A Change of Guard

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Saturday 24 January 2015

Women With Clout: Kalyanee Mam, A Lady of Nature

Thursday, 22 January 2015; News by Khmer Times/Nou Sotheavy


Filmmaker Kalyanee Mam talks with Khmer Times about nature and culture. (KT Photo: Nou Sotheavy)

PHNOM PENH (Khmer Times) – As an award-winning filmmaker, lawyer, storyteller and nature advocate, Kalyanee Mam dedicates her life to sharing stories of human atrocities and social issues through her films. 

Her latest film, “A River Changes Course”, won the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize for Documentaries at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, and focused world attention on the impact of dams on Cambodia’s lifeblood –its rivers. With experience working on the films “Inside Job” and “Between Earth and Sky”, she prepares to tackle her next project, “The Areng Valley”.

Inspired by her culture and her family since she was young, Ms. Kalyanee returned to Cambodia in 1998, 17 years after her family emigrated to America. Now, she continuously travels from California to the Kingdom of Wonder. The Khmer Times met with her on her latest visit. 

The Lawyer’s Dream

Clad in bright colors and sporting a dark honey tan, Ms. Kalyanee was using her latest trip here to meet as many young people as she can. She is amazed at how many artists and lawyers she’s met that are passionate about playing a pivotal role in the future of their country. 

“The way they talk about law is very different from anything I heard.” she said. 


The young lawyers she’s encountered travelled to Phnom Penh to study. Their goal is to return to their countryside homes, armed with resources to teach villagers how to protect themselves and their land rights. 

“Their dream is to affect change in one small place — their village. If everyone does the same, imagine the repercussions of it,” she exclaimed. 

Ms. Kalaynee noted that many countryside folk migrating to the city often neglect the villagers they left behind, allowing big companies investing in industrial agriculture to destroy the land and people’s livelihoods.

“Everything I do now involves the environment,” she stated.

Developing the Filmmaker Inside

Born in Battambang during the Khmer Rouge era, her family survived the work camps to make it to Kao-I-Dang, a refugee camp in eastern Thailand that at its peak housed 160,000 people. In 1981, the family was accepted for settlement in the United States. After some time in Houston, they settled in Stockton, California – home to a large Cambodian immigrant population.

Inspired by her culture and heritage, Ms. Kalyanee received a full scholarship to attend Yale University.  While there, she volunteered to work at the Yale Cambodian Genocide Program.

In 1998, Ms. Kalyanee returned to Cambodia for the first time in 17 years. She worked as a research intern at the Documentation Center of Cambodia. Her published study, “The Endurance of the Cambodian Family Under the Khmer Rouge Regime”, pushed her to learn more about  her country and her people.

She graduated from Yale and received a Charles P. Howland Fellowship to research crimes committed against women during the Khmer Rouge regime. After graduating from the University of California’s School of Law, she continued to pursue her passion by recording and documenting her research on film.

 “A River Changes Course”, her most well-known film, explores the impact of development in Cambodia, on both a human and environmental level. It was inspired by the massive changes she saw after visiting the country in 2008, 10 years after her first trip back as an adult. The countryside she remembered as a child was giving way to rubber plants and condominiums.  

She sees parallels between the displacement she experienced as a child  the one now experienced by a new generation of Cambodians. She links the environment to the survival of Khmer culture.

“We belong to nature, it’s in our blood,” she said. “If we destroy the environment, we destroy the sense of who we are – our culture, music, heritage and identity. Nature is the foundation for everything in our lives.”

Awakened by Areng

“I read an article by Al Jazeera in November of 2012 about the monks marching in the Areng valley,” she continued. “It was inspiring – how Buddhism teaches to protect nature because we are part of our environment. Areng valley represented that.”

Hoping to show the value of indigenous Cambodians to urban film audiences, Ms. Kalyanee plans to spend time with them to better understand their lives and their ties to nature.

“Not everyone has the ability to travel and see these things ,and that’s why it is important to record it [on film],” she said. “I have never lived in the jungle for three weeks on my own before.”

Past experiences of leeches falling from trees and tortuous, dirt roads have not deterred her in her quest to see the true soul of Cambodia.

Determined to show that Cambodia is not like its neighboring countries, she believes the path is through the arts.

 “We can only be ourselves and who we are – people who are deeply connected to nature but also deeply connected to the arts,” she said. 

“We are an artistic people – look at Angkor Wat, look at our music and our traditions, it is so beautiful,” she said. “We can be a nation of culture and not necessarily a nation of commodities and industrialization.” 

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