Coney Island Getting a $30 Million Italian Makeover

Workers in Altavilla Vicentina, Italy, prepare a ride that will become a new attraction at Coney Island in New York City. More Photos »

By ELISABETTA POVOLEDO

Published: April 23, 2010

ALTAVILLA VICENTINA, Italy — Alberto Zamperla sweeps through the cavernous workshop here where his amusement rides are manufactured while workers measure and bang and solder enormous platforms, oddly shaped beams and assorted fiberglass vehicles.

Spring is a busy time for his company, and attractions are being prepared for the summer season that is about to open in theme parks around the world.

This year, however, one destination has Mr. Zamperla racing against the clock: Coney Island in Brooklyn, where in just a few weeks he will present a new amusement park featuring 22 rides, including the Tickler, a family-oriented roller coaster; the whirly Mega Disko; and Air Race, a heart-gulping aerobatic experience.

Coney Island is the largest investment yet in the 50-year history of the Zamperla Group. Zamperla is the majority shareholder of Central Amusement International, the New Jersey-based company that signed an agreement in February with New York City to build and manage the amusement area. So far, Central Amusement has spent $15 million on the refurbishment of the park, about half of the $30 million it expects to invest.

“Ride manufacturers have been operating rides in parks or fairgrounds for many years,” said Andreas Veilstrup Andersen, executive director of the European office of the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions. “However, a project as big as Coney Island is very unusual.”

Time has been tight, with the park’s opening set for the end of May.

“We had a pretty good idea of what we could produce on time,” said Mr. Zamperla, who is chief executive and president. “There’s a lot of pressure, because all eyes are on us. Things just can’t be good, they have to be perfect.”

Luigi De Vita, managing director of the company, added: “When we’re under pressure, we give the best of ourselves.”

Theme parks and amusement parks have a global lure, with about 758 million visitors worldwide in 2007, according to the latest study from PricewaterhouseCoopers on the outlook for entertainment and media. Worldwide revenue in 2007 was $24 billion, the study said.

The Zamperla Group, according to industry experts, is ranked among the top five manufacturers of amusement park rides.

The Coney Island project will be called Luna Park, after the original playground that stood there until World War II. Drawings for the new main gate on Surf Avenue mimic the original design, but flashier.

The park at Coney Island “had its glory but lacked an innovative spirit,” Mr. Zamperla said of a site that in recent decades had become seedy.

In February, Central Amusement won the bid on a 10-year lease to build and operate the park, which sits on a city-owned lot.

“Their specific proposal was a nice blend of honoring the history of Coney Island while developing it as a modern 21st-century amusement park,” said Seth W. Pinsky, president of the New York City Economic Development Corporation.

The Zamperla Group was chosen because it had a sound track record in operating amusement parks, including the Victorian Gardens, a children’s amusement area at Wollman Rink in Central Park in Manhattan. And it was known as the producer of “some of the most exciting rides in the world,” Mr. Pinsky said.

The Zamperla family has been building amusement park attractions in Altavilla Vicentina since the early 1960s. Alberto’s grandfather, Umberto Zamperla, opened one of the first movie houses in Italy, then moved into carnival attractions. His father, Antonio Zamperla, worked in traveling shows before deciding to settle in this Veneto town to start inventing and manufacturing rides.

Alberto Zamperla, 58, the eldest of five children, took the show on the road, so to speak, and there are now factories or sales offices in several countries, including the United States, China and Russia. His group sells to customers in more than 90 countries and now exports about 95 percent of its products.

There are about 185 employees in Italy, with an additional 270 around the world.

The nuts and bolts of the business — its administration as well as its main manufacturing activities — are at the headquarters near Vicenza, an industrial district that is the third-largest exporting center in Italy, according to the local chamber of commerce.

