VANISHING CULTURES
Kalyanee Mam’s refreshingly quiet and cinematic documentary A River Changes Course follows families in rural Cambodia as they struggle with the effects of global progress on their simple way of life. A fisherman is forced to send his son off to work as a laborer because overfishing has decimated the rivers. A rice farmer packs her daughter off to the big city to work in a garment factory to pay off their debts. A villager laments deforestation; where once tigers, bears and elephants roamed, now the only danger is man.
We know of this phenomenon; once thriving communities—made no longer economically viable by encroaching industrialization—wither to exhausted shadows of their former selves. Perhaps those of us from small towns have seen versions of this firsthand: A landscape that seemed eternal is suddenly and irrevocably altered; cultures, skills, customs, ways of seeing and being are lost forever. Where once there was a haunted ancestral wood now there’s a ______ (fill in the blank).
How these familiar stories differ is in their specifics, and Ms. Mam captures with care and sympathy the unique details of her subjects’ lives and the magnificent landscape which they inhabit. To anyone growing up in a metropolitan environment in modern America, the ability to travel and adapt to new surroundings is seen as almost a requirement (at least for anyone on a dating site). We have little if any connection to the land and we can watch our favorite shows and get our favorite coffee anywhere in the country, if not the world. But the individuals Ms. Mam follows are not so lighthearted and versatile. They are tied not merely materially but spiritually to the earth on which they walk, which they farm, to the waters which they fish, and Ms. Mam explores these connections with the straightforwardness and minimalism that match her subjects’ lives.
There are no politics in this documentary. No solutions are offered, there is no finger pointing, no tired statistics or expert analyses, no talking heads, and barely an interview. Instead Ms. Mam simply shows us the sad sweet beauty that is her subjects’ vanishing lives.
photos © 2012 Migrant Films
A River Changes Course
Migrant Films
Cambodia/USA / 2013 / 83 minutes
in Khmer & Jarai w/English Subtitles
opens October  4, 2013 in New York (IFC Center);
October 11, 2013 in Los Angeles (Music Hall)
for more info and screenings, visit http://ariverchangescourse.com/