The Killing Fields Movie Review (1984) | Roger Ebert Tweet There's a strange thing about stories based on what the movies insist on calling "real life." The haphazard chances of life, the unanticipated twists of fate, have a way of getting smoothed down into Hollywood formulas, so that what might once have happened to a real person begins to look more and more like what might once have happened to John Wayne . One of the risks taken by "The Killing Fields" is to cut loose from that tradition, to tell us a story that does not have a traditional Hollywood structure, and to trust that we'll find the characters so interesting that we won't miss the cliché. It is a risk that works, and that helps make this into a really affecting experience. Advertisement The "real life" story behind the movie is by now well-known. Sydney Schanberg, a correspondent for the New York Times, covered the invasion of Cambodia with the help of Dith Pran, a local journalist and translator. When the country fell to the communist Khmer Rouge, the lives of all foreigners were immediately at risk, and Schanberg got out along with most of his fellow Western correspondents.

He offered Pran a chance to leave with him, but Pran elected to stay. And when the Khmer Rouge drew a bamboo curtain around Cambodia, Pran disappeared into a long silence. Back home in New York, Schanberg did what he could to discover information about his friend; for example, he wrote about four hundred letters to organizations like the Red Cross. But it was a futile exercise, and Schanberg had given up his friend for dead, when one day four years later word came that Pran was still alive and had made it across the border to a refugee camp. The two friends were reunited, in one of the rare happy endings that come out of a period of great suffering. As a human story, this is a compelling one. As a Hollywood story, it obviously will not do because the last half of the movie is essentially Dith Pran's story, told from his point of view. Hollywood convention has it that the American should fight his way back into the occupied country (accompanied by renegade Green Berets and Hell's Angels, and Rambo, if possible), blast his way into a prison camp, and save his buddy.

That was the formula for " Uncommon Valor " and "Missing in Action," two box-office hits, and in " The Deer Hunter " one friend went back to Vietnam to rescue another. Sitting in New York writing letters is not quite heroism on the same scale. And yet, what else could Schanberg do? And, more to the point, what else could Dith Pran do, in the four years of his disappearance, but try to disguise his origins and his education, and pass as an illiterate peasant --one of the countless prisoners of Khmer Rouge work camps? By telling his story, and by respecting it, "The Killing Fields" becomes a film of an altogether higher order than the Hollywood revenge thrillers. Advertisement The movie begins in the early days of the journalistic coverage of Schanberg. We meet Schanberg ( Sam Waterston ) and Pran (played by Dr. Haing S. Ngor , whose own story is an uncanny parallel to his character's), and we sense the strong friendship and loyalty that they share. We also absorb the conditions in the country, where warehouses full of Coca-Cola are blown up by terrorists who know a symbolic target when they see one.

Life is a routine of hanging out at cafes and restaurants and official briefings, punctuated by an occasional trip to the front, where the American view of things does not seem to be reflected by the suffering that the correspondents witness. The whole atmosphere of this period is suggested most successfully by the character of an American photographer, played by John Malkovich as a cross between a dopehead and a hard-bitten newsman. He is not stirred to action very easily, and still less easily stirred to caring, but when an occasion rises (for example, the need to forge a passport for Dith Pran), he reveals the depth of his feeling. As the Khmer Rouge victory becomes inevitable, there are scenes of incredible tension, especially one in which Dith Pran saves the lives of his friends by some desperate fast talking with the cadres of adolescent rebels who would just as soon shoot them. Then there is the confusion of the evacuation of the U.S. Embassy and a last glimpse of Dith Pran before he disappears for four years. Advertisement In a more conventional film, he would, of course, have really disappeared, and we would have followed the point of view of the Schanberg character.

But this movie takes the chance of switching points of view in midstream, and the last half of the film belongs to Dith Pran, who sees his country turned into an insane parody of a one-party state, ruled by the Khmer Rouge with instant violence and a savage intolerance for any reminders of the French and American presence of the colonial era. Many of the best scenes in the film's second half are essentially played without dialogue, as Pran works in the fields, disguises his origins, and waits for his chance. The film is a masterful achievement on all the technical levels -- it does an especially good job of convincing us with its Asian locations -- but the best moments are the human ones, the conversations, the exchanges of trust, the waiting around, the sudden fear, the quick bursts of violence, the desperation. At the center of many of those scenes is Dr. Haing S. Ngor, a non-actor who was recruited for the role from the ranks of Cambodian refugees in California, and who brings to it a simple sincerity that is absolutely convincing. Sam Waterston is effective in the somewhat thankless role of Sydney Schanberg, and among the carefully drawn vignettes are Craig T.

Nelson as a military attach -- and Athol Fugard as Dr. Sundesval. The American experience in Southeast Asia has given us a great film epic (" Apocalypse Now ") and a great drama ("The Deer Hunter"). Here is the story told a little closer to the ground, of people who were not very important and not very powerful, who got caught up in events that were indifferent to them, but never stopped trying to do their best and their most courageous. Advertisement The Killing Fields (1984) - Synopsis The content of this page was created directly by users and has not been screened or verified by IMDb staff. Warning! This synopsis may contain spoilers See plot summary for non-spoiler summarized description. Visit our Synopsis Help to learn more Synopsis The film opens in May 1973 in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh. The Cambodian national army is fighting a civil war with the communist Khmer Rouge, a result of the Vietnam War overspilling that country's borders. Dith Pran, a Cambodian journalist and interpreter for New York Times reporter Sydney Schanberg, awaits the arrival of Schanberg at the Phnom Penh airport when he leaves suddenly.

Schanberg arrives after his flight is delayed for three hours in Bangkok, Thailand, and, irritated that Pran is not at the airport, takes a taxi to his hotel. There he meets Al Rockoff, his photographer. Rockoff doesn't know where to find Pran and suggests they go to a nearby cafe to eat. While they sit and talk, an explosion happens nearby. Al thinks a passing scooter's passenger threw a grenade, though the target isn't actually revealed. Pran suddenly arrives and tells Schanberg that an incident has occurred in a remote town, Neak Leung. Allegedly, an American B-52 has bombed the town by mistake. After talking to the United States Consul at the American embassy and finding out that the reports about Neak Leung are true, Schanberg and Pran try to find transport to the site. Pran is able to sneak himself and Sydney onto a police boat that takes them to Neak Leung. When they arrive, they find that the town has indeed been bombed and hundreds have been killed, with many more wounded, including women and children. Schanberg and Pran are arrested when they try to photograph the execution of two Khmer Rouge operatives by Cambodian army officers.

