Part of the Khmer Rouge project was not only to destroy individual people, but to destroy the very notion of the individual. I want to simply rebuild the stories of people – it’s part of my fight against the Khmer Rouge agenda. Rithy Panh Read Quote
I left Cambodia when I was 12 or 13. I didn’t really escape, but I needed to go away. Rithy Panh Read Quote
To me, form is not something that you can plan beforehand, especially for a documentary. You can’t write it or sketch it. It requires a confrontation with reality, with history, with ethics and morals. After identifying good content, you have to find the right form to express that content. Rithy Panh Read Quote
Totalitarians always want to kill culture. But imagine life without football, Faulkner, or Bob Dylan. It’s not life. Rithy Panh Read Quote
The Khmer Rouge can’t destroy me. I still have my imagination and am capable of making films. I am not locked up. Rithy Panh Read Quote
There is no book-learning culture in Cambodia. People do not read. The children do not read in school. Educators must come up with a policy that meets the great need for knowledge: using modern audiovisual methods that the young can connect with. Rithy Panh Read Quote
What I like to do with every film is to bring a form, like a cinematographic proposal. If you watch ‘S21,’ it’s a form; ‘Duch, Master of the Gates of Hell’ is a different proposal. Rithy Panh Read Quote
Of course, when you’re making a documentary, you don’t have actors, but nonetheless, there is a writing process that does take place in the editing room. Rithy Panh Read Quote
