^ Staying on topic would be a good start. When you constantly derail threads to promote ideas that have nothing to do with what is being discussed, that is also trolling.

Currently, in this forum "Cambodian Culture and Language", we are discussing a film called 'White Building'. It is rare that Cambodian films attract international recognition and the "white building" was a Phnom Penh institution, so many of us are interested in this topic.

(I am not here to talk about ISIS, and if you decide to start a thread about ISIS, I promise that I won't derail your thread with comments on Cambodian culture.)

donner-kruger wrote: But it's funny how we in the west are constantly told one side of the story.

The corollary of “let’s be careful believing mainstream media” is not “let’s parrot complete garbage we saw on YouTube as though it were fact because we thought it sounded interesting”.

More importantly, the fact that we found a version of events that contradicts official sources is not automatically evidence that we have successfully dug deeper or got the “other side of the story”.

Could anyone let me know where I can rent or buy "I don't know" online? I would like to watch the whole feature. Thanks

Int’l Critics Line: Cambodia’s Oscar Entry ‘White Building’
By Stephanie Bunbury
December 10, 2021 8:00am

The eponymous edifice of Cambodia’s International Feature Oscar entry, White Building, is barely white at all by the time we encounter it. A low-rise apartment block in Phnom Penh — the sort of teeming anthill of humanity familiar to anyone who has spent time in a South East Asian city — it is stained with tropical rain, its cement falling off in chunks, its cat’s cradles of improvised electrical wiring truly shocking, in every sense of the word. Director Kavich Neang grew up here.

The building was demolished in 2017 to make way for something more profitable but, before that happened, Neang filmed it from every angle. His film gives it a second, fictional life as the center of a story of a community in quiet crisis. Most of the people living in the white building’s apartments are current or retired government employees and their families; inner urban life is all they know.

Our guide to this is young Nang (Piseth Cchun, who won the Best Actor award in the Horizons section of the Venice Film Festival for his unhurried performance) who is the moving force in a dance crew, his eyes fixed on the prize of Cambodia’s Next Superstar. Riding three-up on his scooter through the night markets, he and his pals are as recognizably part of the streetscape as the building itself.
Full article: https://deadline.com/2021/12/white-buil ... 234888664/

I have been looking around for any legal way to watch this movie. I don't mind paying for culture, but I'm also practical, so if there is no legal option I don't lose any sleep over torrenting stuff. It's been listed on one of the French sites, so I guess I'm giving legal options one last go.

Great to see Cambodian people and filmmakers getting some plaudits,let's face it these guys face hardships growing up that few Westerners could survive?

White Building Review: A Humanistic, Slow-Burn Depiction of Uprooted Lives
The film’s depiction of life impacted by urban transformation conjures a palpable aura of entrapment and helplessness.
By Derek Smith
on April 19, 2022
White Building
Photo: KimStim

Cambodian director Kavich Neang opens his elliptical fiction feature debut, White Building, with a gliding bird’s-eye shot of the titular building’s trash-ridden roof. The structure is in such a state of disrepair that it resembles ancient ruins more than a densely populated Phnom Penh apartment building that’s still brimming with life.

Given its exposed wires, leaky pipes, and water-stained ceilings, it’s no surprise that the building is being slated for demolition. For the residents, this means seemingly endless debate over the price that they’re willing to accept for their apartments from city developers—and, sadly, some are willing to settle for the most meager choices out of fear of ending up with nothing. Regardless, they all come to realize that whatever payoff they get, they will likely be forced to move outside of the city that they’ve long called home.

Anxieties about displacement hang over White Building like a dark cloud. But in the first of the film’s three segments, “Blessings,” these concerns are pushed to the background—slyly reflecting the main characters’ various forms of denial that surface throughout—as Neang follows the exploits of one of the building’s residents, Nang (Piseth Chhun).

The determined 20-year-old spends his days practicing dance routines with his two friends, Tol (Sovann Tho) and Ah Kha (Chinnaro Soem), and his nights moving ebulliently through Phnom Penh’s neon-drench streets on his beaten-down scooter, hitting on girls, and dancing to earn some cash. He desperately wants to make something of himself, and has visions of his dance troupe achieving stardom, but like the disintegrating abode that he lives in, these dreams are, unbeknownst to him, quickly approaching their expiration date.

This is easily the liveliest and most hopeful stretch of the otherwise somber White Building. The depiction of the friends’ humorous and tender relationship establishes the film’s emotional pulse, offering insight into the mindsets of some of the titular building’s younger residents. And it’s Nang’s bright-eyed optimism that makes the seemingly inevitable misfortunes that strike his family, and many others like them, sting that much more.
In full: https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/whit ... ich-neang/