6:18 mins., b&w, silent.
Production : ICF (Indochine Cinémas et Film), the French colonial government film production company
Source : this film can be viewed here. It is also held by the NAFC, where the catalogue number is AS-89.2.12
This film shows performances by the Royal Ballet of Cambodia – traditionally composed almost exclusively of female dancers – shot in three different locations: outside in a tropical garden, then on a roof terrace, finally inside what appears to be a palace room with mirrors (one shot shows the camerman reflected in the mirror, busily turning the handle of his camera).
This is a much more substantial corps de ballet than in the Coomaraswamy films, and the dancers are accompanied by a considerable number of musicians with xylophones. The quality of the film production suggests professional involvement: in the latter part of the film, there are many striking close-up shots of hands, feet, costumes, faces. However, while being technically superior to the Coomaraswamy films, this film is in some ways less interesting from an ethnographic point of view since it does not follow the performance of particular legends.
On the YouTube site where this film is available, it is proposed that it was made in the ‘early 1900s’, which may be influenced by the fact that King Sisowath’s Royal Ballet performed at a colonial exhibition in Marseilles in 1901. However, the location is clearly in Cambodia, and is probably the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh, while the quality of both the film stock and the shooting suggests a much later date, though certainly before 1927, since Sisowath died in that year.
Although there are no credits, it is possible that the film was shot by Brut and/or Lejards, two skilled Pathé cameramen who were in Phnom Penh around this time while shooting À travers Cochonchine et Cambodge, an extended reportage film released in 1925. This also features a very well executed sequence of the Royal Ballet dancers.
For all these reasons, the 1925 date suggested in the NAFC catalogue seems appropriate.
The Cambodian Royal Ballet corps continued to perform until it was dispersed by the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s, and many of the performers perished during the ensuing genocide. But with the fall of the Khmer Rouge in 1979, the corps was recreated and in 2003 the ballet form was added to the UNESCO list of examples of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. For further details see here.
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