Notes
1 Over a period of three months, the team spent three weeks in Thnol Lok and then returned for another two weeks. They then spent three or four months in Phnom Penh, finalizing the movie.
2 Unless otherwise indicated, the information comes from Ella Pugliese’s personal communication with the author (interview, 27 November 2018; email exchange, 12 April 2020).
3 Pugliese thinks that an NGO had organized a local screening of The Killing Fields some time before she and her team arrived in Thnol Lok.
4 Working as an interpreter for foreign correspondents, Dith Pran (1942-2008) helped Schanberg (1934-2016) cover the 1970-1975 civil war in Cambodia.
When the Khmer Rouge forces were about to enter Phnom Penh in April 1975, Dith refused to evacuate with his family to the United States and stayed with Schanberg. The two men were separated shortly after the fall of the city. Dith survived through several labor camps and finally escaped to a refugee camp in Thailand, where he was reunited with Schanberg in October 1979. Dith resettled in the United States and joined The New York Times.Cambodia expert David P. Chandler praised the accuracy of the movie in his review of The Killing Fields. For example, “the ink, format and typeface of Schanberg’s Cambodian visa, shown for a split second at the beginning of the film, are exactly right” (1986, p. 93).
Foreigners were shortly rounded up at the French embassy, the only diplomatic representation to remain open after the Khmer Rouge takeover of Phnom Penh, and evacuated to Thailand in early May 1975.
The daughter of a high-ranking military police officer of the Khmer Republic, Loung Ung was five at the time of the Khmer Rouge takeover. After the forced evacuation of Phnom Penh, her family dispersed to survive. Ung was reunited with her remaining siblings in 1979 and migrated to the United States in 1980.
The book (2001) and the film (2017) recount her experience as a child soldier in Democratic Kampuchea.Obviously, the Khmer Rouge had no intention to negotiate with the MONATIO people and slaughtered them.
In 1985, Ngor even won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Of course, one wonders whether “acting” is the appropriate term for Ngor’s performance in The Killing Fields.
For example, when Ngor played the scene in which Dith implores Khmer Rouge soldiers to spare a group of Western journalists (including Schanberg) arrested while photographing the fall of Phnom Penh, he used his recollection of begging for his life after he was caught with a vegetable basket. Ngor tapped into even more dramatic episodes of his life: for the scene in which he parts from Schanberg at the French embassy, he remembered the death of his wife, Huoy, and broke down.
In the evening, for example, the team organized projections for the children.
In the film, for instance, Dith’s return from crossing the border to Thailand looked quite easy, “like going shopping.” In real life, Ngor had brought about 220 people with him, but only 17 made it because of landmines, rapes, and killings by Khmer Rouge and Thai soldiers (De Anza College, 1986). Another time, he explained that The Killing Fields only touched the tip of the iceberg: the movie “isn’t bad enough, suffering enough, bloody enough” (Georgetown University, 1988). The two talks feature in Arthur Dong’s documentary movie The Killing Fields of Dr. Haing S. Ngor (2015). Additionally, after Joffe’s movie was shown in Melbourne in early 1985, Cambodian survivors told historian David P. Chandler that the violence of the Khmer Rouge regime had been “played down” (Chandler, 1986, p. 96).
Loung’s mother crushes berries in a big pan and soaks the family’s clothes in it. In the background, one hears slogans explaining that people are equal and must dress the same now that Western vanity is being replaced with a revolutionary mindset.
Located fifteen kilometers south of Phnom Penh, Choeung Ek was the place where the Khmer Rouge killed S.21 prisoners and disposed of their bodies.
Excavations were conducted in 1980, and the remains of about 9,000 individuals were found in mass graves. The remains were chemically preserved and housed in a wooden memorial pavilion, which was replaced in 1988 with a memorial glass-windowed stupa (a traditional structure that houses relics).This commemorative reenactment conjures up another example, the ceremony held at the Amahoro Stadium in Kigali in 2014 for the 20-year anniversary of the Rwandan genocide. Dressed in gray and white, hundreds of people sprawled on the soccer field, motionless as if they were dead. Russian soldiers, who were based in Kigali, played the role of the U.N. peacekeepers abandoning the Rwandans to their fate. The last scene represented the arrival of the Rwandan Tutsi troops, lifting each body until the field was empty. This powerful reenactment, attended by some 30,000 spectators (including many survivors), had a huge emotional impact. Many people in distress had to be carried away (Flood, 2014; Warner, 2014).
16 Still, one should not overlook Ngor’s agency in this situation. He chose to do that, and he was adamant that he wanted to bear witness to the suffering of the Cambodians and use cinema for it. “I want to be this actor. I want to show the world how the Communists really were.... If I die from now on, O.K. The film will go on 100 years” (Freedman, 1984).
17 In this context, reenactment may even have pedagogical objectives. For instance, the Documentation Center of Cambodia, a prominent research institution working closely with the ECCC, recently launched the educational program “A Role Play: Understanding the Khmer Rouge History in My Village” in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sports. This program complements the study of the Khmer Rouge period in textbooks with role play. Students write and perform scenes in which Khmer Rouge interrogates, beats, and even kills prisoners. See Makara Ouch’s trailer film at the Hun Sen Mean Chey high school in Kampong Cham province (2018).
18 In response to the description of the team being overwhelmed, Pugliese explained to me that, in spite of the “contradictions and weaknesses [the team members] embodied,” it is essential to acknowledge “what [they] have experienced there together, the power of these moments, the feeling that despite all shadows and phantasms, the people felt some relief afterwards.” She adds that what overwhelmed her as well as the “courage of the people who chose to take part in the movie.”
19 In fact, this had also been the case before, when the team returned to Thnol Lok a few weeks after the core period of work to do the editing of the film and integrate the villagers into the process; Pugliese had the feeling that people had already moved on and were less interested. Admittedly, this was also the period of rice harvesting, and the villagers had no time.