ENTERTAINMENT : Cambodians to See ‘Killing Fields’

“The Killing Fields,” the movie that showed the brutality of Khmer Rouge rule in the 1970s in Cambodia, will be shown in a Cambodian theater Friday for the first time, the director said today.

Among those attending the screening will be Sydney Schanberg, the American journalist depicted in the 1984 Academy Award-winning film, who will make his first visit to Cambodia since he left there 14 years ago.

British director Roland Joffe said it is time to show the film there because diplomatic events have created optimism that peace will return to the country.

The film depicts how Schanberg, then a reporter for The New York Times, and his Cambodian assistant, Dith Pran, were separated as the Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh in April, 1975, and began its fanatical revolution.

Hundreds of thousands died in torture chambers and slave labor camps, but Dith Pran made it out in a trek to the Thai border through fields littered with human bones.