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| Los Angeles band Dengue Fever(Photo: Gina) |
Our Geo Quiz is also the the Global Hit this time: We’re talking Dengue Fever, not the illness, though, but the band.
This six-person outfit plays a style of music associated with 1970s
psychedelic rock from Cambodia. Dictator Pol Pot didn’t like its
associations with the West and America. So he censored the music, and
killed many of its practitioners.
When the founding members of Dengue Fever themselves discovered
Cambodian rock years later, they found it far away from Cambodia. So
your task is to name the Cambodian capital where the music originated
and the city in southern California where Cambodian psychedelic rock had
a rebirth.
Cambodia’s capital is Phnom Penh and Long Beach, California is where
Dengue Fever discovered a scene where Cambodian psychedelic rock was
going through a rebirth.
The World’s Marco Werman reports.
Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie strikes a pose in Cambodia for Louis Vuitton's 'Core Values' campaign.
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| The full image of Angelina Jolie as the new face of Louis Vuitton's Core Values campaign. Photo: Louis Vuitton/ Annie Leibovitz |
So it IS true after all. After months of speculation that Angelina Jolie
was set to star as the new face of Louis Vuitton, images have finally
been revealed in
WWD
of the Hollywood actress in Vuitton's latest 'Core Values' campaign.
Bare foot and smoky-eyed, Jolie is pictured reclining on a wooden
boat in Cambodia - the country she fell in love with, and adopted her
son Maddox from, after filming of Lara Croft: Tomb Raider there in 2000.
By her side, her six-year-old monogrammed 'Alto' carryall bag; just
out of shot, four of her six children who came along to the set and had
to be 'shooed' away by photographer Annie Leibovitz.
"People are not used to seeing Angelina in this situation," Vuitton's
executive vice president, Pietro Beccari, told WWD. "I like the fact
that it's a real moment. This travel message we give through personal
journeys is a fundamental one for the brand."
Beccari declined to comment on rumours that Jolie was paid in the
region of $10 million for her time, but did disclose that she had
elected to donate a significant slice of her fee to a charity - most
likely the Maddox Jolie-Pitt Foundation, which the couple founded to aid
community development and conservation in Cambodia.
Core Values celebrates Vuitton's timeless classics in real situations
on 'real' people - meaning celebrities rather than models - and runs
alongside their seasonal 'fashion' campaigns.
The most recent campaign images feature U2 frontman Bono and his wife
Ali Hewson in Africa, where the couple have long campaigned for the
fight against extreme poverty, and actor Sean Connery photographed on a
beach near his home in the Bahamas.
Previous 'faces' of the campaign include Vuitton favourite Sofia
Coppola and her father Francis Ford Coppola sitting in the Buenos Aires
countryside, Rolling Stone Keith Richards in a hotel suite with a Louis
Vuitton guitar case, and former President of the Soviet Union, and Nobel
Peace Prize winner, Mikhail Gorbachev, in the back of a limo passing
the remaining part of the Berlin Wall.
The campaign is expected to run for at least 18 months and will also
feature a video interview with Jolie filmed on location later in the
month.
Dengue Fever (from left: David Ralicke, Zac Holtzman, Senon Williams, Paul Smith, Chhom Nimol, Ethan Holtzman) builds its sound on Khmer pop and surf rock.
SAN FRANCISCO — Dengue Fever didn’t set out to earn the elusive title of Southern California’s quintessential 21st-century rock band, but with “Cannibal Courtship,’’ the sextet’s fifth album, released in April, it makes a convincing bid for the crown.
There are other strong contenders, mainly Ozomatli, Linkin Park, and System of a Down. Dengue Fever stands out through the sheer wondrous strangeness of its cultural synthesis, a Pacific Rim sound built upon vintage Khmer pop and surf rock. Launched in 2001 by brothers Ethan and Zac Holtzman, the group united around their mutual love of Cambodia’s ebullient psychedelic movement of the late 1960s and early ’70s, when the Southeast Asian nation boasted a giddily creative scene sparked by surf rock, soul, and garage-band hits broadcast by US Armed Forces Radio to troops in Vietnam.
