Duch, Master of the Forges of Hell

Duch, le maître des forges de l'enfer

France, Cambodia

2011

103 Min

Color

1.85:1

Khmer

Currently 4.0/5 Stars.
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ED Marie-Christine Rougerie, Rithy Panh, Mathias Bouffier

SOUND Sear Vissal, Myriam René

Cannes (Special Screenings), Toronto (Real to Reel), Rotterdam (Spectrum), Istanbul (Documentary Time), BAFICI (Trayectorias)

Synopsis

Between 1975 and 1979, the Khmer Rouge regime caused the death of some 1.8 million people, representing one-quarter of the population of Cambodia.

Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, was in charge at M13, a Khmer Rouge-controlled prison, for four years before being appointed by the Angkar (“the Organisation”, a faceless and omnipresent entity which reigned unopposed over the destiny of an entire people) to the S21 centre in Phnom Penh. As party secretary at S21, he commanded from 1975 to 1979 the Khmer Rouge killing machine in which at least 12,380 people perished, according to the remaining archives. But how many others disappeared, “crushed and reduced to dust”, with no trace of them ever being found?
In 2009, Kaing Guek Eav aka Duch became the first leader of the Khmer Rouge organisation to be brought before an international criminal justice court.

Duch reveals here how he considers that he fully carried out his mission, and the reasons which led him to command M13 and then S21:

- His faith in the ideology of the Angkar
- His obsession with work well done, his cult of hierarchy and his eagerness to gain the approval of his superiors.
- His passion for power, discipline and organisation.
- His talents as a teacher, eager to train perfect workmen to carry out of a collective and silent crime.
- His instinct for survival, his regrets, and his fear of death.

Rithy Panh records his unadorned words, without any trimmings, in the isolation of a face-to-face encounter. At the same time, he sets it into perspective with archive pictures and eye-witness accounts of survivors. As the narrative unfolds, the infernal machine of a system of destruction of humanity implacably emerges, through a manic description of the minutiae of its mechanisms. –Cannes Film Festival

Director

Rithy Panh

Rithy Panh was born in Phnom Penh. His father was a school teacher and inspector of primary schools.

His family and other residents were expelled from the Cambodian capital in 1975 by the Khmer Rouge. Rithy’s family suffered under the regime, and after he saw his parents, siblings and other relatives die of overwork or malnutrition, Rithy escaped to Thailand in 1979, where he lived for a time in a refugee camp at Mairut.

Eventually, he made his way to Paris, France. It was while he was attending vocational school to learn carpentry that he was handed a video camera during a party that he become interested in filmmaking. He went on to graduate from the Institut des hautes études cinématographiques (Institute for the Advanced Cinematographic Studies). He returned to Cambodia in 1990, while still using Paris as a home base.

His first documentary feature film, Site 2, about a family of Cambodian refugees in a camp on the Thai-Cambodian border in the 1980s, was awarded… read more

Rithy Panh was born in Phnom Penh. His father was a school teacher and inspector of primary schools.

His family and other residents were expelled from the Cambodian capital in 1975 by the Khmer Rouge. Rithy’s family suffered under the regime, and after he saw his parents, siblings and other relatives die of overwork or malnutrition, Rithy escaped to Thailand in 1979, where he lived for a time in a refugee camp at Mairut.

Eventually, he made his way to Paris, France. It was while he was attending vocational school to learn carpentry that he was handed a video camera during a party that he become interested in filmmaking. He went on to graduate from the Institut des hautes études cinématographiques (Institute for the Advanced Cinematographic Studies). He returned to Cambodia in 1990, while still using Paris as a home base.

His first documentary feature film, Site 2, about a family of Cambodian refugees in a camp on the Thai-Cambodian border in the 1980s, was awarded “Grand Prix du Documentaire” at the Festival of Amiens.

His 1994 film, Rice People, is told in a docudrama style, about a rural family struggling with life in post-Khmer Rouge Cambodia. It was in competition at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival, 4 and was submitted to the 67th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film, the first time a Cambodian film had been submitted for an Oscar.

The 2000 documentary, The Land of the Wandering Souls, also told of a family’s struggle, as well as showing a Cambodia entering the modern age, chronicling the hardships of workers digging a cross-country trench for Cambodia’s first optical fiber cable.

His 2003 documentary, S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine, about the Khmer Rouge’s Tuol Sleng prison, reunited former prisoners, including the artist Vann Nath, and their former captors, for a chilling, confrontational review of Cambodia’s violent history.

More post-Khmer Rouge events are documented in the 2005 drama, The Burnt Theatre, which focuses on a theater troupe that inhabits the burned-out remains of Phnom Pehn’s Suramet Theatre, which caught fire in 1994 but has never been rebuilt.

His 2007 documentary, Le papier ne peut pas envelopper la braise, delves into the lives of prostitutes in Phnom Penh. —wapedia.mobi/en

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