Cambodia & Cinema: Vichara Dany, the Vanished Star of Khmer Film
She is said to have made more than a hundred films in barely seven years. Then the Khmer Rouge reached Phnom Penh, and Vichara Dany vanished from the screen. To this day, nobody knows for certain how she died.
Debut in 1967
Tith Vichara Dany was probably born around 1948. Sources are scarce and the dates differ from one document to the next. She began acting around 1967.
That year she appears in Picheyvongsa, directed by So Min Chiv, with Chea Yuthon. She is also in Neak Ta Kleung Meung, opposite Kong Som Eun, and in Kakey, with Vann Vannak. All three are legendary tales, the genre that dominated Khmer cinemas at the time.
The pairing with Kong Som Eun
By 1970 her name is on a large share of film posters. She often played opposite Kong Som Eun, the busiest actor of the period: more than 120 films in under ten years, according to the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
Release lists for 1970 show her in Akareth Moyoura, Neang Ampopich, Neang Champameas, Rattanavong and Tropeang Peay. With Vann Vannak, she headlines Sovann Pancha.
She did not stick to legends. Her filmography also includes contemporary dramas such as Thavory Meas Bong, a melodrama that also featured Saom Vansodany, another hugely popular actress.
One film, three voices
In 1972 she is in the cast of Riem Chbong Yeung, directed by So Min Chiv, with Kong Som Eun. The music is by Sinn Sisamouth. The songs are sung by him, alone or as duets, with Ros Serey Sothea and Pan Ron.
The film shows how closely cinema and music worked together in Phnom Penh in those years. The same voices served the same screens.
1975 and the silence
Her last credited film, Pkah Thgall Meas, dates from 1975. The Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh on 17 April of that year. They stayed in power until January 1979.
Of the country’s artists, actors and musicians, most died, fled or never worked again. A few survived, like Dy Saveth. Vichara Dany is among those whose fate is unclear.
One version circulates on several websites. It says she was married to a Khmer Rouge cadre, escaped, and died in childbirth in Pursat province around 1976. We found no verifiable source for it. It also contradicts itself: the same account has her fleeing toward Phnom Penh when Vietnamese troops arrived in 1979, which does not fit a death in 1976.
Other entries say only that her death is unrecorded and that she was probably a victim of the regime soon after April 1975.
What is left of her films
Most Khmer films made before 1975 were destroyed or lost. A handful of Vichara Dany’s survive. Sovann Pancha and Rattanavong still exist. Picheyvongsa was remade in 1996 and again in 2004, and Tropeang Peay in 2007.
The figure of “more than a hundred films” comes from the biographical entries available. It has not been checked title by title, and most of those films can no longer be seen.
Readers with memories, photographs or documents about Vichara Dany are welcome to contact Cambodge Mag.
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