Negotiating the Spectre and Spectatorship of Trauma in Rithy Panh’s S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine (2003)

Cambodian filmmaker and genocide survivor Rithy Panh discusses the necessity of leaving a record as part of a particular process of forgetting (and in effect, remembering) in the context of the traumatic events and memories of the Khmer Rouge regime headed by Pol Pot. The Khmer Rouge established the state of Democratic Kampuchea (DK) on April 17, 1975 – overcoming the U.S.-backed government administration headed by General Lon Nol in the process – and existed until the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia that dissolved DK on Jan. 7, 1979. During the Khmer Rouge regime, around two million Cambodians (a quarter of the country’s population at the time) died as a result of starvation, exhaustion in labor camps, tortures/interrogations and mass executions in the name of creating a classless, agrarian society of a “pure” Khmer race. Panh’s family members were among the two million Cambodians who died during the regime.