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SFO through Festival- and Peace-Building Involvement

In last March, our Executive Director was attending an intensive five days of Cinema Without Borders by Movies that Matter, in The Hague, the Netherlands. He was selected to represent Cambodia, among other 13 fellows from the Global South, to be trained on festival programming on human rights. 

The fist week of last May saw his attendance in another intensive four days of Asia Peace Innovators Forum, organized by Salzburg Global Seminar, funded by The Nippon Foundation (日本財団). He was selected to represent Cambodia, with Women Peace Makers-Cambodia, among over 40 fellows from the Global South. The following week gathered CCs (Cooperation Circles) of URI (United Religions Initiative, Asia Region) Southeast Asia and Pacific in Jakarta, Indonesia. This gathering allowed us at SFO to reflect on our past activities or collaboration to both growing our local communities and building global peace.

SFA from Training to Production

Following the filmmaking training in last April and May, Sunflower Film Alliance (SFA) has polished their scripts and prepared their production. As in previous years, SFA is going to shoot two short fictions for 5 to 10 minutes each, based on two crews’ story ideas and respective roles distributed since early this year, thanks to the support of Sombath Somphone Memorial Fund.  

“I’m glad we went through this [casting] experience. When our team came together to solve such problems, I felt our bond got strengthened and we learned to communicate better”, affirmed Ms. VANDY Denasophealeap, Vice-President of SFA 2024, in charge of props in the film project.  

CSFF from CFI 1.0 to Deadline Extension

Since last April, Chaktomuk Short Film Festival (CSFF) has launched its new edition, opening its call for submission to short filmmakers. In order for its candidates and audience to understand better about its submission call, CSFF conducted its very first Chaktomuk Film Insight (CFI) of the  year in an online format, on May 25th. 

Besides, upon overwhelming requests by our local filmmakers, our submission deadline will be extended till July 31st, while another CFI would be conducted in July, in person to enhance the filmmaking skills of our interested candidates.

SM’s Cultural Documentary and Romance Series 

As Sunflower Media (SM) has been founded to create positive content for social impact, we found it relevant to collaborate with a group of SFA alumni to launch an online show called “Cultures Matter“. This show highlights Cambodian cultural and arts forms such as large puppet shadows “Sbek Thom“. 

On our continued trajectory to support the same crew’s ambition, they have been now working on a series of short films, commissioned by SabayOne to relate to Cambodian teenagers and youth nowadays. 

SEAVFC’s Workshop and Extended Deadline

As part of our submission campaigns, SFO joined hands with Anak TV Foundation (main organizer of SEAVFC from the Philippines) to co-organize the very first video workshop for Cambodian children and the second one with our production partner, Box Media. Both were conducted respectively on June 15th-16th and June 29th-30th, with six remarkable videos creatively produced by children-participants, with their parents’ satisfaction. 

Meanwhile, the submission sees its deadline now extended till August 31st. The change in deadline was requested by the 4th SEAVFC Festival Director, Dato Mayhiddin, to give all countries ample time to gather more entries and conduct their in-country competitions. If your students/children are ready with their videos, you can submit them to us here.