Creator
Robert H. Lieberman
Robert H. Lieberman is a documentary director and novelist who made the Cambodia portrait film Angkor Awakens.
Robert H. Lieberman is an American documentary director and novelist who made Angkor Awakens: A Portrait of Cambodia (2016).[1][2] He has been a member of the physics faculty at Cornell University since 1980.[3]
Career
Lieberman trained as a scientist and has written novels since he was 18.[4] He has published six novels, among them The Nazis, My Father and Me (2015) and The Boys of Truxton.[5][3] His novels also include Neighbors, about a ballet teacher drawn into the defects of a house he buys, and Baby, about an aging school librarian who believes she is dying but is pregnant.[1] In 2016 an animated feature based on The Nazis, My Father and Me was being made in Paris with the producer Didier Brunner.[3]
He has made several films for PBS, among them Faces in a Famine, on the 1985 famine in Ethiopia. His other films include BoyceBall, about the making of a new ballet, the comedy Green Lights and Last Stop Kew Gardens (2007), about American children of Holocaust survivors.[5][4][3] For They Call It Myanmar (2012), which shows Myanmar as it tried to move beyond military rule, he visited Burma five times over three years. Without a permit to film, he worked alone, shooting and recording sound himself, and he interviewed Aung San Suu Kyi at the headquarters of the National League for Democracy.[4][6]
Angkor Awakens
Lieberman filmed Angkor Awakens over four years across Cambodia, staying up to six weeks at a time.[3] The 90-minute film was cut from 200 hours of footage and more than 150 interviews; the film's own site gives 149 interviews, which Lieberman recorded himself using only available light.[3][5] Shadow puppets tell parts of Cambodian history, which the film traces from Angkor through the French protectorate and the Vietnam War to the Khmer Rouge years and the present.[3][7] It looks at the coup that removed a pro-U.S. leader, the rise of the Khmer Rouge, the effect of the secret U.S. bombing, and what younger Cambodians know and do not know about that period.[8][5] It also draws parallels between the Cambodian genocide and the Holocaust.[3] His background as a child of the Holocaust led him to explore the effects of genocide on young Cambodians.[9]
The interviews include two hours with Prime Minister Hun Sen, recorded one-on-one at a hotel in New York City, and a conversation with John Gunther Dean, the last American ambassador to Cambodia before Khmer Rouge rule.[3][7] Lieberman also filmed a violent clash involving riot police and the prime minister's private guards.[3] He has said the title refers to Cambodia emerging from the dark years of the Pol Pot regime, and that the film ends on a hopeful note.[2][7] It had its Washington, D.C., premiere on May 7, 2017.[10]
Recognition
- They Call It Myanmar: New York Times Critics' Pick (2012)[3]
- They Call It Myanmar: one of Roger Ebert's top dozen documentaries of 2012[5]
Works
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Robert H. Lieberman, official website
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 VOA Khmer, interview with Robert Lieberman on Angkor Awakens (March 16, 2017)
- ↑ 3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 3.10 Cornell Chronicle, 'Angkor Awakens' explores Cambodia's hope, traumatic past (September 29, 2016)
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Film at Lincoln Center, Robert Lieberman on They Call It Myanmar (April 3, 2012)
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 Angkor Awakens, About
- ↑ The New York Times, Review: 'Angkor Awakens,' a blistering account of Cambodia's painful past (May 3, 2017)
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 VOA Khmer, Q&A: Robert H. Lieberman, director of 'Angkor Awakens: A Portrait of Cambodia'
- ↑ The Seattle Times, 'Angkor Awakens' review (May 25, 2017)
- ↑ Laemmle Theatres, Angkor Awakens: A Portrait of Cambodia (2017)
- ↑ VOA Khmer, At screening of 'Angkor Awakens', hopes for reflection and progress (May 17, 2017)