I went to Cambodia in 1986, on an assignment given to me by Kathy Ryan of the New York Times Sunday magazine to photograph Dith Pran and Haing Ngor.

My assignment coincided with Diane Sawyer who was doing an ABC news piece on Dith Pran and Haing Ngor returning to Cambodia after filming the movie “The Kiling Fields.” It was the first time Pran had returned to his country, and it was still a bit dangerous because there were still Khmer Rouge in the countryside.

Pran grew up near Angkor Wat and as a young man had been a tour guide, when he met Sidney Schanberg, the New York Times reporter, whom he worked for as a translator and fixer.

Schanberg was eventually forced to leave the country, but while he won a Pulitzer for his coverage, Pran became a virtual slave of the Khmer Rouge in a death camp. Dith Pran watched the country descend into the hell known as the killing fields, but was able to survive from 1975 until 1979 during the time when a third of the population was killed. Pran later said, “Only the silent survived.”

Eventually Schanberg found Pran in a refugee camp and brought him back to New York and helped him to immigrate to the United States where Pran became a photographer for the New York Times.

Pran and I became friends after our time in Cambodia so after he retired from the New York Times, we returned to Siem Reap. It was moving to be with him as he returned to his country and revisited his family. While there, we visited nearby Angkor Wat. I was so struck at the magnificence of this temple complex, I planned to come back and photograph it as soon as I had the opportunity. Years later, I went back and photographed Angkor Wat on assignment for National Geographic.

Haing Ngor, who played Pran in the movie, “The Killing Fields,” won an Oscar for his role. Tragically, Ngor who was a doctor in real life, was murdered in Los Angeles during a robbery.

Gisteraand op TCM het hulle die uitmuntende The Killing Fields gewys. Die fliek is gebaseer op die ware verhaal van Dith Pran, ‘n Kambodjaanse joernalis, wat na Amerika se ontrekking uit Kambodja gevangene geneem word deur die wreedlustige Khmer Rouge. Al het die fliek ‘n “gelukkige” einde is dit ‘n verskriklike hartseer fliek. Dit wys net weereens hoe Absolute Power corrupts Absolutely.

Hierdie is een van die beter flieks van die laaste 30 jaar. Ek gee hom 4.5 / 5. Niemand kan ooit die musiek van Mike Oldfield (hieronder) hoor en nie aan die merkwaardige storie dink nie.

Dith Pran and Lia Chang at the Asian American Journalists Convention in San Francisco in 2001. (Photo by Michael S. Yamashita)

A final farewell to my good friend Dith Pran, New York Times photojournalist, humanitarian, Cambodian Genocide survivor, and the subject of the Oscar winning 1984 movie “The Killing Fields,” who succumbed to pancreatic cancer on March 30, 2008 in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

The Dith Family has started the Dith Pran Foundation, whose  mission is to form a memorial for Cambodian victims of the “Killing Fields,” a scholarship for Cambodians who will make a difference in the world, and other projects that will empower the Cambodian people. 

Donations can be sent to the New York Times in Dith Prans’ honor, and will be forwarded to the Dith Pran Foundation.

Dith Pran, Staff Photographer
The New York Times
4th floor Picture Desk
Att: Melissa Bellinelli
620 Eighth Ave.
New York, New York 10018

El proppassat dilluns 24 tinguè lloc l’última de les projeccions del Cine-Fòrum “Orson Welles” de Periodisme a la UMH amb la pel·lícula “Els crits del silenci” (The Killing Fields). Fins que no es va projectar a les sales de cinema aquesta pel·lícula de Roland Joffé en 1984, no se sabia gaire cosa dels crits i dels silencis que se succeïen en aquells moments. En la dècada dels anys 60 i 70 del segle XX, gairebé tots els països de la Indoxina (principalment Cambotja i Vietnam, però) no eren sinò un obscur i sanguinari regne de tirania; mentrestant, el Govern dels Estats Units imposava a Occident l’òptica d’un infern comunista i els seus esforçats marines uns àngels justiciers.

