Social Impact Media Awards (SIMA) began as the first and only international media competition to celebrate creative, human rights and humanitarian achievement. Today, SIMA is the most prestigious global curator of social impact, serving the independent film, academic and global social justice communities around the world.

This year, SIMA Traveling Series 2024 teams up with Meta House’s “Speak Out, Sisters” project, featuring a selection of documentaries by and about women from Cambodia and many other countries. Each night, a Cambodian female filmmaker shows and discusses her recent short film, followed by the screening of selected SIMA documentaries. Entrance is free. All films have English subtitles.

VOICES FILM FESTIVAL @ META HOUSE, DAY 6

Voices of Resilience, Stories of Strength and Hope

Allison Chhorn is a young Cambodian-Australian film-maker and multidisciplinary artist whose very personal work explores themes of migrant displacement, trauma and the repetition of memory. Tonight, she will screen and discuss three of her films.

Threading common questions of longing and inverting language between English and Khmer, Allison’s film MISSING (2021, 7 min) discusses the separation and distance of the Cambodian diaspora, embodied in two generations of a mother and daughter living apart from each other. BLIND BODY (2021, 15min) introduces you to Cambodian immigrant Kim Nay. Partially blind, the grandmother depends on touch and sound to navigate her daily routine of eating, resting and listening to Khmer news. THE PLASTIC HOUSE (2019, 46min) takes place almost entirely inside and around the dilapidated greenhouse of Allison’s family. Chhorn filters and displaces her fears about her parents’ deaths onto an intensely moving narrative of ritual, physical labor, and isolation.

* REMEMBER (Democratic Republic of Congo/USA, 2022, 14 min): One night at her Congo home, 14-year-old Mugeni awakes to sounds of bombs. As her family scatters to forests to save themselves, she finds herself alone. Filmmaker Amy Bench portraits a child refugee, who sets out to reunite herself with her loved ones and to lift up her tribe.

* FREE TO CARE (USA, 2022, 14min): A single mother with a passion for nursing, Lisa Creason wanted the freedom to pursue her dreams. When an unjust law prohibited her from doing so, she took the fight into her own hands and ended up opening doorways for thousands like her. Directed by Chris Temple.

ANGOLA, DO YOU HEAR US? (USA, 2022, 26min): Cinque Northern tells the story of Liza Jessie Peterson’s shutdown performance of her play “The Peculiar Patriot” at Angola, America’s largest prison-plantation. The documentary examines what led to the shutdown, the material that confronted a system and the impact of her visit after it was erased by prison authorities.