Something of a companion piece to his celebrated S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine [which screened at Silverdoc in 2003], director Rithy Panh once again turns his keen eye toward the history and present reality of Cambodia with The People of Angkor.
Rithy finds in Angkor Wat's enduring edifices a powerful rebuke to the Khmer Rouge's vicious acts of erasure-not so much the temples' artistry as the personalities of those who work in and around the ruins.
While the former prisoners in S-21 pursued the verifiable facts of painfully recent events, the people of Angkor find the legends of their medieval temples offer a truth no less serviceable for its malleability, and perhaps lessons on how to navigate the present.
A trio of stone masons offer up different interpretations of a stone-carved relief, each as viable as the next. Elsewhere, a peddler boy pretends a photograph of a beautiful Khmer Rouge victim is of the much longed-for mother who has abandoned him.
For a country troubled by questions of what to remember and what to forget about its recent history, Panh offers a vision of past and present peacefully coexisting, and most movingly, the possibility of forgiveness."
The documentary screens at 2:15pm on Friday, June 18.
It's been shown in recent months at Tribeca in New York and at the Nashville Film Festival.
Meanwhile, Rithy's chilling S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine is playing in limited screenings around Philadelphia.
For more on Cambodia, check the excellent news blog, Santepheap.
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