The European Film Festival Cambodia aims to inspire local audiences and filmmakers

Aaron Woolner

The second European Film Festival Cambodia (EUFF) will provide local audiences with a chance to experience the full diversity of European cinema, and provide aspiring local film makers with ideas to make their own movies, according to Nicolaus Mesterharm.

Mesterharm, who is director of Meta House Phnom Penh which will screen some of the films, told an audience at a roundtable discussion on: ‘Cultural Exchange and the Power of Film’, at The French Institute on Tuesday, that the 26 films which be screened between 17 to 26 February had been carefully selected by the organizers to show the range of styles used by European filmmakers.

“The EUFF offers Cambodian audiences the opportunity to learn a lot about the different countries in Europe, which are as diverse as the ones here in Asia, every country in Europe has its own take on films, has its own history and a distinct way of storytelling. So if you attend some of these screenings, you will see how our different and diverse European cinema can be,” Mesterharm said.

Mesterharm’s views were backed by fellow panellist, Cambodian film maker Ines Sothea who last year won The Cambodian National Short Film Festival Award for Love.Life.Bliss. Sothea said that attending film festivals had been an important way to gain ideas for her own work.

Opportunity for ambitious Cambodian creatives

“Attending my first film festival was an eye-opening experience for me; to be able to go to the cinema and see a lot of foreign films that had never been shown on a big screen in Cambodia before meant I found stories that were very inspiring”, she said.

Fellow panellist and actress Kosamak San echoed Ms Sothea’s view that the diversity of films on offer provides the opportunity for ambitious Cambodian creatives to get ideas from outside the country.

“As an actress I get inspired from filmmaking, and watching European films is very important in developing my skills because you need to see various types of acting in order to play the protagonist in different ways. If I watch purely Cambodian films I might not develop my acting skills so quickly,” she said.

“For example, there’s no there’s no one way of being sad, there’s a lot of ways to show sorrow, and to see how European actors and filmmakers and from across the world try to convey moods in different ways is very inspiring to grow as an actress,” she added.

European filmmakers first came to Cambodia in 1962, according to Mesterharm, with French Oscar winning director Marcel Camus’s film Bird of Paradise, and the Meta House director said that future such tie-ups offered the potential for a cross-cultural bridge between Europe and Cambodia.

Creating unique content important

Influence may be good but Cedric Eloy said there was also a downside to following foreign filmmakers’ approach closely. The consultant at the Cambodian Film Commission told the audience that while it was positive to be inspired by the rules, techniques and styles of foreign filmmakers it was important, particularly for a small country like Cambodia, to develop an individual style. He pointed to the Thai film industry which he said had aped American filmmaking conventions as an example of this approach.

“In Thailand, you can see that they’re applying the American rules to their cinema, and while it’s tempting to just look for a recipe that works and copy it instead of developing your own voice or an individual style, this is a mistake. The Cambodian film industry is still searching for its own voice and style, and I hope this will emerge organically,” Eloy said.

The 10 day-long festival is hosted by the European Union Delegation to Cambodia and starts on Friday with a screening of the Ukrainian film, Mother of Apostles. In addition to contributions from nearly every European country, even the tiny island state of Malta, languages used by the film makers include even obscure European tongues such as Georgian, as well as non-European ones Kurdish and Arabic.

Screenings will be held at the Bophana Center and Aeon 1 Mall’s Major Cineplex theatre in addition to the venues already mentioned and all events are free to attend.