An Inside Take on New Film, ‘Inside Job’

Men Kimseng, VOA Khmer
Washington, DC Wednesday, 29 December 2010

via CAAI

Photo: Courtesy of Charles Ferguson

“No one wants to take responsibility.”

Charles Ferguson’s newest film, “Inside Job,” examines the realities behind the 2008 economic crisis, which resulted in millions of people losing their homes and jobs.

The film, which is shortlisted for the Oscars and recently screened in many theaters in Washington, shows evidence that Wall Street executives took advantage of financial deregulation to buy and sell murky investments, eventually derailing the US economy.

Kalyanee Mam, a US-Cambodian, was director of photography and an associate producer on the film.

“The market cannot just be deregulated,” she said in an interview with VOA Khmer. “If it is, it can lead to a [bubble] burst, like what we experienced. There should be rule of law and accountability.”

Over the course of the film’s production, Kalyanee Mam said she saw CEOs keeping quiet about what went wrong and who was responsible.

“No one wants to take responsibility,” she said. “It was tough to get the CEOs of companies to talk to us. No one wanted to talk to us.”

In the end, she said, the poorest would face the consequences: losing jobs and paying for a market bailout. There’s a lesson in that, she said.

“They should put public interest higher than the private one, than the corporate one,” she said.