Cinema
ບົວແດງ
Som-Ok Southiphone · 1988
Synopsis
In a village in Vientiane Province, on the eve of the fall of the royalist regime, a young woman loves a boy who has left to join the guerrillas. Her mother pushes her to marry a supporter of the government, and the wedding takes place against her will, at the same time as her sister's. The royal army wants to turn the village into a bridgehead against the guerrilla and takes advantage of a ceasefire to mass its troops there.
Context
The film was shot in 1987 in Vientiane, in black and white on thirty-five millimetre, for five thousand dollars, and was released the following year; for lack of a laboratory in the country, it was developed and edited in Hanoi. Its director was not supposed to direct it: he was meant to be the cameraman for a colleague trained in the Soviet Union, who did not know what to do, became his assistant and left the set before the end. The lead actress became his wife. The film stayed two weeks in the capital's cinemas before going to the provinces, and it is one of only three Lao films preserved out of the dozen made.
Who it is for
A subtitled Lao-language film with very limited distribution. The context of the state production of the nineteen-eighties sheds light on its subject.
Prizes and reception
Special Jury Prize in Cambodia in 1997, American premiere at the Hawaii festival; a trade magazine sees in it a rare glimpse of a cinema ignored abroad.