Australian Ambassador’s Recommended CIFF Films

The 11th Cambodia International Film Festival (CIFF), which will begin on June 28th- July 3rd, is celebrating the 70th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Cambodia and Australia with a panorama of 16 Australian feature films spanning 1953 to 2022.

This includes the cult classic, MAD MAX 2, PRISCILLA QUEEN OF THE DESERT, and FLIRTING. In addition, the festival will show recently restored films, such as STRICTLY BALLROOM or STORM BOY, and recently released films like BLAZE and BUOYANCY.

With screenings of contemporary and old Australian classics and a special exhibition of Cambodian Australian filmmaker Alison Chhorn, CIFF pays tribute to Australian cinema.

This year’s festival will screen the largest ever showcase of Australian films in Cambodia, many for the first time in Asia, including Murray Pope’s ANGKOR: THE LOST EMPIRE 3D. The 3D IMAX film shows the famous Cambodian temple in 3D and reveals what had happened to it based on the data collected by climate scientists.

Australia’s Ambassador on Films

The Australian ambassador to Cambodia, Pablo Kang, is pleased to see some of his suggestions selected for the festival this year. “I was moderately successful and I’ve seen about ten of those 16 already over the years,” Mr. Kang said. “ I think the important thing is because we’re celebrating 70 years of Australia-Cambodia relations this year — the films also spanned that period. So we have some films from the early 1950s right up until Contemporary today.”

“A couple of the movies are really looking forward to seeing MAD MAX 2, which is one of Mel Gibson’s breakout movies before he became an established Hollywood star,” Mr Kang said with a smile. The 1981 Australian post-apocalyptic action film was directed by George Miller and is the second instalment in the Mad Max franchise. The film is set in the post-apocalyptic Australian wasteland, where petrol is more valuable than gold. Mel Gibson is Max, a lonely drifter who agrees to help a petrol-rich community and their problem with vicious gangs.

A fan of scary movies, Mr. Kang started off his list with some classics. “I can think of a couple of movies from the kind of horror genre, I think WAKE IN FRIGHT, which was an Australia and US-UK co-production in the early seventies, which was really quite a shocking and successful movie,” Mr. Kang stated. A 1971 psychological thriller film directed by Ted Kotcheff, the story is about a young school teacher who descends into personal moral degradation after finding himself stranded in a brutal, menacing town in outback Australia.

“And also more recently, THE BABADOOK, which I think was made in 2014 and has received quite widespread critical success as well as been judged to be the best Australian film of that year.” Mr. Kang added. “So that’s also showing at the festival.” A horror film by Jennifer Kent, this film is about a single mother who is plagued by the violent death of her husband and battles with her son’s nighttime fear of a shadowy monster. Eventually, the story shifts from one of a mother nearly driven mad by her son’s obsessions to one of a woman nearly destroyed by loss.

Films about indigenous cultures from Australia have received many awards at film festivals, so Mr. Kang was also interested in Cambodia’s indigenous voices. “We have had quite a long collaboration with the Bophanna Center here, which of course, is one of the major partners of the Cambodia International Film Festival and the embassy has done a lot of work with Indigenous filmmakers,” Khang explained. “Indigenous documentary filmmakers supporting their work, but particularly around the Mondoulkiri documentary films that showcase everyday aspects of provincial life in those parts of Cambodia have quite difficult and sensitive topics, including of course, you know, during the COVID19 pandemic.”

Kang is also looking forward to seeing Australian documentary filmmaker James Gerard, who has produced films in Cambodia for decades. His films, MEKONG DOWNSTREAM, and KHMER! KHMER! was made in the late sixties to early seventies and will be screened as part of the Mekong River segment of the film festival.

“He’s (James Gerald) actually coming to Cambodia to talk about them (the films) and to conduct workshops with young Cambodian documentary filmmakers so that they’ll be really good,” Khang stated. “It’s not just getting the Australian films here, but it’s also getting Australian filmmakers. We have Allison Chhorn, who’s a young Cambodian Australian filmmaker who is also an artist very successful in her own right. And her recent film, THE PLASTIC HOUSE, will also be shown here at the festival. She’s going to be talking about women in film and being on a panel with other women filmmakers from South East Asia.”

The PLASTIC HOUSE is about a young woman who constructs a solitary reality by imagining what life would be like after the passing of her parents. The ritual of physical labour heals her over time as she becomes absorbed in the slow process of working alone in the family’s green house. She relives shadow memories of her Cambodian mother and father. With the weight of nature bearing down on the plastic roof, the weather is becoming increasingly precarious, posing a threat to this new life.

There will be an exhibit of her 10 works of photography, which explore the traces and shadow memories of the family plastic house the artist lived and worked in as a teenager with her Cambodian refugee parents.

“So that’s great because she’s an example of someone who was born in Australia, but whose parents, you know, were obviously from Cambodia, fled during the Khmer Rouge period,” Kang added. “And you know, there’s like a lot of Australians from Cambodia or with Cambodian background— around 66,000 Australians have Cambodian background.”

Since the last edition in 2020, when the pandemic abruptly ended the event, Mr. Kang has seen the festival grow. According to an Australian film critic from Variety magazine, there were only a few films from Australia on the program. “Now we’ve got 20, so it’s great to see movies back, cinemas open again and we’re seeing the 11th version of the Cambodia International Film Festival, the very best of luck.”

A major attraction at CIFF is a screening of the restored version of the feature-length movie — STRICTLY BALLROOM. Other iconic Australian films to be screened at the festival are THE STORM BOY, a family film about a boy and his friend caring for three orphaned pelican chicks in South Australia’s isolated Coorong area, and FLIRTING, a tale of a rebellious teenager sent to a remote boarding school who meets a new student at the nearby girls’ school in 1965.

A number of prominent films from Australia will be present at CIFF, among them well-known actor Eliza Scanlen (Babyteeth), director John Heyer (The Back of Beyond), director Charles Chauve (Jedda), director Wayne Blair (The Sapphires), director Natalie Erika James (Relic), director Garth Davis (Lion), director Nadia Tass (Malcolm), director Gillian Armstrong (My Brilliant Carreer), and oscar-submitted director Rodd Rathjen (Buoyancy).

Check for film times in the program!

Written by Sotheavy Nou