Cinema
Siang peun chak thong hai
Somchith Pholsena · 1983
Synopsis
Soldiers of the second battalion of the Lao people's army, in wartime, in a north-eastern region devastated by bombing. The film mixes combatants and villagers, and was shot on the very ground of the episode it recounts, with the help of a Vietnamese crew.
Context
The film was produced by the cinema department of the Ministry of Information and Culture, the country's only producer, with the assistance of the Vietnamese government: the Lao director signed it together with the Vietnamese Pham Ky Nam. It was shot in colour and on thirty-five millimetre film in the province of Xiangkhouang, on the very sites of the episode it recounts. Scripts went through the control of the cinema department and that of the provincial information service; this one passed these stages, but the censors banned the finished film, which never was released. It was shown for the first time outside the country thirty-two years later, at a French festival devoted to the cinemas of Asia.
Who it is for
Eighty-one minutes, in Lao, with no French edition. The Plain of Jars, in the north-east of the country, was one of the most contested grounds of the war.
Prizes and reception
First feature film produced after the abolition of the monarchy, banned on its release and left unseen; one of only two shot in Laos between 1975 and 2008.
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