Trial Stages

This chapter examines Rithy Pahn’s S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine and its disturbing tableaus featuring the ex-guards of S21 reenacting acts of torture and reciting documents extracted under duress at the very site where these atrocities were committed. Following an interest in the dissonant effects of spare, empty sites, this chapter explores the affinity between contemporary reenactment film and juridical and psychoanalytic discourse; it considers the theatrical effects of the perpetrators’ affectless behavior in relation to notions of traumatic reenactment, and it posits, through close readings of a number of scenes, a parajuridical aesthetics based on a triangulation between performance, recitation, and a narrating figure that serves as judge/professor. Panh’s articulation of an indicting, evidentiary structure and of a disturbing witnessing position for the viewer are analyzed in contrast to documentaries made around and about the International Court of Cambodjian Crimes, including juridical reconstructions at the site.