I was at least expecting a delicate conversation in which I would have to justify my strange request. But he immediately understands what I mean and I enter his property without any discussion. I feel like a Pinteresque movie character.
The boy doesn’t even want to see where I’m going. He knows why I’m here. He has had visitors with the same bizarre question before. Always Barang, foreigners, because Cambodians don’t understand what’s so special about that old crap.
In my stocking feet, I follow the narrow, dark hallway that brings me to a small bathroom with a water barrel. At the back of the house, a paved garden path leads to three rusted doors. They make a metal sighing sound before giving me access to the treasure hidden behind them.
One big step, over a pile of rubble and crumbling walls and I’m entering a forgotten part of the rich artistic history in the city of Battambang. This used to be a popular cinema. The canvas is still there, on a collapsed wooden podium. The numbered folding chairs as well, although some have been turned into firewood. The place seems even mustier than during my last visit.
It has been raining inside and that slowly but surely demolishes bricks and walls. It’s not that the roof is leaking. There is no roof at all. I don’t understand how it can simply disappear. When I look up, I see the blue sky. Here and there are some pieces of corrugated iron, clumsily trying to protect the construction against the tropical downpours.
The ceiling decoration is still there. It’s a frivolous pattern of diamond-shaped tiles in faded green and red. In some places, they’re lifelessly hanging down as if to accentuate the sadness of this place.
Personally, I love decay and decline, places with a soul and an ancient history that transcends human existence. But what I see here can only be called shameful.
The sixties was the golden age of Cambodia, at the time called ‘The Pearl of Southeast Asia’.
Cambodia had a rich film culture in the 1960s. The then king-filmmaker, Norodom Sihanouk, was able to gather the best actors and musicians around him. He used the silver screen to show off the rich culture of his country. Not very original visuals or exciting scenarios but rather the traditional Apsara, a typical dance with graceful hand movements.
It was the golden age of Cambodia, at the time called “the pearl of Southeast Asia”. A rapidly developing country that was looking for its own identity as the French domination had ended in 1953. There was not only film and dance but also rock ‘n’ roll. American and British classics were mixed with local folk music, creating a specific Cambodian sound.
In the 1970s, the Khmer Rouge would destroy all these diamonds. Leader Pol Pot’s reign of terror considered artists to be suspicious.
They were murdered or mysteriously disappeared from the stage. That cultural fabric has been able to recover, but not to the full extent.
You would hope that this mould-filled cinema could still be saved. I imagine how 300 enthusiastic spectators might walk in here again. Not through the house of the young man with his bath towel, of course, but via the stately front of the building, which is now boarded up.
In the 1970s, the Khmer Rouge would destroy all these diamonds. Leader Pol Pot’s reign of terror considered artists to be suspicious.
But it’s too late. The walls are rotten and inhabited by cockroaches or rats. The ground floor is clearly being used as a dog toilet. The ramshackle balcony, where you could once find the best seats, looks so unstable that I don’t dare go up.
The owner is waiting for the last piece of wood to fall, so he can ride the road roller over the cultural past of his country and build luxury apartments on it. Property developers and building promoters are always a little faster than artists. And the clinking sound of money is louder than the beauty of music.
There is an awareness that cultural heritage is valuable, but mostly when it comes to classical temples from the tenth century or the female Apsara dancers depicted on the walls.
After the Khmer Rouge period, this country was rebuilt from refugee camps, where you were always on the lookout for possible danger. This attitude has curbed creativity. Young people now make music with discarded computers and a plastic rattle beat. But if you’re quick, you’ll find a few remnants of unadulterated rock ‘n’ roll.
