Anchor Moy wrote:

Jamie_Lambo wrote:

SinnSisamouth wrote:i dont evar want to go to the genocide museum

i had a dream about it the day before i agreed to go with a khmer friend

she was relived as she did not want to go either

we got drunk instead

i went to the museum but not the killing fields, the museum was bad enough, all those faces staring back at you, so many faces, dead faces, knowing theyre going to die
theres not much else to the museum tbh just loads of empty rooms, but its depressing, i was tempted to go again now i have a lot better understanding of the country, but i think it would depress me more so ive never bothered

Same here. I went to the school/museum on my first trip to Cambodia because I thought I should.I'm "glad" I went. But one visit was really enough, the experience was intense and I will never forget what I saw there. Or rather, what I felt while I was there.

Also,I have mixed feelings about the concept of genocide sites as tourist "attractions", yet it is important to acknowledge what happened and not to forget those who died. However, I totally understand those who don't want to experience this. (Personally, I visited the museum and THEN got drunk.Each to his/her own.)

Anwar Congo and his friends have been dancing their way through musical numbers, twisting arms in film noir gangster scenes, and galloping across prairies as yodelling cowboys. Their foray into filmmaking is being celebrated in the media and debated on television, because Anwar Congo and his friends are mass murderers.

MEDAN, INDONESIA When the government of Indonesia was overthrown by the military in 1965, Anwar and his friends were promoted from small-time gangsters who sold movie theatre tickets on the black market to death squad leaders. They helped the army kill more than one million alleged communists, ethnic Chinese, and intellectuals in less than a year. As the executioner for the most notorious death squad in his city, Anwar himself killed hundreds of people with his own hands. Today, Anwar is revered as a founding father of a right-wing paramilitary organization that grew out of the death squads. The organization is so powerful that its leaders include government ministers, and they are happy to boast about everything from corruption and election rigging to acts of genocide.

THE ACT OF KILLING is about killers who have won, and the sort of society they have built. Unlike ageing Nazis or Rwandan genocidaires, Anwar and his friends have not been forced by history to admit they participated in crimes against humanity. Instead, they have written their own triumphant history, becoming role models for millions of young paramilitaries. THE ACT OF KILLING is a journey into the memories and imaginations of the perpetrators, offering insight into the minds of mass killers. And THE ACT OF KILLING is a nightmarish vision of a frighteningly banal culture of impunity in which killers can joke about crimes against humanity on television chat shows, and celebrate moral disaster with the ease and grace of a soft shoe dance number.

A LOVE OF CINEMA In their youth, Anwar and his friends spent their lives at the movies, for they were "movie theatre gangsters": they controlled a black market in tickets, while using the cinema as a base of operations for more serious crimes. In 1965, the army recruited them to form death squads because they had a proven capacity for violence, and they hated the communists for boycotting American films - the most popular (and profitable) in the cinemas. Anwar and his friends were devoted fans of James Dean, John Wayne, and Victor Mature. They explicitly fashioned themselves and their methods of murder after their Hollywood idols. And coming out of the midnight show, they felt "just like gangsters who stepped off the screen". In this heady mood, they strolled across the boulevard to their office and killed their nightly quota of prisoners. Borrowing his technique from a mafia movie, Anwar preferred to strangle his victims with wire.

In THE ACT OF KILLING, Anwar and his friends agree to tell the filmmakers the story of the killings. But their idea of being in a movie is not to provide testimony for a documentary: they want to star in the kind of films they most love from their days scalping tickets at the cinemas. The filmmakers seize this opportunity to expose how a regime that was founded on crimes against humanity, yet has never been held accountable, would project itself into history.

Jamie_Lambo wrote:

SinnSisamouth wrote:I know that uk school kids go to the Nazi camps and I bet the german kids do too

that whole "dont mention the war" joke came about because the germans dont like talking about it or used to

i went to germany for a week on a school trip but we never went to any nazi camps, went to an old roman amphitheater but no nazi camps,
i cant say i know anyone thats been to a germany nazi camp on a school trip

SinnSisamouth wrote:I dont think the norvern schools could afford any journey past birmingham