\n<\/p>\n
\n\tCinema can \u201cpreserve history, influence mindsets, and provide a space for reflection and escape,\u201d Cambodian auteur Rithy Panh (Graves Without a Name<\/em>, Exile<\/em>, Meeting With Pol Pot<\/em>, Everything Will Be OK<\/em>) said when he was unveiled as the surprise jury president of this year\u2019s 78th edition of the Locarno Film Festival. <\/p>\n \n\tThe long-time documentary chronicler is best known for his work about the 1970s Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia, which saw his parents, siblings and extended family perish of starvation and forced labor. Panh escaped to Thailand and then to France, where he discovered filmmaking.<\/p>\n \n\tIn 2013, his The Missing Picture<\/em> saw him debuting the aesthetic mixing clay figurines, archival footage and first-person narration that became his trademark. The movie ended up winning the Un Certain Regard award at the Cannes Film Festival and earning an Oscar nomination in the best\u00a0international\u00a0feature film category.<\/p>\n \n\tPanh is \u201cone of contemporary cinema\u2019s most courageous and consistent defenders of artistic freedom and an indefatigable champion of the power of historical truth,\u201d Locarno said when revealing his appointment as jury head. \u201cSince 1994, his feature films have been acclaimed around the world, giving voice to those whose lives were destroyed through horrifying state violence.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tGiona A. Nazzaro, artistic director of the Locarno festival, lauded him as \u201can authoritative witness of our time,\u201d adding: \u201cHis passionate search for truth, his anti-dogmatic approach, and his genuine commitment, as well as his capacity to move freely between the numerous forms of present-day filmmaking<\/p>\n \n\tBefore taking on his jury duty at the Locarno festival, which kicks off on Wednesday, Aug. 6 ans runs though Aug. 16, talked to THR<\/em> about his past and current work, the impact of social media and AI, the importance of the theatrical experience, and why he wants to pick up a Super 8 camera next.<\/p>\n What are you working on right now? Any new film in the works, maybe?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tI start reading now and searching for information, maybe looking back at the list of ideas to see what idea is now possible to work on. I am also working with some young artists on a photography exhibition in November. And I\u2019m reading the latest version of the book I wrote with Christophe Bataille [The Elimination: A Survivor of the Khmer Rouge Confronts His Past and the Commandant of the Killing Fields<\/em>], which takes time.<\/p>\n \n\tDo you expect your next film will be similar to your latest, Meeting With Pol Pot<\/em>, and a continuation of your past work or quite different, like Everything Will Be OK<\/em>, in which nimals enslave humans in a takedown of totalitarianism, surveillance, and excessive capitalism?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tI don\u2019t know. That one was different, talking about capitalism, the environment, etc. I have always mixed things up between work on the Khmer Rouge and also other work. But it was a choice that I put more time on the Khmer Rouge work. But now it\u2019s maybe the last 10 years or 15 years of my life. I don\u2019t want to be that director who still shoots at 100 years. That\u2019s really crazy. Maybe I wish to enjoy cinema more now. I\u2019m teaching, too. You learn a lot when you are in contact with young film directors. I try to discover them and have an exchange with them. Now, how people produce, how the new generation does thing is different and how they observe the world. And at the same time, I like teaching my students with classic films, because they discover things. The idea is that we can be free with cinema, and we can bring people with us.<\/p>\n \n\tYou mentioned freedom. You have long seemed free from genre restrictions, mixing documentary and fictional elements and the like. Can you talk a bit about that?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tIt\u2019s amazing. When I made The Missing Picture<\/em>, the film got nominated for the foreign-language film Oscar, not for documentary. But still, people used to call me the guy who makes documentaries. But it\u2019s not really true, because I am not thinking too much about whether something is fiction, documentary or more. It\u2019s just my vision of the images and how to tell a story with images. <\/p>\n \n\tNow, people make films [or series] for social networks that are three minutes [long], exactly the time between two stations on the subway. I\u2019m very interested by this kind of new narration, but it\u2019s so stupid. It\u2019s three minutes and always the same story. It\u2019s cinema influencers and not cinema. For me, it\u2019s good to to go to festivals sometimes to have a meeting with cinema and wait for something that can make me cry or make me laugh or make me sad, whatever \u2013 but something that moves me. <\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\u2018Meeting With Pol Pot\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n \n\tHow do you approach the role of jury president in Locarno?