Byline: Kyle james

Modern-day slaves

The stories appear with depressing regularity in the press: young Cambodian women sent to Malaysia are abused by their employers. Overworked and underfed, sometimes they manage to return to their families; sometimes they die. Cambodian men escape after months or even years working in slave-like conditions on fishing boats or palm-oil plantations. Twenty-hour days, beatings, weeks with little or no pay at all are par for the course. Children are forced to beg on the streets or work as prostitutes.

Human exploitation comes in many forms, be it forced labour or sexual slavery, and is not limited to Cambodia. While it’s impossible to know the exact numbers, the United Nations estimates conservatively that there are 2.5 million victims of human trafficking around the world at any one time. The people and groups responsible for these misdeeds, the fastest growing form of transnational crime, earn tens of billions of dollars every year.

On June 20, Meta House continues its film series exploring the theme of human trafficking and exploitation with documentaries and discussions centred on this modern-day scourge. The 2011 short film Enslaved, produced by MTV, looks at exploitation in Cambodia and the region, featuring the voices of people who were searching for better lives but found a nightmare instead, as well as those who profited from their misery. Another short film, Beyond Borders, recounts the story of Cambodian Prum Vannak, who was held in virtual slavery on a Thai fishing boat, then on a palm oil plantation. His is a story of hunger, torture and crushing solitude. Once he managed to escape, only to be picked up by another broker. After three years, his torment finally ended.

Human trafficking takes place in more developed regions of the world as well. The extraordinary 2005 documentary Sex Slaves examines sex trafficking in Eastern Europe as one man tries to save his pregnant wife who has been sold to a pimp in Turkey. The film features interviews with traffickers, experts, police and women who were kept in sexual bondage. It contains undercover footage that gives viewers a glimpse into the frightening reality experienced by women trapped in this world.

In addition to the films, Ya Navuth, executive director of the anti-trafficking NGO Caram, will be on hand to talk about migration and how it can be made safer. “There is a lack of any kind of mechanism in place for people who find themselves in trouble,” he said. “Take for example the recent maid cases in Malaysia: the women should know who to turn to if things start going wrong.”

Due to the stubbornly high levels of poverty in Cambodia, the Kingdom’s population remains especially vulnerable to trafficking and exploitation, experts say. With a large percentage of people under the age of 20 and work opportunities in rural areas limited, the number of Cambodians desperate to earn a livelihood for themselves and their families and willing to migrate to unknown cities or countries to do so is huge. Too many fall prey to unscrupulous individuals. What’s even more tragic is that sometimes the traffickers are the victims’ own neighbours, friends or even family.

WHO: Cinema lovers with a conscience
WHAT: A rare glimpse into exploitation
WHERE:  Meta House, #37 Sothearos Blvd
WHEN: 7pm July 20
WHY: Understand the nature and scale of the problem

 

Flash dance

For all the hype around modern technology’s supposed ability to bring us together, all too often it keeps us cut off from our fellow man, woman and the environment. We’re encapsulated in the little bubbles we create around us with our iPods, mobile phones, ear buds, song lists or podcasts. But on July 7, one group will attempt to use that technology to break down some of those barriers on a global scale.

“Our gadgets do more to isolate than to unite,” says Danny Silk, online media strategist with education NGO PEPY and one of the brains behind the Global Floating Dance Party, which will be celebrated locally. “But technology has come to the point where so much is possible, so we wanted to do something that would bring people together, along with their environment.”

What started as a late-night, trans-continental Skype conversation has since evolved into a worldwide shindig where folk will gather en masse to dance and party to the same tunes in 25 locations across 12 countries, from Buenos Aires to Beijing and beyond. It works like this: people download a playlist that was crowd-sourced and put together by a DJ from Ghana. Then they gather at a predetermined spot (here it’s Siem Reap, where party-goers have been asked to arrive at 6:30pm). Just before 7pm, the countdown begins. At zero everyone hits ‘play’ – and the party begins, with everyone listening to the same tracks at the same time.

The DJ has compiled an eclectic 90 minutes of music from around the world. “This is a chance for people in Jordan and Costa Rica to hear Khmer dance music for the first time,” says Silk, originally from Lowell in Massachusetts, which has the second-largest Cambodian population in the US after Long Beach, California. “It’s meant to be a celebration of space and technology and dance.”