Dengue Fever, which performs tonight at Brighton Music Hall, started out by reappropriating music that had already gotten the funhouse mirror treatment, interpreting anarchic anthems by pop stars such as Sinn Sisamouth, Pan Ron, and Ros Sereysothea.
“When we started the band, our idea was not to just play all these songs, it was to make new music based on old music,’’ said bassist Senon Williams while cooling off with a beer after an April performance at the Fillmore Auditorium. “At that time in LA there was a lot of shoe-gazer rock. The lead singer would never sing into the mike. He would sing next to it. We wanted to break out of the mold, do something a little bit more bold and fun.’’
Early on, some critics took to describing the band as an exercise in kitsch. But Dengue Fever embraced Khmer pop with no emotional distance. Indeed, the project didn’t come together until the guys discovered Chhom Nimol, a rising Cambodian pop star who decided to try her luck in the United States, while she was performing in karaoke clubs in Long Beach’s Little Phnom Penh district. Hailing from an esteemed musical family, she grew up hearing her parents sing traditional Khmer songs, while her older sister Chhom Chevin was one of the country’s biggest stars in the 1980s.
“When I was kid, my sister is the one who taught me how to sing and supported me all the time,’’ said Nimol, a diminutive figure given to bounding around the stage and spontaneously synchronizing steps with Williams, who towers over her. “I’m not good for traditional music, though. My sister was, but when I tried to sing, it was bad for me, too many notes and too many different keys.’’
With each album, Dengue Fever has increasingly sublimated the Khmer sound, so that on “Cannibal Courtship’’ (Fantasy/Concord) it’s but one stream flowing into an increasingly expansive stylistic palette. Last year the band played several dates in Asia with Seun Kuti and Egypt 80, and there’s an unmistakable Afrobeat groove on “Only a Friend,’’ one of the album’s standout tracks.
Dengue Fever has also generated more original songs with English lyrics, a move pushed by Nimol.
“It’s hard, because there are a lot of words, but I’m enjoying it,’’ she said. “My teacher is Zac, though everybody in the band helps. I want to sing in English because I want to connect with the audience, so people can understand it and jump with us.’’
As Dengue Fever’s sound has diverged from its initial Cambodian sources, the band has forged increasingly deep ties to the nation, which is still struggling to overcome the legacy of the Khmer Rouge’s late 1970s genocide when Pol Pot’s regime wiped out about a fifth of the population, concentrating with particularly brutal efficiency on artists and professionals.
“If you were famous for playing this music, you were first to get a knock on the door,’’ Williams said. “Along with architects, professors, doctors, lawyers, artists, and politicians.’’
Returning to Cambodia in 2005 with Dengue Fever, Nimol found that audiences loved the band’s distinctive spin on the Khmer rock sound. Last year, the band orchestrated the release of “Electric Cambodia’’ (Minky Records), a CD featuring 14 vintage Cambodian rock tunes culled from the band’s precious stash of cassettes, including tracks by artists such as Pan Ron, Ros Sereysothea, and Dara Chom Chan (none of whom are known to have survived the genocide).
For filmmaker John Pirozzi, who captured Dengue Fever’s triumphant tour with his documentary “Sleepwalking Through the Mekong,’’ the band’s journey represents Khmer rock’s power to seize the imaginations of distant people. While Dengue Fever absorbs new influences, the band’s impact on Cambodia endures.
“When I first met the band, they didn’t necessarily know the history,’’ said Pirozzi, who’s finishing “Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten: Cambodia’s Lost Rock and Roll,’’ a documentary about the scene annihilated by the Khmer Rouge. “They assimilated the culture through the music. In Cambodia, young people know all the songs, because they hear it in their homes. But to have an American band arrive and play these hits, it made quite an impression.’’
