The Film The Killing Fields Provoking Thought and Action

1. Main claim/thesis idea of source/author of source: Director Roland Joffé and writer Bruce Robinson reveals the atrocities of Pol Pot’s regime. The Cambodian genocide is often overlooked, concreting it through film and aesthetic means makes the issues apparent.

2. Evidence: History of the Khmer Rouge :On April 17, 1975, the Khmer Rouge seized power in Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge thought that they could free their people from the conflict in Vietnam which was quickly beginning to reach into their country. The leader of this regime, Pol Pot, had Cambodian citizens evacuated from the cities and put into the countryside, supposedly for their own safety (http://www.nndb.com/films/744/000032648/). Players in success of film: “The film's screenplay, by first-time scripter Bruce Robinson, was adapted from Pulitzer Prize-winning NY Times reporter Sydney Schanberg's The Death and Life of Dith Pran from The NY Times Magazine. It was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor (Sam Waterston), Best Director (first-timer Roland Joffe), and Best Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium (Bruce Robinson) and won three Oscars: Best Supporting Actor (Haing S. Ngor), Best Cinematography (Chris Menges), and Best Film Editing (Jim Clark)” (http://www.filmsite.org/kill.html).

3. Purpose: The story of war, survival and friendship brings to light the issue of the Cambodian genocide in the 1970’s to a greater audience. The power of film allows awareness and a genuine interest in supporting justice.


4. Audience/ Use of source: The public, historians. Falling under the clusters of art/action and public/counter publics, the topic of human rights and how an art form provokes thought and action was really interesting. The form of film and its resonating significance was therefore the ideal frame in which I could analyze some type of injustice. At first, it was really hard for me to find a topic that I was really interested in, so from the forum, I decided that the passion for the topic had to be personal and worth spending countless hours researching. Since my parents are from Cambodia and experienced the cruelty of the Cambodian genocide, I think the project would be worth a lot more if it delves into family history. Thus, I decided to pick the film The Killing Fields as a starting point in which I could further research an injustice and an “art” that critiques the cruelties.