The event might sound like a rave, but it’s not going to disturb the locals with techno blaring from loudspeakers in the middle of town. This is a silent party – except for those plugged in, of course. And that’s the point, Silk says: no one wants to anger the police, or the neighbours. All they want to do is bring people together through music. If you have headphones and an MP3 player, you’re welcome to join in the worldwide fun.

WHO: Groovy types
WHAT: Global Floating Dance Party
WHEN: 7pm July 7
WHERE: Royal Palace Gardens, Siem Reap
WHY: It’s a worldwide flash dance

 

The great vanishing

The first thing one notices about Jeff Perigois’ photographs of Boeung Kak Lake is the sense of absence. His images of the area in northern Phnom Penh—once the location of the city’s biggest body of water and now home to its biggest vacant lot—have an almost post-apocalyptic feel to them. The dramatic, mostly black-and-white photos of the transformed urban landscape, often cowering under roiling clouds, will be on display at his one-man show, Boeung Kak Was a Lake, at Meta House starting June 2.

The controversy surrounding Boeung Kak is well known to many. In 2008, contractors began pumping sand into the lake in preparation for a large-scale development project that will result in the construction of commercial and residential properties where once there was water. But critics from the outset have worried about the environmental and social costs of the project. Many homes and businesses have been displaced and the efforts of some families to resist mandatory relocation have met with official force.  Just last week, 13 women were given jail terms for protesting the demolition of the homes of one-time residents.

“This kind of thing is happening everywhere,” said Perigois, who took his photos at Boeung Kak in April 2011 and then again in April this year. “Things must change, and we need development so that people do not remain poor, but should we really be doing it this way?”

For him, the lake’s filling is another instance of the natural environment being replaced by concrete and he wanted to document how it has affected the people who live there. He didn’t set out to make grand gestures, and the people in his images are engaged in everyday activities—a woman selling coffee, a boy pushing his motorbike. But they are surrounded by a world that has been torn asunder by powerful financial interests over which they have no control.

Still, some of his photos do have something of the grandiose about them. While in this instance the natural world has been uprooted by man, in Perigois’ images, nature still dominates. Even the skyscrapers of Phnom Penh’s quickly changing skyline seem lost in the landscape. “No matter how much we build, we are still small compared to nature,” he said.

Perigois, 42, hails from Brittany in western France. Two decades ago he met an older photographer he wanted to learn from. The man told Perigois to take his camera out to the streets and present the world from his own perspective. He later learned the man had been a student of Robert Doisneau, one of France’s most renowned photographers, and the advice he had been given was golden.

Perigois first started coming to Asia 14 years ago and has made Cambodia his base for the last five. He has always been attracted to the country’s natural landscape and its people, which is why he was drawn to the lake and its residents, and to this dramatic transformation. “I am just a witness to this, what we are doing to the world.”

WHO: Jeff Perigois
WHAT: Boeung Kak Was a Lake, photography exhibition
WHERE: Meta House, #37 Sothearos Blvd
WHEN: June 2
WHY: See what happens when a lake disappears

 

Filmmaking’s new guard to celebrate Chaktomuk Short Film Contest winners

From 1960 to 1975, Cambodian directors made some 500 films, an average of more than 30 per year. But then the Khmer Rouge came and wiped the film industry out of existence. It has never really recovered. Today, maybe one or two movies make it to the screen every year.

“It’s not good,” says Seila Prum, summing up the general state of Cambodian filmmaking. “You can’t really call it an industry today.”

Prum, an independent filmmaker and videographer himself, wants to do something about that. He joined up with other film lovers to form the collective Kon Khmer Koun Khmer (‘Cambodian Film, Cambodian Youth’) to make films and show Cambodia what their country used to be able to do with celluloid.

He and his partners’ most recent project was the Chaktomuk Short Film Contest 2012, which asked aspiring filmmakers under 30 to create short films from one to five minutes. In March, an international jury chose three prizewinners. Now, the wider public will get to see those stand-outs as well as the other entries at Meta House on May 23 and get a taste of what the future of Cambodian film might well look like.

