Post-Khmer Rouge Documentary and the New Paradigm in Genocide Studies

Perpetrator Cinema: Confronting Genocide in Cambodian Documentary is the third installment in Raya Morag’s trilogy on violent pasts and trauma as seen through the camera lens. In it she argues that the Cambodian cinema of the last two decades sheds light upon some of the major paradigm shifts in genocide studies, particularly with regard to the figure of the perpetrator. What is more, in spite of its modest scope, this set of documentaries issued after the complete destruction of the film industry under the Khmer Rouge comes to epitomize what is unimaginable in any other film production dealing with mass murder.