Ferryman of Memories

DEIRDRE BOYLE is professor emerita of media studies at The New School in New York where she directed the Graduate Certificate in Documentary Media Studies. She is a writer, media historian, and psychotherapist. Her books include Subject to Change: Guerrilla Television Revisited, among others. She has received Guggenheim and Asian Cultural Council fellowships as well as writing residencies at MacDowell and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

"I do not know another film director today with a more complete understanding of human experience--of its precariousness and pain as well as its deepest joys. Rithy Panh presents the harshest of realities in a way that dwells on beauty, sensuality, and light. He paints with the lightest of touches, using music, pacing, and timing with the precision, emotion, and unity of an orchestra. Ferryman of Memories is a welcome introduction to his unique work.”- Angelina Jolie (actress, filmmaker, and humanitarian) "Boyle focuses on Cambodian documentary director/screenwriter Rithy Panh, who has published five books, produced 20 feature films, established a film center in Cambodia, and been acclaimed worldwide. [Ferryman of Memories] examines each film, folding them into the narrative of Panh’s life. An admirable book that will likely increase visibility of Panh’s remarkable films." (Library Journal, starred review) "An accessible and consciousness-raising book about a brilliant, committed, and multifaceted filmmaker with whose salutary body of work we should be better acquainted. She presents a critical and revelatory overview of many of the short and feature films that Panh directed and largely scripted." (Cineaste) "[Boyle's] unique book weaves in-depth research with personal reflections as she recounts the process of piecing together all of the accomplishments of this fascinating filmmaker along with the complexities of the socio-political history and cultural context in which his work is steeped. . . . Provides profound insight into the workings of this singular director." (Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: A Podcast About All Things Documentary) “Deirdre Boyle's training as both media historian and psychotherapist provides a major resonance in this outstanding book on one of current cinema's best directors, Rithy Panh. Moving between personal memoir and film analysis, Boyle sweeps the reader into the Cambodian genocide as an extraordinary chapter in twentieth-century history.”- Raya Morag (professor of cinema studies at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and author of Perpetrator Cinema) "Like Claude Lanzmann regarding the Shoah, no other film director than Rithy Panh has managed to make visible, audible, and imaginable the uncanny world of the Khmer Rouge that brought Cambodia into hell. Seeing in Panh a modern Charon who transports human souls to the other side, Deirdre Boyle guides us through a disturbing journey where suffering and trauma, but also grieving and redemption, are pervasive."- Vicente Sánchez-Biosca (professor of visual culture and author of The Death in Their Eyes) "Through her deep engagement with Rithy Panh and his films, Boyle offers us a timely reminder of Cambodia’s difficult history, of superpower complicity, and how the impact of the Khmer Rouge’s short brutal reign continues to mark Cambodian people today." - Annie Goldson (professor and officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit at the University of Auckland)

• Preface Prologue 1 Uncle Rithy and the Cambodian Tragedy 2 The Return: Discovering the Gaze 3 The Khmer Rouge: Three Years, Eight Months, Twenty-One Days 4 Perpetrators and Survivors: The S-21 Trilogy Interlude: Dark Tourism 5 After the Wars: Fiction and Nonfiction 6 Colonialism: France and Cambodia 7 Remembering the Past, Mourning the Dead 157 EpilogueAcknowledgmentsAppendix 1. "Confronting Images of Ideology: An Interview with Rithy Panh by Deirdre Boyle"Appendix 2. "On a Morality of Filming: A Conversation between Rithy Panh and Deirdre Boyle"NotesFilms and Books by Rithy PanhIndex