New Script and Rough Cut Complete!

Sorry for the delay in posting but things have been busy these past few months. In May of this year, Clara Lehmann and myself began working on a complete overhaul of the film’s script. Using previous cuts of the film, feedback from test screenings, and assistance from writing advisors, we focused on maximizing the film’s current strengths while clarifying its story arc. By early July we had a finished script that we began to refine and send out for further feedback from talented and experienced writers like Jeff Long, Meg Moss, David Boodell, Eric Battersby, and others. Also at this point, we decided to incorporate two new elements into the storyline.

The first new element is narration which we use as a means to reinforce presented history as well as draw connections between the current actions of our main character with events of his childhood thirty years ago. The voice in the film is subtle and only there for reinforcement and guidance as we were careful to continue to focus on “showing rather than telling.”

The second new element we decided to incorporate was animation. Animation itself is a bit of an umbrella term so let me further clarify what I mean here. Within our main character’s life were many important moments that happened long before we could have recorded them (or even ones he remembers clearly). Instead of having him tell his story only in the present, we decided that it would be helpful to the story if we could find a way of presenting certain elements from his past on screen. However, we did not want to reinact moments exactly as they happened for fear of oversimplifying them. Instead we came up with the solution of using beautifully designed and animated scenes that focus on the subtle events of his story alongside his description of what happened. We tried to match the existing cinematography of the film as much as possible so the transition between the two worlds would be less drastic. We’re about one third of the way through the process at this point and look forward to finishing up the rest very soon! Our animator is Viktor Berg and you can see samples of his work at : http://www.i3erg.com/

In August of this year, I began work on assembling the film following the new script as closely as possible. In late August, I passed the work to Jonathan Lacocque who will be finishing out the rest of the edit. The detail and organization in Clara Lehmann’s new script as well as previous cuts completed by Chris Parkhurst and Melissa Burns, have allowed things to move very smoothly and efficiently with the new edit and we look forward to finalizing and sharing it with you soon! Until then, thank you for your patience and interest, and please email or post comments/questions to this entry, take care! – John Severson

Passing of Bou Senghourt (HOURT)

BOU SENG HOURT
1981 – 2009

With a very heavy heart and profound sadness we announce the passing of Bou Seng Hourt. Hourt was the wife of Aki Ra, the gentle mother of Amatak, Mine, Meta and dozens of children who called the Cambodia Landmine Museum their home. She made all our lives richer for having known her.

Of all the people I spent time talking to in Cambodia, Huort’s smile and laugh were one of the most memorable. Despite the recent radical changes to where she lived/worked, her honesty and love for Aki Ra and her children never waivered one bit. She was a beautiful and healthy woman, barely 30 years old, and her death came as a shocking surprise to all who knew her.

Hourt meant so much to Aki Ra, their adopted children, and the museum and up until last month, she was a dedicated de-miner as well. You will be proud to know that Aki Ra’s new demining team has women deminers working with him. This was something Hourt had encouraged and without her I doubt these women would have participated. Hourt is just as much a hero as Aki Ra and letters, phone calls and emails from around the world to Aki Ra last week prove that to be true.

Rich Fitoussi is currently en route back to Cambodia to help Aki Ra and the community in their time of need. For more information and/or to make a donation to Huort’s memorial, visit http://cambodialandminemuseum.org

Let this be another reminder to cherish those close to us and be thankful for incredible people like Bou Senghourt.

-John Severson

Follow-up Interview with Aki Ra

As mentioned in last month’s newsletter, we did manage to coordinate one final interview with Aki Ra. Because Aki Ra is very busy with his new demining team, we had a very limited window of time to pull this off. Combining the productive power of Skype, a carefully planned and organized question list, and the sheer determination and confidence of Uy Serimony (aka “Tom”, our translator), we were able to pull it off. Now, we are awaiting translation of the two-hour interview addressing holes in our current cut of the film.

To complete this interview successfully in two very different hemispheres and timezones, I awoke last weekend at 4:30am in Chicago and called Tom, our translator, in Cambodia. We completed a final sound check and reviewed the questions. Aki Ra arrived on time and at 6pm Saturday evening (5am Chicago time) the interview began. With a pair of headphones and a wireless internet connection using Skype, I listened to the entire interview as Tom questioned Aki Ra on key moments of his life, and how he had changed during the years leading up to the opening of his museum and afterwards.

The following morning, Tom returned to Phnom Penh to work on translation. Meanwhile Aki Ra returned to demining, and the digital recordings were transported overseas with producer, Richard Fitoussi as he returned to Canada. I just spoke with Tom this morning, and he is about halfway through the translation and will be emailing it to me by Thursday of this week.

David Boodell and the rest of the Year Zero Team are excited to see the results of the interview, and I look forward to passing on more information as soon as I have it. Thanks for your continued interest and take care!

Finishing Writer Joins Year Zero Team

The Year Zero team is pleased to announce the addition of Documentary writer/director David Boodell. Boodell, a former supervising producer at Chicago’s well-known Towers Productions, has directed and produced numerous features for television networks such as A&E, the History Channel, and Discovery. In 2006, he directed the feature “Facing Life: The Retrial of Evan Zimmerman,” a story of one man’s struggle to prove his innocence after being wrongly convicted of a murder in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Boodell has just finished co-authoring the book “Dreams From the Monster Factory” with Sunny Schwartz. In the book, Boodell details how Schwartz, who has worked in the San Francisco County Jails for a quarter of a century, has gone about reforming the system so that it works for the community rather than against it.

Boodell is working diligently to help fine-tune the Year Zero story and write voice-over to make it more appealing to broadcasters and film festivals alike. He is currently reviewing our rough cuts and suggested outlines as well as reading through the film’s transcripts to check for additional material that we may use. We’ll keep you updated on his progress but we’re hoping to have a finished outline to edit from by the end of this month.

