Focusing on the business side of the biz as it plays out here – funding, scheduling, ratings, awards – sometimes the human side of production, what happens behind the camera on the other side of the world, can become remote.

Wayne Abbott, an independent producer/cameraman who has traveled to very remote areas of the world, has brought that strange doc-making dichotomy – that of an arm’s length observer swiftly passing through unforgettable scenes, unable to help, yet potentially a conduit for compelling world reaction – closer to home, by sharing the following excerpts from his diary of a recent shoot.

Abbott, whose Between Here And Heaven: In Search Of Jamie Marr is a Hot Doc! nominee in the Best Social/Political category, chronicles seven days in Cambodia with producer Morgan Elliott and sound man Jim Ursulak for a documentary on landmines for the Discovery Channel.

Nov. 18, 8:37 p.m., Los Angeles Airport

awaiting a dreadful 18-hour flight to Bangkok on Thai Airlines, I’m writing while sipping my last cappuccino before 18 days deep in the heart of South East Asia.

When Morgan Elliott, producer at Discovery Canada, called me and discussed her idea of a documentary on landmines in Cambodia, I didn’t have to think twice about accepting this project. The adventure is just too powerful to pass up. It draws you in like a tractor beam.

Nov. 20, 6 p.m.,

Phnom Penn, Cambodia

the city of Phnom Penn is smaller than I imagined, a nice pace compared to the chaotic and frantic city of Bangkok, just a one-hour flight away. We all have been greeted with smiles and friendly waves, but at the same time the local people are cautious.

Just 20 years ago the Khmer Rouge was in control. Their power and genocidal tactics were felt in all corners of this small country. Somewhere between one million and two million people were killed during a four-year period from 1975 to 1979.

Nov. 21, 6:30 p.m.,

Phnom Penn

another day in Cambodia and the temperature closed in on 35C. The crew has nicknamed me the ‘Iceman’ since I try to find any form of air-conditioning available.

We spent most of the day interviewing Canadian military personnel involved in overseeing the removal of landmines. The military guys had a real love/hate relationship for the landmines. They spoke quite openly about how terrible they are, but as I zoomed in to close-ups, sometimes I could almost see a glint in their eyes as they spoke quite passionately about this simple technology for killing.

There are approximately 10 million landmines in Cambodia.

Nov. 22, 10:30 p.m.,

Phnom Penn

cambodia is filled with a history that can only shock you, disturb you and affect you at the very core of your being. Today I came face to face with tangible evidence of the ‘killing fields’ horror.

We traveled into a decrepit local hospital and met with victims of landmine accidents. The conditions in the hospital were appalling. It was a dirty collection of old army bunks. Men lying in hallways with their legs cut off at their knees. Their children running around naked on the dirty floors.

As a cameraman it was a moment I will never forget. My eyes searched out the perfect compositions amidst the horror. The dramatic lighting through the shutters gave an eerie atmosphere to the scene. The contrast of bright windows with darkened foreground images suited this moment. It was heart-wrenching, the contrast between the sad images and the perfection of the moment for a cameraman.

Our next stop was the genocidal museum in Phnom Penn. This was an old high school converted by the Pol Pot regime into a chamber of horrors, a torture center. It is estimated that 20,000 people were killed here during those years of chaos.

Our purpose was to shoot a few of the 20,000 photos displayed. Every unfortunate soul who entered this place was photographed before they were killed. The strange thing I remember is how perfectly framed the photos were, each person having an id number.

It was a very difficult thing to shoot because I couldn’t turn away, I had to stare back, reading the nuances, reading the fear each individual felt at that moment the shutter clicked. Out of the hundreds I shot, one affected me deeply. It was a large photo of a young mother, her baby asleep peacefully in her arms.

The final stop on this afternoon was ‘the killing fields’ just south of Phnom Penn. It was here that thousands of people were buried in mass graves. Today it is a peaceful location away from the city. A large ‘stupor’ has been erected to honor the dead.

Within this 100-foot structure is a horrifying reminder of the atrocities which occurred here. Eight thousand skulls have been laid upon each other filling the inside of the stupor. Like the photos at the torture center, they stare back at you with their cavernous eyes.

It is a difficult scene to shoot. The skulls fill the viewfinder and in black and white they seem more ominous. As I zoomed in closer I was horrified to see the holes and cracks in the skulls, giving away the means of death. I was told that bullets were scarce and most people were bludgeoned to death.

I had to sit alone for a few moments to take this all in.

Nov. 23, 9:45 p.m.,

Phnom Penn to Battambang

this day began with an intense storm at 5 a.m. My only thought at that time was, ‘My God, we’re flying Air Cambodia today! F—!’ Luckily when we left for the airport the rain had moved on. The heat was already intense, closing in on 35C. We survived and even saw how beautiful Cambodia was from the air.

Today, we visited another hospital. This time to a unit looking after victims of landmines whose injuries occurred just days prior to us arriving. This was probably the most difficult shoot of my life. It is so hard to describe how emotional it was to capture the recent pain these men had suffered. It was one of the first times that the camera didn’t protect me from the raw emotions that I was recording. The small black-and-white viewfinder intensified the scene tenfold.

With the use of the zoom, I experienced their eyes full view with no distractions. It was me and them, together caught in a small and intense space that was too much for me to handle.

It was the first time that I actually cried quite openly as the camera rolled. My tears didn’t interfere with my job at hand. In a way they focused me. It’s maybe something that only another cameraman can understand.

