Bunhom Chhorn was only six when the Khmer Rouge separated him from his family and sent him to work in the countryside outside Battambang at a place then known as Camp 32.
Child labour: The Khmer Rouge separated children from their families and put them to work in the fields. Many did not survive.
For the next 25 years Hom, as his family and friends call him, was haunted by memories and nightmares about his time in the camp, where an estimated 30,000 people perished from execution, starvation and mistreatment at the hands of the Khmer Rouge.
Hom and the surviving members of his family ended up in Australia as refugees and a couple of years ago a team of Australian documentary makers heard his story and took him back to the land of his birth to try to find Camp 32, as there were no records of its existence.
The end result is a spellbinding documentary simply called Camp 32, and the unlikely star on camera is Hom. The soundtrack to Camp 32 is hauntingly beautiful, and Cambodian, and was done by the Phnom Penh-based band Krom. Camp 32 will be shown in Cambodia for the first time in December, and the producers are scouting for screening venues in Bangkok and around the region.
LOST SOULS
“We wanted to get justice for the souls who suffered in Camp 32,” said Hom. “Growing up in Australia, I was lucky and I had all these life necessities on a plate.
“But every night I went to sleep, I would have nightmares. I would have this dark figure who was always chasing after me. This stayed with me until I was about 30 years old. I somehow felt like the lost generation where if you don’t confront it you just can’t let go.”
Hom wanted to know about his lost childhood in Cambodia — why he had horrible nightmares and memories of people being killed — and also about the 55 members of his father’s family who perished during the rule of the Khmer Rouge in a place that had never even been documented.
“There are many undocumented camps in Cambodia. That’s not unusual,” he said. “What is unusual about this camp is if we can prove its existence, which we have proven … it would be the largest killing camp in Cambodia because all the other camps are smaller in numbers [of those] killed.”
Making Camp 32 took a toll on co-producer and co-director Tim Purdie, both emotionally and financially.
“Making Camp 32 hasn’t been easy for Hom, his family, the survivors we met or for the team of film-makers and artists who volunteered their time to bring this story to life,” Purdie told Spectrum.
“Hom and I met in Melbourne through a mutual friend. What was to be a 15-minute chat over coffee turned into a two-hour conversation about his family’s experiences at Camp 32. I couldn’t understand how so many people could be tortured and killed there, and there be no official record of the camp.
“I pretty much pledged to Hom on the spot that I would help him with documenting the existence of Camp 32. We very quickly became friends.
“Emotionally it messed with my head for months, but it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done in my life, and I’d do it all over again if given the chance.
“We pursued film funding options without any luck, so after a year of planning we pooled our meagre savings, bought some additional camera equipment and boarded a plane to Phnom Penh. I remember being a bit apprehensive and wondering if we were all crazy.
“We had a few leads on survivors and after having interviewed Hom’s family extensively we were fairly certain we knew where the site of Camp 32 was. But it felt like a huge risk we were taking.”
With co-producer and co-director Andrew Blogg and co-producer and researcher Gaye Miller on board, the team joined Hom on his return to Cambodia and filmed his search for Camp 32. What followed was a story that can only be described as amazing, and one the Australians weren’t fully prepared for.
‘HORROR AFTER HORROR’
“Throughout the five weeks of filming each of us struggled from time to time as we absorbed horrific story after horrific story,” said Purdie. “I’m a big boofy [thick] Australian who rarely shows emotion, but on a couple of occasions I needed time alone to shed a few tears and process the enormity of the task we had taken on.
“I increasingly felt a huge responsibility to Hom, his family, the survivors and even those who lost their lives at Camp 32. Could I do their story justice?”
The team started filming in Phnom Penh, talking to experts on that period from 1975-79 when the Khmer Rouge ruled the country, and checking for leads on Camp 32 at the Documentation Centre of Cambodia. They had no luck and could find no records of the camp.
So they headed to Battambang, and by a stroke of luck — some would call it fate — they had a big break when they randomly hired a taxi to drive them to where they thought they had a lead on the camp’s location.
“After an hour of driving, Hom started talking with the driver,” recalled Purdie. “Their talking intensified. They sounded like they were arguing to me at first. I was seated next to the taxi driver as they spoke frantically in Khmer. “I couldn’t understand much of it, but picked up the Khmer word for ‘32’ and some other names of people [from Camp 32] Hom had talked about previously.
“Luckily the camera bag was at my feet, so I began filming. The taxi driver looked as though he had seen a ghost and then goosebumps appeared all up his arms. Hom was gobsmacked.”
FATEFUL MEETING
The taxi driver was also be a survivor of Camp 32 and the last time the two had met they were both young boys suffering from malnutrition and beatings from their Khmer Rouge guards and struggling to stay alive. Both had assumed the other had died.
This encounter turns out to be the turning point in the documentary, but by no means the climax to the story of Hom’s return to Cambodia and his search for Camp 32. Those who want to find out what happened will have to wait until December when Camp 32 will be shown in Phnom Penh and Bangkok.
After the final frame was shot, Hom, Purdie, Blogg and Miller returned to Australia and their regular jobs and spent a long time editing, translating and putting Camp 32 together. For Purdie, the icing on the cake was getting the soundtrack from Phnom Penh-based Australian Chris Minko and his Cambodian band Krom, which will be doing some shows in Bangkok towards the end of the year.
“The beautifully haunting soundtrack they composed for the film far exceeded any of our expectations,” he said. “We sent Chris a video of us talking about the film along with some clips. Within a week or two he sent us some recordings that totally blew us away.
“He just seemed to intuitively know exactly what the film needed from those few small clips. Over the next month we received the soundtrack in full. Each time something came through on the email from Chris Minko I would excitedly download the music onto my phone and sit under the stars on my deck repeatedly playing it through.
“They just nailed it and were so professional. The fusion of traditional Khmer with blues and other Western influences is unlike anything I’ve heard before and I can’t imagine the film with any other music.”
For Hom, most of the nightmares have now stopped, but he still feels there’s more to do and he wants Camp 32 to be recognised by the United Nations.
“We cannot allow people who commit genocide to just go,” he said. “They need to be
punished.”
Alan Parkhouse is a former editor-in-chief of The Phnom Penh Post.
Fruitless: Bunhom Chhorn in Phnom Penh trying to find records of the camp he was held in.