Angelina Jolie
barely devotes any time to her beauty regime. She recently said, "In my
life, I hardly brush my hair very often. I try to be as low-maintenance
as possible because of my kids, so I can just get up and get ready and
do things and not take too much time."
So she hardly takes care of herself but looks so good. That's reason number one why we "hate" her!
Reason number two: Her boyfriend Brad Pitt is one of the sexiest guys in Hollywood. And the word on the street is the two are finally thinking about getting married.
Reason number three: She manages to raise six kids while simultaneously making films. She's a super mom.
Reason number four: She's a goodwill ambassador. She recently stuck
up for Libyan refugees and she donates both time and money to charitable
causes.
Reason number five: A world-famous Hindu temple has been named after
her. She is so beloved in Cambodia (where she adopted her first child
Maddox) that one religious site in Angkor has been renamed in her honor.
Do you "hate" Angelina as much as we do? Let us know in the comments.
Infrastructure development lures projects
The biggest driver behind the expansion of Cambodia as a location has been the upgrading of filming facilities. For the first time, lighting, grip, equipment and crew are available -- and are expanding shoot by shoot.
"The number of foreign projects in the country has multiplied by four over the last two years and demand is constantly rising." says Cedric Eloy, CEO of the Cambodia Film Commission.
In the past two years, Cambodia has hosted features, docus and skeins from France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Australia, the U.S., India and Singapore.The biggest project by far was "Transformers: Dark of the Moon," the third in the franchise, which shot at the Angkor Wat temple complex.
The commission has been working to train Cambodians and enable more Hollywood and other foreign projects in the country, and focusing on providing the kind of crew that a production expects to source locally.
Cambodia now provides assistants for all departments and even some key crew people in a few areas. There is also an improved understanding of the benefits that foreign productions can bring.
"Cambodia offers a very authentic Asia that is now accessible as the production sector becomes more organized," says Eloy. "The CFC guides productions and the Ministry of Culture facilitates film permits and customs paperwork."
Casting has also improved, and Cambodia can offer good secondary roles.
Variety
This is always a worrying time of year for Cambodian health
officials, as cases of dengue fever normally spike in June and July.
However, this year officials at the National Dengue Control Programme
(NDCP) are especially concerned.
They have already seen a high number of reported cases in the first two months of 2011, when dengue should be fairly dormant. Alarm is also being raised by the number of patients suffering from dengue hemorrhagic fever (around two-thirds, compared to half in 2010). Major outbreaks of dengue fever strike Cambodia every 3 to 5 years and in interviews given to IRIN, specialists at the NDCP are saying the pattern of cases is looking similar to 2007, when the last large epidemic hospitalised around 40,000 people, with over 10,000 in one week.
Cambodia normally takes measures each year to try and reduce cases of dengue during what’s known as the ‘nightmare season’. However, this year there could be problems in the implementation of these programmes. An annual grant which normally makes up three-fifths of the NDCP’s budget is yet to arrive from the Asian Development Bank. And since Cambodia’s health services were decentralised three years ago, there is uncertainty over what control measures are being taken in certain areas and whether provinces have begun distribution of the chemical used to kill mosquito larvae.
Recent research from Peru (where a dengue outbreak killed 14 people earlier this year) questions whether this is the most effective technique for controlling the spread of dengue fever. Researchers found that mosquitoes choose to lay their eggs in water which is already heavily infested with those of other mosquitoes. Therefore using larvicides to kill eggs or removing them, may simply spur mosquitoes to find other sites. Instead, the creation of ‘egg-sinks’ treated with growth regulators to limit the emergence of adults may be a better way to control mosquito numbers, though the scientists warn that individual countries may need to adopt different controlling strategies.
In recent years, the NDCP has tried alternative methods in Cambodia for preventing dengue, such as introducing guppy fish (which eat mosquito larvae) in water storage containers. These trial projects have been ongoing for 7 years and have prevented serious outbreaks of dengue. But though this kind of scheme only costs around 1 dollar per household to maintain, up-front investment is needed to put the necessary infrastructure in place. Wider adoption is therefore prevented by the short-term nature of many aid grants.
