Ferryman of Memories: The Films of Rithy Panh

by Deirdre Boyle

Overview

Ferryman of Memories: The Films of Rithy Panh is an unconventional book about an unconventional filmmaker. Rithy Panh survived the Cambodian genocide and found refuge in France where he discovered in film a language that allowed him to tell what happened to the two million souls who suffered hunger, overwork, disease, and death at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. His innovative cinema is made with people, not about them—even those guilty of crimes against humanity.  Whether he is directing Isabelle Huppert in The Sea Wall, following laborers digging trenches, or interrogating the infamous director of S-21 prison, aesthetics and ethics inform all he does.  With remarkable access to the director and his work, Deirdre Boyle introduces readers to Panh’s groundbreaking approach to perpetrator cinema and dazzling critique of colonialism, globalization, and the refugee crisis. Ferryman of Memories reveals the art of one of the masters of world cinema today, focusing on nineteen of his award-winning films, including Rice People, The Land of Wandering Souls, S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine, and The Missing Picture.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781978814646
Publisher:	Rutgers University Press
Publication date:	03/17/2023
Pages:	270
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	16 - 18 Years

About the Author

DEIRDRE BOYLE is professor emerita of media studies at The New School in New York where she directed the Graduate Certificate in Documentary Media Studies. She is a writer, media historian, and psychotherapist. Her books include Subject to Change: Guerrilla Television Revisited, among others. She has received Guggenheim and Asian Cultural Council fellowships as well as writing residencies at MacDowell and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

 

Table of Contents

Preface

Prologue

1 Uncle Rithy and the Cambodian Tragedy

2 The Return: Discovering the Gaze

3 The Khmer Rouge: Three Years, Eight Months, Twenty-One Days

4 Perpetrators and Survivors: The S-21 Trilogy

Interlude: Dark Tourism

5 After the Wars: Fiction and Nonfiction

6 Colonialism: France and Cambodia

7 Remembering the Past, Mourning the Dead 157

Epilogue

Acknowledgments
Appendix 1. "Confronting Images of Ideology: An Interview with Rithy Panh by Deirdre Boyle"
Appendix 2. "On a Morality of Filming: A Conversation between Rithy Panh and Deirdre Boyle"
Notes
Films and Books by Rithy Panh
Index

Editorial Reviews

"Like Claude Lanzmann regarding the Shoah, no other film director than Rithy Panh has managed to make visible, audible, and imaginable the uncanny world of the Khmer Rouge that brought Cambodia into hell. Seeing in Panh a modern Charon who transports human souls to the other side, Deirdre Boyle guides us through a disturbing journey where suffering and trauma, but also grieving and redemption, are pervasive."
 

professor of visual culture and author of The Death in Their Eyes - Vicente Sánchez-Biosca

Deirdre Boyle's training as both media historian and psychotherapist provides a major resonance in this outstanding book on one of current cinema's best directors, Rithy Panh. Moving between personal memoir and film analysis, Boyle sweeps the reader into the Cambodian genocide as an extraordinary chapter in twentieth-century history.”
 

professor of cinema studies at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and author of Perpetrator Cinema - Raya Morag

"I do not know another film director today with a more complete understanding of human experience—of its precariousness and pain as well as its deepest joys. Rithy Panh presents the harshest of realities in a way that dwells on beauty, sensuality, and light. He paints with the lightest of touches, using music, pacing, and timing with the precision, emotion, and unity of an orchestra. Ferryman of Memories is a welcome introduction to his unique work.”
 

actress, filmmaker, and humanitarian - Angelina Jolie

"Through her deep engagement with Rithy Panh and his films, Boyle offers us a timely reminder of Cambodia’s difficult history, of superpower complicity, and how the impact of the Khmer Rouge’s short brutal reign continues to mark Cambodian people today."

professor and officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit at the University of Auckland - Annie Goldson

★ 03/01/2023

Boyle (media studies, the New School; Subject To Change) focuses on Cambodian documentary director/screenwriter Rithy Panh, who has published five books, produced 20 feature films, established a film center in Cambodia, and been acclaimed worldwide. When the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime took control of Cambodia in 1975, for the next four years, all but one of Panh's family members died in forced labor camps. Eventually reaching Paris, Panh enrolled in France's premiere film school. Documentaries offered a way to give meaning to the dead and survivors. In 1989, his first documentary, Site 2, won the Grand Prix at the Amiens International Film Festival. In 1994, his Rice People documentary was the first Cambodian film submitted for consideration for an Oscar, and 2013's The Missing Picture snagged a nomination. Panh's scripting is poetic, and his technique is revolutionary; he takes a single-focus camera and shoots close, using people he happened to zoom in on in place of professionals. He lets them speak for themselves and mixes live, clay-and-stick figures to recreate a damaged past. This book examines each film, folding them into the narrative of Panh's life. VERDICT An admirable book that will likely increase visibility of Panh's remarkable films.—David Keymer

Library Journal