Shower time

Just time for a shower before going out for dinner. Up early for a dawn visit to a completely empty Ta Prohm then onto Banteay Srei, which has changed dramatically since my last visit a few years ago. Now you cannot get near the central structure - before you could clamber anywhere you liked - and the road that passed by the front entrance has disappeared into a brand new car parking and refreshment area. We stopped by the Aki Ra landmine museum on the way back for my first visit there too before I got dropped off at the back entrance of Angkor Wat to visit Now, who was helping her sister sell souvenirs on her day off. After lunch we took our guests to Angkor Thom to visit the South Gate, Bayon and East Gate and then a hotel inspection at Hotel De La Paix before shower-time. They are off to a dance show at La Residence, I'm off for dinner with Now at Shadow of Angkor. More later.

I'm outta here

Just got a couple of minutes before I get outta here and along to Meta House to screen the first-ever Cambodia showing of the the documentary Aki Ra's Boys, by director duo Lynn Lee and James Leong. We will kick-off the screening at 7pm. The film focuses on Boreak, who lost his right arm in a landmine accident and who tries his best not to go to school. He's a bit of a rascal, but a likeable one. I hear that now, a couple of years after the film was made, Boreak is now almost a changed boy, studious and well-behaved. The film also introduces Aki Ra, who has been demining Cambodia almost single-handedly for years and hosts the landmine museum near Banteay Srei, as well as a home for children like Boreak.
I'm just back from the oven that is the Olympic Stadium. Only one game this afternoon and that saw Preah Khan retake top spot in the Cambodian Premier League, with a run-of-the-mill 4-1 success against struggling Post Tel. It was so damn hot. Hats off to the two teams for doing their best in those conditions. A 2pm kick-off (it was televised so a later start wasn't possible) is murder to play football in. I tried it when I was turning out forBayon Wanderers (ah, the good old days), so I know how hard it really is. I'll post my match report when I get back later tonight.

Next month at Meta

Boreak, one of Aki Ra's Boys

So you can put the dates in your diary for August, I will be presenting three documentaries at Meta House next month. The first will be on Saturday 8th, when the hour-long Aki Ra's Boys will be shown in Cambodia for the first time. Filmed in 2007 by the team of James Leong & Lynn Lee, it deals with the scourge of landmines and the effects on the handicapped children who live in the home of Aki Ra, the man who has demined swathes of Cambodia by hand and who runs the landmine museum near Banteay Srei. It was very sad to hear that Aki Ra's wife Hourt unexpectedly died a few months ago, though I believe he's now remarried and continues in his demining work and providing a home for handicapped orphans.

The second film night will be on Thursday 13th with a double-bill of documentaries on a photography theme. The first is Secrets of S-21: Legacy of a Cambodian Prison, a half-hour BBC production from 1996 in which two American photographers, Doug Niven and Chris Riley, painstakingly piece together the details of the genocide that took place at S-21 through thousands of photos left behind when the prison was evacuated. The photos and interviews with former prison guards and prisoners reveal a world built on power, fear, and total disregard for human life and dignity. This is still a relevant documentary more than a decade after it was made and so relevant to the KR trials taking place right now. In the second half-hour film, veteran Magnum photographer Philip Jones Griffiths (pictured), in a film called The Shoot: Cambodian Odyssey, returns to Cambodia to talk about his experiences in the area but also of his approach to photojournalism. This documentary was filmed in 1996 by director Richard Traylor-Smith for the BBC. Griffiths died in March 2008.