Him Sophy

HIM SOPHY (composer; Cambodia) was born into a musical family in Prey Veng Province, Cambodia in 1963. He started learning the piano in 1972 in Phnom Penh, but was forced out of the city in 1975 for the duration of the Khmer Rouge regime. After the fall of the Khmer Rouge, he returned to his musical studies at Cambodia’s Secondary School of Fine Arts. In 1985, he won a scholarship to the Moscow Conservatory of Music, where he studied and earned his PhD. He returned to Cambodia in 1998, and opened the Him Sophy School of Music in 2013. His previous works, including the acclaimed rock opera Where Elephants Weep, have demonstrated an unparalleled facility for bringing Western and Khmer musical worlds into intimate conversation. This time, Sophy combines a Western chamber orchestra and chorus with Khmer instrumentalists and vocalists. These traditional musical forms are crucial for honoring the dead; unfortunately, live performances are seldom heard in the capital and rapidly disappearing in the countryside.

Rithy Panh

RITHY PANH (director, designer, filmmaker; Cambodia) was born in Phnom Penh, but expelled from the capital by the Khmer Rouge as an 11-year-old in 1975. He escaped to Thailand in 1979, and lived for a time in a refugee camp in Mairut. He later made his way to Paris, and graduated from the Institut des hautes études cinématographiques. He returned to Cambodia in 1990, and splits his time between Paris and Phnom Penh. An internationally-acclaimed documentary director and screenwriter, he was named Asian Filmmaker of the Year by the Busan International Film Festival in 2013. He

is the first Cambodian filmmaker nominated for an Oscar for The Missing Picture (2013). The same year, he received a prize in the “Un Certain Regard” category at the Cannes Festival. His documentary S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine was awarded the prestigious Albert Londres Prize in 2004. Most recently, he worked as producer for Angelina Jolie’s film First They Killed My Father, based on Loung Ung’s memoir, released in September 2017. Panh is also the founder of the Bophana Audiovisual Resource Center in Phnom Penh, which makes film, photography, and sound archives on Cambodia publicly available, and trains a new generation of Cambodian filmmakers and multimedia technicians.

Trent Walker

TRENT WALKER (librettist; USA) is a young scholar of Southeast Asian Buddhist music. Trained in jazz and Western classical music, he spent several years in Cambodia studying with vocal masters Prum Ut, Koet Ran, and Yan Borin while working with Cambodian Living Arts. A former Buddhist novice monk, he regularly performs and gives lectures on the Cambodian Dharma song (smot) tradition of Buddhist chant. At present he is a PhD student in Buddhist studies at the University of California, Berkeley where his research focuses on Southeast Asian Buddhist liturgies in Khmer, Lao, Pali, and Thai.

Gideon Obarzanek

GIDEON OBARZANEK (director of staging; Australia) is a director, playwright, and choreographer. He is also an artistic associate with the Melbourne Festival, chair of the Melbourne Fringe, and board member of Critical Path choreographic research center based in Sydney. In 1995, he founded the Australian dance company Chunky Move and was CEO and artistic director until 2012. Under his leadership the company established itself as one of the country’s most innovative, awarded, and internationally-recognized performing

arts companies. Awards include Best Short Documentary for Dance Like Your Old Man (Melbourne IFF, Cinedans Festival), a Bessie Award for outstanding choreography and creation, and Australian Helpmann Awards for Glow and Mortal Engine (2009 Next Wave).

Chhorn Sam Ath

Chhorn Sam Ath is a well-known singer and actor who also teaches at the Royal University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh. In 2007, Sam Ath was invited to perform at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. Both singers hail from famous artist families and have performed extensively in Cambodia, New Zealand, and the US.