Going to the Movies in Phnom Penh, circa 1967: Film Exhibition in Cambodia’s Sangkum Era (1955-1970)

Introduction: A Night at the Movies

Imagine it’s February 1958. You’re in Phnom Penh and you want to go to the movies. Which film would you choose?

Perhaps the light French comedy La mariée est trop belle (Her Bridal Night, Pierre Gaspard-Huit, 1956), with Brigitte Bardot as “a graceful, playful and dreamy child-woman,” as a newspaper advertisement promises?

Or maybe Eskrimador (The Fencer, Teodorico C. Santos, 1955), a Philippine swashbuckler with Efren Reyes (Sr.) and Juan “Johnny” Monteiro?

At the newly opened Hawaii Cinema, just a block from Central Market, they’re showing the fairy tale film Die Geschichte vom kleinen Muck (The Story of Little Muck, Wolfgang Staudte, 1953) from East-Germany. The film isn’t quite as new as the cinema – it was made six years ago – but it has now found its way to Cambodia.

At the old and somewhat run-down Cine Star, this week there’s a Bollywood film showing, which you shouldn’t miss: “For the first time on screen: a great Indian circus. It would be regrettable if you did not see it,” the advertisement proclaims.

Four films from four different countries in one week in Phnom Penh’s cinemas. La Dépêche du Cambodge, February 1959.

Anyone who searches through the few newspapers that survived the Khmer Rouge terror regime in Cambodia’s National Archives, looking for cinema advertisements, will be in for a surprise: in the 1950s and ’60s, films from all over the world were shown in the capital of this Southeast Asian country – it’s hard to imagine a more cosmopolitan cinema program in any other country at the time. Alongside films from the former colonial power France and other Western European productions, there were also Soviet films to see, such as the spectacular fantasy film Ilya Muromets (The Sword and the Dragon, Aleksandr Ptushko, 1956) or the award-winning art film Letyat zhuravli (The Cranes Are Flying, Mikhail Kalatozov, 1957).

Naturally, as in all Southeast Asian countries, productions from Shaw Brothers and other Hong Kong studios like Great Wall were shown in Phnom Penh, but also propaganda films like Nu lan wu hao (Woman Basketball Player No. 5, Xie Jin, 1957) from the People’s Republic of China. The large Sino-Khmer community was particularly drawn to Teochew opera films like Xiao Duan Meng yi ban da si Jiang Xi Wang (Xiao Duan Meng Kills Jiang Xiang Wang with a Single Strike, Chi Lo, 1961). Even movies from neighbouring Thailand occasionally made it to Cambodian screens, despite the two countries’ traditionally strained relations.

The Phnom Penh Cinema showing Xiao Duan Meng Kills Jiang Xiang Wang with a Single Strike. National Archive of Cambodia.

And of course, once Cambodian filmmakers began making their own films at the end of the 1950s, cinemas in Phnom Penh and the provinces gained a completely new attraction: local productions, often based on Khmer legends or stories from the Ramayana, became extraordinarily popular. The first Cambodian feature film was produced only in 1960 by former pharmacist Ly Bun Yim, who casted amateur actors. Ronteah Krusar (Thunderbolt in the Family), released in 1961, revealed the strong potential for locally produced cinema.¹ In the following years, dozens of film studios opened in Phnom Penh, most of them run by self-taught filmmakers who, over the next fifteen years, produced more than 450 films. Within only a few years, Cambodia developed a distinctly vernacular fantastic cinema that strongly resonated with local audiences. Melodramas set in contemporary times also found an appreciative audience. Some of these films were more successful than any foreign production and remained in theatres for months. Directors such as Tea Lim Koun, Ly Bun Yim, and Uong Citta developed their own recognizable filmmaking styles. The nascent industry simultaneously gave rise to a star system of its own, with figures such as Dy Saveth, Vichara Dany, Kong Som Oeurn, Chea Yuthorn, and Saksi Sbong attaining immense popularity. Many of them appeared in dozens of productions and frequently worked on several films concurrently.

The four films mentioned at the beginning of this essay were all shown on the same day in Phnom Penh, as a newspaper advertisement indicates. While Her Bridal Night, The Fancer and The Story of Little Muck remain easily identifiable today, the film advertised as “Pramchari” or “Koïlâh Prom Chéray”² proves more elusive. Its promotional claim of featuring an Indian circus suggests it may have been Circus Queen (Noshir Engineer, 1959) with Fearless Nadia and John Cawas. If so, the film arrived in Cambodia with remarkable speed – released in India on 1 January 1959, it screened at the Cine Star across from the National Museum just weeks later.

Some foreign films arrived in Phnom Penh shortly after the release in their country of production, while others, like Modern Times (1936) and other classics by Chaplin (known in Indochina as Charlot), had been circulating throughout Asia since the 1920s – perhaps even as the same prints.³ How these films entered Cambodia remains poorly understood. Although a few distribution companies are mentioned in historical sources such as telephone books and travel guides, the larger network that carried both global hits and eccentric obscurities into Cambodian cinemas has yet to be convincingly unravelled.