Update from Cambodia

Things in Cambodia are going amazing for Aki Ra and the team at the CLMMRF. Aki Ra’s new de-mining NGO, Cambodia Self Help Demining (CSHD), received full licensed accreditation from the Cambodia Mine Action and Victim Assistance Authority in mid December of 2008 just in time for the beginning of the New Year. The accreditation of this new all Khmer organization marks the efforts of nearly 10 years of hard work by the Landmine Relief Fund and its sister organization the Cambodia Landmine Museum Relief Fund.

Aki Ra’s new NGO team has been fully outfitted with new Personal Protection Equipment (PPE), state of the art mine detection equipment and logistical GPS equipment for mapping and surveying mined areas in Cambodia. The new NGO has acquired vehicles required for its first team including an outfitted ambulance that is mandatory for every demining team operating under international and Cambodian humanitarian demining standards.

Bill Morse, International Project Manager for the CSHD and director of the Landmine Relief Fund in Palm Springs California, has been working diligently on the diplomatic front to get Aki Ra’s all Khmer demining team accredited and deserves a huge pat on the back for all his work. The CSHD are currently demining in Kohchombok Village in Siem Reap Province.

-Richard Fitoussi

Happy Holidays!

Everyone here at Year Zero would like to wish you the best of holidays! We’ve taken the last week to regroup, and we hope you too found time to relax with family and friends. During this time of year we thought it would be great to share both an update, and some important thank yous.

Currently we are finalizing the assembly of a writing/story development team with more help from the talented writer Jeff Long. He has been a wonderful adviser to the film and continues to show great support. We’ve also recently contracted Clara Lehmann to read all of our interview transcripts, and provide editorial help. We feel strongly about where we’ve taken the film so far, but we also understand the importance of critical and objective feedback. Making sure the film speaks clearly and powerfully to as many people as possible is extraordinarily important to us, and thus this final leg of work will be both challenging and exciting. As a group of professionals living with the same media for nearly 2 years now, it is important to now push for that finish line. We will likely be reviewing the film, transcripts, re-worked script and written outlines/proposals for the next month with an interest in completing the final film sometime in February.

Finally, although we did not get into the Sundance Film Festival, we are excited to prep our film for future festival submission. We’ve thought about Full Frame, Hot Docs, AFI Dallas along with several others. Let us know if you have any thoughts or suggestions–we’d love to hear them!

Thank you all for your support and continued interest in our project. We hope to bring a powerful film to each of you in the early part of ‘09, and can only wish for a positive response. With the finalization of this film and promotion of it, we will be working hard to garner support and further fiscal sponsorship for Akira’s Landmine Museum, and interest in the landmine issue that plagues not only Cambodia and Southeast Asia, but much of the world.

Fine Tuning

Progress continues as Jonathan and I are making one last set of revisions before getting it out for reviews and feedback. We’ve made significant changes since the last cut with more stories from people who know Aki Ra and some restructuring to the order of events. See below for a clip from Aki Ra’s brother-in-law, Sen Ho, describing what its like to demine with Aki Ra.

Cinema Verite 2007 Video

YEAR ZERO Rendezvous in Paris, Geneva, & Japan

It has been one year since the Cinema Verite International Rendezvous Film Festival awarded the 2007 Laureate Film Award to the makers of YEAR ZERO for their short film LIVING WITH LANDMINES in Paris and Monaco last October. LIVING WITH LANDMINES was created to help raise awareness for the Cambodia Landmine Museum Relief Fund (CLMRF) and was a promotional teaser for the feature length film YEAR ZERO: STORY OF A KHMER ROUGE SOLDIER. The prize provided nearly fifty thousand dollars to help fund post-production and promotion for Year Zero.

On the anniversary of the event this October 8-12th, Year Zero’s executive producer Richard Fitoussi was invited to attend the 2008 Cinema Verite Film Festival in Geneva and Paris where he was asked to speak about the responsibility of film to promote global humanitarian awareness. Richard arrived from Japan earlier that day where he was speaking about the film and the Cambodia Landmine Museum Relief Facility at the Six International Conference for Museums of Peace at the Kyoto Peace Museum. Following the speech a ten minute preview of selected scenes from Year Zero was shown to an exclusive audience both in Geneva and Paris. The Geneva gala dinner was held at the prestigious President Wilson Hotel and at the Bastille Opera House in Paris. During the events Her Majesty Queen Noor of Jordan spoke about the film’s impact to bring about action that will positively affect those who are suffering in the world.

Also in attendance were this years Cinema Verite award winners who included Nobel Prize Laureate Wangari Maathai, Erin Gruwell (portrayed by Hillary Swank in the film FREEDOM WRITERS), Golden Globe award winning director Hany Abu-Assad (Paradise Now), and director Jeremy Gilley (THE DAY AFTER PEACE). The 2008 Cinema Verite Guests of Honor included Meg Ryan, Susan Sarandon, and Richard Jenkins (SIX FEET UNDER, THE VISITOR). It also included legendary humanitarian Sir Bob Geldof, the driving force behind the LIVE 8 concerts for third world debt relief in 2005 and the 1984 Band Aid concert to rescue the starving in Ethiopia.

Adjustments Continue

After receiving some very useful feedback from our tester screeners, adjustments to final cut have begun. Plan is to have changes that affect order of cut finished by this coming weekend then move into final sound mastering stages by next week. Thanks again to all who helped with reviews!

Also…see below for highlight of last year’s Cinema Verite Festival in France which shows some clips from the short we submitted as well as other films.