Film screening of Golden Voice followed by Q&A with filmmakers at the Los Angeles Public Library Westwood Branch
Tuesday, May 21, 2024
12:30 PM - 2:00 PM (Pacific Time)
Los Angeles Public Library Westwood Branch
First Floor Community Room
1246 Glendon Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90024
Join us for a public screening and talkback for Golden Voice, a short documentary about trans survivors of the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia. The film follows Noy Sitha, a a transgender man, as he returns to the village where he not only survived the 1975 - 1979 genocide, but also unexpectedly discovered queer community. Shifting between the past, present, and future, Golden Voice meditates on how pain and love linger through the years, and how the wisdom of queer elders might provide hope and healing for generations to come. We are joined by the film’s director, Mars Verrone, and producer, Tabitha Payne, whose academic fieldwork was the springboard for the film’s production.
This film screening is hosted by Professor Cindy Nguyen as part of the Global History of Libraries: Colonial Pasts, Decolonial Futures course in the UCLA Department for Information Studies.
Thank you to the LAPL for providing a space for the event!
Space is limited to the first 30 registrants.
Tabitha Payne is an organizer, researcher, and incoming Anthropology PhD student. Her award-winning Brown University undergraduate thesis, “Queer Histories of the Khmer Rouge Genocide,” used oral histories and archival research to explore the Cambodian Genocide as an unexpected moment for queer identity & community formation. Tabitha is a longtime collaborator with CamASEAN Youth’s Future, a grassroots LGBTQ and marginalized people’s activist group in Phnom Penh. She has won fellowships and awards with the Brown University Cogut Institute for the Humanities, the Pembroke Institute of the Humanities, the Fulbright Program, and more. Tabitha was born and raised in Phnom Penh, Cambodia to Filipino and American parents.
Mars Verrone is a filmmaker and musician from Los Angeles, CA, now based in Brooklyn, NY. They produced feature documentary UNION, (dir. Stephen Maing, Brett Story) which premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival in the U.S. Documentary Competition and won a special jury prize for “The Art of Change.” They are a NBC Original Voices Fellow, PGA Create Fellow, and Brown Girls Doc Mafia Sustainable Artist Fellow. Their work has been supported by Sundance Institute, Ford Foundation, Field of Vision, and the International Documentary Association, among others. In 2019, they graduated magna cum laude from Brown University with honors in Modern Culture and Media (Production) and Phi Beta Kappa membership.
Sponsor(s): Center for Southeast Asian Studies, UCLA School of Education & Information Studies, UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television, UCLA Center for the Advancement of Teaching