They are eventually released and Schanberg is furious when the international press corps arrives with the U.S. Army to report a sanitized version of the story. The story moves ahead two years, to April 1975. The international embassies are being evacuated in anticipation of an invasion of the capital by the Khmer Rouge. Schanberg manages to secure evacuation papers for Pran, his wife and their four children. However, Pran insists that he stay with Schanberg and help him continue his war coverage. Pran's family is evacuated with the other international diplomats. On April 17, the Khmer Rouge move into the capital, seemingly under a banner of peace. During a parade through the city, Schanberg, suspicious of the positive way the Khmer Rouge are being welcomed, meets Rockoff, who tells him that he'd just come from an area where heavy fighting was taking place. At a makeshift hospital they see the result of the fighting; many children and other citizens are injured by shrapnel and gunfire. As they leave the hospital they are met by a small unit of Khmer Rouge troops, who arrest them immediately.

Pran is at first not allowed into the armored personnel carrier with Schanberg, Rockoff, Swain and their driver, but he is able to bribe the Khmer Rouge leader with his wristwatch. The group is taken through the city to a hidden courtyard where prisoners are being held and executed. Pran, unharmed because he is a Cambodian civilian, negotiates with the Khmer Rouge officer in command for several hours to spare the lives of his friends. They are set free, joining the thousands of refugees fleeing the capital. They do not leave Phnom Penh, but instead retreat to the French embassy and stay there for several days, awaiting their chance to evacuate. During this time they are informed that the Khmer Rouge have demanded that all Cambodian citizens in the embassy be turned over. Fearing the embassy will be overrun, the embassy occupants comply. Knowing that Pran will be imprisoned or killed, Rockoff and fellow photographer Swain vainly try to forge a passport identifying Pran as a German citizen. Without a current picture of Pran, they use supplies they find in the embassy buildings; however, the picture fades because of the poor quality and age of the paper they use.

With no other options available, Pran is turned over to the Khmer Rouge and is forced to live under their totalitarian regime. All of the foreigners whom include the French, American, and most others are then expelled from Cambodia. Several months after returning to New York City, Schanberg is in the midst of a personal campaign to locate Pran. He has appealed to many humanitarian organizations and has kept in close contact with Pran's family in San Francisco. In Cambodia, Pran has become a forced laborer under the Khmer Rouge's "Year Zero" policy, a return to the agrarian ways of the past. Pran labors in rice fields under the watchful eyes of armed young children of both sexes, whom the Khmer Rouge hold in high regard as the future leaders of their regime. Pran is also forced to attend propagandist classes where everyone undergoes re-education. As intellectuals are singled out and murdered or made to disappear, Pran feigns simple-mindedness. Eventually, he tries to escape from his work camp, but is recaptured.

Before he is found by members of the Khmer Rouge, he stumbles upon the infamous "killing fields" of the Pol Pot regime; endless acres of bones and blue plastic bags (used for suffocation executions) where millions of Cambodian citizens were murdered by the new order. Flashing forward to 1979, Sydney Schanberg receives a journalism award for his coverage of the Cambodian conflict. At the acceptance dinner he tells the audience that half the recognition for the award belongs to Pran. In the mens room, he is confronted by Rockoff who harshly accuses him of not doing enough to locate Pran and for using his friend to win the award. Schanberg defends his efforts, saying that he has contacted every humanitarian relief agency possible in the four years since Pran's disappearance. Rockoff suggests that Schanberg subtly pressured Pran to remain in Cambodia because Pran was so vital to Sydney's work. This accusation hits close to home, and Schanberg begins to wonder whether he put his own self-interest ahead of Pran's safety.

He finally admits that Pran "stayed because I wanted him to stay." Back in Cambodia, Pran is assigned to be the assistant to the leader of a different prison compound, a man named Phat, and charged mostly with tending to his little boy. Pran continues his self-imposed discipline of behaving as an uneducated peasant, despite several of Phat's attempts to trick him into revealing his knowledge of both French and English. Phat gradually begins to trust Pran and asks him to take ward of his son in the event that he is killed. By this time, the Khmer Rouge are now engaged in a war with Vietnam. The conflict reaches Pran's region and a battle ensues between the Khmer Rouge of the compound and the invading Vietnamese troops which are supported when two Vietnamese fighter jets are sent in to destroy the camp. After the skirmish has ended, Pran discovers that Phat's son has American money and a map leading to safety. When Phat tries to stop the younger Khmer Rouge officers from killing several of his comrades, he is ignominiously shot. In the confusion, Pran escapes with four other prisoners and they begin a long trek through the jungle with Phat's young son.

The group later splits and three of them head in a different direction. Pran continues following the map with one of them. However, Pran's companion steps on a hidden land mine while holding the child. Though Pran pleads with the man to give him the child, the mine goes off, killing them both. Pran mourns for a time and continues on. One day he crests the escarpment of the Dangrek Mountains and sees a Red Cross camp near the border of Thailand. The scene shifts to Schanberg calling Pran's family with the news that Pran is alive and safe. Soon after, Schanberg travels to the Red Cross camp in Thailand and is reunited with Pran. Asking Pran to forgive him, Pran answers, with a smile, "Nothing to forgive, Sydney", as the two embrace. John Lennon's popular song, "Imagine" plays over the scene and during the end credits, which show actual photos of the real Pran and Schanberg. Synopsis Articles about Dith Pran - latimes Unauthorized play about Oscar-winner Haing S. Ngor causes friction July 17, 2013 | By David Ng Haing S.

Ngor won an Academy Award for portraying a survivor of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge regime in the 1984 movie "The Killing Fields," but his own life story offers an equally riveting and dramatic tale. That's the audience hook for a new stage play based on the life and untimely death of the doctor-turned-actor. Although the playwright contends that he was scrupulous in adapting Ngor's life for the theater, the estate of the late Oscar winner has come out against the play, threatening to take legal action against the writer. Advertisement Speaking for the Innocents : As Cambodia Undergoes a Painful Rebirth, Dith Pran Remembers--and Cannot Forgive October 25, 1991 | JOSH GETLIN, TIMES STAFF WRITER Dith Pran knows what it's like to come back from the dead. Minutes after his emotional reunion with reporter Sydney Schanberg in 1979, Pran remembers, he began shaking uncontrollably. As he told of his escape from the murderous Khmer Rouge, the Cambodian survivor sobbed and laughed, stunned by his newfound freedom and the ordeal he had survived.

"I am reborn," Pran whispered to Schanberg, standing in a dusty refugee camp on the Thai border. "This is my second life." NEWS Notable people who died in 2008 December 28, 2008 Agents of change Dith Pran, 65; survivor of Cambodia's "killing fields" became the public face of the genocide (March 30) Del Martin, 87; longtime leader of the lesbian rights movement who, with her partner Phyllis Lyon, became the first same-sex couple to marry in San Francisco in June (Aug. 27) Dorothy Green, 79; founder of Heal the Bay and a giant of the California environmental movement (Oct. 13) Bettie Page, 85; the brunet pinup queen whose saucy photos helped usher in the sexual revolution of the 1960s (Dec.