A stroll though the headquarters at Altavilla Vicentina hints at the complexity of producing amusement park rides for the world’s theme parks, including various Disney Parks (“In our business, it’s the best reference you can have,” Mr. Zamperla said), Six Flags theme parks and malls worldwide. Even the late Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch has Zamperla rides.

On average, the company spends about one million euros ($1.3 million) a year designing new products, using complicated computer algorithms and mathematical models. The attractions are then built and tested here. Zamperla has dozens of patents on items like merry-go-round decorations and roller-coaster seats.

“This is where ideas are born,” Mr. Zamperla beamed as he looked at the MotoCoaster, a ride being prepared for a dinosaur theme park in Changzhou, China. Each ride requires about a year from design to delivery, he said, and can cost anywhere from 20,000 euros to 6 million euros. The MotoCoaster sells for 3.5 million euros and will be one of the attractions at Coney Island next year.

Demand is growing in new markets, especially in the Middle and Far East. The Zamperla Group has a factory and sales offices in Suzhou, China, to serve the fast-growing Chinese market. “We’re not going to make the mistake of underestimating the Chinese,” he said.

The factory in China produces about four million euros worth of rides for the Chinese market. He exports about the same amount from Italy to China and hopes to reach 20 million euros in sales in two years.

In well-established markets like the United States, long-term success in the amusement ride industry depends on novelty, Mr. Andersen said.

This year, for example, Air Race, an airborne experience that the company describes as “the ultimate thrill ride” will have its debut at Coney Island, alongside more placid family fare. Next year, rides are expected in the Scream Zone, an addition to the park that will feature several Zamperla roller coasters intended mostly for teenagers.

“In the end, all we want to do is build rides that people will enjoy,” Mr. Zamperla said. And Coney Island, he said, “will be the perfect showcase.”

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G-20 Split on the Need for a Global Tax on Banks

Treasury chief Timothy Geithner between Dominique Strauss-Kahn of the I.M.F. and Christine Lagarde, French finance minister.

By SEWELL CHAN

Published: April 23, 2010

WASHINGTON — Proposals to establish a global tax on banks and charge them for the cost of government bailouts divided representatives of the Group of 20 countries during a summit meeting here on Friday.

The perilous fiscal condition of Greece and other countries in Europe, and the need for the world’s big economies to coordinate changes in financial regulation, were the other major topics in the daylong meetings of Group of 20 finance ministers and central bank governors.

“The global recovery has progressed better than previously anticipated, largely due to the G-20’s unprecedented and concerted policy effort,” the officials said in a joint communiqué.

The International Monetary Fund endorsed a proposal this week that would establish a tax on bank profits and on salaries paid to bank executives. Canada, whose banking system withstood the crisis, has led the opposition to the idea, while the Obama administration, which has called for a $90 billion levy to be collected over 10 years from banks that received bailout money, tried to marshal support for it.

“There was not agreement on a global bank tax,” Jim Flaherty, the Canadian finance minister, said at a news conference after the meetings. “Some countries are in favor of that. Some countries quite clearly are not. It depends whether a country has had to use taxpayers’ dollars to bail out banks, for the most part.”

Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner defended the idea. “We’re trying to establish the basic principle that where governments are exposed to risk in putting out financial fires like this, that taxpayers don’t bear the costs of paying for those actions,” he said, adding, “That is a simple, fair, basic imperative.”

Mr. Geithner said there was “significant support” for the bank tax, but allowed that he understood a “certain lack of enthusiasm” from Canada.

He added, “We’re going to do what’s necessary for the U.S., what’s in our interest, and I think the world’s going to want to watch what we do. And I suspect that’ll provide a basis for other actions across some of the other economies.”

The cautiously worded joint communiqué acknowledged, but sidestepped, the bank tax proposals. It called for further I.M.F. study “on options to ensure domestic financial institutions bear the burden of any extraordinary government interventions where they occur, address their excessive risk-taking and help promote a level playing field, taking into consideration individual countries’ circumstances.”

