Kon Khmer Koun Khmer presents: Golden Reawakening Part 2

Friday, November 06, 2009

Phnom Penh: Exhibition of photos and drawings of the movie theatres in Phnom Penh in the 70s

At Sasa Gallery, November 6th-18th 2009

In 1975, there were at least 30 movie theatres in Phnom Penh. Today, just one of them still shows films: Lux Theatre.

The photographer group “Stiev Selapak” (Rebel Arts) has photographed the places where those movie theatres were located at that time, trying to find the right angle and light to make those old theatres reappearing behind the image.

Because many photos of the 70’s movie theatres are not available, we worked with a group of artists to create drawings of several movie theatres based on the meticulous description of one remarkable witness of that era, Mr. Chour Sokhen.

We can’t guarantee that those drawings reflect the exact reality of that time – indeed we are sure that they don’t. Let see them as a proposal of what they could have looked like, or as an act of “re-appropriation” from young Cambodian artists of these missing images.

We divided the space into the main areas in which were located the theatres at that time: most of the theatres were in the Northeast of Phnom Penh, few were in the West, others in the South, and we focused on three of the most popular ones: Hemakcheat, Phnom Pich and Capitol.