NEWS Cambodian Survivor Sows Seeds of Peace : ' "Killing Fields" is still going on around the clock, especially in the Third World.' October 10, 1986 | PENELOPE MOFFET "I am not a hero or a politician, I am just one of the witnesses of the Cambodian war," Dith Pran told 350 people who filled a UC Irvine lecture hall Wednesday night to hear his tale of survival under the brutal Communist Khmer Rouge regime. The 1984 film "The Killing Fields" was based on Dith Pran's experiences in forced labor camps in his homeland after Khmer Rouge forces led by Pol Pot overthrew the United States-backed Lon Nol government in April, 1975. NEWS U.S. Will Help Cambodians, Film Star Told May 25, 1985 | From a Times Staff Writer President Reagan told the star and the subject of the movie "The Killing Fields" on Friday that he is committed to working for peace in Cambodia and to helping the flood of refugees who have fled that war-torn land.

Dith Pran, the Cambodian journalist portrayed in the film by Academy Award winner Haing S. Ngor, commented after he, his wife and Ngor met with Reagan: "We are very glad he has seen the movie and is aware about the Cambodian situation. CALIFORNIA | LOCAL 'Killing Fields' was his story March 31, 2008 | Elaine Woo, Times Staff Writer One day during the rise of the Khmer Rouge regime in the mid-1970s, American journalist Sydney Schanberg asked his Cambodian assistant, Dith Pran, a gnawing question. How would Dith respond to the American diplomat in Phnom Penh who had been publicly criticizing Cambodians for not rising up against the communist insurgents, who were killing innocent countrymen every day? Was it because, as the diplomat insinuated, Cambodians did not value human life as highly as Westerners did? NEWS 'Killing Fields' Figure Fears New Civil War in Cambodia August 26, 1989 | CHARLES P.

WALLACE, Times Staff Writer The photographer whose story of survival in Cambodia was told in the film "The Killing Fields" said Friday that he fears that a new civil war is about to erupt in his homeland. Dith Pran, now a photographer with the New York Times in New York, talked with reporters in Bangkok after completing his first visit to Cambodia since he fled the country in 1979. Pran had been working with New York Times reporter Sydney Schanberg when they were caught up by the Khmer Rouge takeover in 1975. ENTERTAINMENT Unauthorized play about Oscar-winner Haing S. Ngor causes friction July 17, 2013 | By David Ng Haing S. Ngor won an Academy Award for portraying a survivor of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge regime in the 1984 movie "The Killing Fields," but his own life story offers an equally riveting and dramatic tale. That's the audience hook for a new stage play based on the life and untimely death of the doctor-turned-actor.

Although the playwright contends that he was scrupulous in adapting Ngor's life for the theater, the estate of the late Oscar winner has come out against the play, threatening to take legal action against the writer. NEWS Notable people who died in 2008 December 28, 2008 Agents of change Dith Pran, 65; survivor of Cambodia's "killing fields" became the public face of the genocide (March 30) Del Martin, 87; longtime leader of the lesbian rights movement who, with her partner Phyllis Lyon, became the first same-sex couple to marry in San Francisco in June (Aug. 27) Dorothy Green, 79; founder of Heal the Bay and a giant of the California environmental movement (Oct. 13) Bettie Page, 85; the brunet pinup queen whose saucy photos helped usher in the sexual revolution of the 1960s (Dec.

CALIFORNIA | LOCAL 'Killing Fields' was his story March 31, 2008 | Elaine Woo, Times Staff Writer One day during the rise of the Khmer Rouge regime in the mid-1970s, American journalist Sydney Schanberg asked his Cambodian assistant, Dith Pran, a gnawing question. How would Dith respond to the American diplomat in Phnom Penh who had been publicly criticizing Cambodians for not rising up against the communist insurgents, who were killing innocent countrymen every day? Was it because, as the diplomat insinuated, Cambodians did not value human life as highly as Westerners did? CALIFORNIA | LOCAL CALABASAS : Dith Pran to Speak on Cambodia at Soka February 7, 1995 | FRANK MANNING The Cambodian photojournalist whose life was depicted in the movie "The Killing Fields" will be at Soka University next month to discuss life under the Khmer Rouge, the rebel group that overthrew Cambodia's government, unleashing a reign of terror.

Dith Pran, who escaped from a slave labor camp run by the Communist regime, will appear at 7 p.m. March 1 as part of the school's lecture series on human rights. NEWS Speaking for the Innocents : As Cambodia Undergoes a Painful Rebirth, Dith Pran Remembers--and Cannot Forgive October 25, 1991 | JOSH GETLIN, TIMES STAFF WRITER Dith Pran knows what it's like to come back from the dead. Minutes after his emotional reunion with reporter Sydney Schanberg in 1979, Pran remembers, he began shaking uncontrollably. As he told of his escape from the murderous Khmer Rouge, the Cambodian survivor sobbed and laughed, stunned by his newfound freedom and the ordeal he had survived. "I am reborn," Pran whispered to Schanberg, standing in a dusty refugee camp on the Thai border. "This is my second life." NEWS 'Killing Fields' Figure Fears New Civil War in Cambodia August 26, 1989 | CHARLES P.

WALLACE, Times Staff Writer The photographer whose story of survival in Cambodia was told in the film "The Killing Fields" said Friday that he fears that a new civil war is about to erupt in his homeland. Dith Pran, now a photographer with the New York Times in New York, talked with reporters in Bangkok after completing his first visit to Cambodia since he fled the country in 1979. Pran had been working with New York Times reporter Sydney Schanberg when they were caught up by the Khmer Rouge takeover in 1975. NEWS Cambodian Survivor Sows Seeds of Peace : ' "Killing Fields" is still going on around the clock, especially in the Third World.' October 10, 1986 | PENELOPE MOFFET "I am not a hero or a politician, I am just one of the witnesses of the Cambodian war," Dith Pran told 350 people who filled a UC Irvine lecture hall Wednesday night to hear his tale of survival under the brutal Communist Khmer Rouge regime.

The 1984 film "The Killing Fields" was based on Dith Pran's experiences in forced labor camps in his homeland after Khmer Rouge forces led by Pol Pot overthrew the United States-backed Lon Nol government in April, 1975. NEWS U.S. Will Help Cambodians, Film Star Told May 25, 1985 | From a Times Staff Writer President Reagan told the star and the subject of the movie "The Killing Fields" on Friday that he is committed to working for peace in Cambodia and to helping the flood of refugees who have fled that war-torn land. Dith Pran, the Cambodian journalist portrayed in the film by Academy Award winner Haing S. Ngor, commented after he, his wife and Ngor met with Reagan: "We are very glad he has seen the movie and is aware about the Cambodian situation.