This essay examines the movie-going experience in Phnom Penh during the Sangkum Reastr Niyum period (1955-1970). Drawing on historical sources, interviews, film reviews, and newly translated Chinese and Khmer publications, I seek to convey a sense of what going to the cinema meant in that era and how it was experienced in everyday life. In the second part of the essay, we hop on a cyclo and visit three different cinemas in Phnom Penh that represent distinct types of theatres from that period.

None of these venues are still in operation today. Yet for many young Cambodians, the vanished cinemas of the 1950s and 1960s have become romanticized, almost mythical spaces. A blog created by architecture students in Phnom Penh in 2017 has mapped and documented all of the city’s former downtown cinemas, even offering a virtual walking tour.⁴ One of its members told the ethnographic researcher Maggy Jack: “It is amazing to think of all the people wearing beautiful clothes, looking sophisticated at the cinema in the previous time. This is about our city, our lifestyle, our culture, our identity.”⁵ For Jack, “Roung Kon’s patient and careful documentation of heritage cinemas and the dissemination of their knowledge – their work of infrastructural restitution – was a form of social and political action.”⁶

Self-guided tour of old cinemas at the Roungkon Project’s webpage.

Cinema as Entertainment and Cultural Expression

In the Cambodia of that time, cinemas were an important form of entertainment. This era saw economic growth and cultural development after independence. With no televisions or mobile phones in homes, people relied on theatres for movies. Although Khmer opera and Chinese opera were also popular among the population, cinema began to overtake traditional dramatic forms in the 1960s. By the mid-1960s, over thirty cinemas operated in the capital, attracting diverse groups, from workers to officials.

However, going to the movies at that time was also an expression of the zeitgeist – a form of participation in a new kid of modernity and cosmopolitanism. The memories attached to it form part of the recollection of a brief halcyon period in this Southeast Asian country, brutally brought to an end in 1975 by the Khmer Rouge and their stone-age communism. From this historical catastrophe, not only Cambodia itself has yet to fully recover; its national cinema and the memory of its once-vibrant film culture were almost entirely erased. Countless artists were killed, and films and historical records destroyed. Today, only about fifty films from before 1975 survive in any form – often as fragments, some merely as degraded duplicates of old VHS recordings, others with soundtracks or improvised dialogue added long after their original creation.⁷

But the 1960s are often remembered as Cambodia’s Golden Age. After gaining independence from French colonial rule in 1953, the country entered a period of optimism and rapid modernization. While another part of former Indochina – today’s Vietnam – was drawn into two devastating wars, first against its colonial masters and then against the United States, Cambodia came to be known as the “Switzerland of Asia.” Its leader, Norodom Sihanouk, launched an ambitious postcolonial development program. Under his Sangkum Reastr Niyum, highways, ports, and airfields were built, and schools and canning factories established. Yet this political framework – often translated as “Community of the People” – also had a cultural dimension, one that encouraged a distinctly modern spirit rooted in Cambodian traditions.⁸

Architect Vann Molyvann gave Cambodia a modern face for the post-independence era. His state commissions and private residences combined European modernism with traditional Khmer forms.⁹ The government supported art exhibitions, cultural buildings, and new universities, including the art academy in Phnom Penh. Sihanouk himself made several documentary and feature films to present his small Southeast Asian nation to the world.

Alongside this state-sponsored high culture, a vibrant popular culture was taking shape. Sinn Sisamouth’s innovative music – blending traditional Khmer melodies with Western pop – together with Yol Aularong’s raw rock energy or Ros Serey Sothea’s iconic Chnam Oun 16 defined the sound of Cambodian nightlife. Artists such as Nhek Dim developed a fresh visual language for the Sangkum era.

The aforementioned new Cambodian films shown in Phnom Penh cinemas were part of this development. While a number of studies have now dealt with this period of Cambodian cinema, far less attention has been paid to the cinema experience itself. Sokmean Srun’s book Here’s the Cinema 2 – consulted here in an English translation generated with the help of AI – served as an important source for this essay,¹⁰ which also draws on my own interviews, on research in newspapers preserved at the National Archive of Cambodia and on Yingpheng Chhuor’s thesis on the Khmer remake of the Shaw Brothers smash hit Liang Shanbo yu Zhu Yingtai (A Love Eterne, Li Han-hsiang, 1963).¹¹

To introduce the subject matter, the following section offers a brief historical overview of the various phases of Cambodian film culture that preceded the period on which this essay primarily focuses.

Colonial-Era Ownership (1920s-1940s)

The cinema landscape in Cambodia during the colonial period was dominated by French capital and corporate monopolies. Of approximately 100 cinemas across Indochina in the 1940s, only 20 were independently owned. The rest were controlled by two French companies: the Société Indochine Films et Cinémas and the Société Ciné Théâtre d’Indochine. Each controlled half of the non-independent theatres. Individual French proprietors also owned multiple venues – notably a M. Tissier, who owned both the Excelsior Cinema and the Royal Cinema in Phnom Penh.

Even during the colonial period, there was already a clear class hierarchy in regard to the cinema. The elite French-owned cinemas like the Lux, Royal, and Excelsior catered to French nationals, the royal family, and high-ranking officials. Meanwhile, by the 1930s-40s, a parallel network of Chinese-owned theatres emerged in the Chinese quarters around Phsar Kandal and Phsar Chas markets, including Kim Son, Kim Phong, Majestic, and Casino cinemas. Whether the Vietnamese name of Trung Quoc cinema indicates Vietnamese ownership could not be determined.

Post-Colonial Cinemas

After independence in 1953, the dynamics of Phnom Penh’s cinema landscape changed dramatically. The fate of the old colonial theatres followed several trajectories, though it is difficult to determine from the available sources whether they continued to be operated by their former French owners. Some, like the Ciné Bijou – later renamed Cine Star or Dara – became second-run houses with outdated equipment and low ticket prices. Others, such as the Royal, closed altogether.

The Cine Lux, however – built in 1938 by an unknown architect in an elegant Art Deco style and the last of the old theatres to close, in 2016 – remained a cinema for the upper class throughout its existence.¹² It will therefore be discussed in greater detail later in the text.

In a category of their own were venues like the Kim Phong, which may have already operated before the 1950s, specializing in Chinese films but also hosting performances of Chinese opera and Cambodian Lakhon Bassac. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, both the Kim Phong and the Khemra showed propaganda films from the People’s Republic of China and the Soviet Union, a bizarre result of the Cold War.¹³  

In the 1950s, the French monopoly structures gave way first to Chinese entrepreneurship and later to a mixed economy during the so-called Golden Age. The historian David Steinberg describes the situation of the 1950s so comprehensively that it is worth quoting his account in full:

Motion pictures in Cambodia are agents of cultural as well as ideological change for urban dwellers but are seen by very few country people. The French authorities, when still in control, issued an ordinance that French films be shown at least five out of every thirteen weeks. This reflected the importance attached to motion pictures as a medium of communication – and possibly a public preference for other than French films. The American, French, Indian, and British governments for some years have promoted the use of their respective films in Indochina. Indian films generally are modern representations of old legends and are loved as such; in these, good always triumphs. American “Westerns” are liked for their sweep of action and scenery; other films, American or European, portray the life of modern cities. Cambodians thus are impregnated with western ways; city children, impressed by American films, have combined two standard prototypes into a Cambodian “cowboy-gangster” role in their games.

Some 400 feature films were imported in 1950, 41 percent of them American, 36 percent French, 13 percent Chinese, 6 percent British, and 2 percent Italian. There were thirteen movie theaters in Cambodia in 1951, ten of them in Pnom Penh. Their total seating capacity was 5,464, with a combined annual audience estimated at 1.5 million. The theaters are reported to be packed at almost every showing. The two major circuits controlling eight of the theaters – the Société des Ciné-théâtres d’Indochine and the Société Indochine Films et Cinémas – both were financed by French capital; the other five theaters are said to be controlled by Chinese. Each theater has a 35-mm projector; ten of them also have 16-mm projectors. The programs usually consist of a feature, a newsreel, and a documentary or a cartoon, Gaumont Newsreels and the French edition of Fox Movietone and Pathé Journal are shown in the French circuits. The Chinese theaters show no newsreel. Limiting factors in the use of movies are the lack of theaters in outlying areas and the inability of many people to understand foreign languages or to read Cambodian subtitles.¹⁴

One might wish that such detailed and vivid accounts existed for the later periods of Cambodian cinema history as well. For the decades that followed, however, researchers are left to piece together the story from scattered traces – fragments of memory, brief mentions in newspapers, a couple of film clips, and other elusive clues that still allow glimpses into the film culture of those years.

The opening of the Khemara Cinema was, without question, a watershed moment. Tucked into the narrow confines of 17th Street, this medium-sized theatre was commissioned before 1955 by the Sino-Khmer banker Tan Pa, then Director-General of the Banque Franco-Chinoise. Its designer, Henri Chatel, a French architect working in Maurice Masson’s office, sought to translate the idiom of European modernism – Bauhaus and Le Corbusier – for the tropical conditions of Southeast Asia. (Some of his other works, including designs for the National Bank of Cambodia and the Ministry of Defense, reveal the same aspiration – one that would later be carried forward by Cambodian architects such as Vann Molyvann and Lu Ban Hap.)

From the few surviving photographs, the Khemara stands out with its simple, refined design: five slender columns rise at a dramatic angle from the sidewalk, holding a sweeping canopy that shaded patrons from the sun – and perhaps, too, drew a current of air into the cinema’s foyer. Beyond this dynamic gesture, the façade itself remained modernist in its restraint – clean, geometric, and unadorned, a Bauhaus-style minimalism that is underscored in a simple line drawing featured in an advertisement that announces the theatre’s reopening after an air-conditioning system was installed. The most important signal the cinema may have sent was its very name: Khemara – a formal expression for “Khmer” or “Khmerness.” In a postcolonial environment still marked by colonial infrastructures and cultural dominance – evident, among other things, in cinemas bearing names such as Lux, Royal, or Excelsior – the message was unmistakable: this is a Khmer cinema.

December 1955 newspaper ad for the Khemara Cinema.

