Yvon Hem

Yvon Hem was a director of the Golden Age of Cambodian cinema who made the first Cambodian feature film after the Khmer Rouge years.

Illustration, as an impression, of a homemade film camera built from mismatched spare parts on a bamboo tripod, in a small studio workshop.

Creator details
Roles	Filmmaker
Active	1963 to 1975; 1987
Based in	Cambodia
Subjects	Film & Moving Image; History & Remembrance

Yvon Hem was a film director of the Golden Age of Cambodian cinema in the 1960s and 1970s. After the Khmer Rouge years he made Shadow of Darkness (1987), the first feature film shot in Cambodia after the fall of the regime.

Early career

In 1963 the French director Marcel Camus made L'oiseau de paradis (The Bird of Paradise) in Cambodia with actors who had never acted before. The young Yvon Hem was a production assistant on the shoot. He enjoyed the work so much that he learned filmmaking through a French correspondence course.

With his sister Narie Hem, who had played the lead in Camus's film, he founded a production company, Baksey Thansour, a name meaning "bird of paradise". The Berlinale Forum's notes on the period count him among the company's most professional directors, with a sure sense of style.

Films

Mother's Heart (1963) was shot on 16 mm film and set in Phnom Penh of its day. Nop Nem plays a wealthy young man and Keo Montha a servant girl who has learned to distrust men.

Most films of the period drew on Khmer tales and legends set in a fantastic past. Yvon Hem's Sovannah Hong and Sovan Pancha (1970) were among the period's hits. The Berlinale Forum dates Sovannah Hong to 1968 and the Bophana Center to 1967. In April 2020, for the Khmer New Year, the Bophana Center streamed three of his films online: Sovannhang, Abul Kasem (1969) and Sovann Panhcha.

After the Khmer Rouge

Yvon Hem survived the Khmer Rouge years as a farm worker. He then went back to Phnom Penh and opened a photography studio. With equipment he had built himself from old spare parts, he shot Sror Mori Anthakal (Shadow of Darkness, 1987), the first feature made in Cambodia once the Khmer Rouge had fallen. The 111-minute film follows a family under the Khmer Rouge.

Later recognition

He is one of three directors, with Ly Bun Yim and Liv Sreng, whose memories tell the story of the Golden Age in Davy Chou's documentary Golden Slumbers (2011), alongside the actress Dy Saveth.

LinDa Saphan's book Faded Reels: The Art of Four Cambodian Filmmakers 1960-1975 covers him with Ly Bun Yim, Tea Lim Koun and Uong Citta. At the book's New York launch in October 2022, Mother's Heart was screened.

References