Day 2 in Cambodia
As always we all adjusted to jetlag and the heat in record time -- off the plane into our first day's filming. Beautiful plane ride over Siem Reap, home of Angkor Wat, seeing the low-lying rice paddies. Rice has been so much of Cambodia's story -- from being the ricebowl of Asia to starvation during the Khmer Rouge years. Now there is the incipient creep of factory developments replacing the paddies. Yesterday was full on, filming an artist who was imprisoned in Tuol Sleng, the "model prison" where virtually everyone was executed; Bou Meng is one of five living survivors as is Norn Chanpal who was 8 when the Vietnamese forces overthrew the Khmer Rouge in 1979. He had a heartbreaking memory of his mother stroking his hair and telling him to look after his little brother -- she was then taken away. He and his brother hid under a pile of old clothes. We are also following the dictum "every Cambodian has a story" which is true -- so are doing brief vignettes of all the people we meet "naturally" in the film . .translators, court officials, drivers and so on. I think, hope, this is working. Peter as always is doing a great job and we are bristling with cameras...
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