End of an Era
https://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/end- ... -2-132995/
Includes photos of the White Building from the Vann Molyvann Private Collection.

The landscaped garden had long gone, replaced by a chaotic vista of ramshackle shops, garbage piles and traffic. The dirt track that once ran in front of the block had been transformed into a narrow lane filled with food carts. Where grass once grew, Sothearos Boulevard now stretched, teeming with motorbikes, noise and pollution.

That could be describing 90 % of PP.

Hope the kids can find another playground.

Here's a photo I took of it.

White Building Documentary Garners Global Awards, Praise for Young Cambodian Filmmaker
After premiering earlier this year, “Last Night I Saw You Smiling” picked up NETPAC Award for best Asian film in February at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. It won the Special Jury Award for International Documentary Feature at Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival in May.
14 September 2019

WASHINGTON — The sounds and sights of the White Building are deeply etched in Kavich Neang’s memory. The shifting sounds of children running around the iconic building’s hallways and the daily chatter of neighbors discussing the happenings in their lives are part of a recurring dream. A dream that kept reminding Kavich Neang of the place he and his family called home.

It also forms the narrative core of his documentary, “Last Night I Saw You Smiling,” where the 31-year-old filmmaker documents the transformation of bustling building community into a silent demolition site, following the White Building’s flattening in 2017. The title of the documentary borrows from the lyrics of a Sin Sisamuth song.

“I couldn’t bare the feeling that everything that existed [in this building] would be completely gone,” Kavich Neang told VOA Khmer in a phone interview, from Phnom Penh, where he lives. “So as a filmmaker, I felt the need to film and document the last moments of my family and my neighbors packing and moving.”

The White Building is located in central Phnom Penh’s Tonle Bassac commune. It often is mistaken as a Vann Molyvann design, though it was part of his beautification plans for the central neighborhood. Built as low- to medium-cost housing in the early 1960s, the building was abandoned following the rise of the Khmer Rouge in the mid-1970s.

After the ultra-communist group’s ouster in 1979 from the capital, it became a haven for returning artists, actors and dancers, as well as civil servants working for the Vietnamese-backed government. Over the years, the building also developed a reputation for drugs and prostitution.

The White Building was slated for demolition in 2017 to make way for a new condominium project. Two years later, while there is no condominium at the site, it is set to house a $4 billion casino complex built by the NagaCorp, which has two other casinos in the same neighborhood.
https://www.voacambodia.com/a/white-bui ... 82837.html

Also: cambodian-culture-and-language/anti-arc ... ml#p358953