David mendez kalyanee mam bio

Most definitely! I wish we all had more time to get together, but everyone from our class and beyond have been incredibly supportive. I accept. August 4, Young Leader shares work as documentary filmmaker, telling stories of and advocating for Cambodian peoples. Biography Award-winning filmmaker, lawyer, and born storyteller, Kalyanee Mam, a Young Leader of the French-American Foundation, is committed to combining her passion for art and advocacy to tell compelling and universal stories.

KalyaneeMam Interview We were delighted that you joined the French-American Foundation for a special reception following a screening of your directorial feature-length david mendez kalyanee mam bio, A River Changes Course, in June What was the reaction to this work? Here in the United States? Among fellow documentarians? In Cambodia and among those featured in your work?

Your work explores the parallel issues of environmental decay and the rapid changes to traditional lifestyles and culture in Cambodia, which are often linked to ethnic identities? How are these two phenomena intertwined? Louis International Film Festival. However, Kalyanee Mam is best known for directing and producing award-winning documentary A River Changes Coursewhich explores the damage rapid development has wrought in her native Cambodia on both a human and environmental level.

She noticed a dramatic change in the country's landscape — many of the forests she had traveled to before had been cut down and replaced with rubber plantations, huge lakes in Phnom Penh were dredged and filled with sand to accommodate condominiums and business infrastructure projects, and hundreds of garment factories sprouted outside the city where once were rice fields and towering palm trees.

On this trip, Mam also first met Sari Math, who recounted the story of his family and their struggle to survive in a fishing village on the Tonle Sap. During this first meeting, Mam knew she wanted to tell Sari's story and the story of other Cambodians impacted by development. Mam is also known for her work with director Charles Ferguson as Cinematographer, Associate Producer, and Researcher for Academy Award-winning documentary Inside Joba Sony Pictures Classics release about the — financial crisishailed as a "masterpiece of investigative non-fiction moviemaking" and which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.

A River Changes Course. Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read Edit View history. We drove out to the forests and spoke with every village chief in the jungles. We rode elephants, boats and motorcycles to get to these remote, faraway places. We explained to them what we were doing and one village chief happened to know the perfect family for it.

So, I got on his motorcycle, crossed a river and climbed nine mountains. I met Khieu through someone who became a friend of mine. When I first met Khieu, we were sitting on the floor of her dormitory and had a meal together. I knew she was perfect for this after hearing stories about her life and her family. I got to know these three families over the course of three years.

As a documentary filmmaker, do you ever find it difficult disarming your subjects and getting them to really open up? Well, I was very open with the families. I have to be. I shared my own life story and completely revealed myself to them. So, I got to know them first and interviewed them at different intervals to cover the beginning, the middle and the end.

If you notice, I actually never asked them much. I maybe asked a few questions to follow up on what they were saying, but I most wanted to hear what they wanted to talk about. These people live their lives without that kind of intrusion, so why should it be any different on film? You have a remarkable story of your own. My family and I were refugees that came to the US in We fled this atrocious period during the Khmer Rouge.

I grew up hearing all these stories about the genocide from my parents and that really affected me. It very strongly influenced my ways of thinking and confused me too. I wanted to understand my history and where I came from. My parents always instilled in me the importance of my country and the importance of education, but also the importance of helping others.

All I can do is share stories and in doing so, urge others to do the same. As a lawyer, I was really interested in refugee and immigration law. I worked with refugees in South Africa and immigrants in Los Angeles—particularly women who were brought here, almost against their will, and now the victims of domestic violence. When I was working in Iraq, I was compelled to help the Iraqis, who became my friends, fight for their right to leave their country and resettle as refugees elsewhere in places like Syria, Jordan and Egypt.

David mendez kalyanee mam bio: David Mendez – Movies,

I felt like the only way I could help them was by putting their stories on film and reach as many people as possible. I had no experience as a filmmaker. I had no idea what I was doing. All I knew was that I wanted to make a film about the subject. It was really the passion that let me do it. You made quite a leap from that to Inside Job.

Just how steep was that learning curve? My younger brother, Jonathan, refused to blend in. He fidgeted during family photos, made faces, and acted out the way any young boy would. My father did not like this. He knew there would be trouble if Jonathan could not fall in line. My father disciplined my brother, hoping he could beat into him the sense he had beaten into himself.

These beatings caused Jonathan to rebel even more. Although he excelled in school at first, surpassing me in the high school state debate tournament when I was a senior and he was only a freshman, Jonathan refused to study and become the obedient child my father wanted him to be. Drinking, smoking, and hanging out with friends were more fun and spoke to the angst he felt inside—the angst we all felt, but which only Jonathan, at the time, was honest enough to express.