John Lipsky, the deputy managing director of the I.M.F., said on Friday that the bank tax, if calculated based on the risk banks posed to the financial system, “could help to discourage financial institutions from taking on excessive risk.” Such a fee would also “address the public policy concern that financial institutions are able to privatize gains but socialize costs arising in the financial sector,” he said.

Mr. Lipsky’s boss, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the top I.M.F. official, caused rumblings on Friday when he suggested that some countries were moving too quickly on reform. He said the Obama administration’s plan “comes too soon” given the need to coordinate responses across countries.

“I read that and I thought, really?” Mr. Geithner said in response. “My sense is that it’s been 15 months — or more than a year — since we started this process in the United States. We’re not moving with excessive haste.”

Mr. Geithner acknowledged that one of the biggest reform elements — forcing banks to hold more capital as a buffer against economic disruptions — was partly beyond the scope of the legislation being debated by Congress. The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, a global regulatory body, is coordinating discussions around capital requirements in the hope of announcing new standards by the end of this year.

“The core issue there is the quality and quantity of capital and setting standards for that, and also an appropriate cap on leverage,” said Mr. Flaherty. “We agreed that that’s a key element.”

The Group of 20 officials offered few details on the Greek debt crisis, except to support the aid plans of the European Union and the I.M.F. Mr. Flaherty said of the Greeks: “They have undermined the confidence of the markets and it is essential that some steps be taken, that the Greek government work with the I.M.F., and the European Commission of course, to identify a credible, multiyear economic and fiscal program.”

Although India and Brazil this week joined calls by the United States for China to allow the value of its currency, the renminbi, to appreciate, the Group of 20 officials said the topic did not come up in their meetings.

Yoon Jeung-Hyun, the South Korean finance minister who coordinated the meetings, said “there were no specific discussions” of either the renminbi, also known as the yuan, or the euro, which has recently fallen in value.

Even as problems in Europe preoccupied the leaders, officials reported positive developments in some poorer parts of the world.

The I.M.F. projected on Friday that economic output in sub-Saharan Africa would expand by 4.75 percent this year and 5.75 percent next year, up from 2 percent last year.

“The economic slowdown in sub-Saharan Africa looks set to be mercifully brief,” said Antoinette Monsio Sayeh, director of the fund’s African department, adding that “the slowdown has nonetheless entailed considerable social dislocation and suffering.”

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F.D.A. Steps Up Oversight of Infusion Pumps

Federal regulators say they are moving to tighten their oversight of medical devices, including one of the most ubiquitous and problematic pieces of medical equipment — automated pumps that intravenously deliver drugs, food and other solutions to patients.

On Friday, the Food and Drug Administration issued preliminary guidelines that will require producers of the devices, known as infusion pumps, to supply the agency with more test data on them before they can be approved for sale.

Over the last five years, the agency says it has received reports of 710 patient deaths linked to problems with the devices, though F.D.A. officials say they think the number may be significantly higher. Some of those deaths involved patients who suffered drug overdoses accidentally, either because a hospital worker entered incorrect dosage data into a pump or because the device’s software malfunctioned.

An estimated two million infusion pumps are used in hospital and clinical settings and hundreds of thousands more are used by patients in their homes. The pumps use a variety of designs to intravenously deliver food, fluids and drugs like pain medications, insulin and cancer treatments.

The pump-related initiative comes as the Obama administration tries to reinvigorate the F.D.A. after years of criticism by lawmakers and others that it was a rubber stamp for industry. The F.D.A. Center for Devices and Radiological Health, which oversees scores of critical products like heart implants, imaging equipment and infusion pumps, has come under particular scrutiny.

A few years ago, for example, several top scientists at the center contended in letters to lawmakers that their superiors had ignored both their recommendations and policy guidelines in approving the sale of devices. Along with reports of 710 deaths, the center also received more than 10,000 complaints annually about infusion pumps from 2005 to 2009. In that same time frame, manufacturers of infusion pumps issued 79 recalls, among the highest for any medical device.

