the death and life of dith pran

As I was getting ready for school this morning, I heard on NPR that Dith Pran had died of pancratic cancer. He was a photojournalist for the New York Times, but is better known for the story of what happened to him during the Cambodian civil war and genocide, which was later made into a movie called "The Killing Fields".

Here is how I first heard about his story.

I was flipping through the channels a number of years ago, and stumbled across a film of a Spalding Gray's monologue called "Swimming to Cambodia". It was not the kind of thing I would normally watch, but there was something about his delivery that caught my attention, so I kept watching.

He was talking about his role in the movie "The Killing Fields", and what it was like to be a part of the cast. He also talked about the events that had inspired the film, most of which I had never heard of. It got me interested enough to rent the movie, and I watched it.

It touched me deeply, in a way I find difficult to articulate. One thing that I came away with was a need to one day visit Cambodia, and see with my own eyes what had happened there.

I went to Cambodia and saw with my own eyes.