Filmmaker Jocelyn Glatzer will screen and discuss "The Flute Player" in a Chicks Make Flicks event on Wednesday, May 12 at 7 p.m. in Room 6-120.
"The Flute Player" features Cambodian immigrant Arn Chorn-Pond, who probably would have carried on his family's musical legacy and become an opera star if the Khmer Rouge hadn't taken over Cambodia in 1975. Instead, at age nine, Arn was thrust for four years into the killing fields, a genocide that claimed his family and the lives of 2 million other Cambodians.
In the film, after living in the United States for 20 years, Arn is facing the shadows of his past as he fights to save Cambodia's once-outlawed traditional music from extinction.
"The Flute Player" won the Audience Award at the 2003 South by Southwest Film Festival as well as sponsorship and funding from the Sundance Institute and ITVS; it also was broadcast by PBS' acclaimed "POV" series. Before directing "The Flute Player," Glatzer worked for Maysles Films as well as WNET's "Great Performances" and "American Playhouse."
Chicks Make Flicks is a monthly series organized by Women in Film and Video/New England and co-sponsored by MIT's Women's Studies Program and Women's Independent Living Group. The series was established to highlight women's contributions to film and to encourage more female participation in the filmmaking industry.
For more information, call 253-8844.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on May 12, 2004 (download PDF).
