The Cambodian-French filmmaker Rithy Panh is one of the great chroniclers in contemporary cinema. In fiction films, but mostly in documentary essay, he explored the Cambodian genocide by the Red Khmer and its aftermath in contemporary Cambodia, a genocide he himself narrowly escaped after he witnessed his entire family die of starvation or exhaustion in the Killing Fields.
Panh´s previous films include his most personal L´Image Manquante (The Missing Picture), or Irradiès and Everything Will Be Okay, his most experimental films which have as well elements of an art installation. These films document not only his everlasting search for new cinematic forms, they have also have the tendency to place the Cambodian trauma in a global context to a century of genocides, dictatorships and Holocaust. In his latest film Nous Sommes Les Fruits De La Forêt turns to a new and almost unknown subject, the life and the beginning vanishing of an indigenous ethnic minority in Cambodia, the Bumong-people. They live not only in the Forest, but as well completely from it. The forest offers them everything they need, food, tools, energy and even some cleared areas for agriculture. Just alone the title reminds me in two different stories, Akira Kurosawa´s Dersou Uzala, this melancholic cinematic poem about man and nature (Kurosawa´s first film after his suicide attempt) and Ursula Kroeber Leguin´s science fiction novel (obviously influenced by Vietnamese-American war) The Word For World Is Forest.
In his film, Rithy Panh lets speak the Bumong people for themselves. What this people and the images of this film reveal is a very close relationship between people and their environment, where everyone and everything has a soul appears like an ecological utopia. It reminds not only in Dersou Uzala but as well in Panh´s early masterpiece Neak Sre (Rice People, 1994) But just the first images tell about the fact that this utopia is already threatened to vanish. Bulldozers from big companies clear up parts of the forest and are increasingly restricting the habitat of the Bumong. This biotope where the Bumong live close to nature according to the tradition of their ancestors, is going to be destroyed day by day. I do not dare to think how far this destruction has proceeded between the time the film was shot and today.
Panh works with different methods, sometimes with archive footage, interviews, voice over, sometimes even split screen. Sometimes it even seems that this world is disappearing faster than the film can proceed. More and more, there are signs of resignation in the descriptions of the bumong. It is as if they aware that their world will vanish. There is the bitter realization that their culture is doomed. Rithy Panh´s film is both, a very conscientious ethnographic study but as well a heartbreaking swan song of a vanishing world.
Even though Panh lets the Bumong talk for themselves, he nevertheless takes up a stance of what his images reveal in his film. There is the handicraft of the Bumong like pottery, which is almost celebrated in this film like a very last exposition of a vanishing world. They talk about their mythology, their spirits and how this incredible relationship between the people and their environment worked. This “ecological” awareness where we Europeans are so proud of, is here not just an ideology or an opinion but something which is lived here literally with body and soul. I am torn between the almost paradisiacal aspect and the looming destruction.
Sometimes the forest sinks into an impenetrable fog. In other moments, the eyes of the spectators have to adopt the natural lightning conditions of the Bumong. At night, the only light source is a camp fire. Not everything is recognizable. This is another sign of Panh´s efforts in his approach to give an authentic image of this often discriminated people whose culture is endangered. As the forest offers everything what the Bumong need for their life, Panh´s film offers different aspects of what we call a great film. Beside his clear and respectful glance to this culture, Nous Sommes Les Fruits De La Forêt has moments which remind me in the unique poetry we find for example in the early films of of the great documentary filmmaker Peter Nestler, a poetry which is not imposed but which seems to arise almost entirely alone from the people and things presented in front of the camera. And I mentioned only a few aspects of this wonderful film about one can spend a whole day talking about. Nous Sommes Les Fruits De La Forêt is another moving cinematic journey in the extraordinary filmography of Rithy Panh and one of the most memorable films of this years Forum´s selection.
Rüdiger Tomczak
further screenings:
18.Feb, 17.30, Cinema Paris
20.Feb, 11.30, Cubix 8
22.Feb, 12.00 Silent Screen
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