El film conta la història, però, de com en 1975 dos periodistes del New York Times, Sidney Schanberg (Sam Waterston) i Dith Pran (Haing S. Ngor) posen de relleu com els marines estigueren sembrant el terror amb poblets bombardejats, selves cremades, infants decapitats i dones violades: el gran Mekong asiàtic convertit en riu de sang. A més d’això, també mostra les conseqüències personals dels dos periodistes per la seua iniciativa de superar la censura militar. Qui més patí va ser sobretot el cambotgià Dith Pran que, en haver-se quedat per ajudar a Schanberg a cobrir la caiguda de la capital, Phnom Penh, en mans dels comunistes, es va veure atrapat en les tortures i penúries dels esgarrifadors camps de “reeducació” dels Khmers Rojos.

Des d’ací vull donar l’enhorabona a la companya Claudia Seva per la iniciativa del cine-fòrum que, malgrat la descoratjadora resposta gairebé nul·la del públic, s’ha mantingut ferma fins al final. La també companya del grup Veintidós ens oferia als estudiants de periodisme una ocasió de fer quelcom més que estudiar al campus d’Elx.

Més informació:
Canal 3/24: “Mor el fotoperiodista Dith Pran, un dels supervivents més cèlebres del genocidi de Cambodja“, 31 de març de 2008.

I’m not sure what to make of this. If true, it’s disturbing news indeed. Sydney Schanberg recently wrote an article for The Nation which very strongly suggests that John McCain is and has been highly involved in a coverup involving hundreds of American POWs who were knowingly left behind in Vietnam. For those not familiar with Schanberg’s writing, here is a brief biography:

Sydney H. Schanberg, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, has for nearly 50 years been a reporter and columnist for the New York Times, Newsday and the Village Voice. He has reported extensively on the POW story. 

Schanberg has written extensively on foreign affairs–particularly Asia–and on domestic issues such as ethics, racial problems, government secrecy, corporate excesses and the weaknesses of the national media.

Most of his journalism career has been spent on newspapers but his award-winning work has also appeared widely in other publications and media. The 1984 movie, THE KILLING FIELDS, which won several Academy Awards, was based on his book THE DEATH AND LIFE OF DITH PRAN – a memoir of his experiences covering the war in Cambodia for the New York Times and of his relationship with his Cambodian colleague, Dith Pran.

For his accounts of the fall of Cambodia to the Khmer Rouge in 1975, Schanberg was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting “at great risk.” He is also the recipient of many other awards – including two George Polk awards, two Overseas Press Club awards and the Sigma Delta Chi prize for distinguished journalism.

In the opening paragraph of his article, Schanberg states:

John McCain, who has risen to political prominence on his image as a Vietnam POW war hero, has, inexplicably, worked very hard to hide from the public stunning information about American prisoners in Vietnam who, unlike him, didn’t return home. Throughout his Senate career, McCain has quietly sponsored and pushed into federal law a set of prohibitions that keep the most revealing information about these men buried as classified documents. Thus the war hero people would logically imagine to be a determined crusader for the interests of POWs and their families became instead the strange champion of hiding the evidence and closing the books.

I would go on to detail the theories and facts, but could never do justice to the large body of information Schanberg has collected, and will therefore simply put up a link to the article itself. There are two versions of the article: A shorter one which appeared on September 17, 2008 which can be read HERE, and a longer, far more detailed version of the article which can be read HERE. 

The rest I leave up to you.

Dith Pran, New York Times photojournalist, the subject of the film The Killing Fields died recently. The New York Times has a slideshow of some of Mr Pran’s work.

Above Mr Pran in April 1975, when the Khmer Rouge seized power in Cambodia.

