Jackie Chan will shoot movie in Cambodia
www.southeastasiancinema.wordpress.com, 11 November 2009



When I moved to Phnom Penh three month ago, I was convinced that I would enter a cinematic no-man´s land – after all, this is a country that does not even have a cinema that shows the Hollywood blockbusters that most of all the neighboring countries are being force-fed.

How wrong I was. So far, not a single week went by without some cinematic revelation, some of which were described in this blog in great detail.

And now that: Jackie Chan came to town to recieve a honorary doctorate from the University of Cambodia.

Jackie Chan´s career is nothing short of amazing. During his speech, the new doctor of the humanities frequently apologized for his bad English (and it really IS bad). He never really went to school, only to a circus school, yet he is an international star who is recognized all over the world and has been in a number of big budget Hollywood productions.

After a traumatic accident in Yugoslawia during the shoot of his Indiana-Jones-Rip-Off Armour of God (1987), he decided to found a charity, and he mostly spoke about his philantrophic work during his brief speech. He also announced that he would start shooting a movie on stolen artefacts next year, and that one part of the movie would be shot in Angkor Wat.

To the shock of some of his hardcore fans, he denounced his break-throough movie Drunken Master (“It teaches you only to drink and to fight.”), and eventually called on all his listeners not to leave left-overs in their water bottles, but to use them to water trees, and then crush them, so they take up less space.

Yes, it was that kind of talk. Unfortunately, his advice regarding water bottles was generally not followed by the audience in the steaming hot auditorium of the University of Cambodia, as this picture, that was taken after the talk, shows: