The gods of cinema must be smiling: just days after a Cambodian documentary won the second-most important competition at the Cannes film festival, Dengue Fever is to headline at the Memory Heritage Festival here in Phnom Penh – the first of its kind anywhere in Asia.
Rithy Panh, 49, used small clay figures to tell the story of how his family was murdered by the Khmer Rouge in his winning Cannes entry, L’Image Manquante (‘The Missing Picture’). The filmmaker, whose work focuses on the brutality inflicted on his homeland between 1975 and 1979, told Reuters: “For a country that has emerged from its difficulties and years of war, it is important to say we are still alive.”
His words could not be more poignant: of the 350-plus films produced during the revered ‘Golden Age’ of Cambodian cinema in the 1960s, before Pol Pot brutally dialled the country back to ‘Year Zero’, only about 10% have survived. Of the casts and crews, fewer still escaped the Killing Fields. Now, in a bid to resurrect the ghosts of films gone but not forgotten, Cambodia’s foremost audiophiles and cinephiles are joining forces to produce Asia’s first celebration of film heritage.
Dubbed the Memory Heritage Festival, the event – entry to which is free throughout – spans nine days (June 1 – 9); more than 40 classic films from around the world (all subtitled); two exhibitions; a special tribute to film by the late King Father Norodom Sihanouk; a cine-concert with Dengue Fever; conferences and encounters with international cinema heritage experts; a dedicated youth programme and the showcasing of original 35mm screening equipment at Chaktomuk Theatre.
“After the Khmer Rouge, they sometimes replaced films with these little photo novels, which we’ll show at the Bophana Centre during the festival,” says Marie-Josée Blanchard, a volunteer at the centre which, along with the Technicolour Foundation, organised the celebrations. “They were very popular during the ’60s and ’70s. Sometimes they’d have pictures; other times they just drew the images and they’d have text to go with them. It’s like an old comic book, you know? Right after the Khmer Rouge, we didn’t quite have the technology or the resources to produce films. For a few years, people at least had these to replace films, but there’s still so little left.
“We aim especially at the younger generation of Cambodians. We want them to discover a new type of image and sound that they’re not used to – they’re always on iPhones or iPads, you know what it’s like. That’s why we have 35mm dual projectors being installed at Chaktomuk. You don’t see those very often these days, and they’re going to stay there after the festival. We hope to train people in how to use them. We want young people to discover this type of film: the quality and the sound is not quite the same as they’re used to.”
Dengue Fever, the Los Angeles-based sextet who take ’60s Cambodian psyche rock and stuff it through a blender, are today the stuff of music legend. The Kinks’ Ray Davies hailed them “a cross between Led Zeppelin and Blondie”; Matt Dillon asked them to record a Cambodian version of Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now for his directorial debut City Of Ghosts, and Metallica’s Kirk Hammett picked One Thousand Tears Of A Tarantula – homage to Ros Sereysothea, forced by the Khmer Rouge to strip naked and sing under the merciless Cambodian Sun until she dropped dead from exhaustion – for the number two slot on his Rolling Stone magazine Best Music Of The Decade ballot.
On June 5 at Koh Pich (‘Diamond Island’), the band will perform alongside French VJ Alexandre Elkouby. “The really cool thing about Dengue Fever is we’re having a cine-concert,” says Blanchard. “The VJ will mix classic films on a giant screen while they’re playing.” Dengue Fever are also due to present a special screening of Sleepwalking Through The Mekong, a documentary by John Pirozzi that charts their first visit to Cambodia – the native home of lead singer Chhom Nimol – as a band back in 2005.