A related New York Times article is here – a brief extract follows

Mr. Dith saw his country descend into a living hell as he scraped and scrambled to survive the barbarous revolutionary regime of the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1979, when as many as two million Cambodians — a third of the population — were killed, experts estimate. Mr. Dith survived through nimbleness, guile and sheer desperation. His credo: Make no move unless there was a 50-50 chance of not being killed.

Adam vividly remembers the film and the horror and outrage he felt at the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge.

 It is in death that some people achieve true immortality.

Paul Arden’s legacy suffers a little for being at his most successful when Advertising was at it’s most swollen with its own importance, not to mention that his most famous ad was for cigarettes. It is easier to remember someone like John Webster with a warm nostalgia as his work tended to deal in humour and is indelibly associated with most people’s childhood. As for Paul, suffice to say that if Spitting Image made your puppet you were probably the subject of a certain amount of ire.

I shan’t put Paul Arden’s stuff on here. You’ve all seen it – the BA ad with face, the brilliant but untrue Intercity film, It is, are you? and the car in front is a Toyota. I could go on. He was a talented guy.

However, he talked a much better game. Maverick is one of those words that gets bandied about a great deal, especially in our industry where banality rules but he respected creativity, true off the wall creativity, even if he wasn’t the poster boy for it. He also saw a nobility in what we do and went out on a limb to tell the world about it.

For my part, it is for his books that I shall remember him best. It’s not how good you are, it’s how good you want to be sits on my desk as we speak, a constant reminder that ideas are free, it’s good to f*** up and that aspiration isn’t all about sofas. I don’t agree with all the following, especially the bit about writing, but all in all it’s a banquet for your brain.

The problem with making sensible decisions is that so is everyone else.
Why do we strive for excellence when mediocrity is required?
Don’t try to please the client.
Have you noticed how the cleverest people at school are not those who make it in life?
If you can’t solve a problem it’s because you’re playing by the rules.
You don’t have to be creative to be creative.
You don’t have to be able to write to be able to write.
Don’t seek praise, seek criticism.
Sometimes it’s good to be fired.
There is no right point of view.
It’s right to be wrong.

Sleep well mate.

It is death that we can, once again, get some perspective. 

Dith Pran was the photographer and journalist whose story was told in The Killing Fields, a phrase that he coined to describe the human rubbish dumps that littered his country during the reign of the Khmer Rouge. The tools he used to publicise the Cambodian Holocaust are our stock-in-trade: strap line, copy and unforgettable images. He branded mass-murder so we will never forget it. Every time I buy tinnies from the bodega next to my flat and get given a  wispy blue bag I think of the horrors that humans can unleash when extremism takes hold. That and whether the handles will break before I get to the party.

The film, a masterpiece that won Haing S. Ngor an oscar for his portrayal of Pran, touched me very deeply. It is why I have a black passport cover. It makes me feel safer.

It is in death that some people have their worth assessed.

Having had Ben Hur ruined for me by Bowling for Columbine I was pleased to see in Charlton Heston’s obituary that had been an outspoken part of the Civil Rights Movement and a friend of Martin Luther King. That pretty much gets him off the hook, I think. I shall listen to Stump’s Charlton Heston Put His Vest On, a former Viz Number One by virtue of £20 in Victoria Wine Vouchers no less, and think of XLI fondly once more.

News coming from around the country this past week included a message from Angelique Bollard in Troy, Montana who just joined the darrellsongs mailing list. Angel and I met years ago when we were “home-front-pioneering” Baha’is in the same town – National City California.  That little piece of Baha’i jargon means we each moved there in order to achieve a membership count of 9 adult Baha’is in that city, and form a local Spiritual Assembly – which we did! Welcome Angel!

My producer friend Jarome Matthew in Vancouver British Columbia is heading to China this week for a recording project there.  Good luck Jarome.  We’re expecting great things!

And Laura Harley is working on the release of her new CD.  She has chronicled the process on her own website and I’ve enjoyed following along.  Laura is learning a great deal about production and promotion.  I hope to get her to share some wisdom at our next Music Weekend at Bosch.

