Film looks at personal side of Khmer Rouge genocide
by Paul Clark, PCLARK@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
February 2, 2008 12:15 am
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ASHEVILLE -- A do***entary coming to Asheville highlights the effects
that the Khmer Rouge genocide had on the filmmaker's family.
Socheata Poeuv, believed to be the first Cambodian-American woman to
film a feature-length do***entary, will screen her film at 7 p.m.
Wednesday at the Fine Arts Theatre.
Part of the Southern Arts Federation's Southern Circuit Tour of
Independent Filmmakers, the do***entary "New Year Baby" is $5 but free
to students from UNC Asheville and Western Carolina University. After
the film, Poeuv will engage the audience in a discussion about the
film and her work as a filmmaker.
Poeuv was born in a Thai refugee camp on Cambodian New Year and raised
in Dallas with limited knowledge of the cir***stances that brought her
family to the United States. When she turned 25, her parents told her
that her two sisters are really her cousins and her brother is only
her half brother.
Each member of the family is a survivor of the Khmer Rouge genocide in
Cambodia, smuggled to Thailand by Poeuv's father before the family
immigrated to the United States. Learning this raised more questions
for Poeuv than it answered.
In "New Year Baby," her debut do***entary, Poeuv and her brother
travel with their parents to Cambodia to reconnect with their past and
to discover and do***ent the family's legacy of survival.
Poeuv's film is a combination do***entary and travel diary that sheds
light on one of the darkest chapters in the history of human rights
and the life of her family.
"New Year Baby" received Amnesty International Movies That Matter
Award at its 2006 premiere and earned international acclaim as the
Best Do***entary Award at both the AFI Dallas International Film
Festival and the San Francisco International Asian American Film
Festival.
The Southern Circuit Tour of Independent Filmmakers, a program of the
not-for-profit regional arts organization Southern Arts Federation, is
brought to Asheville by the Media Arts Project. To learn more about
the MAP, visit www.themap.org.
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Contact Paul Clark at 828-232-5854, via e-mail at
pclark@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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