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tI\u2019m a little bit afraid of festivals. Why? Because you have to judge things. I don\u2019t want to say this one is better than that one. I\u2019d create a prize for everyone. I\u2019m a filmmaker, so I respect you a lot when you shoot a short [or feature]. It\u2019s so hard to make a film. I don\u2019t know if I didn\u2019t sleep well at night, maybe I cannot follow one film. We have a few people on the jury, and maybe someone will have to explain the story of a film to me. And if one film comes from another continent, how can I fully understand all of it? The strongest films are universal. You can understand because you fear something. There is this humanity, dignity, freedom.<\/p>\n \n\tYour work has often explored trauma, especially historical trauma. How do you see cinema helping people confront and work through trauma?<\/strong><\/p>\n Probably, the cinema work will be harder now because there are fakes with AI, so artists will need to be very cautious about where and how we research. With trauma, of course, culture in general can do something, because it can gather people around to talk about a painful event or something like this. Cinema also brings you a moment to breathe, happiness, you can dream, you can love. We are so under pressure everywhere, with daily life, work, all that\u2019s happening, amplified by social media. And we need something to breathe. We need space. We need to watch and hear. We need physical sensation. A close-up must be a close-up on the big screen. It\u2019s not the same on your TV screen. <\/p>\n \n\tBut can cinema repair the world or can it save the world? No, we cannot save the world. We need to save ourselves. <\/p>\n \n\tYou are a role model for various filmmakers. Do you have any cinema role models, or anybody who you feel influenced your work a lot?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tMany, many, many. I knew the cinema when I was very young, because my neighbor was a filmmaker. But I was a child, so I was not prepared to make films. When I went to cinema school here in France, I knew nothing about cinema history. But they gave us an ID card so that we could go watch films for free. So I spent a lot of time in theaters to discover film, and they also had a videotape library. I watched Andrei Tarkovsky and started watching a lot of Russian cinema. I also love the great work of [Kenji] Mizoguchi, [Akira] Kurosawa, and, of course, [Ingmar] Bergman and [Aki] Kaurism\u00e4ki and [Krzysztof] Kie\u015blowski.<\/p>\n But maybe the best one for me is [the late low-budget French filmmaker] Chris Marker. Maybe not in terms of filmmaking, but when I have difficulty with shooting or editing, I think: \u201cHi, Chris, can you help me?\u201d And I hear him: \u201cDon\u2019t worry. Go test! Don\u2019t worry. Be free. Don\u2019t respect the script. Change the pace of the sequence.\u201d I never met him, but he is very strong for me, like a saint of cinema. Saint Marker.<\/p>\n \n\tIs there anything else you would like to mention?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tImages and sound are very complex. When cameras can come into every hand, it\u2019s good in one way because everybody can record pictures. But also, images can become more and more banal. <\/p>\n I have a project. I want to go back to Super 8. As a very young filmmaker, I made a Super 8 movie. And I want to go back to Super 8. But it\u2019s very expensive \u2013 100 euros ($118) for [a film roll of] three minutes. It\u2019s interesting because you cannot shoot like when you use your phone. You need to think a little bit. I have bought a camera now. So I will try one or two cartridges to see what happens. I would like to find again my first love or maybe the same sensation.<\/p>\n \n\tI would like to find something more innocent, more elegant, more poetic. And I realized I shot too much with the digital camera, so I want to go back to something more basic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Cinema can \u201cpreserve history, influence mindsets, and provide a space for reflection and escape,\u201d Cambodian auteur Rithy Panh (Graves Without a Name, Exile, Meeting With Pol Pot, Everything Will Be OK) said when he was unveiled as the surprise jury president of this year\u2019s 78th edition of the Locarno Film Festival. The long-time documentary chronicler<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13919,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[7582,7581,1460,1846,2206,7580,480,7579,3687],"class_list":{"0":"post-13918","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-cambodia","9":"tag-cinema","10":"tag-interview","11":"tag-jury","12":"tag-locarno","13":"tag-panh","14":"tag-plans","15":"tag-rithy","16":"tag-super"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13918\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}