According to a spokesperson at the World Health Organisation (WHO) in Cambodia, there is currently no alarm within the organisation over reported cases of dengue fever in 2011. However, he admitted that the situation could change.
From the June, 2011 issue of Import Tuner
By Luke Munnell
Photography by Steve Bitanga
Via Khmerization
2NR: I read on your Facebook that you’ve been on the road now for quite a while, and our shoot is your last gig before you hop a 15hr flight back home. What else have you been up to?
DS: So much! I was up in Toronto for a while before coming down to SoCal, hanging out with my cousin and doing a shoot for Heaven and Hell magazine. I was in Miami before that, then just kicked back at some resorts in South America for a while on holiday.
Did you have fun?
So you like it here?
I wanna move here!! I love Australia, but you all have it made in California.
As long as you don’t plan to buy a house, pay for gas, or get a job. But Aus has a little bit of everything, too, right?
Yes, good dining and nightlife in Melbourne, good sightseeing in Sydney. We have Mount Buller for skiing and snowboarding, Surfers Paradise in Queensland, lots of bungee jumping, hiking, extreme sports . . .
And what are you into most?
Of those? Nothing. laughs I’ve gone canoeing, but I really hated it. I hate water; it makes me think I’m going to die. I’m glad I did it, though. I’ll stick to the clubs in Melbourne!
Word? Melbourne is the spot?
Oh yes. Hot clubs, hot Asian girls . . . they’re all just terrible dancers. You Americans have us beat there. laughs
Yeah, but you’ve been in a dance crew for years, right? You’re bound to be a little more critical than most . . .
Yes, but the chicks out here are just bad. laughs They try, and they have fun, so I guess that’s all that counts, right?
You’re talking to a gearhead white boy from the East Coast not the biggest dance authority.
laughs
Where else is hot? You’re always on the go, right?
I go to Malaysia and Cambodia a lot to visit the fam. I have a cousin in Francethat’s an awesome place. We can fly to most of Asia for $250 out of Avalon airport in Melbourne on Jetstarkind of like JetBlue here.
So Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbanethey’re all on the east coast of Aus. What happens on the other 9/10ths of the continent?
Nothing. laughs It’s pretty much all kangaroos and open land until Perth on the west coast.
But with photo radar.
Yes! I hate those damned things. I actually got two fines on the way home from the airport after dropping Steve (Bitanga) off the last time he came down here. I had no idea I was even speeding until I got them in the mail. Like $400 each.
It’s bad over there for a car owner, huh?
Terrible. I think in Cali you have what’s called a referee station, where the cops send you if they think your car is illegally modified? Well, over there they can just take your car and auction it off if they want to.
Damn. And you guys have some pretty badass cars over there, too, huh?
Yeah. Skylines in Aus are like Civics here.
What are you driving these days?
laughs A Holden Barina. I wanted a Silvia, but I got stuck with that. I always wanted a Nissan Micra convertible. They’re so cute, but I’ve only ever seen them in England.
As a natural beauty Angelina Jolie is widely known for her pouty lips
and sultry eyes. She is an Academy Award winner, a mother, a wife, a UN
High Commissioner for Refugees Goodwill Ambassador, and now it is
confirmed that she will be the new face for Louis Vuitton.
The campaign will be shot in Cambodia by the internationally acclaimed photographer, Annie Leibovitz. Leibovitz has shot a slew of celebrities, from the George W. Bush Cabinet to a nude Vanity Fair cover of Scarlett Johansson and Keira Knightley.
The location of the shoot is in Siem Reap, Cambodia, a country Angelina is more than familiar with being the birth place of her adopted son, Maddox. In 2001, prior to the adoption Angelina donned the Laura Croft gear for her part in the film, Laura Croft: Tomb Raider, filmed in Angkor Wat.
Following her adoption of Maddox in 2002, 2003 saw the inception of the Maddox Jolie-Foundation, which has since been changed to Maddox Jolie-Pitt foundation.
