See the multimedia introduction piece of this project at this link.
This project features 7 Cambodian masters in their specific art.
Meet each of them through a multimedia portrait (photos + interview) at the following links:
Ny Jewell
Masady Mani
Viphas Eng
Phutyrith Sek
Chum Ngek
Kantya Nou
Archival pictures in this stories are from photographers Dominique de Rivaz, Jean-Jacques Kurz and Robert Trippett whose contribution to this project and multimedia pieces are greatly appreciated, thanks a lot!
From the Cambodian refugee camps of the Thai border in 1979 to America today, there’s still thousands of stories that must be told.
All the confirmed artists that I have met at the Cambodian temple of Silver Spring, Maryland these last two years have compelling stories… Most of them have fled Cambodia while the Vietnamese took over the country and the Khmer Rouge loosing it. Several ended up meeting together in Kao-I-Dang refugee camp where they were eager to bring back the Cambodian living arts alive. After a few months, a group of 30 families of artists was admitted in the United States, among the first Cambodian refugees accepted in the US. They settled in Maryland and started a new life in the early 80s. For the last 30 years now they have challenged the odds, going back to school, looking for jobs to support their family and raising their children. Still they continued practicing their art, sharing the tradition to a younger generation of Cambodian Americans.
On the picture above: Cambodian native Soeun Tauch (right), 73, shares her experience and story as survivor of the Khmer Rouge regime with Cambodian native Phatry Derek Pan (left), a South East Asian specialist, human rights writer, and an ASRIC volunteer to help receive the stories of survivors.
After California, Oregon, Virginia, Maryland, and a week before Pennsylvania, non profit ASRIC (Applied Social Research Institute of Cambodia) organized in the building of the CMAA (Cambodian Mutual Assistance Assistance) in Lowell, Massachusetts from Nov. 6th to 8th 2009 another workshop to help the survivors of the Khmer Rouge regime share their stories, file a complaint for the trial now in process in Phnom Penh, possibly have their voice be heard.
Thanks to the support of the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at New York University, ASRIC could gather in Lowell a group of volunteer lawyers and law students to listen to the stories of survivors and help them file. On the picture above Cosette Creamer (left), 28, an international relations and law PhD candidate at Harvard Law School, receives the story of Cambodian native Yean Chhoeun (center), 56, sharing her experience as a survivor of the Khmer Rouge regime, with the help of Cambodian native Sonith Peou (right), a program director at Metta Health Center-Lowell.
On the picture above Cambodian native Sok Sareth (right), 53, shares her experience and story as a survivor of the Khmer Rouge regime with Leakhena Nou (left), Assistant Professor of Sociology at California State University, Long Beach, and Founding Director of ASRIC.
Today, after 10 workshops in 2009 in the United States, ASRIC has already received and filed more than 150 complaints that will soon be addressed to the ECCC in Phnom Penh (the “Khmer Rouge trial”) for the second part of the trial that should start early next 2010…
