FRAMES OF IDEOLOGY: CINEMATIC AND HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES ON KHMER ROUGE PROPAGANDA (1975-1979)

• Grant number: 24/18219-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Post-doctor
• Start date: April 01, 2025
• End date: September 30, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Arts - Cinema
• Principal Investigator: Eduardo Victorio Morettin
• Grantee: Tomyo Costa Ito
• Supervisor: Duong Keo
• Host Institution: Escola de Comunicações e Artes (ECA). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Royal University Of Phnom Penh,
• Associated to the scholarship: 23/05509-0 - The Khmer Rouge propaganda archives, 1975-1979: a cinematic and historical analysis, BP.PD

Abstract

This project, to be carried out through an internship at the Royal University of Phnom Penh (RUPP), proposes to view, break down, describe, and analyze the propaganda films of the Khmer Rouge regime through direct access to archival material, which is available in its entirety only at the Bophana, Audiovisual Resource Center, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The supervision will be provided by Professor Keo Duong, a historian with 15 years of experience in researching the regime through primary sources: testimonies, documents, and audiovisual materials. The on-site research will also provide privileged access to extrafilmic documents and references, consisting of three sets: 1) the historiography of Cambodia (BECKER, 1998; KIERNAN, 1995); 2) the Khmer Rouge's ideology, expressed in its slogans, official magazines, and leaders' speeches (DUONG, 2018; LOCARD, 1996); 3) and testimonial narratives (HENG, DEMEURE, 1992; PONCHAUD, 2001; LANGIS, 2015). To gather extrafilmic materials, we will also conduct investigations at the Documentation Center of Cambodia and the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, two key institutions that preserve documentation from the regime period. We propose a conjunction between film analysis and documentary research, composed of these three sets of materials, guided by the following main issues: the construction of a political mythology in the films, based on a nationalist view of the country's history; the veiled manifestation in the films of the violence present in the regime's slogans and ideological speeches; and the representation of the people in contrast to that of the leaders. Finally, we propose to conduct a seminar at RUPP on the cinema of Rithy Panh, in dialogue with the main issues of the research and the image archive of the Bophana Center.