Surviving Bokator tells an inspirational tale – but avoids a Hollywood happy ending

15 Mar 2018  2214 | Cambodia Travel News

A screenshot of a l'bokator performance at Angkor with Tharoth Sam in front. Photo supplied
A screenshot of a l'bokator performance at Angkor with Tharoth Sam in front. Photo supplied

This article contains spoilers for the documentary Surviving Bokator.

In April 2010, Mark Bochsler hobbled up the steps of what looked like a dilapidated old storage facility near Orussey Market on a pair of crutches. The Canadian photographer was looking for a good story to stretch his filmmaking skills, and in Grandmaster San Kim Sean he thought he had found it.

After surviving the Khmer Rouge, Kim Sean had lived in the United States and taught martial arts, but came back to Cambodia to follow a calling: reviving the ancient martial art of l’bokator. Other journalists before him had wanted to document Kim Sean’s story, and that of his rag-tag gang of students who trained in his Phnom Penh gym. But Bochsler’s handicap – a nearly-severed tendon – in the end may have done him favours. He kept showing up at the gym with his camera and crutches, a perseverance that endeared him to the martial arts crew facing their own obstacles.

“We didn’t know if the building would collapse,” Bochsler said. “But there was life in there.”

Bochsler arrived at an opportune moment for the sport. Kim Sean’s students – who included Tharoth Sam, now an actress and martial arts star, and Ung Darith, a well-known l’bokator practitioner – were preparing for an international competition in South Korea with the potential to put the sport on the map. At that time, Cambodia was an anomaly in the region in that it didn’t have a signature martial art. The competition was a perfect underdog story – with the grandmaster living in poverty but obsessed by his dreams, and the students spending their free time on their craft with no financial benefit. And in true Hollywood fashion, they manage to win second prize at the competition, an exhilarating moment that could easily have ended the film. Instead, the most interesting parts of Surviving Bokator begin at that moment.

“The ending was too cool I felt. It was very American, with a happy ending, Hollywood style,” Bochsler said. So he decided to keep filming, this time developing the story of the students rather than just focusing on Kim Sean. What he found were rifts beginning to show. Throughout the movie students make passing references to Kim Sean’s strictness. They express love for him as a surrogate father, and the disappointment that comes with feeling that a parent doesn’t respect their differences.

A screenshot from Surviving Bokator, showing Grandmaster San Kim Sean and the team in South Korea. Photo supplied
A screenshot from Surviving Bokator, showing Grandmaster San Kim Sean and the team in South Korea. Photo supplied

There are also rifts within the l’bokator community among the other masters – those running provincial schools – who resent Kim Sean for having taken his students to Korea and not theirs, and not having told them beforehand. In one scene, several of the men break down in tears after accusations are thrown at Kim Sean of being self-interested.

Finally, Darith, both an instructor and one of Kim Sean's students, decides to strike out, opening his own l’bokator academy, and the conflict comes to a head. In one striking scene, Darith returns to the old gym, where had been living, to retrieve his belongings and finds photographs of himself with the other students in which he has been marked out with an ‘x’.

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