The revolution will be televised

Marc Eberle

July 9, 2019

 

From our print archive: Movie producer and real estate mogul Oum Prum looks back at his past life as a filmmaker for the Khmer Rouge regime

Editor’s note: When we think of the Khmer Rouge, we don’t normally think of a roomful of technicians feverishly cutting clips together in a Phnom Penh film lab. But for Oum Prum, one of the men recruited by the regime to film the brutal rebirth of Cambodia under Pol Pot’s forces, this was the lens through which he viewed the darkest chapter in the Kingdom’s past. His memories of filming the fall of Phnom Penh and the Khmer Rouge’s bloody efforts to rebuild a shattered Cambodia shine new light on a regime desperate not just to craft a new nation, but a new people inspired by acts of wordless self-sacrifice – regardless of the human cost. Now, for the first time, you can read his story online. 

OP leans back on his sofa in his Phnom Penh studio. “I was eight years old when I held my first gun, nine when I held my first camera,” he says. OP is short for Oum Prum, the name the Khmer Rouge gave him. Oum means “powerful” and Prum is the four-headed god that smiles from the towers of Cambodia’s most enigmatic temples.

Read full article