On a sad note, the world lost a great man last week – Dith Pran. You may know his name from the movie “The Killing Fields” about his escape from destruction in the Cambodian genocide of the Pol Pot regime.  What makes this particularly poignant for me is his friendship with my bride Deb.  Deb was a newspaper reporter and editor for 20 years before becoming disabled.  She “met” Pran “on-line” through a mutual friend.  Pran took it upon himself to regularly send Deb humorous stories and encouragement making her bed-ridden days (now behind her Thank God) much more tolerable.  Imagine that! – a man of world fame who came through greater horrors than most folks can imagine, took the time to comfort a pen-pal he had never met face to face – just because he knew she needed it.  Friends, That’s how God works through us. 

Deb says: “Pran kind of adopted me. He sent me prayers, inspiring stories and jokes almost every day. There were times when I was in the lowest depths of despair and a silly joke from Pran would snap me out of it. That’s how I came to value humor so much when facing any difficulty. That Pran took me on while still fighting on behalf of fellow Cambodians, working full-time, etc. Well, he was just a truly special individual.”

And I must give a hearty THANK YOU to my artist friend Moro Baruk down in the Caribbean nation of Haiti!  Moro makes very artistic items he sells in Haiti and on his website.  Among his creations are very clever CD-boxes that appear to be held or toted or sat upon by little Haitian people.   You will notice from the pictures in his photoblog, how my Darrell’s Birthday Party CD appears in the “Place d’honneur”, as Moro calls it.
Check out Moro’s craft at:   http://www.photoblog.com/baruk/2008/04/05/

Next Saturday I will be “opening” for Brian Taraz and NAHuM at El Ojito Springs on 4th Ave in Tucson.  I was able to rehearse a blues number with them last weekend and had a ball.  Last Wednesday, Brian played solo at the “Open Mic” there and inspired me to perform there this Wednesday.  If you’re in town, come on down.

Dith Pran, a Cambodian photojournalist who had teamed up with New York Times correspondent Sydney H. Schanberg in the 1970s to record some of the most heart-wrenching photos from Cambodia, was later captured and tortured by the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1979. After those nightmarish years, he escaped, and was re-united with his family in New York, where he continued to work as a photojournalist and to speak out for human rights. His story was made into an award-winning movie, “The Killing Fields“, in 1984. He died on Sunday March 30 at age 65. A video interview made by the New York Times just weeks before his death can be seen here.

• Intervistare Dith Pran fu uno dei primi incarichi che mi diedero, diversi anni fa, appena arrivata alla redazione Esteri del mio quotidiano. Conoscere quest’uomo e la drammatica, immensa storia di cui fu testimone (lo sterminio di oltre due milioni di cambogiani dal ‘75 al ‘79, ad opera di Pol Pot) mi rese ancora più determinata nell’affrontare questa professione. Rafforzò, come si dice oggi, la mia mission.

• Ieri Dith Pran, l’uomo che ha ispirato il film otto volte premio Oscar «Urla del Silenzio» (The Killing Fields, di Roland Joffrè), si è spento all’età di 65 anni, a causa di un male incurabile. Ma il dolore più grande lo ha avuto per non aver visto Pol Pot processato e chiamato a rispondere della morte di due milioni di innocenti. Lo annuncia il suo collega del New York Times (dove Pran ha lavorato come fotografo dopo avere lasciato la Cambogia dei Khmer rossi nel 1979) Sidney Schanberg, l’altro protagonista della storia e Premio Pulitzer.

• Le immagini di questo film sono rimaste impresse indelebilmente nella mia memoria e qualche mese fa, in viaggio in Cambogia, non potevo non sovrapporle a quelle delle risaie che mi scorrevano accanto, della terra rossa delle strade e delle pur meravigliose rovine nella giungla ad Angkor…

Credits by DCV, Donne Con la Valigia

Eu achei que a idéia do Last Word, do NYTimes, não tinha repercutido. Pareceu estranho, porque é uma iniciativa genial (e comovente), e que diz muito sobre a questão de como lidamos com a morte.

