Word: khmers
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...result is Kuon Puos Keng Kang, The Snake King's Child, one of the first major film productions in Cambodia since the Khmer Rouge regime in the 1970s. Considering the recent history of the land of the Killing Fields, few countries have more stories to tell on film, but no one's telling them. Fay Sam Ang's film, which was released last month to coincide with the Year of the Snake?Cambodians also celebrate the Chinese Lunar New Year?is designed to change that and spark a cinematic rebirth of what was once a thriving industry. "I think...
Movies, along with most cultural activities, were proscribed in 1975 by the conquering Khmer Rouge. Hundreds of actors, writers and directors were executed. When the regime finally fell, the theaters slowly reopened and a brief renaissance followed, but the industry soon faced another threat: cheap Thai videos and television soap operas. Five years ago, the last commercial movie house in Phnom Penh closed...
...decided to update Puos Keng Kang, and tried to find a copy of the original, but none was available in his country. The Khmer Rouge had destroyed them all. But Fay Sam Ang , like most Cambodians, knew the old Snake-Meets-Girl story. (In a memorable scene in the new film, a 4.5-m python borrowed from a local temple slithers on top of soap star Ampor Tevy and darts its tongue at her face.) The snake impregnates the peasant woman. Her husband returns from a trip, discovers her infidelity and slits open her belly, releasing hundreds of tiny snakes...
...police do crack down, those at the top, the brains running the muscle, are never touched. Take a man like Samnang. A 45-year-old arms trader, his daytime job is as a border guard on the Thai side of the border with Cambodia. "I am an ex-Khmer Rouge soldier," he says, smiling easily. We are talking outside his office at the bustling gateway, and Samnang is dressed for work - blue shirt and pants and a walkie-talkie. "Even when we were in power, I started selling weapons to make more money. You know how poor we were...
...Samnang gets the weapons from his contacts within the Cambodian army, ex-Khmer mates and the villagers along the 700-km border. He mainly sells AK-47s, rocket-propelled grenades and hand grenades. "I sell them to my buyers but I don't know about the end users because there are so many people in the chain. I have some protection from my boss who runs a syndicate. He is close to the powerful people...