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SYNOPSIS
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'Cambodia
- Circle of Life' is a proposed feature length documentary telling the
living stories of the Cambodian Paralympic Volleyball Team. Of the 11
players in the Cambodian Paralympic Team, 10 have lost limbs through
contact with land mines. The remaining player has polio. Two players
were former soldiers affiliated with the Khmer Rouge. Led by Pol Pot,
they were responsible for the genocide that swept Cambodia. Between
1.4 and 2.5 million Khmer people were killed in the Killing Field genocide
between 1975-79. A guerrilla war ensued, ending in 1998. The documentary
will briefly explain Cambodia's Pol Pot regime through poignant interviews
with these volleyball players who were on opposite sides of the Cambodian
holocaust.
The film will also explore the lives of the Khmer people working at the Joom Noon silk weaving project. This project now employs over 70 farmers, spinners, dyers, and weavers, just half of whom are women and 80% of whom are disabled. One of their products is supplying scarves for the Cambodia National Team Volleyball for Disabled. The film will touch on portraits of these athletes and Cambodian people, featuring their beauty, their optimism, and their struggle to live full, normal lives in the face of overwhelming tragedy. What will unfold are the stories of the Khmer people, some or maybe all have made full circles, a 360 degree change in their life.
Over the last century, the people of South East Asia (Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam) have endured unspeakable hardships in the wake of numerous wars, invasions and widespread genocide. Most of the present population of that region were not yet born when the last bombs fell. But the last victims have yet to be counted as thousands of land mines and other unexploded ordnance (UXO's) continue to take a brutal toll on the population. Government estimates show that one in 384 Cambodians have had a limb amputated as a result of land mines or unexploded ordnance. About 14 percent of Cambodia's 11.4 million people have some form of disability, the bulk from injuries caused by mines or unexploded ordnance.
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