The foundation is committed to creating peace and stability in communities by working with impoverished rural villagers and local governments. It aims to help alleviate food shortages and increase basic necessities, such as healthcare and education.
Currently, the program is working on the Samlout 2012 project. It's priority is to achieve economic grown and reduce enviornmental destruction in the rural Cambodia Samlout district.
Since then, Angelina has returned to Cambodia on many occasions for business and pleasure. She is so beloved there that it was said that a temple was named after her.
In 2010, Rajan Zed, president of the Universal Society of Hinduism, told WENN news that Ta Prohm, a Hindu religious temple has been unofficially renamed the "Angelina Jolie Temple."
Cambodia being such an important part of Angelina's philanthropic endeavors and personal life makes for an interesting setting.
The campaign's debut is slated for this summer.
Art and Design
International superstar Angelina Jolie was spotted at Siem Reap airport
yesterday after an advertisement shoot for luxury brand Luis Vuitton
reportedly finished.
Accompanied by her children, including
adopted Cambodian-born son Maddox, Jolie was seen exiting a helicopter
late in the afternoon.
A small number of tourists watched on – before security guards brought out screens to shield the family – as the group was whisked away in a mini-van and two four-wheeled drives, complete with darkened windows.
The drivers were wearing uniforms of Siem Reap’s exclusive Amansara hotel.
A well-placed source said Jolie had flown from Siem Reap to Battambang province in the morning and returned later that day.
In 2003, the mega-star founded an NGO called the Maddox Jolie-Pitt Foundation, which operates out of Battambang province. It tackles conservation, education and infrastructure projects in the area.
Yesterday, the foundation’s human resources manager said he could not comment on Jolie as he had been on leave.
The star of Lara Croft: Tomb Raider is thought to have arrived in Cambodia on Saturday for filming after a production team scouted out potential locations.
An advert was shot on the banks of a Siem Reap river while an interview for Louis Vuitton was also filmed, said a source close to the shoot who wished to remain anonymous.
Khmer Mekong Films provided the back-up production for the shoot.
The filming was yesterday hailed as a boon for the Kingdom’s film production sector by Cedric Eloy, chief economic officer of the Cambodian Film Commission. “This shows that Cambodia is a safe place to shoot movies,” he said. “In some quarters it still has the image of a place with violence, but projects like this will help to change the image.
“We’ve had six feature films shot in Cambodia in the last six months, and the film industry is opening Cambodia up to the world,” he added.
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Photo by: Michael Sloan
Angelina Jolie arrives by helicopter at Siem Reap International Airport following a day trip to Battambang province yesterday. |
A small number of tourists watched on – before security guards brought out screens to shield the family – as the group was whisked away in a mini-van and two four-wheeled drives, complete with darkened windows.
The drivers were wearing uniforms of Siem Reap’s exclusive Amansara hotel.
A well-placed source said Jolie had flown from Siem Reap to Battambang province in the morning and returned later that day.
In 2003, the mega-star founded an NGO called the Maddox Jolie-Pitt Foundation, which operates out of Battambang province. It tackles conservation, education and infrastructure projects in the area.
Yesterday, the foundation’s human resources manager said he could not comment on Jolie as he had been on leave.
The star of Lara Croft: Tomb Raider is thought to have arrived in Cambodia on Saturday for filming after a production team scouted out potential locations.
An advert was shot on the banks of a Siem Reap river while an interview for Louis Vuitton was also filmed, said a source close to the shoot who wished to remain anonymous.
Khmer Mekong Films provided the back-up production for the shoot.
The filming was yesterday hailed as a boon for the Kingdom’s film production sector by Cedric Eloy, chief economic officer of the Cambodian Film Commission. “This shows that Cambodia is a safe place to shoot movies,” he said. “In some quarters it still has the image of a place with violence, but projects like this will help to change the image.
“We’ve had six feature films shot in Cambodia in the last six months, and the film industry is opening Cambodia up to the world,” he added.
Phnom Penh Post
