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Title: Samsara: death and rebirth in Cambodia Rating: 2.8 out of 4 Reference: Writer, Ellen Brand [or Bruno?]. Library of Congress subjects: Cambodian-Vietnamese Conflict, 1977- Cambodia--Social conditions
Reviews and Numerical Ratings 2 Samsara is a very affecting & moving video about the effects of the Khmer Rouge massacres on the religious, social & familial life of Cambodians who survived. This video has limited use in a sociological classroom. This is not because the video is weak per se, but because it has no historical or political dimension to it so students would not learn much about why, how or even when the events discussed occurred. While the stories of survival & recovery are moving and the images of Cambodians very arresting, the absence of any concrete context (causes, times, places, macro political effects) limit its value in a classroom. This video would, however, be useful in an advanced class that already had this contextual knowledge, in the study of representations of genocide, & if the instructor wanted to create an emotional response in students. The video features voice-over stories that are never attributed to anyone but were selected by the American director and may in some cases be by composite (we learn in the credits). It’s my sense that this might have resulted in the stereotyping / exoticisation of Cambodians. This would suggest interesting (though subtle & sophisticated) sociological conversations about North American representations of genocide. Chanelle Gallant 3.5 Remarkable display of how communities live in the shadow of war. Evidence of how a war that ended so recently has become so forgotten except by the persons left behind who feel blessed & cursed with their survival as they reconstruct their lives & villages. The struggles of the Cambodian peoples after the Pol Pot regime are displayed in all their emotion & complexities. The survivors of this regime live in constant search of their relatives, in constant fear of a recurrence of war, in constant suspicion of whether their neighbours have blood on their hands, in constant hunger, and with endless mourning. It’s important that women have become the spine of this reconstruction as mass graveyards of skeletal remains have become the home of countless husbands & men. The ramifications of war are shown to be truly horrific. People must trade gold for medicine, mines are left behind to further perpetuate mortality, hospitals are locked into unrecoverable devastation, and “what once brought sickness, now brings death.” This video illustrates how Cambodians have used Buddhism as a tool of recovery and as a way to channel this intolerable situation; feelings of optimism within this form of spirituality are resurfaced by beliefs such as: “blood can be turned into milk, and greed into compassion.” Therefore, especially in light of September 11th , the sentiments in this video and its vivid display of the evil of war become increasingly significant. War in this video is shown as nothing but inhumane, serving no other purpose other than to devastate the already vulnerable. This video is excellent and moving. For students at any level. Belinda Godwin 4 A video about articulating loss and reconstituting
lives & social relations, by using & producing culture/myths.
Makes real the aftermaths of genocide, makes accessible a genocide that
is difficult to understand. Shows how the food cycle is disturbed by
war & how it maintains communities. Traumatic to watch, avoids spectacle,
invites empathy. Lecture topics: grieving, genocide, psychoanalysis,
collective memory, religion. Kathy Bischoping & Riley Olstead 1.5 The strength of this video rests in the testimonies
of family members who survived the massacre led by Pol Pot in the early
1980's. What weakens the video is its failure to address the historical
conditions at the time of Pol Pot's control over Cambodia. This could
have been elaborated in greater detail, which would have been conducive
to an objective perspective to the matter in question. Carlos Torres
(undergraduate)
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