Day Eleven
40° Celsius! That’s 104 Fahrenheit - a fine temperature to make a movie! 6am and we wound our way to Peace City 2 in the comfort of Thyneon’s steel carriage once again, shooting the long road from Phnom Penh to the satellite town in the pink-hued chaos of early morning rush-hour.
The more time we spend in PC2, the more life, spirit, activity, and hope we see behind the dry, barren emptiness that clouded our first impressions.
Narrative backbone was the order of the day - a.k.a a series of static shots capturing a day in the life of PC2 (FYI: it’s abuzz in the early morning, then a short, hot lull followed by a burst of noon-time noise and activity as the factory girls are let out for lunch, followed by dozy afternoons ;-)
Post-siesta trip to the karaoke bar via the dentist, then back to our makeshift office in the market. We got talking to this elderly chappai player who studied with the über-don/ Ray Charles of Cambodia Kong Nay. Our old gent used to live in The Building but was evicted a couple of years ago and moved to PC2 with his family. He introduced us to his beautiful daughter who is a super-accomplished dancer (traditional Khmer) but started working in the garment factory on the compound just two days ago in urgent need of cash…
There was a festive spirit in the city today: the opera-to-go came to town, and with it a rickety but rather splendid mini fairground for the kiddies. Good times in PC2!
Wrapped the day with an inspired writing session - got a double narration grand masterplan which will blow your socks off. Strong filmic vs. hyper-image interactivity. See to believe (just give us a wee while to finish it for you). Zoom zoom!
Day Ten
Super-Smey is back on! We celebrated with a fine Cambodian coffee moment in a Jackie Chan appreciation coffeehouse on the way back to distant, dusty Peace City 2.
We met a lovely grandma called Kum Sarom who was evicted from the notorious Dei Krorhorm settlement in central Phnom Penh which was bulldozed in stages until last Feb and is currently being transformed into a billowey Disney-esque wonderland.
After four fires in the old neighbourhood she feels safe here, and her daughter has a job at the garment factory on the compound. She comes from the rural Svay Rieng province and migrated to the city in search of a steady cashflow in the early 1990s. Her only issue was the water which is brought from the government by a private company and re-sold at unfriendly prices. Her daughter came home from the factory for lunch and we had a little chinwag which amounted to much the same as the above.
We spoke to everyone we ran into - an amazing day of story gathering, shooting a little backbone on the trusty Panasonic, and solidifying the modus operandi for intense production in the coming weeks.
After chatting with a bevvy beauticians, ice-sellers, teachers and general friendly folk, we exited the compound limits and stopped at a small farm-house - Peace City’s closest neighbour. Incredible tales of rural-urban clashes as Phnom Penh sprawl hits ancient village life.
I think you’ll be able to see them soon on this web doc I keep hearing about called Boomtown Babylon!
Then Thyneon tuk-tuk us home via a tank stop.
Super-early start tomorrow for the dawn intro shot…
Day Nine
Day started with a bang - Smey had a bike crash! But luckily only sprained his knee. We took him to hospital and then packed him off home while he reigned in a replacement for the day (no-one will EVER replace YOU Smey!).
We went with Thyneon and his tuk-tuk way out to the wilderness of *Peace City 2*, where he and many other evictees from the bulldozed Bassac and Boeung Kak communities were offered their new homes. Past the airport… past the army base…. past a couple of villages and rice fields is Peace Village 2. A barrack-like formation of identical one-room dwellings, a half-empty market, and a garment factory.
We spoke at great length with five residents who’s histories, insights, opinions, and dreams were all very distinctive and vastly diverse. Some feel betrayed and bitter having believed they were moving to the promised land when they left the city on the promise of a free dwelling in the new satellite town, but now find themselves squatting under tarpaulin among bricks and dust, as they didn’t fill in the correct forms. Others believe this is the start of a new community which will grow and develop, and they appreciate the quiet and cleanliness compared to downtown chaos.
Tomorrow we start shooting in this rural-urban no man’s land… Narrative backbone with the big badboy camera courtesy of Mr Moon, stories and segments with the little Kodaks courtesy of our on-location participants… Roll on the morrow (be better sweet Smey)!
Day Eight
The girls delivered super little clips from inside their lives. We left one camera with the posse to circulate in The Building, and we’ll go swap SD cards tomorrow night to see what new treasures await…
Tomorrow morning we head to *Peace City*, the aforementioned dusty and desolate artificial neighbourhood an hour’s drive from Phnom Penh where evictees from the inner-city bulldozed communities are offered new homes. We’ll go with Thyneon the tuk-tuk driver who took us there last week and introduced us to his family, see what seeds we can plant for the next trajectory.
Day Seven
In the sun-dappled loveliness of the Children of Bassac rehearsal room up on the third floor of The Building, Mr Moon kickstarted the day with a super-duper intense mini-intro to Boomtown, amid our throng of first-round of filmmakers. With Amazing Smey as co-pilot, he explained the wider context of the film (multi-authored, global web film about our new urban civilization, etc etc) and introduced them to the basics of shooting something that looks and sounds good (light, sound and a steady hand - easy peasy!). Armed with a few technical pointers and two cameras to circulate amongst themselves, we left them to it, with plans to catch up later and see what they shot.
