Rithy Panh’s Meeting with Pol Pot (2024) revisits the haunting Khmer Rouge leader, often in shadow, re-engaging the regime's propaganda archives. This presentation draws from postdoctoral research analyzing mise-en-scène as a method to investigate staging, ideology, and hidden violence within these official films (1975-1979), largely held at the Bophana Center in Cambodia. Our project develops the methodology "recomposition of mise-en-scène", confronting archival images with extra-filmic sources to critically reread intended meanings and reveal internal tensions.
Focusing on leadership representation, this paper examines Pol Pot’s portrayal in the propaganda corpus. Contrary to pervasive collective labor images, Pol Pot and high-ranking officials are selectively present. When appearing (e.g., Défilé militaire khmer rouge, Meeting khmer rouge au stade), the mise-en-scène builds rigid hierarchy, visually separating leaders from populace and emphasizing military power. Official visit images (e.g., Visite de la délégation chinoise et laotienne) depict controlled environments and hint at privileges (palaces, cars, banquets) starkly contrasting with the enforced austerity of the population.
Our analysis articulates these filmic constructions with extra-filmic materials: historiography gives context; regime slogans and Pol Pot’s speeches reveal ideological contradictions (such as demanding sacrifice under the sun while using a fan himself); crucially, victim testimonies about forced labor allow perceiving subtle details in the images – fleeting expressions, exhausted bodies – challenging the regime's monolithic narrative of revolutionary fervor and exposing violence masked by the propaganda’s heroic facade. This approach offers cautionary tales from authoritarian archives about visual regimes disciplining history and bodies, insights crucial for navigating complex realities past and present.
