Les gens de la rizière/Neak sre (The Rice People). 1994. Directed by Rithy Panh

Film

No upcoming events

Les gens de la rizière/Neak sre (The Rice People). 1994. Cambodia/France/Germany/Switzerland. Directed by Rithy Panh. Courtesy JBA Production

Les gens de la rizière/Neak sre (The Rice People). 1994. Cambodia/France/Germany/Switzerland. Directed by Rithy Panh. Screenplay by Panh, Eve Deboise. 35mm. In Khmer; English subtitles. 125 min.

The daily staple for millions of Cambodians, rice is nonetheless associated with the dark years of the Khmer Rouge, 1975–79, when the paranoid and barbaric policies of Pol Pot’s Super Great Leap Forward led to mass starvation and disease. (One empty slogan declared, “He Who Has Rice Possesses All.”) Loosely based on Malaysian author Shahnon Ahmad’s novel No Harvest but a Thorn and on the real life—tragic yet unbowed—of a woman he encountered in a refugee camp (the protagonist of Site 2), Rithy Panh’s The Rice People is an affecting mix of neorealism and folklore, observing the cursed fortunes of a peasant family on the Mekong Delta and imagining the recovery of a Cambodian rice culture that has nurtured bodies and souls for thousands of years. Courtesy JBA Production

This film accompanies Rithy Panh.

Past events

Mon, Oct 10, 2022, 4:30 p.m.

MoMA, Floor T2/T1, Theater 1

The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 1
Sat, Oct 8, 2022, 4:00 p.m.

MoMA, Floor T2/T1, Theater 1

The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 1

Licensing

If you would like to reproduce an image of a work of art in MoMA’s collection, or an image of a MoMA publication or archival material (including installation views, checklists, and press releases), please contact Art Resource (publication in North America) or Scala Archives (publication in all other geographic locations).

MoMA licenses archival audio and select out of copyright film clips from our film collection. At this time, MoMA produced video cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. All requests to license archival audio or out of copyright film clips should be addressed to Scala Archives at [email protected]. Motion picture film stills cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. For access to motion picture film stills for research purposes, please contact the Film Study Center at [email protected]. For more information about film loans and our Circulating Film and Video Library, please visit https://www.moma.org/research/circulating-film.

If you would like to reproduce text from a MoMA publication, please email [email protected]. If you would like to publish text from MoMA’s archival materials, please fill out this permission form and send to [email protected].