Creator

Socheata Poeuv

Socheata Poeuv is a documentary director and chief executive of the oral-history project Khmer Legacies.

Socheata Poeuv is a documentary producer and director who made New Year Baby (2006) and leads the oral history project Khmer Legacies.[1][2] The film follows her return to Cambodia to learn about her family's history under the Khmer Rouge, before they resettled in the United States.[3][4]

Career

Poeuv graduated cum laude from Smith College in 2002 with a degree in English literature, and she also spent a year of study at Hertford College, Oxford.[1] She worked in American network television news: she was on the staff of NBC News Dateline, and she also worked with NBC News Today and ABC News World News Tonight Weekend.[1] In New York City she co-founded Broken English Productions.[1] In 2007 she was named an Echoing Green Fellow, and she has been a visiting fellow at Yale University's Genocide Studies Program.[1] In 2011 she was studying at the Yale School of Management.[5]

New Year Baby

Poeuv directed, produced and narrated New Year Baby for Broken English Productions, and she appears in the film.[2][6] She traveled in Cambodia with a mini-DV camera and the camera operator Jason Bolling. The journey took her to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, and animation by Paul and Sandra Fierlinger stands in for the fears she had as a child.[6] In Cambodia she also spoke with a former member of the Khmer Rouge.[7]

Poeuv has said she first made the film out of curiosity about her family's history, and that she widened it beyond a home video because she wanted to share the story. She made it to help break the silence around the Cambodian genocide and to start discussion.[7] New Year Baby was broadcast nationally on the PBS series Independent Lens in 2008.[8]

Khmer Legacies

Poeuv is chief executive of Khmer Legacies, which records video testimony from survivors of the Cambodian genocide. Young Cambodians interview their parents about how they survived the Khmer Rouge, and the project set out to tape thousands of survivors.[1][8] In 2008 she was building it as a nonprofit. The archive was planned as an educational resource for researchers, students and the public, and the work began with a pilot project in the Bronx.[4] Poeuv has said that the film and Khmer Legacies both aim to turn talk of shame and denial into honor and heroism.[7]

Recognition

Poeuv received the Jewish World Watch iWitness Award in 2008.[8] For New Year Baby:

  • Best Documentary Feature, San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, 2007[9]
  • Best Documentary, AFI Dallas International Film Festival[10]
  • Audience Award for Nonfiction Feature, VC Filmfest, 2007[11]
  • Audience Award for Best Documentary Film, Wisconsin Film Festival, 2008[12]
  • Crystal Heart, Heartland Film Festival[10]

Works


See also

References 12
  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 ITVS, New Year Baby
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 IDFA, New Year Baby (2006)
  3. ↑ PBS Independent Lens, New Year Baby
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Smith College News, Socheata Poeuv (August 1, 2007)
  5. ↑ The Yale Globalist, In Search of Lost History (May 12, 2011)
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 PopMatters, Independent Lens: New Year Baby (May 27, 2008)
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 ITVS, New Year Baby discussion guide
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Echoing Green Fellows Directory, Socheata Poeuv
  9. ↑ Angry Asian Man, 25th SFIAAFF: San Jose (March 23, 2007)
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Texas Tech University, The Vietnam Center and Archive, 5th Annual Asian Pacific American Heritage Month Film Festival (2013)
  11. ↑ Angry Asian Man, VC Filmfest 2007: wrap-up (May 15, 2007)
  12. ↑ Isthmus, Wisconsin Film Festival announces 2008 audience awards (April 16, 2008)
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This page was last edited on 22 October 2026, at 04:41.