Surveying Memory

After violence, of whatever kind, after war, after genocide, one doesn’t think, “peace”; one thinks, “to live” or “to survive.” One cannot live with a broken identity, with a memory that has been amputated or annihilated. The path I took, of necessity, in order to tame the suffering and rediscover the erased memory has been that of film and literature. Because to live and pacify one’s soul means tapping one’s capacity to imagine, speak, express one’s emotions and pass them on.

For a long time I refused to look into the tragedy that stole my childhood and my relatives. That sent me into exile. But I couldn't escape the echoes that war and the Khmer Rouge had left, which rang through my body and my thinking. Those echoes generated questions and then a body of work that I carried out through cinema. "S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine" was more than a film project; it was a necessity, it was vital for my reconstruction and, beyond that, to restore the dignity of both the living and the dead. This talk will discuss the making of this film and the experiences that surrounded it.

Speaker Biography:

Rithy Panh was born in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. He arrived in Paris in 1980 after fleeing the genocide led by the Khmer Rouge regime. He studied at IDHEC. In 2003, he produced ‘S21 La machine de mort Khmère Rouge’, a widely awarded documentary that reviews the policy of systematic elimination orchestrated by the Khmer Rouge between 1975 and 1979. In 2006 he co-founded the Bophana Center in Cambodia that focuses on archiving Cambodian audio-visual heritage and running professional training in audio-visual fields. In 2013, his film ‘The Missing Image’ was the first Cambodian film nominated at the Oscars for best foreign language film. His latest film ‘Irradiated’ was presented in competition at the Berlinale where he received the prize for best documentary. Rithy Panh has also co-authored several books including Elimination and Peace with the Dead with Christophe Bataille, published by Grasset.

Moderator Biography:

Darlene Machell de Leon Espena is an Assistant Professor of Humanities at Singapore Management University (SMU), where she teaches courses on International Relations on Film, Film in Southeast Asia, Cultural History of the Cold War in Asia, and Big Questions. She earned her PhD in History (2017) and MSc. in Asian Studies (2012) from Nanyang Technological University (NTU). Her research includes cinema, culture, and politics in postcolonial Southeast Asia; cultural history of the Cold War in Southeast Asia, and cultural discourses on education in Singapore. Before joining SMU in August 2018, she was a Research Fellow at Singapore’s National Institute of Education (NIE). She has held teaching positions at De La Salle University and Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines. Her current book project is entitled “Cinema and Politics: The Creation of Postcolonial Self/Others and the Shaping of Strategic Cultures in Southeast Asia, 1945-1967.”