Lunch was rather interesting. We had the pleasure of meeting this Polish force to be reckoned with type visual researcher known as Maria Stott. She’s been active in Phnom Penh for years and has just completed a photography workshop à la Born Into Brothels with kids living in The Building. She gave us lots of fascinating and sometimes intimidating insights into the wranglings of censorship and privacy laws in Cambodia. Coming from the world of sharing / caring Creative Commons and such, it was a sobering reminder of the two-world collision in which we find ourselves with Boomtown Babylon…
As the dusky sun cloaked the city in gold, we met up with the boys to look at their material (the girls were at school). Beautiful things! There’s something so intimate and fresh about self-shot stories, and the incredible potential for capturing *reality* in this way. Super-excited about the growing web of self-told tales from The Building and what’s coming next… Tomorrow: the girls!
Day Six
We headed straight for the (not very) White Building this morning armed with 3 cameras locked and loaded. Intense and amazing again inside. We explored the pitch black corridors and stairwell light-shafts, having chats with people and asking them if they wanna make a movie.
People seem suspicious of the whole documentary thing (nosey European buffoons I think is the general perception). But when we explain WE are not making the movie - YOU are making the movie, it’s a whole ‘nother story! Splendid!
We arranged for our first workshop tomorrow at noon in a room normally used for dance rehearsals by the Children of Bassac. We gathered about ten excited bright young things to seed the project and start shooting stories. Then we ran into this super-sharp boy called Robbie - 18 years old, trying to go to school but usually too busy trying to scrape together some cash selling water and fruit. He invited us into the home he shares with his mother, disabled father and younger brother and totally got into doing a test shoot. He and his mother were incredible - they shot a simple, one-shot piece of powerful amazingness, in about 5 minutes flat.
We reckon Robbie’s going to be one of our super-duper hotshots over here :-)
Day Five
8am: nobody home at the municipality.
2pm: municipality gone for lunch.
4pm: municipal chief of operations has left for Brazil!
So. Plan B it is.
The Building will be our first shooting location after all. We hot-footed it to the local authority for that all-important permission mission. Frenzied explanations were met with non-enthusiasm. The straight-faced posse told us to go to the office of the more important straight-faced people down the road.
Success! Tuesday we get the permission slip, but we start tomorrow without it.
Day Four
Today we went straight to the top x 2: first the chief monk who is the (suitably intimidating) don of Boeung Kak, to ask if we could hang out in his pagoda during our production. He said “well yes, but only on the other side where I can’t see you”! It’s an incredible spot, kind of a raised platform in a temple surrounded by cremation turrets (I was too excited to take a pic). Then we rushed off to “THE COMPANY” a.k.a the people behind the forced evictions - in search of that crucial letter of permission. They wouldn’t even let us in the carpark and sent us post-haste to the municipality. Nobody home. Yawn! So we sneaked into this ridiculously tall building which towers rather obnoxiously, way above all the others - and got a mind-blowing view of the metropolis in all it’s sky-scraper-heavy glory, including a first proper view of our beloved Boeung Kak.
Tomorrow 8am you can catch us at the municipality in our Friday best!
Day Three
We met this extremely engaging tuk-tuk driver called Thyneon, who was evicted last year from one of the central squatter settlement flanking the insanity of that Vann Molyvan White Building. He and his young family were moved to a new settlement an hour’s drive outside of town - a place the government decided to call “Peace City 1” (more Peace Cities coming right up). It is a desolate, sandy, construction site with smatterings tin-roofed houses dotted across the dusty landscape.
Thyneon took us there in his tuk-tuk, a long and bumpy ride which he now makes twice daily to get into the city and earn some cash. We discussed his situation and our project with him for a couple of hours, and then he shot a short film with our zippy Kodak test model.
We rode to his mother-in-laws house a few dusty blocks away, and passed by a market which was half empty and the abject opposite of bustling. Thyneon’s family-in-law runs a candy stall, and they explained that although they prefer living without the threat of slum fires, away from the dirt and chaos of the centre, it is impossible to make a decent living in this new town-to-be as there is no population - and no money.
Thyneon took us back to PP where we hopped on our motos and zoomed to Boeung Kak. We met a super charming lady called Lina, and her amazingly badass father. They heard about our project a few weeks back (courtesy of the lovely Smey) and she was really keen to participate. But scared to hell of the authorities. So we need to sort out that pesky permission again before going any further. Tomorrow: MISSION PERMISSION!
Day Two
We had lemon soda with this cool budding filmmaker kid called Seila who is part of Cambodia’s first creative collective called 4K.
He took us to this crazy old cinema which closed down and got taken over by homeless squatters, recently evicted from one of the city’s inner-city communities. This French-Cambodian team of hipsters was shooting a documentary there, and the scene made us feel a little awkward. So we left again…