ENTERTAINMENT Movies February 13, 1987 | Arts and entertainment reports from The Times, national and international news services and the nation's press Haing Ngor, who portrayed Cambodian journalist Dith Pran in the film, "The Killing Fields," announced in Brussels Wednesday that he is seeking $300,000 to organize an emergency medical supply relay from Thailand to refugees in Cambodia. Ngor, a doctor, said he wants to train Cambodian refugees in Thailand to carry medical supplies across the border to camps in their native country. The plan had the support of the Thai government, he said. News Killing Fields Photographer Dith Pran Dies Dith Pran, a longtime photographer for the New York Times, died yesterday at age 65 The cause was pancreatic cancer. Dith came to the United States only after surviving the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. His experiences were immortalized in the 1984 film “The Killing Fields.” The Times has a wonderful obituary today, with audio and a portfolio of Dith's images. I also loved the audio report that National Public Radio aired this morning.

Go here to hear it.—The photo above, showing Dith at a family reu By Popphoto Staff posted Mar 31st, 2008 at 1:45pm Dith Pran, a longtime photographer for the New York Times, died yesterday at age 65 The cause was pancreatic cancer. Dith came to the United States only after surviving the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. His experiences were immortalized in the 1984 film “The Killing Fields.” The Times has a wonderful obituary today, with audio and a portfolio of Dith's images. I also loved the audio report that National Public Radio aired this morning. Go here to hear it.—The photo above, showing Dith at a family reunion in 1989, was taken by Magnum photographer Steve McCurry.-- David Schonauer Tags: Dith Pran - The New York Times The New York Times Supported by Dith Pran News about Dith Pran, including commentary and archival articles published in The New York Times. More Sept.

23, 1942 — March 30, 2008 Dith Pran, a photojournalist for The New York Times whose gruesome ordeal in the killing fields of Cambodia was re-created in a 1984 movie that gave him an eminence he tenaciously used to press for his people’s rights, died in New Brunswick, N.J. on Sunday, March 30. He was 65 and lived in Woodbridge, N.J. The Killing Fields of Cambodia - James Gibb Photography James Gibb Photography The Killing Fields of Cambodia June 19, 2015 History I I visited Phnom Penh, Cambodia in November, 2013. I’d been aware of the horrors of the Pol Pot regime and the notorious ‘Killing Fields’ after watching the film of the same title in the early 1990s. The award-winning 1984 film is based on the experience of two journalists, Cambodian Dith Pran and American Sydney Schanberg. The film depicts the atrocities of Pol Pot’s regime, although Dith Pran had said several times the film came nowhere near the true horrors his country experienced.

The Killing fields of Choeung Ek is the most well-known of over 300 killing fields across the country. It was this site we visited on a beautiful November morning; the peaceful tranquility of the day in sharp contrast to the terrible knowledge of what went on in this gentle countryside less than four decades ago. As with Auschwitz and other infamous sites where great atrocities have taken place, there was a quiet and respectful tone throughout. Visitors were told to ”dress modestly”, ”speak quietly” and ”do not smoke” throughout the visit. During my time at Choeung Ek I hardly heard a word from anyone. It was eerily silent. It’s estimated that between 1975 to 1979, during the regime of the Communist Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot, more than 1.3 million people were executed in these killing fields I always find it difficult taking photos where terrible crimes have taken place. It somehow feels wrong but I tell myself it’s important to capture these images as a way of paying my own respects. Between 1975 and 1978 about 17,000 men, women, children and infants were transported here for execution.

They were often bludgeoned to death to avoid wasting precious bullets. The remains of 8,985 people, many of whom were bound and blindfolded, were exhumed in 1980 from mass graves in this one-time longan orchard. Fragments of human bone and bits of clothing are scattered around the site, serving as a constant chilling reminder. As you approach the end of the tour, you have the opportunity to visit the Memorial Stupa where more than 8,000 skulls, arranged by sex and age, are visible behind clear glass panels. What is constantly at the back of your mind is the fact this is only one of 300 killing fields in the country. Most of these have understandably not been preserved as the country tries to move on from its dark and brutal past. However, it’s estimated that between 1975 to 1979, during the regime of the Communist Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot, more than 1.3 million people were executed in these killing fields.

The mass killings are widely regarded as part of a state sponsored genocide – a genocide that British sociologist and academic Martin Shaw describes as “the purest genocide of the Cold War era.” Like the Nazis, the Khymer Rouge were meticulous in keeping records of their barbarism. The total number of estimated deaths at the hands of the Khymer Rouge – whether directly or indirectly through the likes of disease and starvation – ranges from 1.7 to 2.5 million. This is out of a 1975 population of roughly 8 million – approximately one out of every four people. What makes these deaths even more shocking is the barbaric ways in which people were killed. The methods the Khymer Rouge soldiers used – many of whom were teenage peasants rounded up from remote villages by the regime – are still too shocking to document. The placard in the photo to the left says all it needs to say. Later that day we visited the related Tuol Sleng Museum in Phnom Penh. This former high school was taken over by Pol Pot’s security forces in 1975 and became known as Security Prison 21 (S-21). This soon became the largest centre of detention and torture in the country.

Like the Nazis, the Khymer Rouge were meticulous in keeping records of their barbarism. Each prisoner who passed through S-21 was photographed, sometimes before and after torture. At its peak, S-21 claimed an average of 100 victims a day. It’s a difficult place to visit as you find yourself constantly looking at the doomed faces of men, women and children, nearly all of them killed here. Ironically, as the insanity of the Khymer Rouge regime intensified, they started to turn on their own and many of those executioners and torturers were in turn killed by those that took their places. At its peak, S-21 claimed an average of 100 victims a day. When the Vietnamese army liberated the city in 1979, there were only seven prisoners alive at S-21, all of whom had used their skills, such as painting and photography, to stay alive. All of this took place with little awareness from the rest of the world. During my time in Cambodia, I learned more about Pol Pot and his Khymer Rouge – their motivations, their actions, their undoubted brutality.

