charleston.netThursday, February 7, 2008
Born in a Thai refugee camp but raised in Dallas, Socheata Poeuv had scant knowledge of the circumstances that ushered her family to the United States, until undertaking an odyssey of her own.
When the filmmaker turned 25, her parents dropped a bombshell: She and her two sisters actually were cousins and her brother, only her half brother. Each member of the family was a survivor of the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia, smuggled to Thailand by Poeuv's father before the family immigrated to the West. But the revelation raised more questions than it answered. Traveling with her brother and parents back to Cambodia, Poeuv established a link with her past and discovered the horrific scope of the Killing Fields.
This was the genesis of her award-winning documentary "New Year Baby." The 2007-08 Southern Circuit Tour of Independent Filmmakers, hosted locally by the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art, continues Friday with an 8 p.m. screening of Poeuv's film in Room 309 of the Simons Center for the Arts at the College of Charleston.
"New Year Baby" is a personal documentary/travel diary reveals how Poeuv's family survived the Cambodian genocide. The film received Amnesty International's Movies That Matter Award at its 2006 premiere and earned Best Documentary honors at both the AFI Dallas International Film Festival and the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival.
The 2007-08 Southern Circuit Tour of Independent Filmmakers is a program of the Southern Arts Federation. All events are free and open to the public. For information, call 953-7891 or go online at www.halsey.cofc.edu. The Tour is a program of the nonprofit Southern Arts Federation (www.southarts.org).
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