Phnom Penh is the capital and most populous city of Cambodia. It has been the national capital since the French protectorate of Cambodia and has grown to become the nation's primate city and its economic, industrial, and cultural centre. Before Phnom Penh became capital city, Oudong was the capital of the country.
Sinn Sisamouth was a Cambodian singer-songwriter active from the 1950s to the 1970s. Widely considered the "King of Khmer Music", Sisamouth, along with Ros Serey Sothea, Pen Ran, Mao Sareth, and other Cambodian artists, was part of a thriving pop music scene in Phnom Penh that blended elements of Khmer traditional music with the sounds of rhythm and blues and rock and roll to develop a Cambodian rock sound. Sisamouth died during the Khmer Rouge regime under circumstances that are unclear.
Ros Serey Sothea was a Cambodian singer. She was active during the final years of the First Kingdom of Cambodia and into the Khmer Republic period. She sang in a variety of genres; romantic ballads emerged as her most popular works. Despite a relatively brief career she is credited with singing hundreds of songs. She also ventured into acting, starring in a few films. Details of her life are relatively scarce. She disappeared during the Khmer Rouge regime of the late 1970s but the circumstances of her fate remain a mystery. Norodom Sihanouk granted Sothea the honorary title "Queen with the Golden Voice."
Rithy Panh is a Cambodian documentary film director and screenwriter.
Cinema in Cambodia began in the 1950s, and many films were being screened in theaters throughout the country by the 1960s, which are regarded as the "golden age". After a near-disappearance during the Khmer Rouge regime, competition from video and television has meant that the Cambodian film industry is a small one.
Media in Cambodia is largely unregulated and includes radio, television and print media outlets. Private sector companies have moved into the media sector, which represents a change from years of state-run broadcasting and publishing.
Democratic Kampuchea was the Cambodian state from 1975 to 1979, under the totalitarian dictatorship of Pol Pot and the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), commonly known as the Khmer Rouge. It was established following the Khmer Rouge's capture of the capital Phnom Penh, effectively ending the United States-backed Khmer Republic of Lon Nol. After Vietnam took Phnom Penh in 1979, it was disestablished in 1982 with the creation of the CGDK in its place.
S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine is a 2003 documentary film directed by Rithy Panh. Rithy, himself a survivor of the Khmer Rouge, brought together two former prisoners of the regime with their former captors at Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, the former Security Prison 21 (S-21) under the Khmer Rouge.
The Burnt Theatre, or Les Artistes du Théâtre Brûlé, is a 2005 French-Cambodian docudrama directed and co-written by Rithy Panh. A blend of fact and fiction, based on the actual lives of the actors, the film depicts a troupe of actors and dancers struggling to practise their art in the burned-out shell of Cambodia's former national theatre, the Preah Suramarit National Theatre in Phnom Penh.
Chum Mey is one of only seven known adult survivors of the Khmer Rouge imprisonment in the S-21 Tuol Sleng camp, where 20,000 prisoners, mostly Cambodians, were sent for execution. Formerly a motor mechanic working in Phnom Penh, he was taken to the prison on 28 October 1978, accused of being a spy. His life was only spared because of his ability to repair sewing machines for Pol Pot's soldiers. In 2004, he described the killing of his wife and son:
"First they shot my wife, who was marching in front with the other women," he said. "She screamed to me, 'Please run, they are killing me now'. I heard my son crying and then they fired again, killing him. When I sleep, I still see their faces, and every day I still think of them".
Devět kruhů pekla is a 1988 Czechoslovak drama film directed by Milan Muchna. It was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival. The film describes the Khmer Rouge period in Cambodia. Tomáš is a Czech doctor working in Phnom Penh and Khema is famous Khmer actress.
Enemies of the People is a 2009 British-Cambodian documentary film written and directed by Rob Lemkin and Thet Sambath. The film depicts the 10-year quest of co-director Sambath to find truth and closure in the Killing Fields of Cambodia. The film features interviews of former Khmer Rouge officials from the most senior surviving leader to the men and women who slit throats during the regime of Democratic Kampuchea between 1975 and 1979.
Heather E. Connell is an American film director. She is best known for directing the award-winning feature documentaries Small Voices: The Stories of Cambodia's Children (2008) and Forget Us Not (2013).
Christopher Minko is an Australian musician and co-founder of the Phnom Penh-based Delta blues group called Krom. Living in Cambodia since 1996, Minko is also the founder and Secretary General of the Cambodian National Volleyball League (Disabled) NGO, also known as CNVLD.
Davy Chou is a Cambodian-French filmmaker. He has written, directed and produced several films. Chou made his feature length debut with Diamond Island (2016) and made his follow-up with the film Return to Seoul (2022).
Red Wedding is a 2012 documentary film co-directed by Lida Chan and Guillaume Suon, which portrays a victim of forced marriage under the Khmer Rouge regime.
Kalyanee Mam is a filmmaker whose film, A River Changes Course, which she directed and produced, has won several awards, including the Grand Jury Award for World Cinema Documentary at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival and the Golden Gate Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 2013 San Francisco International Film Festival.
Youk Chhang is the executive director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam) and a survivor of the Khmer Rouge's killing fields. He became DC-Cam's leader in 1995, when the center was founded as a field office of Yale University’s Cambodian Genocide Program to conduct research, training and documentation relating to the Khmer Rouge regime. Chhang continued to run the center after its inception as an independent Cambodian non-governmental organization in 1997 and is currently building on DC-Cam's work to establish the Sleuk Rith Institute, a permanent hub for genocide studies in Asia, based in Phnom Penh.
The fall of Phnom Penh was the capture of Phnom Penh, capital of the Khmer Republic, by the Khmer Rouge on 17 April 1975, effectively ending the Cambodian Civil War. At the beginning of April 1975, Phnom Penh, one of the last remaining strongholds of the Khmer Republic, was surrounded by the Khmer Rouge and totally dependent on aerial resupply through Pochentong Airport.
The Bophana Center is an audiovisual center located in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The center is dedicated to restoring, protecting and enhancing the Cambodian audiovisual heritage.