This style seems to have set a precedent: other newly built cinemas in the following years also emphasized their Khmerness. The Phnom Pich, which opened on 6 February 1959,¹⁵ suggested – by its very name, “Diamond Mountain” – prestige and national self-assertion. Unlike the Khemara, which was located on a small side street in the oldest part of the inner city, the Phnom Pich stood on Monivong Boulevard, which at that time was developing into a grand boulevard on the edge of the former city centre.

Under French colonial rule, Phnom Penh had expanded from the Royal Palace and the inner-city district of Daun Penh north and south along the Mekong riverfront; after 1930, the city’s expansion virtually came to a standstill due to the Second World War and the slackening of the French colonial administration. After independence, Phnom Penh grew quickly. From 1953 to 1970, the population rose from about 150,000 to nearly one million. New construction and new neighbourhoods were urgently needed. West of Monivong Boulevard, around the new Orussey Market and along Kampuchea Krom, Charles de Gaulle, and Russian Boulevard, a post-colonial Phnom Penh took shape. It showed a clear local style. In 1960, the Cambodian architect Lu Ban Hap became head of the Service Municipal de l’Urbanisme et d’Habitat. He drew up a development plan and helped shape the area around Orussey Market. The result was a cohesive and unmistakably new urban identity that still reads clearly today.

This style may not be as distinguished as the urban designs that Phnom Penh owes to the 1923 extension plan by Ernest Hébrard, head of the colonial Indochina Architecture and Town Planning Service. In their standard work on the New Khmer Architecture of the 1960s, Helen Grant Ross and Darryl Leon Collins describe the westward extension of Phnom Penh as “uninspiring,”¹⁶ and indeed this area lacks both architectural highlights – such as prestige buildings by Cambodia’s star architects of the time – and urban-planning high points like the campus of the Royal University of Phnom Penh, which was built in the same period.

In these new neighbourhoods, traditional Chinese shop houses, ubiquitous throughout Southeast Asia, were combined with modern materials like reinforced concrete and prefabricated elements to create a nameless, unassuming architectural style. This style still defines Cambodia’s modern appearance. And, crucially for our discussion, cinemas were central to these emerging urban districts.

One could even argue that the cinemas built in the 1960s and 70s in the nondescript districts of Phnom Penh west of the old city centre took on the role that prestigious government architecture played in prominent neighbourhoods. In otherwise rather plain streets, they stood out as striking landmarks. Positioned at prominent corners with eye-catching façades and hand-painted movie billboards, they served as focal points and markers of identity in the new suburbs. And all bore names referencing local culture: the Prasat Pich, the Vimean Tep and the Apsara Cinema on Monivong Boulevard; the Mekong, the Prasat Meas, the Angkor and the Khemarak on Charles De Gaulle; the Mkot Pichon on Kampuchea Krom; and the Monorom on Mao Tse-tung Boulevard.

These cinemas seem less anchored in Phnom Pen’s collective memory than inner-city cinemas like the Hemcheat or the Eden. They also likely lacked the ornate furnishings of the Kirirom, which by the late 1960s was Phnom Penh’s largest and most luxurious cinema. (Film critic René Laporte – pseudonym: TVEAR, Khmer for “door” – describes it in a film review as “the most modern and the most beautiful hall in Phnom Penh,” which with its 1,200 seats was also the largest.¹⁷) Yet these neighbourhood cinemas demonstrate that during these years, cinema had evolved from the privilege of a small Cambodian upper class and French colons into an integral part of everyday cultural life.

The Movie-Going Experience

So what exactly took place in these cinemas?

Before we turn to the details of cinema culture in the 1960s, a caveat: the cinema audience of the time should not be regarded as entirely homogeneous. On the one hand, Phnom Penh in particular was ethnically diverse; alongside the Khmer, according to some estimates, 30% of the capital’s residents were Chinese, and there were also Vietnamese and – even after independence – French and other Europeans.¹⁸ Moreover, Cambodian society was marked by pronounced inequality, with many poor and relatively few wealthy people. We should therefore take René Laporte’s observation seriously: “Maybe it would be better first to clarify that there is not one public but three. First, the elite, who ignore and even despise popular cinema, keeping their favour for quality foreign movies. Second, the average public – orderlies, secretaries, clerks – who also prefer foreign movies, provided they are action films: detective, westerns, adventures. Movies like [Voyna i mir (War and Peace, Sergei Borndarchuk, 1965-1967)] or Les dimanches de Ville-d’Avary [The Sundays of Ville d’Avray, Serge Bourguignon, 1967] never stood a chance, as this public lacked sufficient knowledge of Western culture. Finally, the general public – the majority: vegetable sellers, cyclo drivers, workers, labourers, and especially their wives.”¹⁹

We also owe to Laporte an overview of the various film genres and countries of origin that were popular at the time: “Before the emergence of the first Cambodian movies, the popular public preferred comedies and adventures. If Charlot or Laurel and Hardy filled theatres, Fernandel attracted nobody. [Louis d]e Funès, however, was very popular. Indian films had an enormous influence: their wondrous aspects, special effects, songs, and dances immediately conquered audiences, with subjects rooted in a common historical background. Chinese films, once dubbed in Khmer, also achieved notable success, though less than Indian films. The Khmer public likes them because the plots are simple, full of duels and action. Some Cambodian producers tried to imitate this, but the public rejected it – things accepted in Chinese films were reprimanded in Cambodian ones.”²⁰

