Pek on Pek

In the run up to the first screening of The Red Sense in Phnom Penh - it will be screened at Meta House, next to Wat Botum, on Friday 24 April at 7pm - here's a brief interview with the film's director Tim Pek (pictured), a Cambodian now relocated to Melbourne in Australia, where he combined shooting his debut film with a number of scenes shot in Cambodia. Three years in the making, he employed Khmer actors, speaking in Khmer, with English subtitles. Find out more about the film here.

Here's the interview:
'I was born in Battambang and raised in a decent family, we ran a mixed business back in Cambodia, but unfortunately I only lived there for 8 years. So not much in the way of good childhood memories, moreso I recall seeing those terrified survivors from the Khmer Rouge regime, literally a hell on earth. And still haunting me, which I have never forgot.

A few years after the civil war, my family decided to leave everything and escaped to Khao-I-Dang camp as refugees in Thailand for 4 years before settling in Australia, and now living in Melbourne, one of the best cities in the world in my opinion.
Before getting heavily involved in The Red Sense project, I got motivated and inspired by a few short films back in the early 2005, from friends in Melbourne. I'd been very interested in this medium and always had dreams to make films since I was in my teens, but back then it was quite impossible to do so, everything were so expensive and was simply too hard to achieve when I was at college. In early 2000 I got myself a job and gained an abundance of designing and video skills which then gave me the confidence to make a film in such scale, and ironically its my debut film.
I urge all Khmer people living everywhere to pay respect and support to those hard-working Cambodian film directors and producers to make more films, as you know our film production is in rapid decline. I believe they can make good films so please support them and lets get back to making films like we did in the golden era of the 60s and 70s.

Finally, I have other two projects in post production, Bokator and Annoyed, hopefully they will be available on DVD later this year and can be searched in google.com.'

Click to enlarge