ABSTRACT
This chapter examines visual representations of the Cambodian 'genocide' and the entire period of the Khmer Rouge regime, of which there is remarkably little visual record either in photography or film. It considers the Khmer Rouge-related documentaries of Cambodian-born, French-educated filmmaker Rithy Panh in the light of the debates about the ethics and aesthetics of cinematic representation and the visual archive of the Holocaust. The chapter suggests that in these films, the dearth of photographic and filmic records is both highlighted and overcome by the use of artist-survivor Vann Nath, his remarkable body of oil paintings about the Tuol Sleng Interrogation Centre and his role in re-enactments of the past by both victims and perpetrators. Rithy Panh has developed a style of realist, almost ethnographic, filmmaking and has supported the creation of an ethically-based cinema in Cambodia. Vann Nath's paintings were created to compensate for the lack of 'authentic' images of the extremities of the Khmer Rouge regime.