For many years I wondered why I felt so lost. I had everything my father could have wanted for his children—education, honor, and respect from my peers and my community. They only care about their land and this gift they will leave behind for their children, grandchildren, and all the children who will be born long after they are gone. They understand that legacy means dignity, not wealth.

Integrity means love and community, not david mendez kalyanee mam bio. Every time I traveled to Cambodia, she would ask me to bring back jewelry or silk and handwoven scarves, along with twenty pounds of dried and roasted fish. I always did so reluctantly, reminding my mother of how busy I was, filming and working. When I brought the gifts home, my mother would carefully place the bundles of fish in the freezer, each week removing only a few pieces to cook and savor with a bowl of steamed jasmine rice.

In this way, the fish would last for nearly a year, until I could make my way back to Cambodia again. She would add the silk and scarves to the pile she had amassed in her closet and store the gems in her jewelry box. When we had to flee our home, my mother sewed precious gems and gold necklaces into the seams of her pants. During our escape from one refugee camp to another, my father had to conceal the gems and gold coins in the crevices of his body to keep us safe against bandits.

The jewels were our protection and our hope for a new beginning. These gems and gold coins were not the only protection our family carried with us on our journey. When the Khmer Rouge came to power intwo years before I was born, my family had to flee their home in Pailin with only the barest essentials—clothing, food, rice, and medicine, which they piled onto a cart that my father towed with his Honda motorcycle—joining throngs of families who were also forced to evacuate from their homes.

They had to walk twelve kilometers before they were able to take shelter for the night. My mother cooked rice with sausage and salted fish. Sophaline and Makkara, who were only nine and seven at the time, asked my father if they could return home. Please sleep and save your energy so that we can continue our journey tomorrow. Early the next morning, as they prepared to continue their journey, a man approached my parents and asked them if they had any medicine.

David mendez kalyanee mam bio: Kalyanee Mam (born in

His youngest child had diarrhea and had been vomiting for two days. The man had tried to buy medicine, but no one would sell him any. They told him money means nothing now. Gold is everything. My mother glanced at my father with softness in her eyes, and they both knew what they had to do. My mother comforted the man. She told him not to worry and that my father would go with him to see his child.

My father went with the man and found his son sleeping on a mat, his arms and legs completely still. He took his temperature with a thermometer and gave him a shot.

David mendez kalyanee mam bio: Kalyanee Mam is a

He then gave the man some extra medicine to give to his son. The man asked how much money he owed my father. When we arrived safely to the United States, my mother unraveled the stitches from her pants and strung a golden string of sapphires around her neck, one of the few remaining jewels we have left to remind us of our homeland. She wears them tucked beneath her blouse or proudly on her chest; I have never seen my mother without them.

Only a few years before his death, my father finally found work that honored the jewels he had brought with him from his homeland: his love for people and his commitment to his community. He worked as a counselor for the Refugee Resource Center of San Joaquin County, assisting Asian refugees with family reunification, crisis intervention, and filling out applications.

He also volunteered as a counselor, providing support and guidance for young Cambodian men interned at the California Youth Authority. I had always seen him as a loving, caring father. But this was the first time I had seen him whole, as a proud member of his community, his face and voice finally accepted and recognized. Many of the young men he counseled and supported came to his funeral, helping carry his coffin on their shoulders.

What might have happened if he had spoken to my mother? If he had spoken to us and told us his story? I wonder what might have happened if he had told us that we would never give in to the powers that seek to deface and silence us. Recently, my sister Kunthear expressed to me her fear that her memory of our father was fading. She was afraid that with time she would forget him and that he and his memory would disappear forever.

As we were speaking, we reflected on a backpacking trip we took together two summers ago in the Sierra Nevada, where David and I embark on our pilgrimages each year. We had plans to complete the mile John Muir Trail in four weeks we had completed 29 miles of the trail a few years before that. As we started our hike, Kunthear fell sick, unable to acclimate to the rising elevation.

Just before flying out to California from Texas, she had loaded the car and driven her daughter, Apsaline, to Austin to start her very first year of college. For weeks, she had cooked and packed the freezer with jars of soup and food for her husband and thirteen-year-old son, Edward, to eat while she was away. Her friends and community rallied behind her, ready to take Edward to and from school and offer her the support she needed to complete her hike.

Kunthear did all she could to prepare for the trip, but she was not prepared herself. We walked slowly, taking it one step at a time, breathing deeply and resting often. We completed only a couple of miles the first day. On our second night, we set up camp near a stream lined with purple, broad-leaved lupines and golden arrowleaf groundsel.

Butterflies fluttered around us as we took turns bathing in the stream.