The Cambodian Student Society of Cal State Long Beach will host the Rithy Panh Film Festival on Oct 11-13 as follows: Location: University Theatre (seats 400) FRIDAY OCTOBER 11 ( for 3 hours) 7:00 p.m. "The Rice People" (35 mm; 125 minutes) SATURDAY, OCTOBER 12 (5 hours) 2 p.m. Site II (59 minutes; BETA PAL format) 3:30 p.m. : Bophana: (59 minutes; BETA PAL format) 5 pm: Land of Wandering Souls (99 minutes; BETA PAL format) SUNDAY, OCTOBER 13 (7 hours) 2 p.m. The Rice People (125 minutes) 4:30 pm. Land of Wandering Souls (99 minutes) 6: 30 pm Bophana (59 minutes) 7:30 p.m. Site II (59 minutes) Information about the four films/documentaries follows: 1) LAND OF WANDERING SOULS France /1999/99 min Director - Rithy Panh Producer - Cati Couteau Director of Photography - Prum Mesar Editors - Marie-Christine Rougerie, Isabelle Roudy Screenwriters -Rithy Panh This compassionate portrait of post-Khmer Rouge Cambodia portrays workers digging a trench across that country for a multinational company's fiber optic cable, earning pennies a day enabling a high-tech communication system that will otherwise never touch their lives. Though exhausted and uneducated, they are hardly naïve: In one scene, the laborers are plainly unimpressed by a patronizing company man's enthusiastic description of the "magic eyes and ears" of the fiber optic cable they'll never use. (One man dryly observes that he can barely afford kerosene for his lamp.) Then there is the haunting legacy of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge. "They turned my generation into ignorant masses-just animals," one young man observes. "The Khmer Rouge drove us mad." Every scene illuminates the dignity of a people recovering from a war that left mines and human remains that are still scattered across the countryside. The dangers posed by the mines are obvious, but stray bones are disturbing on another level-a pregnant wife believes that a ghost is pursuing her. The predominant sounds in the film are the thud of hoes striking the ground, the splashes of children scavenging for fish and the rustling of leaves as a mother shakes ants from a branch into a pail. Despite poverty and betrayal, the resilience and gentle common sense of the Cambodian people is undiminished. 2) BOPHANA: A CAMBODIAN TRAGEDY France / 1996 / 59 min Director - Rithy Panh Producer - INA Director of Photography - Jacques Pamart Editor - Marie-Christine Rougerie Through the tragic destiny of Hout Bophana, a young woman, and her husband Ly Sitha, this film looks back at Cambodia's recent history. Disgusted by the corruption of the Lon Nol regime, Ly Sitha joined the communist resistance. After their separation the two young people wrote to each other, and were reunited after the taking of Phnom Penh. The victory of the Khmer Rouge was for them to be the start of a nightmare. Arrested, tortured, and forced to make improbable confessions, they were both executed in 1976. Rare documents - the transcripts of the interrogations, and the couple's repeatedly rewritten confessions - throw an unusually clear light on the young couple's story. The letters exchanged over the years also bear witness to the conditions in which they were living at the time. 3) SITE II France / 1985/ 90 min Director - Rithy Panh Director of Photography - Jacque Bouquin Editor - Andree Davanture This film deals with the Khmer refugee camp on the border of Thailand and Cambodia. Site 2 was one of the many camps housing Cambodian refugees escaping from the ravages of their country. In the eighties, Site 2 held 180, 000 refugees living in a 4 mile space. In this film, Rithy Panh tells the story of one family living in that space. The film, narrated by the mother, tells the story of the 'displaced' person uprooted from their culture and country. Site 2 shows us the family's daily life and what it means to live at the mercy of others.The film displays the "refugee camp" -- a place that is all too often only a point of reference in Western media, and we come to know what it means to be living in the "country of the other," what it does to the body, what it does to the spirit. 4)THE RICE PEOPLE France/1994/125 min Director - Rithy Panh Producer - Jacques Bidou Cinematography - Jacques Bouquin Editors - Andrée Davanture, Marie-Christine Rougerie Screenwriters - Eve Deboise, Rithy Panh, based on the novel, "ranjau Sepanjang Jalan: by Shahnon Ahmad Panh has taken a novel by Malay author Shahnon Ahmad and transferred it to a Cambodian setting, using one complete cycle of rice-growing to portray the tragic fragmentation of a poor rural family. In a remote village, Poeuv lives with his wife, Om, and their seven daughters. Poeuv worries about his declining acreage and Om worries about what would happen if the sole man in the family was incapacitated. The group live permanently on a fragile economic balance dictated by the success or failure of their annual crop. One day Poeuv is poisoned by a thorn in the foot and eventually dies. Om takes on the burden of working in the rice fields as well as running the family. She becomes increasingly paranoid that her kids aren't pulling their weight. The other villagers finally decide she needs treatment in town, and lock her in a cage. Eldest daughter Sokha takes over and eventually brings in the crop. Biographie Né à Phnom Penh en 1964, Rithy Panh est le cadet d'une famille de 9 enfants. Son père, instituteur très large d'esprit, a entrepris le tour du monde pour constater les différents modes d'éducation inhérent à chaque pays... En 1975, il est enrôlé dans les camps de rééducation des Khmers Rouges qui viennent d'entrer dans la capitale. Mais à 15 ans, en 1979, il réussit à s'échapper pour la Thaïlande. L'année suivante, il gagne la France puis parvient à intégrer l'IDHEC. Il signe dès 1989 un premier documentaire déjà primé, Site 2, sur les réfugiés cambodgiens. Viennent ensuite Souleymane Cissé, un portrait du grand réalisateur malien, et Cambodge, entre guerre et paix, nouveau documentaire sur l'actualité de son pays. En 1993, il se lance dans le long métrage de fiction avec un film encore teinté de docu : Les gens de la Rizière. Il met 5 ans à réaliser Un Soir après la Guerre, mélo sur fond d'évènements historiques pas drôles qui émeut pas mal de ses spectateurs (diffusé sur Canal + puis sur Arte en 2001). Son nouveau film, présenté à Deauville, ne sortira qu'à la fin de l'année 2001 sur les écrans...

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