Pol Pot was a Cambodian socialist revolutionary who became the leader of Cambodia (known then as Kampuchea) on 17 April, 1975. He presided over a totalitarian dictatorship that implemented a radical form of agrarian socialism on the country. He felt this once great country had grown weak and needed to return to its agricultural roots. What this meant in practice was forcing all those who lived in the cities – educated people like doctors, teachers, office workers – to move to the countryside to work in collective farms and forced labour projects. Pol Pot had been inspired by Mao Zedong’s recent Cultural Revolution of communist China and wanted to implement the same revolution in Cambodia. The results as we know were atrocious for the population. If you weren’t immediately killed on arrival, you lived in constant fear of execution, forced labour, malnutrition and poor to non-existent medical care. All of this took place with little awareness from the rest of the world. The 1970s was a very different time from today of course in terms of media saturation and popular awareness.

It was only towards the end of the Khymer Rouge regime, when the likes of Dith Pran escaped and was able to tell his story, that the true horrors came to light around the world. In 1979, after the Cambodian-Vietnamese War, Pol Pot fled to the jungles of southwest Cambodia and his Khymer Rouge government collapsed. From 1979 to 1997, he clung to power with another member of the old Khymer Rouge regime near the border of Cambodia and Thailand. Pol Pot committed suicide in 1998 while under house arrest. He was never brought to account for the appalling crimes he committed. Today the killing fields of Cheoung Ek and the Genocide Museum of Tuol Sleng stand as potent reminders of the not-too-distant past and an important lesson to future generations.

Cambodian Survivor Sows Seeds of Peace : ' "Killing Fields" is still going on around the clock, especially in the Third World.' - latimes YOU ARE HERE: LAT Home → Collections Cambodian Survivor Sows Seeds of Peace : ' "Killing Fields" is still going on around the clock, especially in the Third World.' October 10, 1986 |PENELOPE MOFFET "I am not a hero or a politician, I am just one of the witnesses of the Cambodian war," Dith Pran told 350 people who filled a UC Irvine lecture hall Wednesday night to hear his tale of survival under the brutal Communist Khmer Rouge regime. The 1984 film "The Killing Fields" was based on Dith Pran's experiences in forced labor camps in his homeland after Khmer Rouge forces led by Pol Pot overthrew the United States-backed Lon Nol government in April, 1975. A central element in the film is the friendship between the Cambodian photographer and a New York Times reporter, Sydney H. Schanberg.

Dith Pran saved Schanberg's life on the day the capital city of Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge, but the two were soon separated, and Schanberg returned to the United States. Although "The Killing Fields" was based on his experiences, Dith Pran emphasized that the movie "is not just my story, it's the story of the whole Cambodian people who survived." It has been seven years since Dith Pran escaped Cambodia--now the People's Republic of Kampuchea--by walking to freedom in Thailand six months after Vietnamese forces conquered his country. He cabled Schanberg news of his survival and safety, and Schanberg helped him reach the United States. Since May, 1980, Dith Pran has been a staff photographer at the New York Times. Yet although the Cambodian is thousands of miles from his birthplace, he has clearly not left the "killing fields" behind. From the moment he stepped off a plane at John Wayne Airport at 6 p.m. Wednesday until he boarded an 11:15 p.m. flight at Los Angeles International Airport the same night, he talked almost non-stop about Cambodia's problems.

"I hope you understand that 'The Killing Fields' is not just another war movie," he told his UCI audience in heavily accented English. " 'The Killing Fields' does not really end in two hours and 15 minutes. 'The Killing Fields' is still going on around the clock around the world, especially in the Third World countries." The film did not depict the full brutality of life under the Khmer Rouge, Dith Pran said. Those who made the movie tried "to minimize all the violence because they understand the Westerner could not watch a movie that shows all the blood and killing," he said. The Khmer Rouge killed more than 2 million Cambodians while they were in power, he said. He survived by lying about his occupation and "playing stupid. . . . I told them I was a taxi driver. . . ." The people who told them the truth about being professional workers were killed, he said. Forced to work long, grueling hours in rice fields while he slowly starved, Dith Pran later was given a houseboy job, then worked as a cook and a fisherman, jobs that enabled him to steal food and survive.

"For four years while I was there, you have to believe (my) life was protected by the Buddha. I'm not religious but I believe strongly that each person has his own fate, his own destiny," Dith Pran said. "I was lucky. . . . I still don't believe, myself, that I survived that regime." Cambodia is currently occupied by Vietnamese troops, who invaded the country in 1979 and established a proxy government. The Vietnamese "liberated" Cambodia from the Khmer Rouge, but Dith Pran said he didn't believe they would stay. "Now they seem to have become the enemy of the Cambodian people," he said. His people are "trapped in the middle, between the crocodile and the lion," he added. "We don't want the Khmer Rouge or the Vietnamese." Asked by an audience member if he sees parallels between the situations today in Cambodia and Nicaragua, Dith Pran smiled wryly. "Well, I've never been to Nicaragua," he said, "but I will say I believe that Cambodia, Nicaragua, Afghanistan is a universal story," that of Communists infiltrating a country and assuming power.

His experiences in Cambodia have made Dith Pran anti-Communist, but he said he doesn't want to see more fighting in his homeland. "If we have a chance to negotiate, I think we better negotiate rather than start killing each other," he said. He wants to see peace talks started for his country's sake, he added. Dith Pran was brought to UCI as part of the university's arts and lecture series. Santi Smithsuvan, the chairman of the university's Asian Pacific Student Staff Assn., said his visit was appropriate because the school's Asian population is larger than that at any other university on the continental United States. However, Smithsuvan added, very few of UCI's students are Cambodians. Sary Seng, a freshman physics major, is one of those few Cambodian students. Sary Seng was 8 when the Khmer Rouge took over her country, and she remembers being separated from her family and sent to work in the fields with other children her age. The Killing Fields (1984) - IMDb IMDb There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later.

X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error A journalist is trapped in Cambodia during tyrant Pol Pot's bloody "Year Zero" cleansing campaign, which claimed the lives of two million "undesirable" civilians. Director: From $2.99 (SD) on Amazon Video ON DISC a list of 40 titles created 07 Mar 2012 a list of 41 titles created 24 Mar 2013 a list of 30 titles created 24 Apr 2015 a list of 36 titles created 3 months ago a list of 47 titles created 1 week ago Title: The Killing Fields (1984) 7.9/10 Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. Won 3 Oscars. Another 24 wins & 22 nominations. See more awards » Videos Edit Storyline Sydney Schanberg is a New York Times journalist covering the civil war in Cambodia. Together with local representative Dith Pran, they cover some of the tragedy and madness of the war.