Audience Reactions and Cultural Impact

Cambodian films produced from the early 1960s onward sometimes sparked enthusiastic audience reactions: crowds often overwhelmed venues. At Hawaii Cinema in the 1960s, Kbuon Chivit (The Raft of Life, Uong Kanthok, 1962) ran for over a month, recalls lead actress Dy Saveth. “I wondered, why were there so many people standing packed along the sidewalk? The cinema owner smiled broadly because he made a lot of profit.”²¹ However, lengthy runs should also be seen against the backdrop of the production and distribution constraints of the time. Khmer films generally existed in only a single copy because directors had to shoot on reversal stock; Cambodia had no laboratories for processing or duplicating film. The negatives were sent out for processing – to Hong Kong, or even to France – and release prints only came back weeks or even months later.

Prohm Bayon cinema saw long lines for Puos Keng Kang (The Snake Man, Tea Lim Kun, 1970), with some admitting, they had already seen the movie twice, but they were still coming to see it again.²² “Preah Kun Ov Puk” in 1972 packed crowds for three months, with exits so tight that the exits “were so crowded that I couldn’t walk straight, so I had to turn back and stand for a while,” as one visitor recalls.²³ At Capitol, “Ali Baba” fans ”broke down the iron door to buy tickets, and the iron door actually collapsed!”²⁴ Many contemporaries remember that “during the festival days or on public holidays, it was almost impossible to get a ticket for a film screening, if one did not buy one in advance.”²⁵

Eyewitnesses recall how “people shouted and laughed, when they watched scary or funny movies.” During tragic moments, both men and women cried their eyes out. At other times, they talked back to the people on the screen. If an actor or actress played a mean or evil character, they would often get upset with them. Kong Sokha said: “They would say that a cruel character should be killed.” Tea Kimyeng, a tailor in Phnom Penh, recalls: “When they watched actresses like Sak Sisbourng playing an evil character, they hated her and complained about her.”²⁶ Candy, popcorn, dry lotus, watermelon and pumpkin seed, sugar cane, ice cream and bread were favourite snacks of the cinema audience.²⁷ Smoking was banned in almost in every cinema.

Most cinemas offered three or four screenings per day, typically one around noon, another around 4 p.m., and an evening show at 7 or 8 p.m. There seem to have been no late-night screenings. On weekends and holidays such as Khmer New Year (Choul Chnam Thmey) or Chinese New Year, an additional morning screening at 9 a.m. and another afternoon showing were often added. Long-term programming schedules do not appear to have existed: some films disappeared from cinemas after only a few days, while others ran for months.

A distinctive feature were the cinémas permanents – establishments that screened films continuously throughout the day, typically older productions that had already completed their runs at the larger, modern cinemas. These included, at least for certain periods, the Majestic, Trung Quoc Cinema, Dara, Sar Prum Meas, and Khemarak. For a single admission fee, patrons could remain for the entire day. A 1967 advertisement shows that the Sar Prum Meas, for instance, screened the sword-and-sandal film Nel segno di Roma (Sign of the Gladiator, Guido Brignone, 1959) and the Western comedy Calamity Jane (David Butler, 1953) starring Doris Day, both of which had likely been in circulation for some time. The Khemarak showed Il gobbo (The Hunchback of Rome, Carlo Lizzani, 1960) and an unidentified Japanese thriller in widescreen format. 

Ad for two cinémas permanents. Cambodge, 7 November 1967.

Memories differ regarding the equipment and comfort of the cinemas, and may also depend on which cinemas one could afford to visit: “Government officer Hong Saovandy recalls that[:] ‘It was so stuffy in the cinemas, because there were a lot of people and only a few fans,’ [and that] ‘The seats and the people in the cinema were often very smelly.’”²⁸ At the same time, many of the cinemas that opened in the 1960s already had air conditioning – a fact they highlighted in their advertisements. The Casino signalled this by depicting snow on its lettering to show it had air conditioning; other cinemas such, as the Lux or the Kirirom, did the same. In a tropical country where daytime highs in the dry season can reach up to 35°C, cooling was no small incentive to go to the movies. That could also be used as a marketing argument: when the Khemara acquired air conditioning, the cinema made a point of advertising this amenity in newspapers.

Casino Cinema logo covered with snow to indicate it had air-conditioning.

Tickets

Tickets were cheap by regional standards – as little as 1 riel at Trung Quoc and typically 5-10 riel at other cinemas – with screenings rolling every two hours, which contemporary observers deemed “relatively affordable.”²⁹ More luxurious cinemas like the Eden featured tiered seating with variable pricing based on seat location. A 40% ticket tax was levied, half of which was rebated to producers, effectively channelling public revenue back into the local industry and boosting Cambodian films.³⁰  At the same time, the French journalist René Laporte complained in one of his film reviews: “As for the ticket prices, they are far too high, especially if one takes into account the fact that the cost of purchasing these film reels, already old and paid off long ago, is but a tiny fraction of the operating costs.”³¹

There were no advance sales: you bought on site, and if a show was sold out, “you waited for the next show!”³² This setup created room for scalpers, who bought blocks of tickets and resold them with a markup.³³ To save money, families with children often purchased tickets only for the parents. Ly Pihourng, housewife, remembers: “Every time I went to see a movie, my parents bought only two tickets for themselves and we children sat on their laps. Sometimes, I could find an empty seat for myself. Whenever I wanted to get into the cinema by myself, I would just wait at the door of the cinema to enter with elder people, and the guards thought I came with my parents.”³⁴

However, not everybody had to go through such hassles: “VIP tickets were given for free to people working in the government and other institutions. Those tickets were delivered with the newspaper in the morning,” remembers Koy Pov, whose husband was a military commander at that time.³⁵ These complimentary tickets targeted opinion leaders first, anticipating that their endorsement of new films would influence wider audiences.

