On
the Other Side Of the Lens
Making Movies Had a Lasting Allure for Retired
King
By Botumroath Lebun
| Norodom Sihanouk stands behind a camera during the shooting of one of his movies |
Mist rose as the sun warmed the countryside around the meandering roads
leading to the top of the Bokor mountain in Kampot province. It was 1969.
Then-Prince Norodom Sihanouk was directing and acting in his latest film
“Rose de Bokor” and Kek Galabru, later to found the local
rights group Licadho, had been invited to visit the hill-top movie set.
“I was good friends with King Sihanouk’s favorite daughter
...Princess Norodom Sihanouk Sorya Roeungsey, who had invited my husband
and I,” Kek Galabru remembered.
Wearing a T-shirt, khaki pants and a scarf, Prince Sihanouk shouted orders
to his actors from behind the camera’s view finder: “No. No.
No.... You have to act this way, watch me.... Yes, turn your head that
way, and stand like this. The hairdo is no good,” Kek Galabru said,
recalling the prince’s commands.
Then in the scenes where the prince had to act, he would give orders to
the camera crew on how best to shoot his unfolding actions: “Shoot
at this angle, and block some lights,” she continued.
| “Khmers not only like happy endings, but they also like tragic endings.” |
|
—Kek
Galabru, licadho founder |
Kek Galabru has many fond memories of that day—how happy and relaxed
everyone working on the crew appeared and the energy and enthusiasm of
the royal filmmaker.
“They had fun while shooting the movie.... They knew that this was
not a formal outing like in the palace where everyone had to wear proper
attire,” Kek Galabru said.
“It was funny and really interesting and particularly pleasant to
see him work as a filmmaker for the very first time,” she added.
Retired King Norodom Sihanouk was skilled in capturing Cambodia’s
beauty and exoticism: “He was an expert in showing his country—the
green forests, and the wild jungle of Angkor Wat and Bokor mountain.”
Before Cambodia fell into the hands of the Khmer Rouge in 1975, Kek Galabru,
her mother, father and her younger sister had left in 1971 for France
and then Canada. It was only in 1992 that she returned.
During those years of exile, it was Norodom Sihanouk’s films, shown
in Paris and Beijing, that were Kek Galabru’s connection to Cambodia.
“The first time I watched ‘The Enchanted Forest,’ ‘Shadow
Over Angkor’ and ‘The Rose of Bokor,’ I rediscovered
my country again,” she said, noting that the majority of Norodom
Sihanouk’s movies end on a melancholy note, which is all too part
of Khmer culture.
“Khmers not only like happy endings, but they also like tragic endings,”
and a typical Khmer love story usually features a beautiful young peasant
girl who falls in love with a prince, but that love is not returned, the
theme of Norodom Sihanouk’s film “Crepuscule” (1968).
“To show how much she loves him, the young girl kills herself by
drowning in a lotus pond,” she said.
In one of Norodom Sihanouk’s more contemporary movies, “My
Village at Sunset” (1992), lost love and melancholy are the main
themes. In the film Neari, a young, pretty, village nurse in Siem Reap
provincial hospital, suffers the romance and then tragic loss of her husband,
Dr Seiha, (played by King Norodom Sihamoni), a Khmer surgeon from France,
who dies in a land mine explosion while on duty.
Eliza Romey, who graduated in political science from Latrobe University
in Melbourne, Australia and who wrote her masters dissertation on Norodom
Sihanouk’s films—“King, Politician, Filmmaker”
(1997)—said the monarch’s interest in cinema began at a young
age when he started experimenting with filmmaking in the palace after
being exposed to filmmaking techniques by a visiting French cinematographer.
 |
| King Norodom Sihamoni, pictured here in his youth, starred in a number of his father Norodom Sihanouk’s movies |
Norodom Sihanouk’s films “are equally significant as statements from a King to his people at a time when he needed to present his political ideas in a form that was not confused with that of the modern politicians,” Romey said.
“He used a modern form to reinforce his traditional
position and comment on matters of politics with the ‘little people’
and thus bypassing the modern system and those with whom he did not wish
to be identified.”
His well know 1967 film, “The Little Prince,” was an early
indication of Norodom Sihanouk’s preferences for then-Prince Sihamoni
as the next King, and it is as much an analogy of Norodom Sihanouk’s
own position as a young king, Romey said.
“The Little Prince” shows the machinations of power around
the throne and the innocence of the King/young prince.
“The marking of Sihamoni is important as is also the fact that he
is [Queen] Monique’s son.
“Put these details in their political context at the time the film
was made and then the film is rich with meanings far greater than who
is to be the next King,” she said
| “I see the films as a type of ‘royal road’ to the thinking of Sihanouk.” |
| —Eliza
Romey, author of a dissertation on norodom sihanouk’s movies |
They also tell of how Norodom Sihanouk sought to manage and protect his position and the interests of the Cambodian people, as he saw them, Romey said.
During that time, when other Cambodian filmmakers were making their movies, Norodom Sihanouk was not impressed with many of his contemporaries, as he felt they failed to represent Cambodia, Romey said.
“His films do not have a history shared with other Cambodian filmmakers.
“His works are seen as a form of art emanating from the King,” she said.
“I see the films as a type of ‘royal road’ to the thinking of Sihanouk.
“I do believe that Westerners have really failed to understand the importance of the films; they compare the images and the acting with Western forms,” she said.
“Thus, they cannot appreciate the wonderful opportunity the films offer as an insight into Sihanouk, his world, and his political views, both in the palace and the nation,” Romey said.