Please be our guests for Meta’s KMF Movie Night, showcasing films from renown Cambodian production company “Khmer Mekong Films”.

Meth abuse is a serious and growing issue all across Southeast Asia, and Cambodia’s youth is particularly badly hit. These three short documentaries delve into the effect that addiction has on people’s lives and the scale of the problem across the region.

When Kikuo Morimoto, a kimono artisan from Kyoto arrived in Cambodia after the Cambodian civil war, the culture of weaving traditional Cambodian textiles was on the verge of extinction. Morimoto reclaimed idle, deforested land and created a village community sustained almost entirely by the traditional dyeing and weaving of Cambodian textiles. His efforts led to a renaissance in Cambodian traditional textile culture and set an example for combining a self-sustaining village and the revival of traditional culture, an example that has been widely lauded as an antithesis to modern civilization.

Meta House is proud to present the “Crash and Bloom” solo exhibition by American, Phnom-Penh-based artist Emily Marques. The title lends itself to her love of nature and her broad spectrum of artwork that focuses on the masses of flowers clamouring for the sun and waves that crash amongst themselves.

Italian Film Night returns on Tuesday, August 12, at 7 pm at Meta House with a special free screening of Il Treno dei Bambini, Cristina Comencini’s poignant 2024 drama adapted from Viola Ardone’s bestseller.

A violent chain of events ensues as a jailed criminal arranges to buy a car from a shady car dealer, unaware that his partner in freedom has squandered most of the money from their last bank robbery on horse race betting.

Indigenous peoples are found in 22 provinces throughout Cambodia, with the majority of them concentrated in the northern and northeast parts. Many face discrimination and forced displacement from their lands, territories and resources, which is extinguishing them as distinct groups.

Sex with a virgin girl can be worth as much as 1200 dollars to an Asian man. Srey Leak (16), Me Nea (17) and Cheata (17) are all victims of the virginity trade. They met as karaoke girls at the ‘Soul’ club in Phnom Penh.

Marcel Camus’ BIRD OF PARADISE (1962, 95 min) – a spiritual journey into culture, myth, Buddhism, death, and reincarnation – was the first European feature film production in Cambodia.
Sok, a young and imaginative boy, leaves the Buddhist monkhood to seek a more adventurous life. Tith, a friendly fortune-teller, gives him a bird of paradise, which leads him to the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh.

On 18 September 1961, a plane with UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld on board crashed near the Zambian town of Ndola. There were no survivors. But was it really an accident? Was it an assassination? Is Hammarskjöld the most important victim of the Cold War? Or was he removed by Western intelligence services because of his support for free African states?

In the documentary ANTONIO GAUDI (1984, 72 min) filmmaker Hiroshi Teshigahara profiles Spanish architect Antonio Gaudi. Much of Gaudi’s work pays homage to the Catalan art of the Middle Ages — Gaudi being a Catalan himself — and so Teshigahara pays careful attention to the historical context of the artist’s most renowned works. And because Gaudi’s body of work is so vast, Teshigahara forgoes the artist’s ceramic work and instead spotlights his architectural and sculptural designs.

Paula is a single mother and falls in love with the discontented political functionary Paul. She is determined to find her happiness, while Paul hesitates at first. The East-German feature film classic “The Legend of Paul and Paula” (1973, 109 min) is a plea for the right to individual happiness in a socialist state.

The “Dangrek Genocide”, also known as the “Preah Vihear Pushback”, is a border incident on the Thai-Cambodian border in June 1979. Bunseng was among 45,000 Cambodian refugees who managed to escape to what they believed was safety in Thailand, only to be forced back over the Cambodian border in an area heavily infested with landmines by Preah Vihear Temple.

For nearly 20 years a civil war raged in northern Uganda.
Rebels of the LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army) were waging a bloody guerilla campaign. They abducted children and conscripted them as soldiers, forcing them to kill their own people.

Lego bricks capture the life of singer and record producer Pharrell Williams, showcasing depictions from his humble Virginia beginnings to his towering success in the music and fashion world for PIECE BY PIECE (2024, 93 min). A highly unusual twist on the documentary format that somehow works seamlessly, this kaleidoscopic overview of Pharrell Williams’ career is a lively testament to the power of self-belief.

A conscience-driven Japanese soldier traumatized by the events of WWII adopts the lifestyle of a Buddhist monk.

The late British photographer Tim Page (1944-2022) was one of the pre-eminent photographers of the Vietnam War and Cambodia’s UNTAC times. In 1997, he co-published the book “Requiem”, featuring many thousands of pictures by journalists who were killed in the Indochina Wars. Photos from this book are on currently on display at the ECCC’s Resource Center Phnom Penh.

In recent years, there has been a conscious effort to amplify the voices of women in German filmmaking. Annika Pinske’s “Talking About the Weather” (2022, 90 min) is a delightful tragicomedy about what it means to be a self-determined woman trying to climb the social ladder, and the cost at which this comes.

Cambodian cinema flourished in the 1960s, drawing huge crowds to theaters around the country, until the industry was destroyed by the Khmer Rouge in 1975. Of the 400 films produced, only 30 remain today. Almost all the actors were killed during the reign of Pol Pot and only a few of the directors were able to flee the country. Most of the old movie theaters of Phnom Penh have become restaurants, karaoke clubs, or squats.

A thousand years ago, the Khmer people of Cambodia built an empire and their capital was the great city of Angkor, with its centerpiece being Angkor Wat – a vast temple complex covering an area more than four times the size of the Vatican City.

“Loving Vincent” (2017, 94 min) is the world’s first fully painted animated feature film. Armand, the son of a postman, is sent to deliver a posthumous letter to Vincent van Gogh’s brother. His task turns into an investigation as he sets out to discover the truth behind Van Gogh’s suicide.

Back in the 1980s the Khmer Rouge fought a guerrilla war against the Vietnamese occupiers and the Cambodian government. Hundreds of thousands of Cambodians rushed to the border with Thailand to escape the violence and to avoid the famine, which threatened Cambodia.