Creator

John Pirozzi

John Pirozzi is an American filmmaker and cinematographer who directed two documentaries about Cambodian popular music.

John Pirozzi is an American filmmaker and cinematographer who directed Don't Think I've Forgotten: Cambodia's Lost Rock and Roll (2014).[1][2] The documentary follows Cambodian popular music from the 1950s to the mid-1970s and the musicians lost under the Khmer Rouge. He spent about ten years making it from songs, photographs and footage that people connected to the music gave him.[3][4]

Career

Pirozzi works as a cinematographer, camera operator and director.[5] In 2001 he spent several months in Cambodia as a camera operator on Matt Dillon's thriller City of Ghosts.[6][7] The work led him to read about Cambodia's modern history and its culture before the Khmer Rouge.[8] His interest in the music began when he received a copy of the compilation Cambodian Rocks.[6]

His first feature documentary, Sleepwalking Through the Mekong (2007), follows the California band Dengue Fever on its first trip to Cambodia. He directed and shot it.[9][5]

Don't Think I've Forgotten

Pirozzi first meant to make a film about Cambodia's modern history. After hearing the country's rock music from before the Khmer Rouge, he chose to tell the story through its music, to show that the music had survived war and genocide.[7][10] He began filming in 2003. From Los Angeles he went to Long Beach to talk with members of the Cambodian community and to find surviving musicians. Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, helped the crew find more of them.[8] For a time he paid for the project himself, traveling back and forth between Los Angeles and Cambodia.[10]

He began with the names of three artists, and the film grew through stories and interviews in Khmer, English and French.[6] LinDa Saphan, an urban anthropologist, was associate producer, researcher and translator, and she conducted many of the interviews because she spoke all three languages. Nate Hun was also an associate producer.[11][10] Among those he interviewed was the singer Sieng Vanthy, about her life under the Khmer Rouge. He found that famous singers could rarely hide who they were under the regime, while some backing musicians could.[4] He later said these interviews were an intense process, because survivors had to go back to times when they were forced to hide or change who they were.[12]

At the start, many people told him he would find few photographs or archival film. Archival footage was very hard to obtain, and the original master recordings seem not to have survived the Khmer Rouge years. The music survived because people kept, hid and preserved recordings, and the film used original vinyl records from Cambodian collectors.[12][11] Interviewees told him again and again that Baksey Cham Krong was Cambodia's first guitar band, but at first he could find none of its recordings. A call from a Khmer American friend in Washington, D.C., led him to Mol Kagnol, who had the band's records and photographs.[10][7] He said the film came together communally, through the people who cared about the music and the country.[12]

Pirozzi shaped the story in the editing room from what the interviews had gathered, and he spent another year and a half refining the edit.[11][6] He named the film after a song by Sinn Sisamouth, whom he called Cambodia's biggest pop star, comparable to both Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra.[8][4] The film also covers Ros Serey Sothea, Pen Ran and Yol Aularong.[2] He produced it with Andrew Pope and was its cinematographer, and he wrote extensive liner notes for its soundtrack.[3][5][10] It is a 105-minute production from Cambodia, France and the United States, in English, French and Khmer with English subtitles.[2]

The film's first public screening was in Phnom Penh.[6] In 2015 it opened in New York and screened across the United States, including a week at Showcase Cinemas Lowell with question-and-answer sessions with Pirozzi, and a run at the SIFF Film Center in Seattle.[4][6][11] The critic A. O. Scott called it an unsparing and meticulous reckoning with the effects of tyranny on ordinary Cambodians.[1] Pirozzi said the film drew strong reactions from Cambodians and from viewers new to the story. He called the story a positive one because the music survived.[6] In 2021 he and LinDa Saphan led a discussion after a screening at Asia Art Archive in America.[9]

Works


  • Sleepwalking Through the Mekong (2007), director and cinematographer[9]
  • Don't Think I've Forgotten: Cambodia's Lost Rock and Roll (2014), director, producer and cinematographer[2][3]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Don't Think I've Forgotten, Wikipedia
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 CAAMFest 2015, Don't Think I've Forgotten: Cambodia's Lost Rock and Roll (March 18, 2015)
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Documentation Center of Cambodia, Don't Think I've Forgotten discussion guide, with a message from John Pirozzi
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 NPR, The Nearly Lost Story of Cambodian Rock 'N' Roll (April 22, 2015)
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 IMDb, John Pirozzi, Camera and Electrical Department, Cinematographer, Director
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 The Boston Globe, 'Don't Think I've Forgotten' explores Cambodia's rock scene (April 23, 2015)
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 VICE (Portuguese edition), Don't Think I've Forgotten documenta a cena do rock cambojano antes do Khmer Vermelho
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Democracy Now!, Don't Think I've Forgotten uncovers Cambodia's rock 'n' roll (April 24, 2015)
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 Asia Art Archive in America, Cambodia's Lost Rock and Roll: a screening with LinDa Saphan, John Pirozzi and Nate Hun (2021)
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 VICE, Don't Think I've Forgotten documents the Cambodian rock scene (June 2, 2015)
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 International Examiner, Cambodia's lost rock 'n' roll: Music represents a hopeful time in a dark period (January 19, 2019)
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 NPR, The Nearly Lost Story of Cambodian Rock 'N' Roll, transcript (April 22, 2015)
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This page was last edited on 26 September 2026, at 23:39.