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SUMMARY:CGHR Film screening: Enemies of the People - Rob Lemkin (Co-Direct
 or)
DTSTART:20151202T183000Z
DTEND:20151202T203000Z
UID:TALK61867@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:39422
DESCRIPTION:Co-hosted by the Department of Sociology\n\nOne of the most ha
 rrowing and compelling personal documentaries of our time\, Enemies of the
  People exposes for the first time the truth about the Killing Fields and 
 the Khmer Rouge who were behind Cambodia's horrific genocide. More than si
 mply an inquiry into Cambodia's experience\, however\, Enemies of the Peop
 le is a profound meditation on the nature of good and evil\, shedding ligh
 t on the capacity of some people to do terrible things and for others to f
 orgive them.\n\nWinner of a dozen top documentary festival awards\, includ
 ing a Special Jury Prize at Sundance and the Grand Jury Award at the Full 
 Frame Documentary Festival\, this is a riveting film that takes audiences 
 as close to witnessing evil as they are ever likely to get. It is also a p
 ersonal journey into the heart of darkness by journalist/filmmaker Thet Sa
 mbath\, whose family was wiped out in the Killing Fields\, but whose patie
 nce and discipline elicits unprecedented on-camera confessions from perpet
 rators at all levels of the Khmer Rouge hierarchy. This is investigative j
 ournalism of the highest order.\n\nIn 1974\, Thet Sambath‟s father becam
 e one of the nearly two million people who were murdered by the Khmer Roug
 e when he refused to give them his buffalo. Sambath's mother was forced to
  marry a Khmer Rouge militiaman and died in childbirth in 1976\, while his
  eldest brother disappeared in 1977. Sambath himself escaped Cambodia at a
 ge 10 when the Khmer Rouge fell in 1979.\n\nFast forward to 1998\, and Sam
 bath\, now a journalist\, got to know the children of some senior Khmer Ro
 uge cadre and gradually earned their trust. \n\nThen\, for a decade\, he s
 pent weekends visiting the home of the most senior surviving leader\, Nuon
  Chea\, aka Brother Number Two under Pol Pot. “But he never used to say 
 anything different from what he told Western journalists\,” says Sambath
 \, “I was low-ranking\," "I knew nothing\,‟ "I am not a killer.‟ The
 n one day he said to me "Sambath\, I trust you\, you are the person I woul
 d like to tell my story to. Ask me what you want to know.‟ For the next 
 five years he told me the truth\, as he saw it\, including all the details
  of killing.” \n\nSambath also won the confidence of lower-level Khmer R
 ouge soldiers\, now ordinary fathers and grandfathers\, who demonstrated t
 o him how they slit people's throats. For these murderers\, it was the fir
 st time they admitted what they had done. He taped their interactions and 
 discussions about the killings\, and together with British documentarian R
 ob Lemkin they created this landmark film. \n\nFor Sambath\, it has been a
 n ongoing\, lifelong personal journey to discover what was behind such hor
 ror\; he neglected both his family and his own happiness in the search for
  truth with hope of reconciliation. Enemies of the People is at once a cin
 ematically beautiful\, chillingly insightful\, and deeply personal piece o
 f documentary filmmaking. 
LOCATION:Queens Building\, Emmanuel College\, Cambridge
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