The theme of this year’s contest was ‘love’, and the films’ subjects ran the gamut from blossoming affection between two people to love found, lost and then regained for a bicycle, to a more destructive love affair with wine. Jury members, who hailed from as far away as Australia and France, looked at criteria such as scriptwriting, camera use and editing, as well as how the young filmmakers used the medium to tell their stories.

None of the contest participants are professional filmmakers, and while some of them had semi-professional equipment, others were armed only with small digital cameras with a video function. The results speak to their enthusiasm and love of the craft.

“Our goal is to reach people who want to make films and encourage them to do it,” said Seila. “A lot of them simply lack confidence.”

Seila acknowledges that the Cambodian film scene still has a long road ahead of it. There is a serious skills deficit, he says, and then there’s the money issue. Seila is realistic enough to know that Cambodian films aren’t going to see big international distributors knocking on the door anytime soon, but he does think some of these young people, given the right encouragement and mentoring, could get future films on the festival circuit. Who knows, next stop Hollywood?

The important thing, Seila says, is to nurture that early spark to see where it leads. “People who submitted to the contest are continuing to make their own films and try new things out,” he said.

A big turnout at Meta House could go far in giving budding filmmakers a little boost to keep on going. Viewers might just get a glimpse of the early work of a Khmer Jean-Luc Godard or a Steven Spielberg. Now that would be something to tell the grandkids.

WHO: Aspiring filmmakers
WHAT: Entries of the Chaktomuk Short Film Contest 2012
WHERE: Meta House, #37 Sothearos Blvd
WHEN: 7pm May 23
WHY: The next generation of Cambodian filmmakers at work

Rejected at home in USA,Poet embraced by olympics

It was something of a bolt out of the blue. Cambodian-American spoken-word artist Kosal Khiev got a call from Studio Revolt, where he’s currently the artist-in-residence: they needed to talk to him.

Next thing he knew, he found out he had been chosen to be Cambodia’s representative at the Poetry Parnassus, the poetry component of the literary festival that will be held in the lead-up to the London 2012 Olympic Games. It’s the largest event of its kind.

“I never saw it coming,” the 32-year-old said, adding that to this day, he doesn’t know who nominated him. “I think that’s just amazing that you can have an impact on people that you don’t know you have.”

On June 26, Kosal will go to London to take part in poetry readings and workshops with poets from the other 203 competing nations as part of the cultural Olympiad. One project is to “bomb” central London with 100,000 works from the participating poets.

“Instead of destructive bombs, they’re bombing love and the thoughts of poets who are trying to inspire, change and motivate,” he said.

Kosal’s own journey is one that has involved recent change, upheaval even, but which has provided a good deal of motivation for young people here in Cambodia. Born in a refugee camp in Thailand, Kosal’s family went to the United States when he was one, and he grew up there, immersed in American culture. But clashes with the law, a long stint in prison and the toughening of immigration rules in the wake of the 9/11 attacks resulted in Kosal being deported to Cambodia a little over a year ago—to a land he didn’t really know.

But since that time, he has flourished, finding a spiritual home here, honing the craft he began to practice behind bars and helping young people learn to express themselves through language.

In the lead-up to the trip to the UK, a country Kosal has never visited and where he will spend more than two weeks, he is working on new material and with Studio Revolt to document the whole process. One of his dominant themes these days is the idea of Cambodia as a mother, who at one point in the not-too-distant past was sick and hurting. She couldn’t take care of her kids and, in a way, told them to leave and go live elsewhere.

“She said, ‘when I am better, I will call you back’” Kosal said. “And now, I feel like Cambodia has called me home.”

He hopes that his participation in the trip can introduce more people around the world to Cambodia and give them a richer picture of the country, not one dominated by war and genocide. He wants to show them how far the country has come.

“The thing is, me and Cambodia, we have a similar story,” he said. “I don’t want to downplay what happened here, but we both come from struggle and adversity, and we survived.

“I think that’s why I was chosen. My story represents hope and survival, and that’s what Cambodia is about. I hope I can make the country proud.”

WHO: Spoken word artist Kosal Khiev
WHAT: The Poetry Parnassus
WHERE: Southbank Centre, London, UK
WHEN: June 26 – July 1
WHY: Poets of the world, unite!