The center’s new director, Dr. Jeffrey E. Shuren, who has headed the center since August, said in an interview this week that pump manufacturers would soon be required to provide more data about their devices before offering them for sale. He added that the agency had determined that pumps could be made far safer.

He also said that the categorywide approach that the agency was taking toward infusion pumps might soon be extended to other types of medical devices, though he declined to elaborate.

“We need to ratchet up the expectations for medical device manufacturers,” Dr. Shuren said.

The biggest makers of infusion pumps include Baxter Healthcare of Deerfield, Ill.; Hospira of Lake Forest, Ill.; and CareFusion of San Diego.

Representatives of all three companies said the firms were reviewing of the agency’s initiative and could not comment on the specifics. However, they said their pumps were safe and that they looked forward to cooperating with regulators.

“We are committed to partnering with the agency to advance and complete the process for issuing new guidelines for the enhancement of the device review process,” Eric Floyd, Hospira’s vice president for global regulatory affairs, said in a statement.

Under the infusion pump proposal, which could be completed by the end of the year, producers would be required to provide additional data to support the procedures they used to determine the effectiveness and safety of their devices. In addition, companies would have to conduct limited clinical trials to ensure their pumps were not susceptible to misuse or had design elements that could create errors.

Pump producers now typically conduct “simulated” testing of its devices by users to identify bugs. Dr. Shuren indicated that the agency was seeking real-world testing as well.

Infusion pumps normally use software to automatically control both the rate and volume of a medication’s flow. To set a pump for an individual patient’s needs, a doctor, a nurse or other health care worker enters information by using the buttons on a pump’s keypad, which resembles that of a phone.

Pump manufacturers say that most problems occur when a nurse or health care worker enters the wrong data accidentally. F.D.A. officials said, however, that based on their review of pump complaints they thought many deaths and injuries related to the devices were less the result of user error than of product design and engineering.

For example, agency officials said that some pumps were prone to key bounce, a problem in which defective software interprets a single keystroke as two separate presses of that key. For example, instead of dispensing two units of a drug, a pump would dispense 22 units.

Under F.D.A. rules, life-sustaining devices like heart defibrillators must typically undergo clinical trials before they are approved for sale. But the agency clears the sale of many other critical devices like pumps without clinical testing based on a manufacturer’s claim that a new device is similar to a product already on the market.

Agency officials said Friday that they were sending a letter to all infusion pump makers to inform them of their findings and outline the proposed additional requirements companies were be required to meet.

Dr. Shuren said he expected that the new requirements would initially slow down the rate of the agency’s approval for new pumps that manufacturers are seeking to market.

The agency also said it had developed an open-source software code that manufacturers of pumps can use to test the validity of the software they use in their devices.

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UK economic growth slows to 0.2%

The UK economy continued to recover from recession in the first three months of the year, according to official estimates.

GDP grew by 0.2% between January and March, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said.

That was weaker than the 0.4% growth predicted by many economists, but the figure may be revised.

The last quarter of 2009 saw GDP growth of 0.4% - revised up from an initial estimate of 0.1%.

The ONS said the bad weather seen at the beginning of the year may have had an impact on output - particularly in the retail and industrial sectors.

But despite that, manufacturing output grew by 0.7% over the quarter, while the utilities sector saw output rise by 2.5%.

Manufacturing boost

However, the bulk of growth came from the financial and business services sector, which saw growth of 0.6%.

Meanwhile the sector including retail, hotels and restaurants shrank by 0.7%.

BBC economics editor Stephanie Flanders said the rise in manufacturing output was a particular cause for optimism.

"What many will find most cheering in these numbers is the stonking 0.7% estimate for growth in the production sector," she said.

"That's the strongest quarterly performance for that part of the economy in many years. Hopes of an export-led recovery are not dashed yet."

Other analysts were also optimistic, despite the growth figure coming in below expectations.

