In August 25th – 28th of 2017, I attended the Phnom Penh Remix, a 3-day film workshop hosted by the School of Slow Media. Before going to the event, I had to submit a form saying why I wanted to attend and then after that I had to go through an interview. The purpose of this workshop was to make a documentary about a person’s life in Phnom Penh. I was put into a team of three with a woman who’s from the Phnom Penh Post, and another man who is from Sabay. We decided to interview a photographer from the Royal Palace. We worked together really well, even though there were a lot of challenges, and some of them we couldn’t control. In this workshop, I got to learn more about different types of films, tinique to use when taking videos/photographs. I got to interact with people from different backgrounds. They were all adults, so it was such a cool experience for me to communicate with them and learn from them.
Another year has nearly ended and I am trying to catch up every steps the world moves. I’m not sure if I understand how the world works. I keep asking myself why we as the humans keep making problems, making violence, making wars. I remember telling myself that I’m going to be an inspiration for people, telling myself that everyone has the agency to change the world. Cambodia has many problems that needed to be solve but it seems like this country didn’t have a real solution toward it.
Health is one of the main issues in Cambodia because there’s a lack of professional hospital, medicine, and healthcare education. My team and I went to do workshop in Siem Reap about iron deficiency. Since Cambodians are having lack of nutrition (iron) in their body, we proposed a solution that is called Lucky Iron Fish with the collaboration from Lucky Iron Fish organization. We introduced the product to the community and told them the importance of using it. We then distributed about 400 iron fish to the communities. At last we created a documentary, mainly focus on this topic.
One hundred and ninety four countries are in the Paris Climate Agreement, while other countries such as United States of America, Syria and Nicaragua are not in the agreement at all. In school this year, I was in a team who learn about climate change, and marine life in Cambodia. I remembered a research showed that Southeast Asia could easily affected by climate change related to lightning. So my team and I went to Koh Rong which is an island located at the southwest of the country to do workshop about lightning prevention. We also helped to distribute over 100 water filters to the community with the collaboration from Song Saa foundation and Plan International. We did this because people at the rural area has less access to clean water. Moreover we helped the community to build fences and a garden which contain different types of plants such as cucumber, pumpkin, chili, and spinach. Those activities that we did help the community to have a better understanding on global warming, and let them prepare for the future climate change.
Another project that I was involved in was called Khmer Rouge Exploration. In this project, my team and I went to S-21 to learn more about Cambodian genocide. After coming back from the trip, I made a film documented about the voices of young Cambodians who have been left with a deep sense of sorrow from the horrific “Khmer Rouge” war. We are the next generation in Cambodia and we have a strong sense that our country and our people will be united for a better future.
I wasn’t really prepare the film well due to time constraints. But the film had been showed at Liger Sharation, through YouTube, other websites and at Phnom Penh Youth Film Festival 2017. The film even won the Best Picture category. This couldn’t happen without my teammates and learning facilitators. I’m glad that it got shared to a lot of people and hope that it will send positive message to them.
Filming at Government school was one of the Explorations I’m in. In this project, my team and I teaches the students at the public schools about how to make movie. We got to share our knowledge to the students, and inspire them to be creative. At the end, we got to show their movies to some of the audiences at the Phnom Penh Youth Film Festival 2017. As a Liger student, we all should share our knowledge to other people so that they could learn something that we learned and everyone will benefit it.
I was one of the speakers at the TEDxISPP. I spoke about why teen suicide is a problem, and propose many solutions to stop and raise the awareness of mental illness. It was one of my biggest experience to stand in front of a lot of people and speak for more than 10 minutes. All I wanted Cambodia to understand is that even though Cambodia is such a small country, and mental illness or suicide aren’t really a big problem as the United States, the government should consider about implementing different learning curriculum about mental and physical issues so it would help to slow down the rate of suicide or people who are living in depression or other mental problems.
This year I learned and participated in a lot of projects that helped to change Cambodia. Some of them had a big impact, and some aren’t really impacting toward the country at all. Even though I’m just one out of those sixteen million people in Cambodia, I think I play a role to change this country, and also the world. Being born in this country, I will do everything to help my nation and hope I can keep doing what I do every day. It feels good.
Digital Painting was an expertise I did during year 5 of Liger. I got to use the tablet to paint something on the computer. I enjoyed doing it because I love art and I got to experience making art without using pencil or paper. I’m not only doing it in class, but during my spare time, I did some art too. Above are some of my art works. For the portraits of my friends, I used a different method, that’s why it looks real (trust me, I’m not that talented).