When the American forces leave, Dith Pran sends his family with them, but stays behind himself to help Schanberg cover the event. As an American, Schanberg won't have any trouble leaving the country, but the situation is different for Pran; he's a local, and the Khmer Rouge are moving in. Written by Murray Chapman <muzzle@cs.uq.oz.au> See All (47) » Taglines: He was a reporter for the New York Times whose coverage of the Cambodian War would win him a Pulitzer Prize for international reporting. But the friend who made it possible was half the world away with his life in great danger... This is the story of war and friendship, the anguish of a country and of one man's will to live. See more » Genres: 1 February 1985 (USA) See more » Also Known As: Los gritos del silencio See more » Filming Locations: Did You Know? Trivia David Puttnam sees this as the best piece of work he was ever involved in. See more » Goofs During the evacuation of the U.S. embassy, a soldier is taking down the U.S.

flag and climbs back into the building of the embassy, but he forgets his assault rifle. See more » Quotes [first lines] Sydney Schanberg : Cambodia. To many westerners it seemed a paradise. Another world, a secret world. But the war in neighboring Vietnam burst its borders, and the fighting soon spread to neutral Cambodia. In 1973 I went to cover this side-show struggle as a foreign correspondent of the New York Times. It was there, in the war-torn country side amidst the fighting between government troops and the Khmer Rouge guerrillas, that I met my guide and interpreter, Dith Pran, a man who was to change my life ... See more » Frequently Asked Questions (Greenwich, CT United States) – See all my reviews Oh, this brings me back alright. It was the last days of 1984, and earnest college students like me had much to talk about. Wasn't it wonderful that Walter Mondale had chosen a strong woman like Geraldine Ferraro to be his running mate, and wouldn't the Democrats sweep the Northeast at least for that brave move? Does buying a Coke at the local convenience store signal support for the apartheid government in South Africa?

Did anyone else see that amazing film about the human price of American involvement in Southeast Asia? It's nearly 20 years later, and I've managed to shake the ill effects of my youthful liberalism easily enough in most cases. This film, however, packs the kind of punch that isn't explained away by political trendiness. "The Killing Fields" is a great film that tries and succeeds in capturing much of the carnage and tragedy of Cambodia as the radicalized Khmer Rouge and the U.S.-backed regime of Lon Nol controlling Phnom Penh clash in a fight to the death to be/not be the next domino in the Communist rollover in Southeast Asia. By particularizing the conflict to that of the true-life relationship of two men, New York Times reporter Syndey Schanberg and his Cambodian apprentice and aide-de-camp, Dith Pran, the film forces a level of empathy that is at once uncomfortable and absorbing. It is possible to walk away from this film hating the manipulation, the America-bashing, the easy liberal guilt. But it's impossible to walk away from the human experience borne witness to before the movie's done, if one has any pretense of being human, and that's its great strength.

Oh, it's polemical alright. We hear comments about how the Khmer Rouge's excesses were the direct result of Nixon's secret bombing campaign. (U.S. Counsel: "After what the Khmer Rouge have been through, I don't think they'll be exactly affectionate toward Westerners." Schanberg: "Maybe we underestimated the anger $7 billion in bombing would unleash.") It makes its point, absolves Pol Pot and condemns Kissinger with the same broad brush, and it feels a bit jaded and hollow for that, but I don't know. Schanberg betrays the attitudes of a knee-jerk liberal, and I outgrew that, and maybe I feel superior for that, but Schanberg had AK-47s pointed at his head by 12-year-old brainwashed boys, and I didn't, so shut up already, know what I mean? The performances are incredible in their verisimilitude, particularly the leads. Sam Waterson burns with righteous anger as Schanberg, and I like his performance for what it is and how he creates that extra level of tension, but he's a butterfly compared to the condor that's Dr. Haing S.

Ngor, one of the Academy's most obscure best supporting actor recipients (there was even a joke about it in an episode of "The Simpsons") but someone who didn't just walk the walk. He relived his experience surviving a holocaust that was, per square mile, even more savage than the Holocaust itself. The fact he won a Best Supporting Actor award (Waterson instead was nominated for Best Actor, and lost to F. Murray Abraham for "Amadeus") is one of those perversities of film history, given he carries more of the film than Waterson (who slinks to the background two-thirds of the way in) but also that he personalizes the story in a way that makes the incomprehensible immediate and involving. We lost Ngor to a senseless murder a few years ago, and have little left to explain what was going through his mind as he relived an experience that cost him his wife and child when he actually lived through it. Roland Joffe does a nice job in the DVD commentary, though, a commentary I put up there with P. T.

Anderson's "Boogie Nights" and William Peter Blatty's "The Ninth Configuration" for being worth the price of the DVD and then some by itself. He recalls Ngor's reaction to one child actress whose hard face in enacting a scene convinced Ngor she wasn't just pretending to be Khmer Rouge, and Ngor's request that Joffe participate in one critical scene by muttering real torments Ngor suffered at the hands of the "KR" as a way of enhancing his performance. At one point, trying to convince him to come aboard, Joffe said something about Ngor owing it to his country to bear witness to his story, and that of Dith Pran, and that did the trick, though Joffe seems to wonder if the same sort of manipulation Schanberg pulled on Pran wasn't going on here, too. It's a great movie because it doesn't shy away from uncomfortable truths, because it never loses sight of the human dimension, and because it gave a pretense of understanding to one of the great human traumas after World War II. We never wallow in gore, but the cost of this war is always with us while we watch. The experience is both endurable and humiliating.

I just wish they reshot that ending, with "Imagine." Joffe in his commentary even notes the lyrics are the sort of thing Pol Pot would have gone along with. It feels forced. Did Yoko Ono give her approval after they explained the scene her dead husband's song would appear in, or after they told her the first nasty execution scene would be shot while "Band On The Run" issued forth from a soldier's radio? A great movie, of an awful moment in human history. If we have any chance of overcoming man's sorry past, it will be because movies like this one get made once in a while. 105 of 134 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes The Killing Fields of Dr. Haing S. Ngor | CAAMFest 2015 The Killing Fields of Dr. Haing S. Ngor Directed by Arthur Dong March 15, 2015 4:10 pm Not Available Precedes: March 15, 2015 6:00 pm Not Available Description Dr. Haing S.

Ngor, the only Asian to win the Best Supporting Actor Oscar, was recruited out of the blue by a casting agent at a wedding to play the heartrending role of Cambodian photographer Dith Pran in Roland Joffé’s 1984 film THE KILLING FIELDS. Ngor drew on his own experiences as a four-year survivor of the Khmer Rouge’s labor camps, where he endured gruesome torture and hard labor while his family, including his wife and unborn son, died around him. Though he continued acting, Ngor retrained the spotlight on Cambodia, traveling worldwide to speak out against Pol Pot’s regime and the Vietnamese occupation of his country that followed. He became such a powerful voice that specters of conspiracy still haunt his untimely 1996 death. Veteran doc-maker Arthur Dong unspools Ngor’s phenomenal life with original animation, rare archival material and newly shot footage inspired by his autobiography Survival in the Killing Fields. Following the screening, join director Arthur Dong at the Centerpiece Reception. – Jackson Scarlett Dith Pran facts, information, pictures | Encyclopedia.com articles about Dith Pran COPYRIGHT 2004 The Gale Group Inc.

