Educational Media Reviews Online

This video is a documentary “based on the memories and stories of Cambodians in the U.S. and Cambodia” in the late 1980’s, prior to the October 23, 1991 Paris settlement which gave the United Nations authority to supervise a ceasefire among factional Cambodian armies and repatriate Khmer refugees who had fled to Thailand. Though the road to Cambodian self-determination continues to be rocky, the video addresses a time shortly after the genocide of Pol Pot in which the Khmer Rouge ruled by night and the Vietnamese occupation troops ruled by day. The video uses the concept of samsara, or endless repetitions of the cycle of birth, death and rebirth, to depict how those in passage from death to life are following in the way of the Buddha. The missing dead, presumed lost to the “Killing Fields” but whose fates have yet to be discovered by surviving relatives, will also be freed to journey from death to life when they are proved dead and proper rituals have been performed by their survivors. The feelings of several Cambodian survivors are expressed through English voice-over narration or through sub-titled Khmer or French. Scenes range from views of the Toul Sleng Execution Center where survivors seek to learn the fate of their missing relatives, to scenes in crowded cities as survivors constantly seek out their “lost” in the faces of everyone passing by, to hospital scenes of those continuing to be maimed by mines after most armed struggle had ceased. These scenes give the viewer the basis for understanding how “those with the Karma to live are blessed and cursed by their survival.”

Technically, the video is excellent: good sound, smooth editing, and interesting cinematography, especially so in the street scenes. Its strengths lie in showing the enduring humanity of those who have been so devastated by loss, so devastated by uncertainty, so exploited by their politicians and the several revolutionary or occupying armies that destroyed their lands and ways of life ... samsara is clearly key to rising above the despair of shattered existence.

This video will enhance library collections in Asian studies and also support courses touching on the concept of, or the realities of recent genocides. Other films are available to expand on particular aspects of the Cambodian “Killing Fields” that may be used in conjunction with Samsara to provide a comprehensive approach to exploring something that probably cannot be entirely understood. Samsara is recommended for its insight into human resilience and the human ability to somehow rise above unspeakable mental and physical abuse through faith.

Awards

• Special Jury Recognition winner, Special Jury Prize winner, 1989 Sundance Film Festival

Four additional films reviewed in EMRO are listed below: Among the Disappeared (2003) is an account of one refugee’s attempt to discover the fate of those he left behind when he fled to Thailand and Canada to escape Pol Pot’s “Killing Fields.”
Cambodia: Children of Genocide (2002) is a short film which showing the extent of the Cambodian genocide and the progress of the UN mandated reconciliation initiative up to 2002.
Cambodia: Land of Silence (2004) “Killing Fields” survivors react to forced “reconciliation” of the perpetrators and the victims of Cambodian genocide under the UN mandated initiative.
S21 the Khmer Rouge Killing Machine (2002) details the Khmer Rouge torture, intimidation, and extermination strategies from 1975-1979 and their aftermath.