Gone Fishing

November 20, 2007

by Phally Chroy

So you may have been wondering what ever happened to the person who won the Fulbright to Cambodia?…

Well, I’ve been busy sorting out the mixes of moving and internet troubles here. Cambodia is a great country but, not so great for internet access. Not only is it slow here, but expensive as well. You pay about $300 per month for speed of 56k and four gigabytes of access. That was our bill last month at our place of work. Not only are there internet woes, but we also face difficulties finding support for devices in case something goes wrong. Recently, the powerbook provided by mtvU went crazy (again) and now I do not have a computer. Luckily, the people at the organization that I am working with were kind enough to let me use their computer to encode and bare the 56k upload speed. Plus, I had everything backed up on my external drive –minus all my entries.

Here is a short video made by me and some young Cambodian filmmakers. Since my philosophy of media literacy is to teach with a hands-on approach, we went out and about in Phomn Penh– taking in the scene, and shared the process of camera work. I like shooting things that are natural, real and to see people engaging [in activities]– not to make them exotic, but to shoot and show the real world around us.

We found the boy sitting on the riverfront holding a bag with a fish in it. We kindly approached him and started talking to him. During the conversation, I was most interested in whether he was going to tell me anything truthful or, feed me lies in hopes of receiving my pity and perhaps some money. The finished video became a fun and poetic interview. Many thanks to Sam Ath, the camera man, who’s vision captured the conversation.