Dith Pran Dith Pran (born 1942) became known to moviegoers in the West as his story was portrayed in The Killing Fields (1984). When the Communist forces of the Khmer Rouge took control of his homeland in 1975, Pran and his compatriots experienced almost unimaginable suffering. Four years later he was able to escape and ultimately become a crusader for justice in Cambodia. As a guide and interpreter working with members of the United States media in his country during the early 1970s, Pran got to know New York Times journalist Sydney Schanberg. The two worked together, became close friends, and witnessed firsthand the horrors of the Cambodian government's war with the Khmer Rouge. Yet those horrors would be overshadowed by much greater ones that ensued when the Khmer Rouge took power in April of 1975. Schanberg would return to the U.S., where he earned a Pulitzer Prize for his work on Cambodia, but Pran would be forced to stay behind, victim of the madness that swept his country for four years.

The story of his later escape, and the reuniting of the two friends, would prove an inspiring one; yet before it could be written, Dith Pran would have to endure a great deal. The War Next Door Dith Pran was born on September 27, 1942, in the town of Siem Reap. At that time, the Japanese army occupied Cambodia, which belonged to French Indochina, but Pran's home was far from the center of the occupying force's power. He grew up near the ruins of the vast complex of temples called Angkor Wat, built centuries before in northwestern Cambodia. His father was a senior public-works official, and Pran attended local schools, where he learned French. He learned English on his own, and after finishing high school in 1960, went to work as an interpreter for the U.S. Military Assistance Command. From the end of World War II, neighboring Vietnam-formerly a part of French Indochina as well-had been involved in a civil war. A coalition of nationalists and Communist insurgents, led by Ho Chi Minh, had fought the French colonizers.

In 1954 they were able to drive French forces out of Vietnam. The Communists suppressed all other factions to gain control over the north, and with the support of the Soviet Union and China, began waging war with anti-Communist forces in the south, which were supported by the U.S. Cambodia, meanwhile, remained in a state of relative peace. But as American bombing raids increased, North Vietnamese troops-along with South Vietnamese Communists, called Viet Cong-began using the neighboring country as a place of refuge. In 1965, Cambodia's government severed its relations with the U.S. amid charges that American troops had entered the country's borders to pursue their Communist enemies. For Pran, the withdrawal of the Americans meant the end of a job he had held for five years. He went to work as an interpreter for a British film crew, then moved to a position as a receptionist at a hotel near Angkor Wat. In 1970, a U.S.-backed dictator, Lon Nol, seized power in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh. War broke out between Lon Nol's forces and those of a frightening new enemy: the Khmer Rouge.

Darkness Descends on Cambodia The name "Khmer Rouge" means simply "Red Cambodian, " signifying the group's Communist and nationalist roots. Their leadership was a clique of some 20 intellectuals, called Angka Loeu, or "The Higher Organization." Educated in France during the 1950s, the Angka had absorbed an amalgam of doctrines from philosophers such as Jean Jacques Rousseau, who maintained that science and technology had corrupted mankind's natural goodness, and melded these theories with the Communist ideologies of Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and Chairman Mao of China. But the rank-and-file of the Khmer Rouge, led in the field by the infamous Pol Pot, knew little of these theories. Mostly illiterate peasants and young people, they had little experience with the sophisticated city life of Phnom Penh, let alone Paris. The Angka Loeu leadership had determined that the answer to Cambodia's problems was a return to subsistence farming and destruction of anything that hinted of the West or the twentieth century. This message had particular appeal to the rank-and-file soldiers of the Khmer Rouge.

Because the civil war had virtually destroyed the tourist trade, and in part because of his desire to tell the world about the war sweeping his country, Pran moved his family to Phnom Penh to work as a journalist. There he met Craig Whitney, Saigon bureau chief for the New York Times, and he worked with a number of journalists as guide and interpreter. In 1972, Pran made one of the most important friendships of his life. New York Times writer Sydney Schanberg had been operating in Singapore, but he became fascinated by the war in Cambodia, and arranged for a transfer to Phnom Penh. He had contacted Pran, who met him at the airport with a list of contacts and ideas for stories. From that day, the two were close friends and, by 1973, Pran worked exclusively with Schanberg. Both men were dogged in their pursuit of their work, a fact which had as much to do with their circumstances as their personalities. As the war with Lon Nol's forces continued, the Khmer Rouge, operating from strongholds in the hinterlands, became an ever more hardened and fanatical fighting force. Meanwhile the U.S.

had pulled its troops out of Vietnam, which was subsequently overrun by Communist forces. On April 12, 1975, American personnel evacuated Phnom Penh as well. With Khmer Rouge victory imminent, thousands of Cambodians scrambled for any possible means of escape. Pran put his wife, Ser Moeum, and their four children on a truck operated by the U.S. military, but he chose to stay and help Schanberg report the story of the Khmer Rouge takeover. Both men assumed that once the Khmer Rouge had achieved victory, they would behave responsibly. As the first troops began to enter the city between April 12 and April 17, it indeed seemed possible that peace had come. But the Khmer Rouge soon began to display their true intentions. Year Zero Begins Historian Paul Johnson, in his Modern Times, offers a chilling account of what followed: "On 17 April over 3 million people were living in Phnom Penh. They were literally pushed into the surrounding countryside. The violence started at 7 a.m. with attacks on Chinese shops; then general looting. The first killings came at 8:45 p.m.

Fifteen minutes later troops began to clear the Military Hospital-driving doctors, nurses, sick, and dying into the streets. An hour later they opened fire on anyone seen in the streets, to start a panic out of the city." Many were slaughtered in these first attacks, and many more killed in the forced exodus from the city, which involved some 60 percent of Cambodia's entire population of 5 million. Pran, Schanberg, and two other journalists went to a hospital to investigate the casualties. As they were leaving, they were accosted by a group of armed Khmer Rouge. Suddenly Pran sprang into action, beseeching the soldiers on his friends' behalf. The troops ordered them to get into an armored vehicle, and the Westerners complied, but Pran stayed behind, still speaking to the soldiers. In his 1985 book The Death and Life of Dith Pran, Schanberg recalled that he thought "For God's sake, Pran, get inside…. if you go on arguing, they'll shoot you down in the street." Finally Pran got in, and they were released several hours later.

