Film

I Am Chut Wutty

I Am Chut Wutty is a 2015 documentary by Fran Lambrick and Vanessa de Smet about the Cambodian forest activist Chut Wutty and the communities he led.[1][2] News reports say military police shot and killed Chut Wutty in April 2012.[3][4]

Synopsis

Chut Wutty led the Prey Lang Network, a group of forest activists. Its members visited logging sites with cameras to record the damage, the abandoned equipment and the piles of cut timber.[1] The activists came from 330 villages, and their direct action included burning timber that had already been cut, to wipe out the profits and raise the costs of the loggers.[3] Beginning in late 2011, the film follows Prey Lang Community Network patrols in the shrinking forest as members try to stop land-concession companies from cutting trees illegally.[5]

The communities depend on the forest to live, including on resin trees.[1] In the film, the head of a rubber company that holds a land concession near Prey Lang says he wants to expand his business there.[2] More than 400,000 resin trees had been felled, and no one had been paid for them. One activist in the network says that losing the trees would mean losing everything.[1]

In November 2011, at a rubber company concession in Prey Lang, soldiers seized Chut Wutty after the activists set fire to a pile of cut logs.[2][6] Community members came to his aid, and he got away unhurt.[2] He later turned to the Cardamom Mountains, where he suspected that yellow vine was going into drug production. He was shot dead while trying to leave a yellow vine site in April 2012.[1][4] The film includes footage of Chut Wutty from his last months, with accounts from fellow activists and the journalist Olesia Plokhii.[4][1][2] In it he speaks of the support he received from the network's activists and says that fear could stop others from carrying on his work.[5] After his death, the network struggled to continue without him.[1] The film traces the activists' work from the Prey Lang forest to the Cardamom Mountains.[1]

Production

Fran Lambrick, a British filmmaker, made the film as part of her doctoral research at Oxford University, which studied community forestry around Prey Lang.[3] She directed and produced it with Last Line Productions, and Vanessa de Smet was its cinematographer and co-director.[4][1][2] The film is in Khmer.[4] The Movie Database (TMDB) gives its length as 57 minutes.[7] Voice of America gave its length as 50 minutes.[5]

Release

TMDB lists its US release date as April 5, 2016.[7]

In Cambodia, the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts stopped a public screening planned for April 20, 2016, at Meta House in Phnom Penh.[5] A ministry spokesman, Thai Norak Satya, said the film had been made and was to be shown in Cambodia without permission.[8] The ministry also said the film had not passed a content check.[3] Lambrick said the government should allow it because it shows a Cambodian hero fighting deforestation, and her crew asked the government for permission for a later screening.[8][5] Nicolaus Mesterharm, the founding director of Meta House, called the film a window onto events in the forest.[3]

After the ban, private screenings took place across Cambodia. Police interrupted one at Solidarity House in Phnom Penh, attended by Lambrick, 30 minutes after it began, then let it continue.[3] On April 26, 2016, Radio Free Asia posted the Khmer version on its Khmer website with the makers' permission, and an English-subtitled version for 24 hours.[4][5] Lambrick later made the film available to stream and invited people to host screenings.[3]

See also

References 8
  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 Journeyman Pictures, I Am Chut Wutty (August 19, 2015)
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 Rod Harbinson, The Ecologist, Banned: premiere of film probing Cambodian ecodefender's murder (April 21, 2016)
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 Hyperallergic, Cambodia Censors Screening of Film About Slain Environmental Activist (May 3, 2016)
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 Radio Free Asia, RFA Features Banned Film on Murdered Cambodian Rainforest Activist on Website (April 25, 2016)
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 Voice of America, Filmmaker to Post Banned Documentary About Cambodian Logging Activist (April 26, 2016)
  6. ↑ Fran Lambrick, The Ecologist, 'We won't be here forever': Cambodian forest defender immortalised on film (October 2, 2014)
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 The Movie Database (TMDB), I Am Chut Wutty (2016)
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Voice of America, Film Director About Chut Wutty Said Her Film Should Not Be Banned (April 20, 2016)
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This page was last edited on 22 October 2026, at 04:13.