Na realidade, dia 30 de Março o NYTimes publicou o Last Word do Dith Pran, fotógrafo e escritor, responsável pelo livro “The Killing Fields”, que retrata os massacres no cambodja no pós-vietnam. Vale assistir.

The Last Word

 Via Ponto Media.

Dith Pran, a photojournalist for The New York Times whose gruesome ordeal in the killing fields of Cambodia was re-created in a 1984 movie that gave him an eminence he tenaciously used to press for his people’s rights, died on Sunday at a hospital in New Brunswick, N.J. He was 65 and lived in Woodbridge, N.J.

 

He had been a journalistic partner of Mr. Schanberg, a Times correspondent assigned to Southeast Asia. He translated, took notes and pictures, and helped Mr. Schanberg maneuver in a fast-changing milieu. With the fall of Phnom Penh in 1975, Mr. Schanberg was forced from the country, and Mr. Dith became a prisoner of the Khmer Rouge, the Cambodian Communists.

 

Mr. Schanberg wrote about Mr. Dith in newspaper articles and in The New York Times Magazine, in a 1980 cover article titled “The Death and Life of Dith Pran.” (A book by the same title appeared in 1985.)

The story became the basis of the movie “The Killing Fields.”

 

The film, directed by Roland Joffé, showed Mr. Schanberg, played by Sam Waterston, arranging for Mr. Dith’s wife and children to be evacuated from Phnom Penh as danger mounted. Mr. Dith, portrayed by Dr. Haing S. Ngor (who won an Academy Award as best supporting actor), insisted on staying in Cambodia with Mr. Schanberg to keep reporting the news. He believed that his country could be saved only if other countries grasped the gathering tragedy and responded.

The former New England director of the Anti-Defamation League, Andrew Tarsy, has surfaced with a new job. He’ll join Facing History and Ourselves, a Brookline-based group with an international mission of tolerance. Facing History runs some marvelous programs in the Boston public schools on Genocide and the Holocaust.

Tarsy also offers a meaningful and beautifully written essay on the death of Dith Pran, a survivor of the Cambodian genocide at Boston.com. Pran was the main character, along with journalist Sidney Shanberg, in the film The Killing Fields.

Tarsy writes: “With Pran’s death, the world has lost a witness to the worst that human beings can do. But he was not just a witness. Dith Pran’s life was a beautiful monument to human possibility that made an enormous difference and because of the movie, inspired millions. He chose to make his own survival into a tool of protest against injustice. Pran’s story of perseverance and defiance in the face of unspeakable tragedy was no less a monument and no less an inspiration than the giant temple of Angkor Wat.”

(Video:  goldenboi82a)

• Intervistare Dith Pran fu uno dei primi incarichi che mi diedero, diversi anni fa, appena arrivata alla redazione Esteri del mio quotidiano. Conoscere quest’uomo e la drammatica, immensa storia di cui fu testimone (lo sterminio di oltre due milioni di cambogiani dal ‘75 al ‘79, ad opera di Pol Pot) mi rese ancora più determinata nell’affrontare questa professione. Rafforzò, come si dice oggi, la mia mission. 

• Ieri Dith Pran, l’uomo che ha ispirato il film otto volte premio Oscar «Urla del Silenzio» (The Killing Fields, di Roland Joffrè), si è spento all’età di 65 anni, a causa di un male incurabile. Ma il dolore più grande lo ha avuto per non aver visto Pol Pot processato e chiamato a rispondere della morte di due milioni di innocenti. Lo annuncia il suo collega del New York Times (dove Pran ha lavorato come fotografo dopo avere lasciato la Cambogia dei Khmer rossi nel 1979) Sidney Schanberg, l’altro protagonista della storia e Premio Pulitzer. 

