Deep into a bloody history
This story could be three words long: Watch this film. That is: “Enemies of the People,” a lyrical and terrifying documentary of mid- to late-1970s Cambodia, whose subtitle tells the story — “A Personal Journey into the Heart of the Killing Fields.” It was screened Thursday night at the Carpenter Center at an event hosted by the Mahindra Humanities Center and by the Harvard chapter of Scholars at Risk. Afterward, experts added context and urgency to the facts of Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. The facts: 2 million dead. The urgency: Genocide has continued to unfurl its black flag the world over. To make the story a full six words long, just add: Meet this man. Thet Sambath, once a journalist in his native Cambodia, is now a Scholar at Risk at Harvard. (For the film, he shared writing, directing, and producing credits with British documentarian Rob Lemkin.) His father, mother, and brother died...