On Tuesday April 26th at 3:30pm join students from ASIA 1000: Origins of Contemporary Southeast Asia Class for a special screening of Kavich Neang’s Last Night I Saw You Smiling (77 minutes)

One decade after Cambodia’s independence and amid a movement of New Khmer Architecture, Cambodian architect Lu Bun Hap and Soviet architect Vladimir Bodiansky constructed the Municipal Apartments, also known as the White Building. The housing block bore witness to a tremendous series of events: the young nation’s Golden Age; a traumatic breakdown under a radical regime; decades of cultural revival centered within its walls; and, the rapid pace of capitalist development that would ultimately lead to  its demise. 

When director Kavich Neang learns the 493 families of the White Building, an architectural landmark in Phnom Penh where he lived since birth, have agreed to vacate for a condo development, he decides to document the last days, starting by following his parents and family.

His father, a sculptor with the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts, and his mother arrived to the White Building when the government gathered surviving artists to live there after 1979. They express satisfaction with the compensation, but they argue amid the pressure of the move-out process. By the time that they leave, they cannot contain their emotions anymore.

Among Khmer directors emerging today, Kavich Neang is one of the most talented, and certainly one of the most singular voices for Cambodian cinema yet to come.

The White Building was a historic and symbolic building in the heart of Phnom Penh, built in the 1960s and recently destroyed. For nearly thirty years, from his birth in 1987 to his departure in 2017, Kavich Neang lived at apartment number 37, on the third floor of the White Building’s building B. Kavich Neang often shot in this incredible place (A Scale Boy, Three Wheels). When the government abruptly announced a demolition plan for the White Building in May 2017, it became urgent for Kavich Neang to capture the remaining moments of the building’s iconic heritage before they became only memories.

This film responds to his desire to capture and reconstruct the memory of this place and the meaning it has held for so many families through the decades. But this project is more than just a memorial. Through the liberating power of cinema, Kavich Neang plays with the very notions of memory or nostalgia even as he maintains the honesty of lucid observation on the realities of modern Cambodia.

In recent years, the Cambodian film industry has seen real changes, with the emergence of new directors and with the re-opening of movie theaters. Cinema has become fashionable again. But as in all countries around the world, the mainstream film industry is defining the rules, and the struggle has moved to the challenge of building and defending independent voices on the sidelines of the main industry. Our company Anti-Archive was created to accompany the development of those  independent filmmakers in Cambodia, and Last Night I Saw You Smiling by Kavich Neang is a fundamental step towards fulfilling this ambition.