Marketing

Of course, the most conspicuous film advertising in the urban landscape, immediately visible to passing crowds, were the giant hand-painted movie posters adorning cinema façades. Cinema painters like Lim Kiav created hundreds of such marquees. They often employed assistants responsible for backgrounds or details, allowing them to focus entirely on the faces of the stars, which were particularly important for the films’ success.³⁶ 

The larger cinemas also advertised in newspapers through which they hoped to reach their target audiences. A cinema like the Lux, which catered to an educated upper class and screened many European films, placed advertisements in the French-language weekly magazine Réalités Cambodgiennes; Chinese-run cinemas advertising their kung fu films and opera adaptations from Hong Kong and China tended to place ads in Chinese-language newspapers.

Radio also played an important role as an advertising medium. While radio sets were too expensive for many Cambodians at the time, this often resulted in multiple families gathering to listen to a single device. Television was even less widespread, broadcasting only a few hours daily from 1966 onward. However, those who owned a set at home were shown brief clips from new Khmer films. Interviews with directors and actors or film reviews, however, did not exist. Press coverage was likewise generally limited to announcements of new films; the sole exception were the reviews published by French journalist TVEAR (René Laporte) in Réalités Cambodgiennes.³⁷ Cinemas also showed trailers for upcoming films before the main feature, along with advertisements for products such as milk and soft drinks.³⁸

In order to take advantage of the popularity of certain movies, some films were turned into cartoon books that were widely sold. Most of the movies of that time had a good number of songs, which added to the popularity of the films: “Driver Preap Van says: ‘I like Orn Euy Srey Orn [Khmer after Angkor, 1972] by Ly Bun Yim, because the actors were so beautiful and the story was so deep, but also because of the lovely songs sung by Sin Sisamuth and Ros Serey Sothea.’ Some of these songs are still popular today. They are still played on radio and television, or used for ceremonies such as weddings.”³⁹ To familiarize audiences with the songs or even encourage them to sing along during the performance, some productions distributed booklets containing the lyrics.

Live-Dubbing

A distinctive characteristic of Cambodian cinema during this era was the practice of ‘live dubbing,’ whereby one or several narrators provided voices for all characters in a film, occasionally accompanied by taped music. This practice was common throughout numerous Asian countries, including neighbouring Thailand, as well as Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and China. Generally, the practice emerged during the silent film era and declined considerably thereafter, as the advent of sound film made it unnecessary. In countries like Thailand and Cambodia, however, it persisted as a solution to the fact that well into the 1960s, post-production dubbing remained either technically impossible due to insufficient equipment or economically unviable given limited market sizes.

Matt Franjola, who was a correspondent for the Associated Press (AP) in the early 1970s, remembered later: “In the seventies, one of our freelancers at [AP] was Sun Heang who was later killed by the Khmer Rouge. Before he joined AP he had worked as a live dubber in the cinema. He was improvising the dialogue when foreign films were screened. He would sit in the projection room with a couple of other guys, and they would each voice some of the characters in movies that were not dubbed into Khmer. So he would be the bad guy with the deep voice, and he would be the good guy with a higher pitched voice. He would be the lover. He would do three or four accents, and switch back and forth between them. He was particularly good as the bad guy. […] He had to do that for every single screening of a movie, every day. They typically showed the films three times a day, so it must have been really tough work.”⁴⁰

Sometimes, the same film might be shown in its original version at an upscale cinema giving service to educated audiences where foreign language skills could be assumed, while appearing in live-dubbed form at popular cinemas, as an ad for the film The Ipcress File (Sidney J. Furie, 1965) indicates. An advertisement for the Hong Kong wuxia film Qin jian en chou (The Sword and the Lute, Hsu Cheng-hung, 1967) reveals a veritable Babylonian confusion of tongues, with screenings in Khmer and Chinese (which in the case of a Shaw Brothers film from this period meant Mandarin), as well as subtitles in both Chinese and English.

The British thriller The Ipcress File was shown in a French version at the upscale Cine Lux and in a Khmer version at the more popular Cinéma Eden.

The British thriller The Ipcress File was shown in a French version at the upscale Cine Lux and in a Khmer version at the more popular Cinéma Eden.

These observations help us understand cinema culture in Phnom Penh during the Golden Age. To conclude, we turn to three cinemas of particular significance in Cambodian cinema history: however different the Trung Quoc, the Cine Lux, and the Phnom Pich may have been, they share one quality – each merits special discussion, whether for its longevity, its notably good or poor reputation, its importance to the city’s history, or simply the wealth of available sources.

