Anti-Archive is a production company giving voice to an edgier new wave of Cambodian movie makers. They have seized the opportunity afforded by inexpensive shooting methods – using hand held video for example, alongside an emerging artistic community who are concerned less about Cambodia’s dreadful holocaust of the 1970s and more about the pressing challenges of modern life. Careless urbanisation, the discontentment that walks hand in hand with higher education and the stress on families all get airplay in Ant-Archive’s roster of movies which have garnered international awards.
Anti-Archive is a Cambodian film production company, which produces and co-produces fiction and documentary films by the emerging, new generation of Cambodian filmmakers, as well as films by international, independent directors shooting in Cambodia. Deliberately provocative, the name Anti-Archive invites one to rethink the relationship of films and filmmakers with the past and history.
The founders Davy Chou and Steve Chen met in Phnom Penh in 2009, when they were each developing their own film projects. Steve Chen worked on the production of GOLDEN SLUMBERS, and in 2012 directed and produced the Cambodian feature film DREAM LAND with support from Davy Chou.
The company recognises the need for a structure of film production in Cambodia to support young independent filmmakers, some of whom have since shown their first works internationally.
Since 2009 they have produced a string of movies – mostly helmed by locals, but on some occasions using foreign Directors who fulfil a mentoring role to develop local talent.
One film that characterises the social bite of these talented film makers is White Building(2022). This is a coming-of-age story told with a backdrop of modern greed as families are being threatened with eviction from a brutal white building that has been their home for years. Offered a pittance in compensation, families face an uncertain future in a city – Phnom Penh – that they can no longer afford.
The movie screened at many festivals world-wide and won warm reviews from journals such as the Guardian in the UK.
Top rate action, amazing direction – a Euro/Khmer production that highlights the power of Khmer martial arts.
Movie making in Cambodia had its heyday in the 1960s when local film makers cranked out love stories, legends and ghost tales, as well as comedies. All that was nearly wiped out during the Pol Pot years. But after a wave of movies dealing with the horror of the Pol Pot years, a young generation of movie-makers is connecting with other people relatively new to movie-making, and the results are spectacular.
For those who like action the 2017 movie, Jailbreak is astounding. It is a simple story that portrays a team of Special Task Force Officers who have been tasked with getting a gang leader out of prison and delivered to witness protection after he turns snitch. But the gang headed by The Madame (Celine Tran) has other plans, and soon, following her orders, a riot ensues in the jail leaving the Special Task Force officers trapped in the prison and fending for themselves.
Jailbreak is a a no-frills film and the set is used and reused to denote different locations – so the feeling is a little claustrophobic – but that doesn’t matter. In showcasing the Khmer fighting style of bokator the viewer will be pummeled and amazed much as they were with the Thai hit Ong-Bak. No CGI here – these fights are the real deal. The camera puts you right in the middle of the action.
Director Jimmy Henderson has put together a sharp, explosive entry that the Cambodian film industry can be proud of.
I love film, and I love music so I’m excited by the prospect of an upcoming Cambodian movie that uses a famous Sinn Sisamouth song to tie-together three parallel stories set at pivotal times in Cambodia’s recent history. Sisamouth was the legendary pop vocalist who was adored by Cambodian fans in the 60s and 70s but was killed by the Khmer Rouge. Today his music is still revered – a vibrant reminder of the unquenchability of love and of culture.
The film IN THE LIFE OF MUSIC is the creative child of the up and coming female Khmer/American Director Caylee So who is clearly tracing the footsteps of her parents with this drama; her first feature film.
I looked up the movie’s website and here’s what it says about Caylee:
Caylee So was born in a refugee camp in Thailand on September 17th 1981, just after her parent’s escape from the reign of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia. When she was just three years old, her family immigrated to the United States. She grew up in Northern Virginia where she spent most of her youth.
In 2000, soon after her high school graduation, Caylee joined the US armed forces and served in the Virginia Army National Guard for the next eight years. There, she wrote for a little column called Caylee’s Corner, a newsletter that was sent out to friends and families of deployed soldiers.
In between tour of duty, Caylee attended Northern Virginia Community College where she discovered her love of writing fiction. She later transferred to George Mason University to pursue a degree in creative writing. Creative writing led to theatre, and theatre led to film; all mediums that had one thing in common: they all captured stories.
