For two hours in the afternoon of September 6, 2024, dozens of UW and local Cambodian community members along with the public piled into the 125-seats in Thomson Hall 101 at the University of Washington to watch “Made in Cambodia,” a documentary detailing contemporary art and artists in Cambodia since the 1970s.
Through the artists’ own voices in the film, the audience learned about the state of contemporary arts in this Southeast Asian country, what inspires them, and what it’s like to be an artist in Cambodia today. The documentary’s personal stories of the artists also showed the current Cambodian socio-political context.
As the film’s website notes, “there was a vibrant arts movement that was flourishing in Cambodia in the early 20th century. Tragically, it was cut short by Pol Pot’s brutal Khmer Rouge regime in the late 1970s. The genocide was responsible for the deaths of around 90% of the artists and creatives in Cambodia. In the following decades, the arts faltered as the country struggled to recover and heal its wounds.”
The event was sponsored by the Khmer Community of Seattle King County and the UW’s
Center for Southeast Asia & Its Diasporas, a federally-funded National Resource Center housed in the Jackson School of International Studies. The film’s Director and Editor Koji Minami answered questions after the screening about the filming process and the explosion of creativity and vibrancy of the visual arts currently taking place.