Three Cinemas in Phnom Penh

1. Today there is nothing more than a narrow gap in a wall beside a smartphone shop on Street 19 in the old downtown of Phnom Penh. But once this was an alley adorned with cinema posters leading to the ticket booth of the Trung Quoc (also: Troeung Kok, Khrung Kok or Rong Chrieng Kok). The cinema, which has now vanished completely as squatters transformed the passage into makeshift dwellings, likely held no more than 100 spectators. It operated as a cinéma permanent, showing films that had already finished their runs at larger establishments. Ticket prices were low (witnesses remember paying just one riel) and the appointments modest: squeaky folding wooden chairs, infested with bed bugs and mosquitoes in its old, dark auditorium.⁴¹

The Trung Quoc cinema in 1968. Bophana Audiovisual Resource Center/Australian Centre for the Moving Image.

The origins of this cinema remain obscure, but it appears to have existed as early as the colonial period. The name itself poses a puzzle: Trung Quoc is Vietnamese for ‘China.’ Does this point to a Vietnamese founder, or to Phnom Penh’s considerable Vietnamese community as the target audience? Since there was virtually no Vietnamese film production at this time, the name might indicate that films from China or Hong Kong were intended to be shown here. However, surviving film advertisements suggest rather that a potpourri of Hollywood, Hong Kong, and French films were screened, all somewhat older releases. Chaplin silent films were reportedly still shown here in the 1960s.⁴²

Apparently, the cinema was originally located at the site where the Capitol, one of the first major modern film palaces with representative architecture by Khmer star architect Vann Molivann, was constructed in the 1950s, and only relocated to its more modest location in the mid-1950s. Recently, claims have repeatedly surfaced that the cinema screened pornographic films in the early 1970s. This assertion likely stems from a remark in Jean-Michel Filippi’s book Strolling around Phnom Penh, where he writes: “Most movie theaters of the Sangkum period were well advertised, but this one preferred secrecy, for it was the only movie theaters showing erotic films. Of course, the risqué scenes never went very far, not beyond a deep kiss or a close-up of a slightly bare breast that French films of the time used to show.”⁴³

However, the absence of any other authentic source supporting this claim raises doubts; advertisements from this period continue to promote entertainment films. Be that as it may, from all available evidence, the Trung Quoc was not only one of Phnom Penh’s oldest and most enduring cinemas, even though it did not reopen after 1979. Rather, it appears to have been a genuine popular cinema for ordinary people, representative of the small colonial-era theatres that had, by the 1960s, become inexpensive and somewhat dilapidated second-run venues, much like the Dara or the Majestic.

2. The second cinema that we will look at in greater detail also dates back to the colonial era – though it was always an upscale cinema, and remained so. A visit to the Cine Lux was always something special, particularly during the period from 2007 onwards when it was the last remaining cinema from the pre-Khmer Rouge era and at times the only cinema at all in Phnom Penh, until the first multiplex cinemas opened in 2011. During this period, it primarily showed Cambodian productions and films from other Asian countries, especially Thailand and South Korea, until it finally closed in 2017.

The Cine Lux around 1968. National Archive of Cambodia, Phnom Penh.

So the Lux, built in 1938 on Preah Norodom Boulevard in the Streamline Moderne Art Deco style, was the longest-operating movie theatre in Phnom Penh’s history.⁴⁴ It was a two-story building with a curved back staircase, an auditorium with 800 seats, a horizontal balcony and dressing rooms behind the screen. Originally, it had one entrance at the street corner with “Ciné Lux” written above in French, and “LUX” displayed on the Preah Norodom Street-facing wall. The middle section featured six rows of square boxes for film banners for films that were distributed by Indochine Film et Cinéma.⁴⁵ One characteristic that can also be observed at other Cambodian cinemas is their integration with apartments, as seen in the case of the Lux on Oknha Ouk Lonn St. (148 St.) and Dekcho Damdin St. (154 St.). Similar combinations appear at the Battambang and at the Hawaii in Phnom Penh, where the cinema was part of a building that also housed a hotel of the same name. The reasons for this practice remain unclear – was it to minimize financial risk in case the cinema failed to attract sufficient business?

Before 1975, it primarily screened films from Europe for elite audiences, government officials, and French-speaking students, though it occasionally showed notable Khmer movies in the 1960s. These included films by notable art house directors such as Bande à part (Band of Outsiders, Jean-Luc Godard, 1964), Rocco e i suoi fratelli (Rocco and His Brothers, Luchino Visconti, 1960) or Histoires extraordinaires (Spirits of the Dead, Federico Fellini, Louis Malle and Roger Vadim, 1968), but also big-budget productions from Shaw Brothers, like Du xia (The Magnificent Trio, Chang Cheh, 1966). Of particular interest were films that were shot in Cambodia like Le facteur s’en va-t-en guerre (The Postman Goes to War, Claude Bernard-Aubert, 1966). Some of Norodom Sihanouk’s films were also screened at the Lux.

