SE Asia Cinema Adventures Begin: Part 1
Arrival in Hanoi
I arrived in Southeast Asia in 2004, initially arriving in Hanoi, Vietnam to look for teaching work. I had been planning to balance out my filmmaking background with some teaching experience for practical reasons, as I had spent every last dime producing my 2nd feature movie, 'Lost in New Mexico', and realized I needed an additional skill set to establish a buffer during lean times. My first feature documentary, 'BookWars', was still making sales and bringing in some revenue, but I knew I needed to stay ahead of the curve. A friend had recommended I try teaching English in Vietnam; I had a chunk of time before starting to edit 'Lost in New Mexico', so I decided to roll the dice and give it a shot.
I'd actually been to visit Thailand, with a sidetrip to see Angkor Wat in Cambodia a year earlier in 2003...but this time it was different. A one way ticket and an open ended stay. Maybe a year; maybe ten. Maybe more...
So I booked a one way ticket from California to Hanoi and started from there, looking for teaching jobs while also keeping an eye on the regional media production scene.
I worked my way down the coast to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) stopping in Da Nang to hand out some CVs. By then I realized that I should probably get a TEFL certificate to improve my work opportunities, so decided to head from Saigon to Bangkok, where low cost but apparently decent TEFL course was being taught.
Heading to Bangkok
I booked a bus from Saigon to Bangkok, which is quite a long ride, maybe 22 hours. So, the trip was broken up with a stop in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, about 7 hours from Saigon; we would all stay at the King Guesthouse, my first experience in Phnom Penh. The bus driver announced that we 'could get real hamburgers at Lucky Supermarket nearby'.
I'd been to Siem Reap in 2003 to visit Angkor Wat, as a side trip from a visit to Thailand I'd taken for a month. But Phnom Penh was totally different from Siem Reap: it felt raw, edgy, crackling as it developed. The bus company allowed me to join another bus to continue on my way to Bangkok the next day, so I postponed my ongoing trip for a day so I could check out Phnom Penh.
Phnom Penh seemed to be a city that was about to undergo rapid development; I figured I may be able to teach here, actually, and do various indie or sponsored projects in between.
It was outside the King Guesthouse that I met Mr. Vuth, a motodop driver who would later end up helping me with the CamboFest Film Festival, which I would launch in 2007 as a graduate student at Royal University of Phnom Penh (MA, International Development Studies). Vuth would also help me during the early casting sessions for the Freedom Deal project, and he would even accidentally star in the festival-favorite video documentary we made by chance that day while waiting for actors to show up, 'Vuth Learns to Rock'.
On the third day, I finally I had to go. If I didn't leave on that final bus, I'd miss the start of the TEFL class in Bangkok, so I left Phnom Penh at last.
I did the TEFL training in Bangkok, and I even started teaching. The pay was very low though, and I knew then and there I didn't want to be scraping by in Bangkok with all my time hogged up by a low paying teaching job. Phnom Penh was still on my mind after a couple weeks, so I finally devised a detailed plan to head back to Cambodia and undertake part time teaching while pitching my filmmaking services to NGOs, small businesses, and the like.
Return to Cambodia
I headed back to Phnom Penh and got a part time English teaching gig at Pannasastra University. In the rest of my time, I pitched my filmmaking services and bid on a few advocacy videos for various NGOs.
I did indeed land a video directing and production job at last, my first being a video for The NGO Forum on Cambodia. It was called 'Crisis', about land alienation (land grabbing) in Ratanakiri Province.
I continued to send out CVs for teaching, this time targeting the few film production schools or training organizations I could find (there weren't many). In the end, I managed to secure a part time video production teaching position at Royal University of Phnom Penh's Department of Media and Communications.
My First Media Teaching job in Asia
The sponsorship of the program was German, with funding by the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung at the time. I would presumably be filling in for a teacher who normally would have been German according to the funder's hiring preferences
I set up all the workstations (still using Firewire at the time), installed the editing software, and developed a curriculum for the course. The director of the program was a seemingly amiable chap named Martin Kroeber, who had been brought onboard via the DAAD: German Academic Exchange Service.
It turned out later that Martin was not all he was cracked up to be as a director, as we shall see...this would be my first experience with questionable expatriate behavior in the education sector.
As a culmination to his teaching term, I proposed bringing all of my DMC students on a chaperoned field trip to the Bangkok Film Market and Festival, utilizing my own contacts at that event to secure free passes for all my students - a value of $2000. It would be a fabulous capstone field trip to close out their academic year.
I subsequently pitched the idea to Mr. Kroeber, who reacted very positively, and agreed to move forward. Also present during that pitch meeting in his office was an associate lecturer named Isabel (also from the DAAD, I believe.) Isabel smirked and shook her head skeptically that such an effort could be pulled off.
Nonetheless, I managed to secure about 25 passes to the event, and I continued to produce and coordinate the project in my spare time: researching busses and ticket costs, reaching out to hotels and guesthouses in Bangkok, and more.