• Le immagini di questo film sono rimaste impresse indelebilmente nella mia memoria e qualche mese fa, in viaggio in Cambogia, non potevo non sovrapporle a quelle delle risaie che mi scorrevano accanto, della terra rossa delle strade e delle pur meravigliose rovine nella giungla ad Angkor…

Falamos deles outro dia, quando abordamos a representação do jornalista no cinema, e ontem morreu Dith Pran, fotógrafo cambojano que era o protótipo do escudeiro leal, maltrapilho e disposto a morrer para ajudar seu parceiro jornalista. Um personagem que virou clichê nos filmes dos anos 80, mas que neste caso era verdadeiro.

Pran foi tradutor e faz-tudo do jornalista do The New York Times Sydney Schamberg, enviado ao Cambodja em 1975 para cobrir o golpe que colocou no poder o marxista sanguinário Pol Pot. Como conhecia os atalhos, Pran levou o repórter americano a locais onde se acumulavam caveiras e corpos (como mostra este documentário).

Impedido de deixar o país (só Schamberg pôde sair do Cambodja, e lamentou para o resto da vida ter deixado o amigo para trás), Pran foi preso e torturado por quatro anos, até que se conseguiu passar por um iletrado camponês (o regime de Pol Pot matava as pessoas que pareciam esclarecidas) e fugiu para os EUA, onde acabou contratado pelo NYT e criou uma fundação para ajudar as famílias das vítimas do genocídio.

Da cama do hospital, onde lutava contra o câncer, Pran deu uma entrevista ao NYT poucos dias antes de morrer.

É uma coincidência, já que na quarta passada, e também de câncer, morria Philip Jones Griffiths, fotógrafo que teve papel importante na Guerra do Vietnã.

Years ago, backpacking in Cambodia I read a battered old copy of the Killing Fields (the book version of the film).

When I finished it I passed it on to a friend, eventually it went all around all our little group.

Later we all admitted  to shedding tears while reading it.  It is the single most moving novel I have ever read. 

From then on in – every beer sunk under Cambodian skies was accompanied with a toast to the book’s hero Dith Pran.

Years later when my parents visited me in Vietnam on their way to Cambodia I made sure that they too had a copy.

I have just read of Dith Pran’s death aged 65 in New York.  Considering his life story, the fact that he reached such an age is incredible in itself.

It’s not often I feel genuinely saddened at the death of someone I never met.  But Dith and his strength and loyalty to his friend Sydney Schanberg really touched me.  He inspired me and I am sure many thousands of others too.

Cheers Dith.

No humor in this.

With all the relatively recent hue and cry over Darfur, Kosovo, Iraq and other places, I have to let my head drop a bit at the idea of young folk acting if somehow they have single-handedly discovered genocide as they wear their ’save Darfur’ shirts and shout anti-war invective. All fine and well that they may be developing social conscience, but this obituary in Sunday’s International Herald Tribune is a reminder of how change remains the same.

Dith Pran, a photojournalist for The New York Times whose gruesome ordeal in the killing fields of Cambodia was re-created in a 1984 movie that gave him an eminence he tenaciously used to press for his people’s rights, died in New Brunswick, New Jersey on Sunday. He was 65 and lived in Woodbridge, New Jersey

The cause was pancreatic cancer, which had spread, said his friend Sydney Schanberg.

Dith saw his country descend into a living hell as he scraped and scrambled to survive the barbarous revolutionary regime of the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1979, when as many as two million Cambodians — a third of the population — were killed, experts estimate. Dith survived through nimbleness, guile and sheer desperation.

Many of us have probably thought we discovered cruelty in our world, but the true discovery is that cruelty has been around as long as we have.

It doesn’t mean the young – or the old for that matter – shouldn’t fight it, but making the fight a fad eventually creates numbness and short attention span.

When younger folk start protesting China’s behavior in Tibet this spring, they might want to consider just how long repression has been a part of life under the Chinese Communists and pretty much every regime and dynasty before them.

And, given mankind’s general record around the world, that’s just for starters.