Schanberg learned that Pran had not been hesitant to get in the armored vehicle-on the contrary, the Khmer Rouge were trying to keep him away, because they intended to kill the foreigners. Pran had saved Schanberg's life. Now Schanberg, along with the other Western journalists who had remained behind in the city, tried to save Pran's. With their close Cambodian associates, the Westerners had taken refuge in the French embassy. Under an ordinary government, no matter how repressive, the Cambodian nationals would have been safe inside the foreign embassy; but the Khmer Rouge "government" was not an ordinary one. The soldiers ordered Pran and all Cambodians to leave the embassy. Schanberg and other journalists tried to create a fake passport for him. It did not work, and Pran was forced to leave the embassy. Schanberg soon returned to the United States, where he looked after Pran's wife and children in New York City. (The New York Times, in fact, helped to support the family financially.) Through intermediaries at border camps in Thailand, Schanberg circulated photographs of his lost friend.

Pran, meanwhile, was absorbed in the new Cambodia, or "Kampuchea" as the Khmer Rouge had renamed it. Sizing up the situation, he quickly realized that anything which hinted of the West or of wealth was a liability, not an asset. Therefore he discarded the items with which he had intended to bribe the Khmer Rouge, dressed himself like a peasant, adopted a limited vocabulary, and pretended to be a simple villager. It was a wise decision. The Khmer Rouge had orders to execute as "intellectuals" and "foreigners" anyone who wore eyeglasses, perfume, makeup, watches, or other evidence of non-traditional influences. Everything that was not agrarian and Cambodian would be eradicated, and the Khmer Rouge were determined to remake their country from scratch. As a symbol of the fact that Cambodia was starting over, they designated 1975 as "Year Zero." The Killing Fields In accordance with his strict Buddhist faith and its belief that a name is sacred, Pran kept his. But under the persona of his peasant alter-ego, a taxi driver, he made his way to a village 20 miles from Siem Riep.

He and the other villagers, many of them evacuees from Phnom Penh, were put to work in the rice paddies. Their days consisted of back-breaking labor, while their nights were filled with political indoctrination. Though they were growing food, literally at gunpoint, the ration of rice was reduced to just one spoonful per day. Starving, Pran and other villagers ate anything they could find: bark, snakes, snails, rats, and other vermin. Some even dug up dead bodies-one of the few products in abundant supply under the new regime-and gnawed human flesh. Pran was so weak he could barely walk, and his face was becoming swollen from malnutrition while he began to lose his teeth. One night he dared to sneak out to a rice paddy and try to eat some raw rice. For this he was beaten, under guards' orders, by a dozen of his fellow villagers wielding bamboo-cutting blades. He was left outside in a rain storm, and there he prayed to Buddha for survival.

Ultimately the Khmer Rouge would be responsible for the slaughter of between 1.5 and 2 million of their compatriots, an act of genocide which-given the fact that Cambodia only had 5 million people to begin with-was proportionately greater than the atrocities committed by Hitler, Stalin, or Mao. But while this holocaust continued, the rest of the world remained largely silent. Having withdrawn completely from Southeast Asia, America had turned its attention to other concerns, and there were few protests of Khmer Rouge atrocities on U.S. college campuses. But Sydney Schanberg did not forget. Receiving a Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for his Cambodia reporting, he accepted it on behalf of Pran as well, and continued to search for his friend. In the fall of 1977, Pran was granted permission to relocate-a rare privilege in Kampuchea. He became a house servant for a commune chief in the village of Bat Dangkor. The chief, a disillusioned Khmer Rouge officer, allowed Pran far greater freedom than he had experienced at the slave-labor camp. In January of 1979, the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia and overthrew the Khmer Rouge.

Pran made his way to Siem Riep, and there he found that some 50 members of his family had been killed. The village wells were filled with skulls and bones, and the land was covered with graves. Nicknamed "killing fields, " these were easily distinguished from the nearby ground by the fact that the grass was greenest over them. Death and Life Pran was given a position as village administrative chief by the Vietnamese, who had no idea that he had been a journalist. When a group of reporters from Eastern Europe came to visit, he managed to get a message to Schanberg through a member of the East German media. But the Vietnamese learned that Pran had been involved with the press himself, and he decided to escape before they began to question him more closely about his past. On July 29, 1979, Pran set out with several other men on a 60-mile journey past land mines, traps, and the forces of the Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge. He arrived at the Thai border after almost two months, and entered a refugee camp there on October 3. He asked an American relief officer to contact Schanberg, who met him on October 9.

Their emotional reunion and the saga that had led them there would be depicted by Haing S. Ngor and Sam Waterston in Roland Joffe's 1984 film The Killing Fields. By that time, Schanberg had assisted Pran in relocating to the United States, where he was reunited with his family. The New York Times gave him a job as a reporter, and Pran became a U.S. citizen in 1986. Pran began to devote all of his spare time to activities on behalf of his fellow Cambodians who had suffered under the Khmer Rouge. He would ultimately take several trips back to his homeland, and would attempt to bring the Khmer Rouge to justice before the World Court. His example is Elie Wiesel-who helped keep alive the memories of the Nazi genocide. Remarried, Pran and wife Kim DePaul operate the Dith Pran Holocaust Awareness Project, Inc. Among the other projects in which his group assists is a photographic archive on the Internet to assist Cambodians looking for missing family members.

In the early 1990s, he interviewed 29 people who had suffered in the Khmer Rouge camps, and published the results in 1997 as Children of Cambodia's Killing Fields: Memoirs by Survivors. For Pran, the ghosts of Cambodia remain, and the memories are "Still alive to me day and night, " he said in an online interview at "The Site. "When I'm too busy, I can try to forget a little bit, but if I have nothing to do, it bothers me so much because my mind goes back and forth…. It's unbelievable what [the Khmer Rouge] did to the Cambodian people." Further Reading Johnson, Paul, Modern Times: The World from the Twenties to the Eighties, Harper & Row, 1983, pp. 654-657. Notable Asian Americans, Gale, 1995, pp. 318-321. Pran, Dith, compiler, Children of Cambodia's Killing Fields: Memoirs by Survivors, edited by Kim DePaul, Yale University Press, 1997.

Schanberg, Sydney H., The Death and Life of Dith Pran, Viking, 1985. New York Times, September 24, 1989, section 6, p. 125. New York Times Book Review, May 25, 1997, p. 21. Reader's Digest, May 1997, p. 60. "Dith Pran, " The Site, (March 26, 1998). "MSNBC TV: Dith Pran with Brian Williams, " The Dith Pran Holocaust Awareness Project, Inc., (March 26, 1998). Cite this article Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. MLA

Question: Which 1984 film relates the experiences of photographer Dith Pran?
Answer: THE KILLING FIELDS