Howard Archer, chief economist at IHS Global Insight, argued that the lower-than-expected growth figure was "not in itself overly worrying".

"Overall growth in the first quarter was clearly dragged down appreciably by the very bad weather in January, and most indicators suggest that there has been a marked pick up in activity since then," he said.

"Furthermore, there must be a very good chance that first quarter GDP growth will be revised up in future releases as more data for March become available and show improved activity."

The ONS will release two further estimates for growth in the first quarter, based on more detailed economic information not yet available.

But Trevor Williams, chief economist at Lloyds TSB, warned that the growth could equally be revised lower.

"The economy is still recovering," he told the BBC.

"The declines of 2008 are still having an impact [and] the recovery will remain rather weak and could disappoint."

The Institute of Directors, which represents business leaders, also said it expected the recovery in the economy to "look much more L than V-shaped".

The British Chambers of Commerce added that the new figures underlined the challenges still facing the economy.

"It is important for policy-makers to focus on ensuring that the recovery continues and a double-dip recession is avoided," said the business group's chief economist David Kern.

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The Tragedy of History and Its Revision

Then-Prince Norodom Sihanouk with Pham Van Dong
Hun Xen (R) and Nguyen Tan Dung (L)

Friday, April 23, 2010
Op-Ed by MP

All the telling signs indicate just how deep and decisive Hanoi's influence has been over just about every field of Khmer people's national life. We have seen how risky it is for Khmer nationalists and activists to speak out against this one-sided relationship, formed and enforced, first and above all, to advance Vietnamese interests and political agenda in Cambodia.

How has this unjust relationship been structured and maintained without drawing displeasure and opposition from the party in this relationship with the most to lose and sacrifice? That the Vietnamese state does not entertain sanguine aspirations towards the Khmer nation is self-evident, but even Vietnamese imperial excesses over Cambodia in centuries past and Khmer people's bitter taste of that experience have all been, not so much forgotten as details of history, but instead brewed and recast as each other's misunderstood intentions and as outcomes of outdated, feudalistic exercise in inter-state diplomacy against which the entire existence of the Indochinese Workers' Party and its raison d'être were ostensibly purported to rest. This was what Première Phan Van Dong alluded to when he expressed regret over his country's past mistreatments of the Khmer Kingdom in the course of his pep talk with Prince Sihanouk in those hey days of anti-American struggle.

Sihanouk, however, to be fair, might not have been completely naive as to have wholeheartedly accepted all of Hanoi's explanations, but his cards were limited and therefore in his view the forced marriage was necessary in view of enveloping crises and in pander to political expedience or convenience at the time. Moreover, as a royal, and despite having spent some part his youth in Saigon/Prey Nokor as a pupil of French colonial schooling, Sihanouk would have already learned from his immediate royal palace council and forebears not to trust Vietnam's designs towards Cambodia.

But those young revolutionary cadres recruited even before 1978/9 by the Communist Party of Kampuchea out of the salt and rugged stock of the peasantry as its vanguard and replacement of their country's old administrative order represented a radical proposition, a true generational antithesis to Cambodia's past in world view and consciousness, offering Hanoi a rich, pliable alternative and groundwork from which they gleefully set about cloning a new generation of leaders that bear to all intent and purposes their own inward Vietnamese desires and images. It was not for nothing that young Mr. Hun Sen had to turn up at the Vietnamese embassy in Phnom Penh every morning to sit at the feet of his Vietnamese mentor and guru learning the art of world diplomacy, international relations, administrative structure, how to deal with internal 'reactionaries' and dissent, how to mobilise the masses to endorse the new regime, and most crucially, discovering the undoubted benefit and protection provided by the Khmer-Vietnamese solidarity within a unified Indochinese setup.

Within the confines of this morally sordid, contrived arrangement a whole new colony is created out of the body of the Khmer nation itself which gives over the appearance of leading the Khmer people out and away from their dark, troubled past and towards the security of the Promised Land over flown with milk and honey.

