Arts & Events

Opens May 8 at the Elmwood

Note: Director Jon Pirozzi will be appearing at the 7:15PM screening on Saturday, May 9.

If, like most Americans, you remember Cambodia mostly as a sad land of civil war and mass-genocide, John Pirozzi's award-winning documentary, Don't Think I've Forgotten, will forever change that assessment. Pirozzi has resurrected some surprising history—but it wasn't easy. The task of finding evidence of "life before Pol Pot" was complicated by the Khmer Rouge's campaign to destroy every vestige of the popular culture that flourished before the advent of the Maoist-inspired "revolution."

In addition to killing an estimated 2 million Cambodians (starting with the artists and the intellectuals), Pol Pot did such a good job of eradicating the country's pop music remains that few people in the West would suspect that Cambodia once produced a rock-and-roll generation that included scores of popular singers who recorded scores of cassettes and vinyl albums.

 

When Pirozzi first decided to tackle this film in 2004, he found there were "no books, no magazine articles, no primary research material. Nothing." He spent ten years tracking down the few musicians and singers who managed to escape Pol Pol's purges. The search took him to four countries where he conducted 75 interviews and amassed 150 hours of recorded memories. 

And here is what Pirozzi's extraordinary research reveals: 

Before the coup that toppled the "popular if erratic" leader Prince Norodom Sihanouk (who used to entertain his people with songs during national broadcasts), Cambodia was one of the hippist and most music-loving countries in all of Asia. 

"We played electric guitars in the countryside and danced barefoot in the dirt," musician Ouk Sam Art remembers. 

Looking at these rare film clips from Cambodia's Sixties is a lot like watching American home movies from the "Summer of Love." Cambodian musicians had started picking up on American music in the early 60s and, by mid-decade, the kids were starting to grow their hair long and had taken to wearing colorful, trippy duds. 

Things really took off after the US war in Vietnam. That's when Cambodian kids started picking up broadcasts of American music wafting over from the 7^th Fleet, floating in the waters of the South China Sea. 

Suddenly, US culture was everywhere in Phnom Penh. "Hippies were from SF," recalls one of the few musicians to have survived Pol Pot's Killing Fields. "We were like hippies. Long hair, beads, having fun!" (One thing must be said: While the local folks quickly mastered rock's musical licks, they never quite managed the dance moves. My guess is they got their ideas watching white people dance on American Bandstand.) 

The local bands started playing the Beatles and the Stones. Santana was huge and local singers were even channeling James Taylor (in English and Khmer). 

Cambodia produced a number of Phnomenal superstars, beginning with Sinn Sisamouth, an older crooner who managed to segue into a new youth-oriented career with an album of Go-Go music. The film also celebrates a number female pop stars with grand voices, including Ros Serey Sothea, Huoy Meas and Pen Ran. 

Unfortunately, US imperial meddling came along and messed it all up. 

Sihanouk had tried to keep his country neutral as US wars raged along his eastern and southern borders. But he fell victim to a coup organized by a military officer, Gen. Lon Nol. The general was soon getting lots of US money and US bombs were not far behind. 

Losing ground in Vietnam, President Nixon sent B-52s to drop bombs on Cambodia. As Nixon's former Ambassador to Cambodia admits in the film: "We did get involved in bombing a neutral country." 

"And suddenly it was all gone," one of the surviving rockers recalls. "They dropped bombs constantly. For 200 days." Cows were killed, homes and people destroyed. "All we knew was it was the Americans who were dropping the bombs and our people were the victims." Estimates are that Nixon's bombs killed at least half a million Cambodians. 

The bombs (as they often do) alienated the people on the ground, driving them into the arms of the Khmer insurgency, which had sworn to defeat the government that had allied itself with the foreign invaders. With China's prodding, Sihanouk joined forces with his former enemies, the Khymer Rouge. 

On April 17, 1975, the Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh. Instead of liberation, however, they seized the National Radio and cut off the transmission. Henceforth, every day at 4AM, the National Anthem boomed people from their beds with reminders of "bright red blood" spilled for the Motherland and "the blood of our good workers . . . revolutionary soldiers . . . men and women…." 

Soon, all the beauty of young people resplendent in smiles and colorful clothes was gone, replaced by regiments of grim-faced citizens, all dressed in the same uniforms, wearing Mao caps and giving identical salutes of collective loyalty. School, religion and money were abolished. Nearly everyone was sent into the fields to work as farmers. And all those old cassettes and records were confiscated and burned. Sisamouth was ordered back to capital and told to write patriotic songs. Other musicians were forced to join the army. Ros Serey Sothea was drafted and trained to become a paratrooper. 

"At this time there was a great change in the songs. There were no more loves songs, only nationalistic songs." National Radio ordered a ban on all music from the 60s and, instead, blared tunes with lyrics like: "My friends, don't be afraid to kill. Chase and slaughter; pick up a weapon now." 

People with long hair were threatened with death, or just killed outright. Artists who did survive the initial culling had to hide their faces as they worked in the fields. 

Meas Samon, a singer of popular comic songs was assigned to work on a dam. During a break, he picked up an instrument and started to strum it "just for fun." He was ordered to stop because he was "distracting the workers." The next day, he picked up the instrument again and began to sing. He was abruptly hauled away and was never seen again. 

"They didn't need orders to kill you," one singer recalled. 

A middle-aged woman who had been a singing sensation in her youth, confesses to the camera how she saved her life by telling authorities she had been "a banana seller" before the revolution. 

One haunting section of Pirozzi's film slowly scans photos of young women and men arrested and killed by the Khmer Rouge. (It was uncomfortably reminiscent of the photos of young Chileans murdered after the US-backed coup that replaced Allende's socialist democracy with Pinochet's military dictatorship.) 

Finally, on January 7, 1979, Heng Samrin stormed into Cambodia (backed by Vietnamese troops) to declare himself the country's new leader. It was the beginning of the end of the Khmer Rouge's three-year reign. 

When things settled down, people were invited to return to Phnom Penh and other cities evacuated in 1975. It would turn out that few artists had survived Pol Pot. Sinn Sinamouth, Huoy Meas and Pen Ran were killed. A radical young singer named Yol Aularong left the city with his mother and was never seen again. "He never would have been dictated to," a friend recalls. "He was too independent. The Khmer Rough would have spotted him instantly. 

While the first half of Don't Forget is a quirky and charming film, the last half serves up a bloody slice of historical horror, enacted on a grand scale, with a quarter of Cambodia's population sent to an early grave. 

The film ends on a bright note, however. Cambodia today, is once more a welcoming place for young people. They appear in the closing shots enjoying freedom and urban prosperity, shopping, drinking and dancing. But given the grim history lesson spelled out by Pirozzi's film, it may be difficult to leave the theatre assuming that the Good Life is anything more than an ephemeral moment in a world trending toward disaster.