Creator
Ly Bun Yim
Ly Bun Yim was a director and producer of the Golden Age of Cambodian cinema, known for his special effects.
Ly Bun Yim (died 2021) was a Cambodian film director and producer of the Golden Age of Cambodian cinema, from 1960 to 1975. The Cambodia Daily called him the country's greatest filmmaker of that era. It wrote that he made 21 films in those years and was one of the first Cambodian filmmakers to use special effects.[1] His films include Puthisen Neang Kongrey (12 Sisters, 1968).[2]
Films
The filmmaker Davy Chou writes that the first full-length Khmer feature came out in 1960 and that the studios made around 400 films in the next 15 years, many of them drawn from old folk tales.[3] Among the remarkable films of the period he names Ly Bun Yim's romance Orn Euy Srey Orn, retitled Khmer After Angkor after the Khmer Rouge years.[3] The Cambodia Daily singles out Sobasith, 12 Sisters and An Euil Srey An as his masterpieces.[1]
His films drew crowds with flying animals, earthquakes that shook the ground and fake blood, the Cambodia Daily wrote. They filled the Hemakcheat Theatre, a hall on Street 130 with few seats and room for a thousand people. His popular films ran for months, with tickets at 5 to 10 riel.[1]
Puthisen Neang Kongrey was shown at the Berlin International Film Festival's Forum section in 2012 and at the Osaka Asian Film Festival in 2016. Both festivals praised his special effects.[2][4]
After 1975
Davy Chou writes that when the Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh in April 1975, most filmmakers and actors were killed as "enemies of the people", and that a few survivors fled abroad, mostly to France and the United States.[3] He left for France that year. Only three of his films survived the Khmer Rouge years, the Cambodia Daily wrote.[1]
He came back to Cambodia in 1994 and worked to rebuild the film industry for the rest of his life.[1] He was one of the filmmakers Davy Chou interviewed for Golden Slumbers (2011), his documentary about the cinema of the 1960s and 1970s, along with the director Yvon Hem and the actress Dy Saveth.[3][5] Screen Daily's review of the film calls him a producer.[6]
He died in October 2021, aged 87.[1]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 The Cambodia Daily, The Weekly Dispatch: Farewell for Golden Era Filmmaker (October 8, 2021)
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Berlinale, Forum 2012 programme: Puthisen Neang Kongrey (12 Sisters) (2012)
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 New Mandala, Davy Chou, Cambodia's little Bollywood (April 9, 2012)
- ↑ Osaka Asian Film Festival, 2016 programme: 12 Sisters (2016)
- ↑ VOA Khmer, Cambodia's golden age of cinema told on film (October 19, 2011)
- ↑ Screen Daily, Golden Slumbers (February 11, 2012)