AWC Spotlight | Brandon Soun

When Brandon Soun made his short documentary Cambodia Town: Not for Sale in 2019, he did not expect it to become the first of a trilogy. 

Both premiering at the 2022 Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, Conversations at the Register — which Brandon co-directed again with Lan Nguyen since their 2019 film — and Cambodia Town Thrives — which constituted Brandon’s AWC Fellowship film — take a deeper look at the places and faces propelling the movement for equitable development in the Cambodia Town neighborhood.

As a second-generation Cambodian American raised in Cambodia Town, Brandon attributed his passion for filmmaking to its ability to empower communities. Read below to learn more about Brandon, his love and ties to the community, his learnings during the making of these short films and what the community can achieve when people come together.

You made and screened not only one, but two films for this past LAAPFF. Tell us more about this experience.

For Conversations At The Register, the short film on KH Market, UCC reached out to Lan and I — Lan is my co-director — around March or April 2021 when the store was going to close in May 2021. We want to do a tribute piece to the market to celebrate what they have done for the community and how much they mean to them. We finished filming around May right before the store closed, and then throughout the rest of 2021, we were in the editing process trying to raise funds to finish the film and get feedback from the community on what they want to see in our project too. 

At the same time, I was in my AWC fellowship cohort. When I was filming Conversations At The Register, I had a lot of extra footage, a lot of B roll, and extra interviews from Susana — the executive director at UCC — explaining the history of Cambodia Town. So I made Cambodia Town Thrives just to show the history of organizing in Cambodia Town and how our community came to be in the future Cambodia Town as well.

How did CAMBODIA TOWN: NOT FOR SALE originate? Did you have the trilogy in mind then? 

No. When I made Cambodia Town: Not for Sale, we were still students at UCLA — I was an undergrad and Lan was a graduate student in Asian American Studies around December 2018. When we first heard KH Market was going to get demolished, Lan and I were put in contact with each other from one of our professors in the EthnoCommunications program at UCLA. Throughout the first part of 2019, we were working on that film together to try to raise awareness about what’s happening at East Anaheim in Long Beach, and how to mobilize the community and save those small mom-and-pop businesses from being demolished. That ended up being my student film for Ethnocommunications. It premiered around May or June 2019 as part of the spring EthnoCommunications program, but when we first made it, we thought it was just going to be one film. But then we started submitting to film festivals just to see where it’ll take us. We got into 4 or 5 film festivals in the Asian American space, and we were like, “maybe we could do a sequel in the future.” But we didn’t really think anything of it until UCC brought us the idea to do a film on KH Market. 

What does empowerment to the community look like to you? 

Currently I work as a digital organizer for Khmer Girls In Action, which is a nonprofit in Long Beach serving Southeast Asian youth in our communities. One of my main goals in that position is to use narratives or storytelling to make meaningful changes within our communities, like pushing stories of resilience, sharing stories of our communities succeeding to show how far we've come and how our community won't back down from any adversities, while acknowledging the history of how we came to the US. That's what I do everyday working at KGA, and that's how I approach filmmaking too. 

Were there new insights and learnings for you throughout the making of these films?

Throughout making these films, I've been able to see the power that our communities hold when we come together. We can influence a lot of the city planning and get more resources to come into our community. It shows how rich and beautiful our community is with all of the culture and the arts we produce, and seeing it being attempted to be erased by corporations who try to come in and displace our people is very disheartening. It angers me and a lot of people. That’s why we do this, produce art and make these films.

What were some memorable moments during the production of your two films at LAAPFF 2022?

When making Conversations At The Register, when Lan and I were inside filming the store, the interactions, and getting audio from the cash register of just the owners and the customers talking, it was almost like they knew each other and were helping each other out. Customers are like, “Hey, I heard you're closing, I'm going to try to buy everything that I can, support you guys out,” or, one of the longtime customers of KH sent me an audio clip of her saying, when they didn't have enough money to pay, Bon, one of the brothers, helped them out and said pay them back whenever. Getting to hear these different conversations really shows how we got each other's back. In this world now where people are becoming more closed off, it's nice to see stories like this for a change.

Have you shown the film to people from the Cambodia Town community yet?

Not yet. The closest film screening was back when it premiered at the LAAPFF in May, so the screening this coming Saturday is really important, because, you know, it's right in Long Beach. Mark Twain, it's an easy venue, everyone goes there, so it’s really accessible to people in the community. And people who weren't able to make it LA for the festival, they could come out and see all three of our films at once. I'm really excited to hear discussions around how our community has been, how we can continue to organize and build solidarity with other communities at Long Beach, [how to] get the resources we deserve, and how to improve Long Beach as a whole.

Anything else you’d like to share?

I really want to, on behalf of Lan and I, thank the community for allowing us to share your stories, and accepting these films. We're thankful each day for people who message us online, from other communities and states, saying how these films have touched them and how they can see the stories in their communities as well and how it made them explore more of their Cambodian or Southeast Asian identity. And that's one of the main reasons why we make these films is to connect with other people too.

Conversations at the Register (2022)

Cambodia Town Thrives (2022)

Cambodia Town: Not for Sale (2019)

All three films will be screened altogether at WE ARE LONG BEACH: OUT STORIES, OUR FUTURE, a community arts event co-presented by VC and United Cambodian Community (UCC) on Saturday, August 27, 2022. Visit https://vcmedia.org/latest-news/2022/8/16/event-we-are-long-beach-our-stories-our-future for more event details and registration.

The interview was edited for space and clarity. Photo courtesy of Brandon Soun and VC Archives.