"You don't have to worry about the project, Jason, this is your project", Martin assured. I wondered why he was so emphatic about this point, it was a bit odd.
Intrigue
As the field trip grew in stature and prominence, with some local Cambodian news becoming aware of it, Mr. Kroeber suddenly announced that he would be chaperoning the students to Bangkok instead of me.
And what's more, skeptical ol' Isabel would be attending as well as co-chaperone!
Martin sent a text message to inform me: "this is now an official school field trip and I will be in charge"
I still maintained control of the passes to the Film Market, however. I was disgusted, and felt like asking my contact at the Market to take the passes back and re-allocate them to others. Yet, I had promised my students they would be going. I was thus put in an ethical bind.
In the meantime, my students were all eagerly expecting me to be the chaperone, as I'd come up with the idea, I knew the Market, and it was my contact at the market who would be supplying the passes.
"Good luck getting the passes", I felt like saying to Martin
In the end, though, I couldn't break my word to the students. Secondarily, I couldn't rock the boat that much: a program director like Martin who behaved in such a way could conceivable not pay me my final salary and make up some reason not to. Along these lines, commenting on Martin's behavior and characteristics, the founder of one of Phnom Penh's more notable art spaces (also German) referred to Martin as 'a snake'.
In the end, knowing that I would have to inform my students eventually, I opted for transparency. I explained to them what had occurred, from start to finish, how Martin had claimed control of the effort via a text SMS message, saying that "this is now an official school field trip and I will be in charge". My students were perplexed - they had never witnessed this type of behavior before, apparently.
I assured my students that I would fulfill my agreement with them, and that I would supply them with the market passes I had promised. Instead of attending as their chaperone and teacher, I would attend separately (on my own) as an independent practitioner along with my associate producer Chan Norn from Camerado Media.
So, I attended the Market and provided the $2000 worth of free market passes to my Cambodian students as agreed. I saw some of my students there at the market, and it was a little awkward. They were wistful that I couldn't be there with them. It was also strange to see Martin and Isabel strutting about as if they had conceived of, and executed, the whole thing themselves.
(*Lesson from all this, by the way: whenever you pitch a project of any kind, always, always have some assistants with you taking notes and documenting things. Obviously, on the higher levels, you'd want to have a lawyer with you as well)
Anyway, that seemed to be the end of things, and the end of my first media teaching job in Asia, that 2005 chapter of my involvement with the Department of Media and Communications, Royal University of Phnom Penh.
Fast forward
Some years later, when I approached the DMC again offering my services as an instructor, the Cambodian co-director at the time Mr. Vichea responded:
"Martin (Kroeber) said you quit as a teacher, therefore we never reached out to you again".
I was stunned. That wasn't true. I had fully completed my contract (see below), and had moreover produced a very enriching final field trip for my cohort, with free market passes and bus transportation included.
This was my first experience with the politics of academia, and there was a colonial twist: Martin Kroeber, a DAAD participant of a program funded by Konrad Adenauer, had apparently taken offense at the revelation of his own underhanded behavior to his students in the DMC program. He had thus sought revenge against me by dispensing dis-information, with the intention of harming my livelihood.
I subsequently approached the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung and explained the situation. An organization representative, Wolfgang Meyer, confirmed that there had been "problems with and complaints about" Mr. Kroeber previously, so the organization agreed to provide a statement that confirmed I had indeed completed my contract without incident:
Letter from Konrad Adenauer representative, Wolfgang Meyer, confirming I had completed my contract at the DMC (RUPP). This notice directly and specifically contradicted Martin Kroeber's spurious and damaging claim.
Is it possible that the Cambodian environment, without extensive checks and balances which may be found back in a developed European academic environment, caused Martin Kroeber to 'lose it' - as Kurtz had in 'The Heart of Darkness'?
Is there something in the Western context which facilitates wayward behavior among principal stakeholders who are sent abroad to operate as 'solo chiefs', unfettered by checks and balances they might normally encounter back home, once installed in the developing world?
Should not all foreign guests - whether European, North American, or other - behave themselves in some basic cordial way while visiting and operating in a foreign host country? And if not friendly towards each other, at the very least, may they not act with at least some modest restraint and civility, for the overall benefit of the local society and culture?
Afterwards
I had one last interaction with the DMC in February, 2025; I had reached out again with my latest CV and re-introduced myself as a 'veteran'' of the program.
I received a response from Ung Bun Y, the current head of the DMC. Discussions were made about setting up a meeting, then a Zoom meeting... but nothing materialized.
I'm not sure if the 'old phantoms' are still floating about or not, but that's how it goes!
If there's one thing I would say to film and media students I've taught over the years, it would be: be very aware of the political dimensions of your sector and current working environment. Study it carefully before making your first move. This factor, barely mentioned in film school, can play a huge role in the outcome of many projects, careers, and efforts great and small.
Written by Jason Rosette
Coming up in future posts:
- Movie production, media teaching, and screenwriting in Bangkok
- Foreign meddling and interference, from movie pirates to state level actors, in a Cambodian film festival (CamboFest)
