Following his guideline to promote and keep Cambodian culture alive through his new short movie, Director Rotha MOENG who directed “The Rubber Tappers”, accepted to respond to a few questions about the message of the movie and his experience in Hiroshima.

Interviewer : Can you tell us about your impression of Hiroshima city?
Director MOENG : “For me, it’s my second time in Hiroshima. So, I lost a bit of the first impression. Hiroshima has a background like a phoenix rising from the dark. The people here, after what happened, for me, it’s a new reconstruction.”

Interviewer : The Rubber Tappers explores latex exploitation in Cambodia. What message did you try to convey through the film?
Director MOENG : “The message is that everything can resist time. The tree embodies this phenomenon; they survive for almost decades. The kids coming from an ethnic minority in the north of Cambodia also represent the idea of keeping their culture alive through time. His language and culture almost disappeared because the latex industry is taking the land where the ethnic group was initially living. But he continues to speak his language, to connect with nature like his ancestors did. So it’s about the impact of globalization in the world, how it can destroy culture but also how culture can survive it.”
Then he added a sentence that just gives sense to the whole short film :
“You know what caoutchouc means? Cao means tree, and ochu means tear; the literal meaning is crying tree. Globalization was announced even in the words.”

Interviewer : Carrying such a meaningful message in a 20-minute film must have come with its challenges. Did you face any difficulties?
Director MOENG : “For me, my film itself is a challenge because it’s my very first short film. I can say I’m a very young filmmaker. I can think about two challenges that I had. The first is to make my mother’s dream come true. She’s acting in the film with my father. She always wanted to be an actress. So the challenge was to take her into the project. Actually, there is only one professional actor in my film. The uncle coming back from France, he’s the only professional actor. For my mother, it was her first time. So the challenge is that the mother is the boss at home in our society, so I had to direct my mother. It’s not easy. We had to take 19 takes for one of the scenes because I wanted it to be perfect. But at the end, I said to my mom, ‘Do what you feel, what you want,’ and that was the perfect take.”
“The second challenge for me is the kid, when he was imitating a monkey on the big tree. This scene is about the ethnic minority connecting with the forest, the spirit. It was also the first time acting for the kid, so it was not easy for him to play that.”

Interviewer : It’s clear that your work is deeply connected to Cambodian culture and tradition. Are there any upcoming projects you would like to talk about ?
Director MOENG : “I wanted to do a movie. But when I talked about the idea, people around me told me to start with something smaller. So I did The Rubber Tappers and it worked pretty well; I had the occasion to present it in a few festivals. Now my new project is a movie mixing filming scenes and animation. I want to explore Cambodian culture through a kid's mind. So the moments inside his memory are going to be animated.”

Interview by Manon BAUER