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Thursday, January 8, 2004

Thinking about Rithy Panh

How often do you get the chance to stare directly into the face of evil? S21 gives you that chance, and what do you know - evil's face looks just like everybody else's. - Joshua Tanzer, OffOffOff.com

A recent thread on the Rotten Tomatoes Forum made me think about "visually stunning" Asian films, and of course I responded to the poster by offering up more than a half dozen Thai films, with Tears of the Black Tiger being my first recommendation.

I guess that's what it was that made me fall in love with Tears of the Black Tiger, was its visually stunning look. I caught the movie back in 2001 on a visit to Bangkok when I was living in Phnom Penh. I saw it in back-to-back showings at The Emporium with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. If you want visually stunning, there are probably not two finer examples than those films. And I saw them for the first time in one day at the theatre.

What does this have to do with Rithy Panh? Well, when I thought more about visually stunning, I thought about two of his films that I'd seen - The Rice People and Land of Wandering Souls. He's not Thai; he's Cambodian and was trained in France. But his films definitely fit within this group, as they represent a style - for lack of better terminology, the "visually stunning Asian style".

Turns out Rithy made a film last year called S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine. Anyhow, I hope someday to see this movie, as well as see Rice People and Wandering Souls again.

A feature and links to Rithy's film can be found at Sixbillion.org.

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