Cambodia: Children of Genocide 2002
Distributed by Chip Taylor Communications, 2 East View Drive, Derry, NH 03038-4812; 800-876-CHIP (2447)
Produced by ABC Australia
Director n/a
VHS, color, 15 min.
Jr. High - Adult
Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Asian Studies
Date Entered: 11/09/2018
Reviewed by Cliff Glaviano, Coordinator of Cataloging, Bowling Green State University Libraries, Bowling Green, OHThis video presents a contemporary view of Cambodia’s progress toward meeting the UN mandate that the government set up a genocide tribunal to review the roles of the surviving members of the Khmer Rouge Standing Committee in the eradication of 1.7 million Cambodians from 1975 to 1979. Though brief, the program offers a historic overview and highlights the irony of former Khmer Rouge Committee members living practically next door to victims who have lost entire families to forced labor, starvation or executions planned and directed by the Standing Committee. This documentary is a series of interviews with survivors interspersed with film clips of the homes and lives of surviving Committee members (now between 68 and 75 years of age), some of whom already have been granted amnesty for helping the current government reconcile the Khmer Rouge with their former victims. The program points out suspicions that the government is stalling to avoid complying with the UN mandate and is particularly strong displaying the ironies of life in Pailin, one of the final Khmer Rouge refuges, where former Khmer Rouge and their victims currently coexist.
As one would expect of ABC Australia, the technical quality of the video is excellent in sound, editing and video quality. There are some sequences in which interviewees’ responses in Kampuchean are neither translated in voice-over or through captioning: very strange that these are lacking.
The distributor has ten titles in The Southeast Asia Series. Libraries that collect in Asian Studies will be interested in this title as well as others in the series. This video is timely: the UN mandate has not yet been satisfied and in January of 2003, UN-Kampuchea negotiations on the genocide tribunal began again following an eleven-month hiatus. The film is thorough enough to be an introduction to the continuing problem of the “killing fields” and, since it doesn’t spend much time on the artifacts (bones, skulls, photos) of the Khmer Rouge executions, it can be shown to audiences as young as Junior High age.