Cambodian News

“Enemies of the People,” a documentary that demonstrates the Khmer Rouge chain of command, will show at the Sundance Film Festival in the US in January.
The film was selected out of 782 film documentaries in the World Cinema Documentary category and will compete with 11 other films at the prestigious festival, held each year in [...]

Skye Fitzgerald, whose recent documentary, “Finding Face,” chronicles the life of acid attack victim Tat Marina, hopes support built from the film will go toward punishing the perpetrators and finding justice for his subject.
“One of our strategies with releasing the film here in the United States is to garner more support,” Fitzgerald told VOA Khmer [...]

At its height, Cambodia’s film industry produced movies that could be seen in neighboring countries. But that was a long time ago. Following its destruction under the Khmer Rouge, the industry never recovered.
“We need to do much better, otherwise our movies cannot compete with foreign films,” said Ly Bun Yim, a producer from the “Golden [...]

Following the success of the Cambodian rock opera “Where Elephants Weep,” composer Him Sophy is back to work on new music.
“Where Elephants Weep” was a contemporary show unlike anything Cambodians had seen, and Him Sophy spent seven years producing it. Now, the composer told VOA Khmer in an interview, he is creating new musical performances, [...]

The dance performance “Agangamasor,” a new show by the Cambodian Buddhist Society, played in Washington last week, adding a new dimension to a classic story.
The dance tells of a royal guard in Preah Eysor’s palace, Agangamasor, who becomes frustrated with the torments of visiting devadas and eventually turns on his royal patron.
Agangamasor uses a magical [...]

Many of Michael Jackson’s Cambodian fans, including pop stars, comedians, and Hip Hop singers, were shocked by the news of the rock icon’s death.
Jackson died of heart complications in Los Angeles on June 25, at age 50, after suffering a cardiac arrest at his home.
Ou Bunarath, who is Cambodia’s best-known comedian and goes by the [...]

Cambodia’s entertainment industry has fallen sharply due to piracy and the economic crisis, local media reported on Tuesday.
The number of Cambodian companies producing films and karaoke albums has fallen more than 75 percent since mid-2008, a trend that officials and company owners attributed to increasingly widespread piracy and the economic crisis, the Phnom Penh Post [...]

PHNOM PENH (AFP) — Cambodia’s first-ever movie featuring a taboo lesbian love story has been a surprising hit during its first week in theatres, the film’s writer said Thursday.
Phoan Phuong Bopha said the two-hour “Who Am I?” about a Cambodian-American woman infatuated with a famous Cambodian actress has so far attracted some 4,000 viewers — [...]

It all started with a photograph shot by John Vink and depicting the back profile of a dancer standing at a slight three-quarter-angle, her delicate arm reaching up gracefully with, standing in the background, an anonymous blurry protagonist, fascinated by the movement of the scene. In front of this picture, Emmanuèle Phuon, a former dancer [...]

Emerging dance methods at Amrita Art blend international and Cambodian creativity, producing something contemporary out of traditional Khmer dance.
Fred Frumberg, founder of Amrita Art, an organization based in Phnom Penh, has worked in Cambodia for 12 years, preserving classical dance. But showcasing the new ideas of a younger generation is important for the development of [...]