DMC Film Premiere Screening of “Until Today”

Preparing films screening in University of Battambang / by: Dara Saoyuth

Starting from Monday to Thursday, my TV production lecturer and all students in DMC batch 08 had brought 9 short documentary videos to screen in 3 provinces in the Kingdom.

“Until Today” is a DMC Video Project focusing on outgrowing the shadow of Democratic Kampuchea. Throughout the 9 videos, you will know ‘how do events from the past shape our future?’ and ‘how does that affect our daily lives today?’.

Short descriptions of these 9 videos are: A Child Soldier disperses the ghosts of his past with music; After more than 30 years, a man is reunited with his family; Men and women abandon Buddhism to avoid punishment for their sins; Ruined villas of Kep are waiting to take their place among the national heritage; After her abuse under DK, a transsexual now tells her story at the ECCC; A woman joins a mine squad to save others from her own fate; Indigenous tribes in Ratanakiri remember how they turned from friend to foe; The hunt for lost manuscripts as a treasure of the past is on; and The prosecution of intellectuals under DK – reason of unoriginality today?

To produce these videos, my classmates and I had to go to different places in Cambodia talking to various people and capturing everything we thought it would help making our videos good to see. All of us had one week for shooting and around three weeks for editing.

With the financial support from GIZ Entwicklungsdienst, we successfully achieved these 90 minutes video consisting of 9 stories on different topic. Sooner after finishing editing, we had brought these videos to screen at French Cultural Centre in Siem Reap, University of Battambang in Battambang province, and Apic Arts in Kampot province.