In 2011, Caylee was awarded the Zonta’s Women in Film grant for Most Promising Young Filmmaker. In 2012 Caylee received her MFA in Film Production at Dodge College of Film and Media Arts, having won the Best Picture and Best Director at her school’s Cecil Awards that year. She is also the winner of the Director’s Guild of America’s 18th annual Best Female Student Director award. She is the co-founder of the 1st Cambodia Town Film Festival in Long Beach, CA and the winner of the Linda Mabelot’s New Directors/New Visions Award.
3 Chapters; 3 Generations; 3 Worlds: Changed by a Song.
Directed By: Caylee So / Sok Visal
Written By: Caylee So / Dane Styler
Produced By: Caylee So / Neardey Trinh
In the Life of Music tells the story of how one song “Champa Battambang,” a song made famous by Sinn Sisamouth (the King of Khmer Music), plays a role in the lives of three different generations. It is a feature narrative told in 3 chapters during 3 different decades, depicting the lives of people whose world is inevitably transformed by war. It is a powerful intergenerational tale that weaves through 38 years of Cambodia’s ever-changing landscape.
Chapter One: The Song of Love (1968)
In the small village, a group of musicians ride into town to give a rare impromptu fundraising concert, igniting profound excitement and wonder from all the townspeople. Bearing the burdens and responsibilities of traditions, two strangers: CHY, 16, and PHALLY, 15, seeks to overcome their obstacles, and find a way to attend the concert, a concert in which music and love will be forever intertwined.
Chapter Two: The Song of Death (1976)
Mith, 40’s, a famous singer now living under the terror of the Khmer Rouge Regime, struggles with surviving his own legacy.
Chapter Three: The Song of Birth (2007)
Hope, 26, a singer, songwriter, journeys to Cambodia, the place her mother calls “home” where along the way, relationships will be tested, and one’s quest for identity will give voice to a generation who must reconcile the past with the present in order to shape the music of our future.
praCh Ly didn’t know it, but his limited release rap CD was going to Number 1 in Cambodia, and was bridging two generations.
Rap music isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. In the early 90s the gangsta rap sound from the meaner suburbs of Los Angeles assaulted the radio waves and split black culture down the middle with old-school R&B on one side, with a younger edgier generation on the other.
For any teenager growing up in LA it would have been impossible to ignore artists such as Run DMC, NWA, Ice Cube – and if the epicentre of rap music was the suburb of Compton, then in neighbouring Long Beach, home of several hundred thousand Cambodians in the USA, rap music provided an outlet for a generation of young migrants who had grown up with a feeling of displacement that came from being war refugees in a fairly unsympathetic foreign land.
praCh is the seventh child of a refugee family. He was born in 1979 near Battambang, and his family came to United States to escape the Khmer Rouge. His family was quite typical in that the adults seldom talked about their experiences of war: the focus was on the new life, though the new life was extremely tough. Out in the streets, the conversations of young people seem to be mostly about gangs, guns and drugs. praCh Ly loved rap music, but he found his lyrical home when one of his older brothers started telling him stories about the Khmer Rouge and about the family’s desperate escape to a refugee camp. Soon he was recording samples of music, using a karaoke machine, and throwing over these beats his hard-hitting lyrics. His album, Dalama, pieced together a song by song his own life story.
This was in the year 2000, and praCh manned booth at the New Year celebrations held by the Khmer community of Long Beach each year. There was to be live music at the event, but he was told that his music was too aggressive, that he was not able to perform. But an artist is an artist – and displaying a precocious confidence – praCh got up on stage before the main acts which were due to play, and he introduced himself. He told the audience that he was going to do a rap piece, once in Khmer, and once in English – and that if they didn’t like it – then they were welcome to boo him off the stage.
He performed his piece called welcome, first in English – just him and the microphone with no beats or accompaniment – and the younger members of the audience loved it. When he then performed it in Khmer he got a standing ovation from old and young. “Do another one,” they yelled. This was his breakthrough.
His CD sold locally in modest numbers, but unbeknownst to him, a Cambodian DJ took a copy back to the Phnom Penh, and played tracks on the radio. They got a huge reaction – partly from the government who wanted to ban these tracks, but after it was argued that the subject of the rap music was history and not the present government, the authorities relented, and the fan reaction was so strong that pirated copies of Dalama sold in huge numbers; making praCh the first Cambodian rap star.
