A team of archaeologists examines an ensemble of finely crafted gold and silver artifacts from a temple in Laos. The expedition takes the researchers from the vault where the treasure is now housed to ancient temples hidden deep in the jungle. The team makes spectacular discoveries at excavation sites scanned from the air...
Prajna is the Sanskrit word for radiant wisdom, and yatra is the word for pilgrimage or spiritual journey. This visually stunning documentary is a cinematic pilgrimage exploring the lost civilization of Angkor in Cambodia, including the largest temple in the world, the magnificent Angkor Wat. The journey continues to sacred sites of the natural world, Hindu Bali, jungles of Java, and discovering Buddhist Borobudur. A John Bush film.
On April 17, 1975, the face of Cambodia would forever be changed. As Khmer Rouge soldiers marched into the capital city of Phnom Penh, the unsuspecting people of Cambodia had little idea they would be forced into a living nightmare that would last nearly four years. Rain Falls From Earth is a story of courage, a story of survival and a story of eventual triumph over the Communist regime that was responsible for the deaths of over two million people. The voices of many Cambodians are heard as they convey their thoughts, ideas and emotions - the very things they were forced to abandon in the "killing fields" of Cambodia. Their stories are an eyewitness account to genocide.
This is the original version of the much heralded "Raising The Bamboo Curtain" narrated and produced by legendary travel filmmaker Rick Ray. (Rick later sold partial rights to this program to another producer who hired Martin Sheen to narrate - that cut down and rewritten version is not the same). Sneaking his cameras past Burmese and Cambodian customs officials and getting around the country to produce one of the best travel docs ever made, Rick has outdone himself - again!
Angkor et Les Mystères de L'Empire Khmer
This short documentary chronicles the culture and arts of Cambodian Americans and the Lowell, MA community through the eyes of Sokhary Chau, the first Cambodian American Mayor in the United States. Chau immigrated to the U.S. at seven years old to escape the Khmer Rouge genocide. Through this unique story that showcases the best of Lowell—immigrant success, assimilation, history, and the development of the arts—we see a man born into a war-torn country who comes to America to be a first-in-the-nation leader.
Between Us follows the multilayered stories of LGBTQIA+ Khmer and Vietnamese cultural workers in southern California as they contemplate the in-betweenness of belonging, healing, and carving out spaces of their own.
Over three million Cambodians died in the genocide between 1975 and 1979. The Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror also decimated a homegrown film industry that had flourished since 1960: movie theaters were bombed, film prints were destroyed and artists were executed. In Golden Slumbers, French-Cambodian filmmaker Davy Chou mourns this loss of lives and culture, but balances the somber material with a playfulness that honors the lush melodramas and mythic adventures of the glory years.
Part travelogue and part sensitive investigation, the movie tells the universal story of people who refuse to be erased, reminding us that defending the Earth means defending life.
Documentary of the S-21 genocide prison in Phnom Penh with interviews of prisoners and guards. On the search for reasons why this could have happened.
This documentary looks at the stories that take place around a unique 1.5 kilometre long bamboo bridge that for generations has been built every year following the rhythms of nature across the Mekong River to join the rural community of Koh Paen to the city of Kampong Cham in Cambodia.
Documentary about Cambodia featuring a long interview with Pol Pot
Through daily routines in a rural village, an indigenous elder couple recall their strange marriage to their grand-daughter, and sometimes to each other, in the changing rhythm of nature around them.
Cambodian refugee Ted Ngoy builds a multi-million dollar empire by baking America's favourite pastry: the doughnut.
John Baumhackl recalls the early days of the Vietnam War when more and more troops were being sent into combat every month. In 1968, John's number came up and he was drafted into the conflict. Buying a camera at his company store before shipping off, he captured many battles while in a helicopter. John was near the front lines when President Nixon made the controversial decision to push into Cambodia. In John's view, this saved American lives.
Rithy Panh uses clay figures, archival footage, and his narration to recreate the atrocities Cambodia's Khmer Rouge committed between 1975 and 1979.
Les Pépites
Narratives of Modern Genocide challenges the audience to experience first-person accounts of survivors of genocide. Sichan Siv and Gilbert Tuhabonye share how they escaped the killing fields of Cambodia, and the massacre of school children in Burundi. Mixing haunting animation, and expert context the film confronts our notion that the holocaust was the last genocide.
An experimental film revisiting the entangled histories of borders, ancient sites, nationhood, and politics—emerging from the Thai-Cambodian border conflict under the shadow of colonial cartography, modern nation-states, and Thai political tensions.
The temple complex of Banteay Chhmar in Cambodia is half-ruined, but of enchanting beauty. It is the last major temple of the old Khmer empire. The people of the village are rediscovering it: as a place of spiritual inspiration and the center of cultural life. With almost no outside help, the inhabitants of the small village are fighting to preserve and restore the complex.