Tuol Sleng Blessing Ceremony from Briana Berry on Vimeo.
This first piece documents a blessing ceremony that happened at the former Tuol Sleng prison in Phnom Penh the day before the verdict announcement of its former prison chief, Duch. It was my first time visiting the prison, to be honest I wouldn't have gone just to see the museum. I feel pretty adimantly against horror tourism. But I was glad to have a work assignment there because I got to see just how much this site has been transformed into a media photo-op, if you will. Being that the ceremony was staged before such a landmark media event, there was a ton of international press in attendance alongside country folks that had been bussed in to pray. Honestly the media scrum crowding around anyone who was crying hard enough felt a tad exploitative, but that was the aim of the event to some degree.
Khmer Rouge Verdict Announcement - The Media Frenzy from Briana Berry on Vimeo.
This next piece was shot at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia aka the court that is handling the Khmer Rouge War Crimes Tribunal. While the mass of people that showed up for the event where not actually inside the court room (in fact, cell phones weren't even allowed inside the court room), they bused a huge group of Cambodians from the provinces to watch the proceedings on a screen set up right outside the court. And to my knowledge, they have been busing people in for nearly every stage of the trial. Many people have said that what the ECCC is doing is enough, but I think that they have really made a genuine effort to involve Cambobians in this whole process.
Funny tidbit: The crying woman that this piece starts out with is actually one of the civil parties that was denied in the court's ruling. From what I have heard, she actually might be a fraud! Her claim is that an uncle was killed at Tuol Sleng at the hands of prison chief, Duch. However, this uncle 'died' before she was born....Ah, the hangers on of genocide.
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