Film Director Wants Original Stories on Screen

Film Director Wants Original Stories on Screen

Khmer Times/Va Sonyka

Wednesday, 02 March 2016

A young film director Phea Bottom Srey Poung wants to make original film for Cambodia. Supplied

At the age of 19, Phea Bottom Srey Poung is a freshman studying professional design at Limkokwing University. Studying and working at the same time puts a heavy burden on this young female film director, but she never thinks of giving up. 

After starting out as a co-producer of the “Teen Lifestyle” TV program on the MyTV channel, Ms. Srey Poung is currently producing a short film for the program.

“I fell in love with film watching Khmer films productions that copy foreign productions. I started to gradually suffer because of those films,” she said. 

Watching Khmer productions and listening to criticisms of them for copying ideas from foreign productions, Ms. Srey Poung decided to get involved in film, no matter how hard it is. 

“Actually, Khmer people can make [good films] too, they just haven’t had a chance yet,” she said. 

However, she said her film productions and other films she’s seen have had some problems with financing and technical issues. 

“We have less of a budget for a film, and also we have limited film technique. But what is satisfying is that we never get criticism from audiences that we copy story ideas from foreign productions,” she said. 

In order to contribute to the improvement of local standards of filmmaking, Ms. Srey Poung watches every Khmer production as well as foreign productions. 

“We have to watch foreign films but it doesn’t mean that we are watching to copy,” she said. 

“Copying story ideas from other films and trying to make them as our films can result in a poor quality of film, because we can’t make a film which is the same as that original film,” she added. 

Audiences have supported her TV program so far, particularly because she is producing short films about teen relationship issues. All of them are inspired by true stories that occur among youth. 

Ms. Srey Poung, who is the scriptwriter, director and video operator of the short films, spends her free time learning about teen life. 

She said that the films for the TV program are all about relationship problems, which means they don’t have happy endings. However, this is a way to send a message to teens to learn about the causes of relationship conflict. 

Every short film for the TV program comes with an original song that reflects the story idea. In order to promote original products, this female director always finds the owner of the original songs to get their cooperation. 

Today, Ms. Srey Poung owns her film studio, Poung Studio, and uses young crews. The goal of this studio is to gather young talented people who want to work in the film sector. At the studio, she trains many youths to be actors and actresses for her short films and advises them to have good manners. 

“I don’t want to see Khmer celebrities get looked down on, so I want to make a standard for them,” she said.

Ms. Srey Poung points out that Khmer celebrities are misunderstood; people don’t understand how hard they work on their films. She said that her studio also aims to manage the work of Khmer celebrities.

“I want to put an end to the way people give value to famous celebrities and look down on the non-famous, and stop famous celebrities from being so arrogant,” she added. 

Ms. Srey Poung is now looking for an opportunity to make a film for an international competition. However, she said it is not likely to happen soon. 

“I want to make a film for a competition, but not now,” she said. 

She learned that a director alone can’t make a good film. The director needs talented colleagues. 

“A good film needs to have solid filmmaking technique, like in the foreign film industry, which always gathers expert filmmakers  to work together,” she said. 

By experts, she means actors and actresses, videographers, makeup artists, film crew members and video editor.  

“When I can find all of the experts I need, I will work with them on a story and it will help promote the Khmer film industry for sure,” she added. 

Now, she’s looking for experts with various skills in filmmaking to cooperate on a future film.