Cambodia seeks Thai film help

Dy Saveth, a Cambodian movie star of the 1970s, says she would like to produce a few films but needs to find a financier.

Dy is best known for her role in 1971's Snake Girl or Ngu Kengkong. An adaptation of a Khmer folk tale, the film was remade in 2001 as a Cambodian-Thai co-production.

But since then, exchanges between Thailand and Cambodia have been prickly. In 2003, anti-Thai mobs, enraged by falsely based newspaper reports that a Thai actress had insulted the Cambodian people, burned the Thai embassy and several businesses in Phnom Penh.

Thai programs are banned from Cambodian TV, but a delegation from Cambodia recently visited Thailand, seeking assistance with film and television projection, the Bangkok Post reported recently.

The ban on Thai films has been lifted, though, allowing Cambodians to see such movies as Ong Bak, Krasue, Asurakai, and Satree Lek (Iron Ladies) 2 [don't know where they would actually see these films -- there's only one cinema in Cambodia].

The 61-year-old Dy Saveth, now a professor of art at Royal Phnom Penh University, said she would be happy if exchanges of Thai and Cambodian films returned to the same level as in the past.

Panupong Unnahalekka, a producer at Kantana Co, said he was moved to hear that Cambodia wanted to work with Thai producers rather than with Americans.

Kantana has held a concession to run TV channel 5 in Cambodia for a decade, and was one of the Thai companies to suffer during the Jan 29 anti-Thai riots two years ago.

Mr Panupong said the Cambodian film and TV production industry needed assistance in all aspects -- technical (lighting, camera angles, sound etc.), financing and script writing.

''They want to revive their film industry. At the moment they have hit-and-run films with cheap production and short shooting times and budgets of only 100,000 baht or so,'' he said.

Related posts:

• Cambodia's cinematic revival.

(Cross-published at Rotten Tomatoes)