3. The Phnom Pich Cinema holds particular significance as the first cinema to open beyond the historic city centre. As such, it served as a precursor to more than a dozen cinemas that brought film-going to the new urban quarters that emerged in the western districts beyond Monivong Boulevard during the Sangkum period. Even though we know little about the specifics, its location alone suggests it operated at a higher standard than many of the older theatres. After all, it stood on the newly developed Monivong Boulevard, close to a number of new hotels built to international standards, such as the Paradise Hotel, the Asia Palace Hotel, the Hotel Mondial, and the Monorom Hotel. The nearby corner building at the junction with Kampuchea Krom was among the first apartment houses in Phnom Penh to have an elevator for its residents.

It already set itself apart from predecessors like the Khemara by its size: while the building of the older cinema, the Khemara, had only a single storey and covered about 200 square meters and – by my estimate – could accommodate 100 to 200 visitors, the Phnom Pich measured 500 square meters and was a four-storey structure, possibly with a large auditorium extending behind the street-front block and seating on the main floor with an additional balcony above. Like the other cinemas in Phnom Penh, its modernist façade was adorned with hand-painted advertisements for the current films.

The Phnom Pich cinema, circa 1968.

A remark by the film critic TVEAR from a 1966 review suggests that, seven years after the cinema opened, quality standards had declined: “The film reels are always tired, scratched and mended, and the sound is so high pitched that one must make considerable effort to understand the few pieces of dialogue, and the projectors […] are so dim that the grayish images make it seem that the whole movie takes place at dusk.”⁴⁶

A year later, however, the cinema apparently took steps to improve projection quality. In a review of the film Preah Leak Senvong, Neang Priem Kesar (Preah Leak Sinnvong and Neang Pream Kesar, Loy Nguon Heng, 1967) – in which he also notes that the cinema was “located in a tourist-heavy area” – TVEAR writes: “The Phnom Pich cinema has reopened one of the best-located theaters in the capital, right in the center, just steps away from the Monorom Hotel. Until recently, this venue was one of the most uncomfortable. It was stifling to watch subpar Indian films under deplorable conditions: projectors in poor condition producing dark and blurry images, and terrible sound quality. Fortunately, the new management has resolved these issues. Now, the images are sharp and clear, and the sound is better, though still a little too loud.”⁴⁷

Conclusion

“We apologize to our readers for not being able to provide them with the complete list of films that will be shown this week, but the management of Kambuja Cinema regrets to note that, despite a meeting attended by all the cinema directors of the capital, despite home visits and the sending of several circulars, most of these directors do not send their programs to the newspaper on time. They are thus depriving themselves of free advertising and readers of very useful information. We appeal once again to the understanding and goodwill of cinema directors so that information concerning their shows reaches us as quickly as possible.”⁴⁸

This statement appeared above the cinema program published by the magazine in January 1970. Let this exasperated tirade serve as a cautionary note at the conclusion of this essay: evidently, not all cinema operators in Phnom Penh were even able to submit their programs by the editorial deadline – for a magazine published by the former king and current head of state, Norodom Sihanouk! It stands to reason, then, that other information in the written sources used for this text may not always accurately reflect reality, just as oral sources are affected by clouded memory, lapses in recollection, and selective remembering.

Although caution is advised in light of the limited sources, this examination of Phnom Penh’s cinema landscape during the Sangkum period has revealed a complex and dynamic exhibition culture. Beginning with the colonial-era theatres concentrated in the historic centre, the article has documented the expansion of cinema infrastructure into new neighbourhoods west of Monivong Boulevard, with Phnom Pich marking a pivotal moment as the first theatre beyond the downtown core.

The architectural analysis has shown how cinemas ranged from modest venues to elaborate cinema palaces in the Khmer modernist style, while programming patterns demonstrated remarkable diversity, serving Khmer, Chinese, Vietnamese, and French-speaking audiences with films from across the globe. This flourishing cinema culture met an abrupt end with the intensifying civil war and Khmer Rouge takeover. By the early 1970s, war reduced attendance, with director Yvon Hem recalling, “There were grenades exploding in the movie theaters… not so many people went to see them.”⁴⁹

A significant gap remains in understanding the distribution structures that enabled such diverse programming – bringing films from the India, France, Hollywood, East and West Germany, Thailand, China, and numerous other sources to Cambodian screens. Reconstructing these networks would illuminate how geopolitical alignments, commercial considerations, and local taste cultures intersected to create Phnom Penh’s remarkably cosmopolitan film culture during this period.

An endnote regarding the lost films 

Since most Cambodian films from this period are lost, this reconstruction remains necessarily incomplete. In many cases, advertisements, reviews, and personal memories are all that remain of works once central to Phnom Penh’s cinema culture.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Nico Mesterharm, Davy Chou, Chhuor Yingphen, Fabian Tietke, and the staff at the National Archive of Cambodia (NAC), the library of the National Museum and Bophana Audio-Visual Resource Centre in Phnom Penh for their help, but most importantly to Trista Xiaoxiao Weng for her translations and her tireless support during the research at the NAC.

Disclosure

The following AI applications were used in writing this essay: ChatGPT for analysing documents and images, DeepL for translating from Chinese into Englisch and from German into English, Gemini for translating from Khmer and French into English and German, Claude.ai for creating tables of the cinemas and their locations, and Grammerly for editing.

Endnotes