@inbook {ups.9780748694136.003.000720150101, title = {The survivor-perpetrator encounter and the truth archive in Rithy Panh\&$\#$39;s documentaries}, booktitle = {Post-1990 Documentary Reconfiguring Independence, eds. Camille Deprez \& Judith Pernin}, year = {2015}, pages = {97-111}, publisher = {Edinburgh University Press}, organization = {Edinburgh University Press}, abstract = {This chapter proposes an analysis of Rithy Panh{\textquoteright}s documentaries, S21: The Khmer Rouge Death Machine (2003), Duch, Master of the Forges of Hell (2012) and, to a lesser degree, The Missing Picture (2013), as so-called {\textquoteleft}perpetrator documentaries{\textquoteright} {\textemdash} that is, documentaries that focus on the figure of the perpetrator, while unravelling the long-time enigma of the {\textquoteleft}ordinary man turned perpetrator{\textquoteright}. It suggests that the survivor{\textendash}perpetrator encounter staged at the heart of S21 and Duch is a major characteristic of Panh{\textquoteright}s perpetrator documentary cinema, aiming at undermining the perpetrator{\textquoteright}s ideology of extermination and reconstituting the human condition. It also describes the cinematic strategies through which these three post-genocide documentaries constitute a cinematic {\textquoteleft}archive of truth{\textquoteright}. Identifying the major tropes that most potently mobilise this archive examines the role of Panh{\textquoteright}s perpetrator documentaries as a transgenerational site, one that confronts the post-1979 generation with the double enigma: of the {\textquoteleft}ordinary perpetrator{\textquoteright} and self-genocide. In the midst of Cambodia{\textquoteright}s struggle over the post-Khmer Rouge national narrative, Panh, the survivor, has put forward a new episteme with which Cambodia{\textquoteright}s collective post-traumatic memory should be re-established.Request full-text\ https://goo.gl/bHBQ8W}, isbn = {9780748694136}, url = {https://www.researchgate.net/publication/304875489_The_survivor-perpetrator_encounter_and_the_truth_archive_in_Rithy_Panh{\textquoteright}s_documentaries}, author = {Raya Morag} }