Millsaps College presents director Socheata Poeuv, the first Cambodian-American female to film a feature-length documentary, on Monday, February 11, as part of the Southern Circuit tour of independent filmmakers. Following a screening of her movie “New Year Baby,” Poeuv will engage the audience in a discussion of her work and the film. The screening and discussion will begin at 7:30 p.m. in the Ford Academic Complex, Room 215. The event is free and open to the public. For more information, contact Austin Wilson at 601-974-1305 or wilsola@millsaps.edu.
Poeuv was born in a Thai refugee camp on Cambodian New Year but raised in Dallas, Texas, with limited knowledge of the circumstances that brought her family to the United States. When Poeuv turned 25, her parents informed her that her two sisters were really her cousins and her brother was only her half-brother. Each member of the family is a survivor of the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia, smuggled to Thailand by Poeuv’s father before the family immigrated to the United States. This revelation raised more questions than it answered for Poeuv.
In her captivating debut documentary, “New Year Baby,” Poeuv and her brother travel with their parents back to Cambodia to reconnect with their past, and to discover and document the family’s extraordinary legacy of survival. In this personal and powerful film, she unveils the enormity of the Cambodian genocide and interviews the generals of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge who never faced prosecution.
The presentation will also include an opening short film.
The 2007-2008 Southern Circuit is a program of the Southern Arts Federation in collaboration with the South Carolina Arts Commission. It is sponsored locally by Millsaps College, the Mississippi Humanities Council and the Mississippi Film Office.
