Film
Last of the Elephant Men
Last of the Elephant Men is a 2014 documentary about the Indigenous Bunong people of eastern Cambodia and their bond with elephants.[1] Daniel Ferguson and Arnaud Bouquet directed it, and its French title is Les Derniers hommes éléphants.[2][3]
Synopsis
For centuries the Bunong of Mondulkiri Province, near the border with Vietnam, lived with elephants and believed they shared the same destiny.[2] They regard elephants and humans as coming from the same soul. A single elephant was often shared by many families and stood at the center of Bunong life.[1] In the 40 years before 2014, war, the Khmer Rouge, and logging and mining companies reduced the elephants and took Bunong ancestral land.[1] The forests and rivers that both people and elephants depend on are under threat.[2]
The film follows three Bunong from different generations.[1] Mrey is an elderly elephant catcher who caught and tamed hundreds of elephants in his lifetime. Troubled by nightmares and a lingering illness, he travels across Mondulkiri to find elephants he once caught and ask their forgiveness.[1] He became a broken man after the Khmer Rouge seized his elephants.[4] In the opening scene he tells the legend of how people long ago ate magical fish and became elephants.[5]
Mane became the first Bunong to earn a university degree, at 25. At 32 she is a human rights lawyer who helps her people secure legal claim to their ancestral lands, and she sets out to find the elephant her family sold and bring her back.[1] Duol, 17, prefers motorcycles to elephants. When his father becomes too ill to work, he trains as a mahout, an elephant rider, to support his parents. He must also perform sacrifices when something terrible happens in the village, and his future is shaken when his elephant falls ill.[1]
The film links the loss of elephants to wider threats to Bunong culture and to Cambodia's biodiversity.[1][5] Its settings range from the jungles of Mondulkiri to the temples of Angkor and the streets of Phnom Penh.[1]
Production and credits
Ferguson conceived the film on a 2006 trip to Mondulkiri and the Central Highlands of Vietnam, and he wrote it.[4] Research and first filming began in 2006. Some chosen subjects died while funds were raised, so research resumed in 2009 and 2011. The main shoot ran for three years, from 2012 to 2014.[1] The filmmakers lived for long stretches with Bunong families in Mondulkiri.[5] The crew traveled up to 12 hours by car, then by motorcycle, to reach villages. Ferguson has said he was chased out of Vietnam by the secret police, and some key footage left the region with backpackers.[4]
When research began in 2006, Mondulkiri had more than 180 domestic elephants. By the end of 2014 it had fewer than 40.[1] Bophana Audiovisual Resource Center supported the crew.[1] The film has no interviews, voice-over or narration. It includes speech in Bunong, a language with no written form and perhaps 40,000 speakers, and eight translators worked on the footage during a year of editing.[4]
Arnaud Bouquet was the cinematographer and Elric Robichon the editor. Sylvain Moreau composed the music, and Benoît Dame and Catherine Van Der Donckt handled sound design and editing.[1] Ian Oliveri, Ian Quenneville, Laurent Mini and Karim Samaï produced it as a Canadian and French coproduction of InformAction and La Compagnie des Taxi-Brousse.[1] SODEC, the Rogers Documentary Fund and the Centre National de la Cinématographie et de l'Image Animée gave financial support, with France Télévisions (France 5) and TV5 Québec Canada taking part. Filmoption International distributes the film.[1] The press kit gives a running time of 86 minutes; other listings give 90 minutes.[1][4]
Release and reception
The film had its world premiere in the National Competition of the Montreal International Documentary Festival (RIDM) in November 2014.[1] It won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Cinematography in a Feature Documentary.[6]
The film was an official selection of the 2016 Cambodia Town Film Festival, where it had its Long Beach, California premiere on September 3, 2016. It screened in Khmer with English subtitles.[2] The festival named it Best Documentary Feature.[3]
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 1.16 squarespace, (PDF) PRESS KIT - Filmoption International
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Cambodia Town Film Festival, CTFF 2016 Official Selection: LAST OF THE ELEPHANT MEN (archived)
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Cambodia Town Film Festival, CTFF 2016 Best Documentary Feature: LAST OF THE ELEPHANT MEN (archived)
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 Times Colonist, Documentary explores Asian tribe's bond with elephants
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Phnom Penh Post, The last generation of working elephants
- ↑ web.archive.org, Cambodia Town Film Festival (2016-08-16)