This got him big publicity with mentions in Newsweek and other mainstream media, and it took praCh into circles he never expected. In 2002 he was shoulder tapped to become chief organiser of the Khmer New Year’s festival in Long Beach – a role that put him right into the middle of his own community. In the past 12 years he has continued to be published as a rap musician and as a poet – and he has been in big demand on the speaking circuit, lecturing on human rights.
Rap music may not be your cup of tea – but what is interesting about praCh is that he uses an in-your-face medium to tell honest stories, and expose the history faced by so many families who lived through the 1970s. He was quite surprised at how his music has served to open up conversations with families – with the younger generation, informed by his music, beginning to ask their parents about their experiences under the Khmer Rouge. This has been a healing process.
praCh is now probably regarded as the elder statesman of Khmer rap – and there are now several other names of Cambodian rap and hip hop artists both from Long Beach and from the homeland of Cambodia. It is a lively, dynamic genre. In 2004 he went on a 23 States tour across the United States and was a subject for Japan’s documentary film, which won NHK’s Best Documentary of the Year (2004).
He has also become active scoring movie soundtracks including the Khmer baseball documentary ‘Rice Field of Dreams’ (2010) and creating original music for the excellent Sundance Award Winning and *Oscar short-listed movie ‘Enemies of the People’ (2010).
Among his recent activities has been the founding and organising of the Cambodia Town Film Festival which ensures an outlet for Cambodia’s burgeoning film industry. He has been described as Khmer-America’s most influential citizen.
This year a Cambodian, Rithy Panh came close with his movie The Missing Picture, to winning an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, and it is thirty years ago when Haing S Ngor won his deserved acting Oscar for his part in The Killing Fields: a movie that has very much shaped the West’s modern appreciation of Cambodia. This video clip of Ngor’s acceptance speech hints at the luck he had in being cast for the role (he was not a trained actor,) and simply bursts with his pride, joy and – yes – blessings not only for the Hollywod recognition, but for the fact that he made it out of Cambodia, alive. Watching it right now I admit: I burst into tears.
In 2004 when I first visited Cambodia I didn’t get to see much television until I arrived in Phnom Penh and for one day coped with the cultural overload by staying put in my hotel, reading a Nick Hornby novel and watching music videos. I love Cambodian pop music, but what struck me at the time was how these music clips perfectly captured the Zeitgeist of their day. Here are images and 3 minute storylines designed to connect with the audience. Any video producer wants to use images that easily resonate with the mood of the young fan base: in this case the young urban audience who were wealthy enough, and have the electricity to have TV.
So what were the video tropes of 2004? Well, there were the usual global pop cliches – the Britney dancers and the K-Pop princesses, but what stood out for me was the presence of pining, wistful romances in which the lead singer would walk through city life (the cars, the fashions, the cell phones) but feel empty without their true love: and I’m talking not about a girlfriend or boyfriend: I’m talking about their family life in the countryside. We’d see walks by the river, ploughing with the water buffalo, the greeting of elderly family members: a life without the hustle and shallowness of the modern city.
Here surely was evidence of a widely shared angst about urbanisation. Is the shift to the city worth it? Is modernisation all good?
The most memorable video featured a great singer who wore a straw cowboy hat. A very talented singer: and the story in his video was about family life on the farm. There are two kids and a water buffalo whom they adore. They pat him, feed him, ride on him…they love their water buffalo.
But one day while the kids have trudged off to school the water buffalo is sold by the father. The children come home and are distraught when they learn their water buffalo has gone. They weep and cry. But the father shows them why he has sold the water buffalo – it is to buy two new bicycles. Now the kids can ride to school! They light up and – it seemed to me – quickly forget about their old water buffalo. Now they have the gleaming bicycles of modernisation.
Today, ten years later, the music videos have broadly changed. For sure, there is the occasional sentimental story about the girlfriend who dwells back in the village – but for the most part Korean Pop has formed the stylistic reference point for the video makers who churn out clip after clip with the shiny, pounding (and still Britney-esque) K-Pop dance moves and pale-skinned princesses.
Savong School Cambodia 
You must be logged in to post a comment.