It would be insulting to their intelligence to say that the Khmer people are unaware of all these machinations at the heart of this relationship, but they could hardly be blamed for allowing themselves to be led along by this crop of leadership that they know deep down does not possess a will and character of its own to lead them to a destination of their own choosing. For the older generation who have survived the genocide of the Pol Pot regime their ultimate preference would be to be left alone to gather the pieces in life. The generation who came after that regime, on the other hand, simply have nothing more than an epistemological awareness of their nation’s past, learning through selective school texts of Vietnam’s salvific role in rescuing their parents from that genocide.

What will and character this leadership, therefore, does possess denotes or conveys nothing more and nothing less than its artificially cloned self that has, in its own eye, overcome numerous odds and adversities over the decades and in the aftermath of ‘Year Zero’ which, further, is a national tragedy wholly attributed to unguided ultra-nationalism and xenophobia.

So skilfully has the tragedy of Khmer history been exploited and used as a pretext to expunge the will of the Khmer nation and replace it with something foreign to it that even those who just want justice for their ancestral land, who harbour no ill prejudice towards the Vietnamese people, who defend and advocate basic civil rights for all under the law, who decry the excesses of officialdom are all invariably readily awarded the distinction of being trouble-makers, national traitors, and just as absurdly, of being Hanoi’s agents out to make Khmers turn against Khmers even while Khmer interests and lives are being superseded in every field by those of Vietnam.

I concur with Martin Luther King’s refrain that we should learn to live together like brothers or perish like fools, but in my humble view, true fraternity has to reflect equality in human dignity and genuine mutual regard that should leave no scope for underhanded attempt at subjugating one another’s will to something beyond which the convention or meaning of mutuality itself does not permit nor recognises as being equally beneficial to both parties.

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Google Censorship Map: Big Brother Hun Xen's gov't does not want to see your presence on the web?

In most countries, Google is the largest search engine by far. In fact, many web designers say that Google is all that counts…according to current figures, it accounted for more than 85% of search engine visits to this network.

While this position of power is great for the G boys, it also means that they are the prime target for censorship requests. Google has now created a map which shows where most requests come from, here's the map for Big Brother Hun Xen's Cambodia:

Click on the map to zoom in

Click here for additional information about this map

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Former foreign war reporters revisit Cambodia

