Original subtitles

In the midst of life, childhood comes back to mind

It’s like sweet and bitter water.

I seek my childhood like a lost picture

To be more precised it is my childhood which demands me

Is it because I’m 50 years oldÂ

or because I knew turbulent times during which fear and hope were alternating?

Memories are here, now

They bang my temples, I would like to drive them away

With soil and water, with the dead and rice fieldsÂ

with living hands, we can build a man

It doesn’t take much, you just have to believe in it

His suit is white, his tie is dark

I would like to hold him against me: He’s my father

I remember the old days in Phnom Penh, the big parties in our house

I remember laughter and songs

There were smells of caramel, of fishes, of spices, of mango

We used to dance, to speak endlessly with our uncles and aunts

My cousins used to bring fruits - guava and jackfruit

At this time, we studied, we read books

In evenings, I enjoyed listening to my father reciting poetry

I especially remember the sweetness of things

Then the war came

Bombing came closer in the 70s

I remember the first casualties, our fear, my child’s sadness

There are so many images in the world which play on a loop

We think we have assimilated them because we saw them

When we discover a frame on a screenÂ

which is not a board or a shroudÂ

the image is not missing.

Phnom Penh was surrounded by the Khmer RougeÂ

who came to stop injustice and exploitation

They entered the capital on April 17th, 1975

People did not shout for joy but waited silently

I was there

I remember the look of these young fighters: they looked as if we had not been there

An order has been given to them: never touch the enemy with your hands

I am the enemy, I am 13 years old

The central bank with its banknotes is blown

There’s no way back

The city is impure, corrupted

The city was emptied in a few hours

2 million people leave the cityÂ

and abandon their house, their friends, their memoriesÂ

or to sum up: the old world

Long live the very glorious April 17, a day of overflowing joy

The revolution is so pure it doesn’t want human beings

Now Phnom Penh can be filmedÂ

as in Puth Tomniey’s prophecy

Houses will be without inhabitants, streets without passers-by

Nobody will go up staircases

Rivers of blood will pour

Very soon we were separated

We drove to the countryside in the dry season

We were hungry and thirsty

We were passed aroundÂ

as animals in cattle wagon and then we were transported by cart

The deportation of Phnom Penh is a missing image

At once the Khmer Rouge countedÂ

then separated women, men, adults and children

Any keepsakes or personal effects are forbidden

Suddenly there are no more individuals but just numbers

Our hair is cut

Watches, glasses, toys, books are seized

Our clothes are dyed in black, our first names changed

We are the New People:

middle-class persons, intellectuals, capitalists to be re-educated or destroyed

You have to embrace the proletarian condition

Here is the new country called Democratic Kampuchea

A factory with disturbing smokes

Concrete dikes and rice fields

No men

The whole society is organized in a collective and military wayÂ

in working units

Comrades, Angkar is taking care of all of you

Brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers

Angkar is the organization made of everybody:

the young Khmer Rouge, the village chief

the head of the torture center or Pol Pot

This people made of sand, of dust, these barefoot people must be monitored

Soon there will be no more faces, no more friends, no more loveÂ

No more father, no more mother, soon there will be no more emotion

Even words will be altered

Everybody will be a fighter of the revolution or just some fertilizer for rice fields

To resist, it is necessary to hide in oneself a strength, a memoryÂ

an idea that nobody can take from you

Because you can steal a image but not a thought

Angkar invites youÂ

for a session of studies to rebuild yourself

Comrades, we shall soon be masters of water, earth and elements

Every hectare will produce 3 tons of rice or 5 or 7

Then we will be 10 millions

It will be the end of hunger, of injustice no more exhausted people

Old men will be fed by a machine

Angkar is clear-sighted and full of cleverness

People are Angkar’s brain

Long live the grand and extraordinary Kampuchean revolution

Long live the new society without rich nor poor people

We raise our fist, we repeat slogans

Angkar will establish a model society, quite unique, without class divide

In this perfect world, dams are made of concreteÂ

and are covered with tar Everything is in order

At the top of this utopia, there’s a red flagÂ

and of course : Truth

Comrades you are “very free”

For now, you must obey, dig tirelesslyÂ

move earth, move stones

For months, I dug a pond in the middle of arid plains

I never saw any water

Long live the Democratic Kampuchea which made a quantum leap forward

A great leap forward An extraordinary and grand leap forward

Let’s work with determination in the fields Things don’t just come out of the blue

These slogans have never left me, I think I still hear them

My old society only thought about celebrating

Collectivism is the fertilizer and the food

Now a pan is individualistic

It is prohibited to own one

Then we share everything

Our only good is our spoon

With hunger we can control a man

We control all of them, dead or alive

The sick, those who do not obeyÂ

are not fed or they have only a half-ration

We are the only ones who experiment hunger

To make people hungry, it’s like a weapon the new people are a parasitic plant

The people who watch us live in attics

They are never hungry

To re-educate starts with destroying

All the inhabitants in Phnom Penh had to be erased

“To conquer by destroying” is a perfect and simple metaphor

The Khmer Rouge want a people made of iron who become a pure instrument of the revolution

The Khmer Rouge leaders are the universal and homogeneous state

They never look at each other

There is of course Pol Pot, Brother Number One He’s easily recognizable with his fan

Pol Pot and his comrades, Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Khieu Samphan, Son Sen

Arise, wretched of the earth

We are the wretched ones: we work in the fields, in chainsÂ

...we wander like ghosts

In this empty capital for 4 years, there is only the Central CommitteeÂ

...and the Ponhea Yat high school which becomes the S21 center

Here people are whipped, electrocutedÂ

people’s members are cut, people are eating feces, people admit

Everything starts with a pure ideal and finishes with hatred

I know that the Khmer Rouge took pictures of executions

Why ? Did they need a proof, had a file to be completed?

Which man who took pictures of this event would like that this picture is not missing?

I’m looking for this picture

If I finally found it, I could not show it, of course

And what does a picture of death show?

I prefer showing the picture of a young unknown womanÂ

who challenges the camera - the eye of the executioner -Â

and still looks at us

Scarlet blood which covers cities and plains of Kampuchea - our homelandÂ

Sublime blood of workers, farmers

Sublime blood of men and women fighting for freedom

Blood which became implacable hatred and determined struggle

You freed us from slavery

Yet one cannot film with impunity

I’m looking at these children with their hands, their faces and their body which are tired

The work of this vanguard young people means their own destruction

At night I used to tell old storiesÂ

with ghosts, witches, lost travelers, mischievous children

So they made me work in the kitchen where we eat well

I told the story of the rocket Apollo rushing towards the moon

to these revolutionaries who generally used figures and code to discuss

Scarlet blood which covers cities and plain, will you also cover the moon ?

I dreamed walking on it as Neil Armstrong with a light and childish step

One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind

“But who are these people?”, a comrade asks

“Those who walk on the moon are Americans, I saw the video once”

“Americans? You are lying, it’s impossible”

The storyteller admits it, the storyteller is killed

The giant leap for mankind is not in the capitalist propaganda

It is for us who suffer from hunger

Long live the independent and full of control visionÂ

of the revolutionary Angkar of Democratric Kampuchea

Long live its extraordinary clear-sightedness

On our moon there’s nothing: this cracked and dusty earth buries all

It took me years to learn how to walk barefoot over thorns

Muddy water is flowing down my throat

I’m disappearing little by little, I am nothing

It’s strange to drink mud

The buffaloes are looking at us: “these men are strange, they drink our water”

The Nestlé tin becomes our measurement unit

It can contain 250g of rice

Famine spread quickly: Every day we have to share these 250g

It is divided into 7 parts, into 16, then into 25. We share hunger.

My mother fights for us:

She builds a hut with branches, leaves and vines

Every day she walks two hours so that we can drink clear water

She gets the right to give an extra half-ration to my father

But one night he says to us:

“I will stop eating food for animals. I am a man.”

He stops eating

I cannot understand, I resent him

They found a steel sheetÂ

to carry his body up to the pit

My mother does not cry, not a single tear for the Khmers Rouge

That night, she told me how my father would have been buried by his relatives

by his colleagues in respect of tradition and peace

This “burial with words”, I do not want to forget it: it was an act of resistance

My father came from a poor family, he was believing in education

He dreamed of sending to school his sisters and brothers, his children, his ancestors

So that we can become a free people

He did not abandon us: he taught us what freedom is

I still have the feeling that his soul returned to our house

Finally he can recite the Prévert’s poem he loved so much

“Black hair, black hair, Caressed by the waves

Black hair, black hair, Tousled by the winds”

Here, schools become centers of extermination

Here, pigs are readers because readers were pigs

Here, every soldier has a pen in his pocket

Sometimes a watch on his wrist

It is forbidden for us but it is a sign, a distinctionÂ

in a country which hates knowledge

The spade is you pen

The rice field is your paper

Here is the “school of electricity and real application” to train technicians

These students are selected among children of poor farmersÂ

from low classÂ

or fighters from the revolutionary army

The comrade Trang is 16 years old

He entered the revolution and the revolutionary army at the age of 9

He fought on several battlefields

He was also wounded

Children as Trang are plenty on the frontlines and in the rear

We cannot count them

They all had extraordinary lives

Today they work with all their strength and all their heartÂ

within their unity to defend and reconstruct the country

I spent my childhood in the movie studios with a neighbor who was a director

I loved this wonderful world full of jewels and caps, of colors and gold

The world of giants, of fairy tales

I loved the backstage where beautiful actresses seemed to dance just for me

I picked up small pieces of film

I looked at them in boxes with a small light

Then this world has been destroyed, the cinemas closed, the artists executedÂ

and the singers, the technicians, the directors sent to fields

In a Khmer Rouge’s movie there’s always a slogan

Practice worth any theories, so don’t try to have any personal ideas

To cure the disease of the old society, take Lenin as a medicine

From now on only one actor remains: it is not the people, it is Pol Pot

He embodies the revolution, it is necessary to create his myth

A hut is built in the jungle - a wooden set -

Pol Pot is a revolutionary, He drinks only tea

He uses an oil lamp, washes himself in the wild

He lives like everybody in this country, with his books, his weapon, his comrades

He inhabits the ideology

Brother Number One was inspired by the young humanity

The original population: the JaraiÂ

the Cuoi, the Bunong

Some families, here or there, who shared everything

By observing them he understood. He thought of Rousseau’s good savage

In Paris, Pol Pot already signed his articles : «Khmer of origin»

The Khmer Rouge were inspired by Marx and Rousseau :

the complete communist ideology and the pure world of the origins

A perfect society

The radiant revolution shines with all its brightness

The frustrated and abandoned farmers join the struggle for justice

They will look beautiful on the banknotes of the New Country

But the banknotes will never be used

There are no more sales, no more trade

...no more complaints, no more thefts, no more lootingÂ

no more individual property, there are no more problems

The new people are re-educated in rice fields, They are part of the world of the origins

They can be pure again

They need to be rebuilt or destroyed

Pol Pot said: "those whom cannot re-educate, we shall fight them as if they were enemies”

Angkar never uses anything from the imperialist or feudal society

Capitalist cars recognized their crime and are re-educated too

These cars work on the construction of a new country

When we return from the construction site, it is time for indoctrination

The words are altered, we only speak by using slogan

The comrade who has a lot of defects is the enemy

The one who protests is an enemy the one who opposes is a corpse

A 9 year old child denounces his mother who picked mangoes

The child shouts: « The comrade recognized her crime »

His mother is gently weeping

When you admit something, you agree to die for the righteousness of the revolution

When men will be so free and equal, will they still be men ?

The mother closes her eyes

Is it to keep an image of her child?

She keeps silent

Then she left towards the forest with soldiers and never returned

I would like to get away from the mud, from hunger, from my black clothes

To walk in the water is a torture: I fall of exhaustion

Sometimes a plane crosses the sky

Is it watching us?

Is it going to parachute me a camera so that the whole world knows our story?

We are the missing picture

This unreal aircraft saves me

I have no more name, no more family, no more hope

But I still have a human heart

I remember the old days, my brother who disappeared in Phnom Penh

April 17th, 1975

His guitar must not have pleased the Khmer RougeÂ

neither his look, nor his lock, nor his songs

There are no more « colors » in laughter, dances and songs

Our daily life became a fightÂ

a war against nature, against words, against the enemy

Children sent to the front line are still very young

But they are full of energy to do their duty

As for me, Ihave to repeat: ”Angkar never makes any mistake, Angkar is everything”

I wish no one to see a child dying

With her swollen feet, her swollen face as if just water remains

the little girl is shaking all over because of hunger. So she steals corn

The group leader sees her and walks her to our home. He says: « This is a crime »

Her grandmother forbids her to eat corn: we are not thieves, we are proud people

The little girl cries and I do not understand

In the night the child eats salt

His teeth grind We get hungry especially at night

She slept beside me with her swollen belly and her fixed eyes. She was sighing

She called her mother, she called her father and then she kept silence

And we buried her

The other two children died also very quickly

I don’t want to see anymore this picture of hunger

So I show it to you

My mother is taken to the hospital

She learns there that her 16-year-old daughter died

Here, everybody dies

Without saying a single word, she stroked her child’s forehead

She took off lice from her thin but still beautiful face

Then she laid down on the wooden boards

It is forbidden to fish yet fishes are plenty

In secret I took one

Two days later I brought it to my mother

But she was already dead

Then I understood that from now on I would be by myself

I saw again our house, our kitchen, our gardenÂ

my notebooks, the face of my parents

These pictures are not missing, they are in my brain

In 1977 we are determined to fulfill our political duty

with an extraordinary leap forward

I became one of those kids on construction sites

If we look closely, we can see people fall down

People are exhausted, their face is skinny We can see the cruelty of the scene

Some of them cannot work anymore

Yet there is a movie camera

Here is the school teacher - as we call her

She teaches us how to use a spade, a shovel She teaches us the ideology

We are all equal

This is the revolution of children

Of course, everybody should only rely on himself

But the Khmer Rouge leaders eat better than us

They are never hungry Are we equal?

The our own leaders make their self-criticism

The very next day my friends and I are sent to a very hard camp

On this site we had to dig 3 m3 of earth each morningÂ

and produce 25 to 30 kilos of fertilizer each afternoon

from leaves and cow dungs

There were so few cows, trees and leavesÂ

that these figures were impossible to reach

If we could not manage to extract these 3 m3

They became, by order, 5 m3

Work hard, don’t be defeatist anymore in front of the enemy

You must love and respect the community

This camp was a grave guarded by a man with a fedora

His dog was staring at us as if we were a riddle

This man beat those who did not respect the rules

It was forbidden to dig to find roots and forbidden to speak

He was eating alone and had his own food like his dog

We shared our child’s rations

In Paris or somewhere else, those who liked our slogansÂ

those who were reading books, did they see these images?

Or were they missing ?

I think about my past, about all those who disappearedÂ

my sisters, my brothers, my cousins, my parents

Childhood is far and closeÂ

with its sweetness, its joyful shouts, its laughter, its voices

Childhood is always the same old story

I have not come back home since April 17th, 1975

Nevertheless I remember every detail:

Paintings, doors, jars, passageways

My home became a gambling house, a karaoke then a brothel

It has also been emptied, deprived of its destiny

There is no truth there are only movies

Revolution is just playacting

I remember the great flood in 1978

I was already in a labor camp, we were so hungry

Then a huge bunch of rice straw was put down by the river

We even found eggs so we ate

In movie theaters harvests are also glorious

There are cereal grains, People look quiet and determined

It looks like a painting, a poem

At last I see the promised revolution

It only exists in pictures

These bags full of rice were not for us

Were they reserved for the leaders ?

Or sent abroad since they were all labeled in Arabic numerals?

Or were they movie props, bags full of sand ?

Our every move was scrutinized

Our every breath and even our silence

But the famine was not perceived by the Khmer Rouge leaders

Did they know nothing, see nothing? Were they unable to do anything?

Is truth in the glorious slogansÂ

Or in these pictures which are not missing?

Here is what Pol Pot said:

« Currently our cooperatives are already solid units of collectivismÂ

politically and spiritually speakingÂ

able of achieving all the directives of Angkar

In the countrysideÂ

they successfully achieved all the revolutionary tasks

They changed our dull and dry regionsÂ

which were poor and without drinking water

Now there are large and small basinsÂ

canals which intersectÂ

lush rice fields and orchards

These cooperatives are the foundation of a new society

without corruption and thugs of all kinds

These cooperatives are the foundation of a new society

which is collectivist, uncorrupted, egalitarian, prosperous

These cooperatives are healthyÂ

in all these fields: food, health, hygiene

culture, education

Here is the truth:

Straw houses, drought, exhaustion, hungerÂ

neon lights for night workÂ

speakers howling slogans

The ideology was in the fields and rice paddiesÂ

The man who captured these slow and true images is called Ang Sarun

He was a Khmer Rouge cameraman

He also shooted this speech of Pol Pot

Why this fog ? Is it a technical error?

Or does he want to show children in ragsÂ

to show to Brother Number One the condition of his country?

The cameraman is tortured and executed

His body disappears, his story disappears

But not this film

Commit ourselves to always wave higherÂ

the red banner of the revolution

It sounds like a sentence of Mao, it is a slogan of Angkar

Pol Pot personally goes to the airport and hosts two major Chinese leaders

Zhang Chunqiao and Geng Biao

The Chinese Comrades inspired the politicsÂ

and the ideology of Democratic Kampuchea

This image of fraternity is not missing

Is the great leap forward not wonderful?

Is every day not a festive day ?

Is Kampuchea not being successfulÂ

owing to its purity while the Chinese Revolution failed ?

Is Kampuchea not an extraordinary ideological laboratory?

Is this visit not a lesson ?

We chased rats, we ate them

We ate insects, roots, raw snails

Dehumanization starts in this way:

with hunger, sickness, physical decay.

Who shooted the sick people?

Who shooted pagodas changed into hospices?

Who shooted the person sharing my room and his knee eaten by worms?

Or this young woman who has problems to deliverÂ

shouts the whole night, alone, and strikes her belly until death?

Of course, there is a Khmer Rouge Hospital

I spent weeks in these halls of death

Drugs are inside Coke bottles

Patients were injected with coconut juice - it is so pure

I would have liked to stop hearing the groans, the hiccups, the shoutsÂ

to stop smelling the warm and rotting flesh

The dead leave at night

I used to look for them in the morning on their wooden boards - and I survived

This man sitting on the floor is too weak:

He does not eat and no longer moves.

I have thought about him for years I am offering a helping hand to him

The Khmer Rouge destroyed capitalist drugs

They chopped roots, made them boil

They experienced these traditional (and so revolutionary) medicines

Everywhere there are units to experiment them on human beings - in S21 for instance

There are not more diplomas, there are only « practical » diplomas

I used to wash the room, the sick

Every morning I carried the dead up to the pit

Sometimes I reach a point of desperation

There are hollow sounds, bones which bang, hands which are fumbling for someoneÂ

...and find the hand of a child

I am this child who thinks he is alive and tells this story

In the midst of life childhood comes back to mindÂ

in a bittersweet way with its images

A childhood which is drowning, a childhood which is wondering : How can I still be here?

Why was I not able to help my family more?

To think of my childhood is to think about death

We can understand the Khmers Rouge by observing their images

Pol Pol creates a reality according to his desire

Even nature has to comply with it

Sometimes leaders gathered several villages

and showed us a movieÂ

telling the struggle of the people with bare hands against the powerful colonizers

Of course we knew the actors and the movie were bad

and many people slept at the back, exhausted - myself included

For 4 years we have been moved from site to site

How to rebel when you own just a black garment and a spoon ?

When you are lost, when you are hungry

Today some people say that Buddhism and its way to accept fate is responsible for that

What were these intellectuals doing at that time? Reading? Thinking?

Here, it is not karma or religion which kills but ideology

At the beginning of any form of totalitarism, there is something fake

You are afraid of enemies, you are afraid of tree stumps

I worked in vast forests

We had to prune to plant corn fields

It was hot and humid

There were snakes, spiders, monkeysÂ

and lizards that some of my classmates ate

Let us not be overcome by nature

Let us swear to attack and make a breakthrough

These slogans never woke me up

But the sounds of the forest did

We became tougher, getting used to fight against the cold, to control our body

After the thunderstorm, we slept in our wet clothes

I remember the central marketÂ

the bitter and flowery fragrance, the fragrance of jasmine

I remember lovers, their shy gestures and their looks

I remember a time of affluence

I remember silk, fish and meatÂ

and the smell of boiled chicken which has obsessed for 4 years

I remember cheerful meals

At the market of my childhood, people had mouths

They were laughing, kissing each other

It’s the same street full of people then empty

The same, indeed, in the outskirts of Phnom Penh

You just have to open your eyes

I remember this imperfect and human world

2000 years of slavery, Pol Pot said

He’s a human being like you and me

He simply made a choice, a choice of ideology not to say a criminal one

But it’s still very difficult

This is maybe the reason why I really would like to make this film

Because nobody is born as an assassinÂ

Now, our son is good for blabbering

He is speaking, speaking, he knows how to make sentences

I wished he was a schoolteacher like you

He is shooting our own story

But there are poor people who are hungry, the rich ones expel them from their land

He thinks only about the Khmer Rouge

My father is right

Before the Khmer Rouge, poor people were already expelled from their land

They enlisted people because of this injustice

Then the Americans came

They dropped more than 500.000 tons of bombs on the country

So the poor joined the revolution, they raised their fist

The Khmer Rouge lied to them about the notions of justiceÂ

equality, happiness, progress They told lies on everything

And today, the same poor people are digging the earth

Sometimes I see a child, Well, I am this child

Everything was difficult for him

He did not know how to fish, to walk barefoot or to fight

Years later, he feels guiltyÂ

for not having helped more those who were poor

It is said that when we speak about things we can smooth the pain, understand, go through

I will never find wisdom

I’m not in search of an image of my relatives I would like to touch them

Their voice is missing so I stop speaking

I would like to leave everything, my language, my country - but to no avail

Childhood comes back to mind

Now, it is my childhoog which is looking for me

I see it, it would like to speak to me

But it is difficult to do it with words

This black dog is the God of “transition”

He is leading me to his boat

Watching him, i think about the man with his fedoraÂ

and about the river on which corpses were floating

In the village where I lived

Families went on living after the departure of the Khmer Rouge

Young men left to work in Thailand

The former village leader who was cruel and terrified us on his horseÂ

was not arrested

I think he lived happily and had many children

d The Khmer Rouge mess disappear

Almost nothing remains:

pieces of jar, rusty pans, an earth stove

Everything disappeared like in a cruel movie

As for the pits near the hospital where I buried so many deadÂ

and my mother, my sisters They became a manmade lakeÂ

made by an international organization

Bones were taken

Pumpkin and corn were planted

But the lake is so salty and so oddly greenÂ

...that nobody dares to use or drink it

Are the dead there? Yes, they are

Sometimes I have the feeling people walked on them so I pass my way

There are still souls which are wandering, seeking a place, a sweet and noble thought

Many people resisted, many of themÂ

silently, with a word, with a smile

Sometimes a single gesture is enough to say « no »

I think about my father who told his choice to us

Sometime a silence worth a shout

Mourning is difficult, funeral is endless

There are no more cattle wagons

There are no more slogans nor young guards dressed in black

Just remains the ground full of blood

Their flesh is mine

So we are together

There are many things a man should not see or know

And if he saw them it would be better for him to die

But if one of us sees these things or knows them

Then he must live to tell about them

Every morning I used to work over the pit

My shovel bumped into bones and heads

Earth is never enough

I’m the one who is going to get killed or it’s already done

Of course I did not find the missing picture

I looked for it in vain

A political movie has to discover what it invented

So I create this picture, I watch it, I cherish it

I hold it in my hand as people do with a beloved face

This missing picture, now I give it to you

so that it doesn’t stop looking for us