Film
Puthisen Neang Kongrey
Puthisen Neang Kongrey (12 Sisters, Twelve Sisters) is a 1968 Cambodian fantasy film by Ly Bun Yim, based on the Khmer myth of the Twelve Sisters.[1] The Cambodia Town Film Festival calls it a major success of Cambodian cinema.[1]
Synopsis
A king marries twelve orphaned sisters.[1] His thirteenth wife is secretly a giant witch disguised as a beautiful princess, and she convinces him that the other wives are witches.[1] The king has the twelve sisters blinded and thrown into a cave, where they survive only by eating their own newborn children.[1][2] Only Puthisen survives unharmed, and he cares for his mother and his aunts.[2] Grown into a young man, he returns to the court and wins the king's trust.[3]
Production and credits
Ly Bun Yim wrote and directed the film.[4] He directed more than 20 films between 1960 and 1975.[1] Kong Sam Oeurn and Virak Dara, the couple who starred in his greatest successes, play the adult Puthisen and Kong Rey.[1][5] Nop Nem plays the king, Saksi Sbong plays Yeak Sonthamea, and Kim Nova is also in the cast.[5][1] Sunpicture Production and Runteas Pich are listed as the production companies.[5]
The film was one of the few Cambodian films of its time shot on 35mm rather than 16mm.[1] Audiences were drawn to Ly Bun Yim's signature effects: enucleation (the removal of eyes), a skull spirit leaving the cave, a flying horse and pig, and an earthquake.[1]
Survival and restoration
Ly Bun Yim kept only three of his films, among them Twelve Sisters.[1] For years the film had rarely been shown in Cambodia, and then only in poor digital copies.[1] A 35mm print was found in Norwalk, California, at the house of Ly Bun Yim's son, Dawish D. Nil, and was sent to Berlin in January 2012.[1] Its image was in fairly good condition, but its soundtrack was a Thai version rather than the original Khmer.[1] Ly Bun Yim said he made the Thai version in the early 1980s for a release in Thailand that never took place. The original 35mm print is considered lost.[1]
The print was screened with English subtitles at the Berlinale Forum on February 13, 2012, with Ly Bun Yim present.[1] It came to Berlin together with the documentary Golden Slumbers, about the lost Cambodian cinema of the 1960s and 1970s.[1] Because the print had begun to age, it was then kept at −18°C (0°F) in the Arsenal archives in Berlin, awaiting restoration.[1] In 2017, Ly Bun Yim supervised the digitization and the resynchronization of the original Khmer soundtrack.[6] A newly digitized version screened at the eighth Cambodia International Film Festival in 2018, the first screening in good conditions in Cambodia since the 1970s.[1]
The remastered version had its first U.S. screening at the Cambodia Town Film Festival at the Art Theatre Long Beach on September 15, 2019.[1] The festival also gave Virak Dara its Lifetime Achievement Award.[4]
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 1.17 1.18 1.19 Cambodia Town Film Festival, CTFF 2019 Special Screening: 12 SISTERS (PUTHISEN NEANG KONGREY) RE-MASTERED HD (archived)
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 MovieMeter, Puthisen Neang Kongrey (Movie, 1968) - MovieMeter.com (2020-05-09)
- ↑ Movieplayer.it, Puthisen Neang Kongrey (1968)
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Cambodia Town Film Festival, 12 SISTERS (PUTHISEN NEANG KONGREY) RE-MASTERED HD
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 IMDb, Puthisen Neang Kongrey (1968)
- ↑ IMDb, Khmer-language feature films by year