Former Washington Post correspondent Elizabeth Becker (L) consoles former staff member of Kyodo News, Yoko Ishiyama, as she prays at a Buddhist ceremony at Po Kandal village in Kampong Speu province 65 km (40 miles) west of Phnom Penh April 22, 2010, in memory of her husband, Koki Ishiyama, a former correspondent for Kyodo, who was killed covering the Cambodian civil war in 1973. About 40 retired journalists gathered on Thursday to officially commemorate more than 50 correspondents from Japan, France, the U.S., Cambodia, Australia, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, India and Laos, who were killed while covering the conflict, which lasted from 1970-1975. REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea
Carle Robinson (L), former Associated Press correspondent prays at a Buddhist ceremony at Po Kandal village in Kampong Speu province 65 km (40 miles) west of Phnom Penh April 22, 2010. About 40 retired journalists gathered on Thursday to officially commemorate more than 50 correspondents from Japan, France, the U.S., Cambodia, Australia, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, India and Laos, who were killed while covering the Cambodian civil war, which lasted from 1970-1975. REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea
Former Time-Life photographer Tim Page and other foreign correspondents pray at a Buddhist ceremony at Po Kandal village in Kampong Speu province 65 km (40 miles) west of Phnom Penh April 22, 2010. About 40 retired journalists gathered on Thursday to officially commemorate more than 50 correspondents from Japan, France, the U.S., Cambodia, Australia, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, India and Laos, who were killed while covering the Cambodian civil war, which lasted from 1970-1975. REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea
Former foreign correspondents observe a moment of silence in front of a grave on a rice field at a Buddhist ceremony at Po Kandal village in Kampong Speu province 65 km (40 miles) west of Phnom Penh April 22, 2010 . About 40 retired journalists gathered on Thursday to officially commemorate more than 50 correspondents from Japan, France, the U.S., Cambodia, Australia, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, India and Laos, who were killed while covering the Cambodian civil war, which lasted from 1970-1975. REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea
Former Washington Post correspondent Elizabeth Becker (L) reads a list of killed foreign correspondents as former staff member of Kyodo News, Yoko Ishiyama (R), weeps at a Buddhist ceremony at Po Kandal village in Kampong Speu province 65 km (40 miles) west of Phnom Penh April 22, 2010. The list includes Yoko Ishiyama's husband, Koki Ishiyama, a former correspondent for Kyodo, who was killed covering the Cambodian civil war in 1973. About 40 retired journalists gathered on Thursday to officially commemorate more than 50 correspondents from Japan, France, the U.S., Cambodia, Australia, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, India and Laos, who were killed while covering the conflict, which lasted from 1970-1975. REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea
Former Time-Life photographer Tim Page prays at a Buddhist ceremony at Po Kandal village in Kampong Speu province 65 km (40 miles) west of Phnom Penh April 22, 2010. About 40 retired journalists gathered on Thursday to officially commemorate more than 50 correspondents from Japan, France, the U.S., Cambodia, Australia, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, India and Laos, who were killed while covering the Cambodian civil war, which lasted from 1970-1975. REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea
Sylvana Foa (R), two-time nominee for the Pulitzer Price, former Newsweek and United Press International (UPI) correspondent and currently a journalism teacher at New York University's Tel Aviv campus and former staff member of Kyodo News, Yoko Ishiyama (L), place a flower at the dedication of memorial of journalists in Phnom Penh April 22, 2010. Yoko Ishiyama's husband, Koki Ishiyama, a former correspondent for Kyodo, was killed covering the Cambodian civil war in 1973. About 40 retired journalists gathered on Thursday to officially commemorate more than 50 correspondents from Japan, France, the U.S., Cambodia, Australia, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, India and Laos, who were killed while covering the conflict, which lasted from 1970-1975. REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea
Carl Robinson (R), former Associated Press correspondent and Chhang Song , former Khmer minister of information, stand near the sign dedicated to the memory of Cambodian and foreign journalists killed or missing during the Cambodian civil war April 22, 2010. About 40 retired journalists gathered on Thursday to officially commemorate more than 50 correspondents from Japan, France, the U.S., Cambodia, Australia, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, India and Laos, who were killed while covering the conflict, which lasted from 1970-1975. REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea

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Cambodian New Year Celebration at Wat Khemara Rangsey, San Jose, California

(All photos supplied by V. R. Y.)

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Dancing Across Borders

Dance documentary blindsided by good intentions

Sy Sar (left) performs Khmer, a traditional dance of Cambodia, in Anne Bass’s film “Dancing Across Borders.’’ (First Run Features)

via CAAI News Media

By Wesley Morris

Globe Staff / April 23, 2010

Sometimes with documentaries, the best intentions have a way of making decent people look bad. “Dancing Across Borders’’ is a dismaying case in point. Ten years ago the socialite Anne Bass was on a trip to Cambodia. She caught a performance by a traditional Cambodian dance troupe, and the charisma of one 16-year-old so knocked her out that when Bass returned to the States, she pulled some strings and got the dancer an audition at the School of American Ballet in New York. The dancer, Sokvannara “Sy’’ Sar (it’s pronounced “See’’), had never danced ballet. But for two years, he trained with the dance instructor Olga Kostritsky, honed his skill, and became a success story.

In the film, the agents of Sy’s good fortune speak at length about how they refined his raw talent. Occasionally, they do this with Sy seated silently a foot away. