May's Meta highlights

Well, for starters I will be hosting a couple of documentary nights at Meta House later next month, so I recommend you get along to both of those evenings. As part of Legacy Week, on Thursday 28th at 7pm, I am really pleased to present a double-bill of The Tenth Dancer and Samsara. These documentaries are from 1993 and 1989 respectively and are a time capsule of how Cambodia had survived the Khmer Rouge period and almost ten years of Vietnamese control. I'd asked Sally Ingleton for a copy of The Tenth Dancer before I heard about Em Theay's sad loss when her house burned down last month, so this showing will be particularly poignant. The following evening, Friday 29th, in 'Never Before Shown In Cambodia,' I will have two documentaries to screen, Isabelle Abric's 1993 Fear & Hope In Cambodia which chronicles Cambodia's recent history, and Anne Henderson's 1998 film The Road from Kampuchea, telling the story of the courageous Tun Channareth, co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997.
Meta House, on Street 264 in Phnom Penh, will also be screening Site 2 by Rithy Panh on the 30th, and earlier that week, on the 27th, a double-bill of John Pilger's The Betrayal and Tom Fawthrop's Dreams & Nightmares, both documentaries from 1989 and exposing the West's support of Pol Pot. It's a packed month to be honest, with the We Want You To Know! film - with scenes of the KR period recreated by villagers on Sunday 10th - and lots of other interesting films on show, as well as the usual exhibitions and a Pride 09 film festival that focuses on the LGBT community in Cambodia. Link: Meta House.