About the Tonle Bassac squatter community > Stage of the Burnt out theater
This is all that remains of the Bassac theater’s stage. In his 2005 film, Les artistes du theatre brule, acclaimed French-Cambodian director Rithy Panh used the theater as a sad and poignant symbol for the lives of Cambodian artists today. In the movie, one character, a former actor, grows cabbage on the stage to live off of. He, like the other artists of the burnt theater, struggles to find his place as an artist and human being in the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge, seemingly lost and left behind in a world where the memory of past traditions is ruined or crumbling, and the people turn increasingly towards cheap television, karaoke songs, and the work of making money.
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