'Behind the Missing Picture'
A experimental video essay about 'The Missing Picture' (L’Image manquante), a Cambodian-French first person documentary film directed by Rithy Panh in 2013
All sources come from 'The Missing Picture'(Rithy Panh), edit and voice over by me.
SCRIPT:
The Missing Picture (L’Image manquante) is a Cambodian-French first person documentary film directed by Rithy Panh in 2013. It reveals the violences and sins done by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia between 1975-1979, which were erased and taken from their history. Panh, in age of eleven, had been through the exhaustion and starvation, losing almost all his families. Panh later escape to Thailand, immigrated to French and became a movie director, and many of his films are focused on the construction and recalling of the missing pieces of culture and history after the revolution of Khmer Rouge.
Childhood
The Missing Picture is like a diary of Panh’s childhood, which lead us to unseal the invisible history of trauma and death. The archival and propaganda footages of this period contract a lot with the director’s personal memories. Instead of recreating the scenes by the performance of actors and actresses, Panh decided to corporate with artist to create small clay figurines, like child’s toys, represent the childhood that he is seeking and can never go back.
Testimony
This film, as a testimony of the forgotten souls, recorded the silence voice behind the screen. While giving no authority to the propaganda footages, Panh is willing to recall and reconstruct the Cambodian’s missing history, culture and memories and communicate with those who share the similar experience of him. He challenge the reliability of the archival footages remained and argued for the absence of visual documentations of Cambodian genocide.
Memories
Although Panh do tell his story in a linear structure, the narrative itself is blur due to the frequent transitions of flash backs and archival footages. It indicates how struggle Panh is when he try to recall the traumatic memories he and others had experienced. Sending his audiences the message that, miserable history and reality like this is always a hard thing to speak on.
Sound
Sound is a really essential part of The Missing Picture to approach truth both rhetorically and aesthetically. With still clay figurines, different background musics and sound tracks were used to help the audiences locate the character. It can also use as satire, and to enhance the sense of depress. With the voice over, Panh’s memories connected like a childhood diary.
Tactility
“Haptic cinema does not invite identification with a figure so much as it encourages a bodily relationship between the viewer and the video image.” Laura Marks. The hard carved texture of the figurines connects to audience’s body in a multi sensory way, reminds them of wizened skin and also sense of death.
The Missing Picture
What was missing? Past. Future. Truth. Us. Me.
Bibliography
Marks, Laura U. Touch: Sensuous Theory and Multisensory Media. vol. 14, Artichoke
Publishing, 2002.