We interviewed several victims and each gripped me. The first was an 18-year-old boy who had just stepped on a landmine seven days ago. He was in bad shape. Not only was his one leg amputated at the knee, but his other leg had huge chunks of flesh ripped out by flying shrapnel. The worst part of all was that he had no bandages.

I looked at him and the feeling that came over me was one of gloom. You see, in the Buddhist religion, there is a belief that to be complete one must be complete in body! Amputees are treated generally as second-class citizens. This makes me so angry because most victims in Cambodia are the poor and innocent.

The most intense of all the patients we interviewed was a middle-aged man leaning against a wall as he sat with his recently amputated leg tucked under him. It was probably the way he sat so hopelessly against the wall that effected me so deeply. His head flung back, his eyes, so sad and painful, were full of confusion and anger.

I think what separated him from the others was his calm openness when Morgan interviewed him. Out of all the victims, he understood his situation. As he answered the last question, he leaned his head back, closed his eyes and tears ran down his cheeks.

I felt as hopeless as he did. I looked up at him and all I could do was politely bow and say thank-you.

Nov. 24, 7:30 p.m.,

Battambang

here in Cambodia time has stood still or has reversed in a strange way. The wars and political instability over the past three decades have truly messed up this country. Conditions here are as pitiful as I have ever seen. People have nothing. They are lucky if they have food or water. My God, what were the Khmer Rouge thinking when all of those people were killed?

Educated people, cultured people, self-thinkers. Now this country seems to be filled with young wild kids, uneducated farmers, and a land full of mines! The future seems so bleak.

Today was a more physically demanding day than emotionally because we ventured out of Battambang to the minefields. We spent the entire day on three separate sites where mines are being cleared. This was an adrenaline rush. I was a bit nervous at the beginning as thoughts and images of all those people who I met in the hospitals days earlier came rushing through my imagination.

The first minefield was the largest of the three, run by an organization called Cambodia Mines Action Commission. Individuals from the Canadian military are involved as advisors, so my comfort level was definitely helped by their presence. I felt completely safe walking through the designated network of pathways and trails, plus I made sure I was never the first in line!

The hardest thing to deal with was not the mines but the scorching heat. There was no wind and the temperature had to be pushing 40C. I thought at times I was baking.

I remember having a moment to sit under the shade of a tree, looking out on the field. The knee-high ribbons marking the trails and the beach umbrellas scattered throughout the area for the workers to rest added to a very surreal scene. A place where you should be seeing families having picnics and children running around playing hide-and-seek.

We were shown a landmine discovered just before we arrived. It was a wild moment standing less than a foot from this little circular weapon popping up through the grass. All I had to do was step to the right a wee bit then…

The most amazing thing about the last minefield we visited was that it surrounded a small Khmer village. It was strange seeing these ‘danger’ signs around an area where beautiful young children were playing. It truly hit home why people from around the world have gathered here to try and rid this country of this deadly problem. It is just so overwhelming to see them out there clearing the land inch by inch. No matter how much money there is to support these organizations, it will take decades to clear the fields.

Nov. 25, 11:25 p.m.,

Battambang

our last day here in Battambang was a tough but a short day compared to the rest. We ventured south of the city into rural areas to find stories of survivors who have continued with their lives after a landmine accident.

We were deep into poverty-ridden areas. The people we met today were civilians, not military. Most stories you hear are of people collecting firewood or working in their fields when their accident happened.

One beautiful young woman we interviewed simply walked behind her home and stepped on a mine. Now she is treated as a misfit and honestly talks about never marrying and never having a family just because she is an amputee. She is only 23 years old. How could a country treat these victims as outcasts, especially women?

Nov. 26, 5:30 p.m.,

Angkor Wat to Phnom Penn

our final day in Cambodia took us to the beautiful temple of Angkor Wat located just outside of the small city of Siem Reap. I have never seen anything quite so amazing in my travels as this huge temple constructed at the height of the Khmer empire back in the 12th and 13th centuries.

As a cameraman it was simply a field day! You dream of moments like this when subject, light, and movement flow in perfect harmony. Plus it was great that there were very few tourists in flowery shirts walking in and out of my shots.

This day was planned just to gather some beauty shots for the documentary, but no matter where you go in Cambodia the landmine experience will find you, and today, we came in contact with two mine victims.

The first was a gentleman who lost part of his arm and was blinded in one eye when he was trying to defuse a landmine and it went off. He has resorted to begging at the temple.

We met the second man as we were leaving. By sheer luck he was walking through a corridor towards us. His backlit image was simply amazing. We couldn’t have planned a better shot.

The thing that gripped me the most about his situation was his two children who hung by his side. The man sat down beside us and began playing a wooden flute.

No matter where I pointed the camera the emotion of the scene shot through the lens. The young girl sat in the foreground leaning against a pillar, her head cocked to one side staring off into the distance. Her expression was one of the saddest I have ever seen. This little girl at the age of three seemed to capture the current state of Cambodia – worn, tired and defeated.

Morgan, Jim and I left Cambodia the next day and traveled to Laos for one week before heading home. Even though we spent just ‘seven days in Cambodia,’ the memories of the people and country will be forever with us. I am currently developing a number of projects on Cambodia, and hopefully will be producing a ‘benefit concert’ for landmine victims in the near future.

Wayne Abbott can be contacted at nse1@netcom.ca.

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Also in this report:

– Hot Docs! brings in international players p. 36

– A sampling of Canada’s emerging doc directors p. 36

– Opportunities at the NFB doc studio p. 37

– Hot Docs! distrib options p. 39

– Nominees for the fifth annual Hot Docs! awards p. 47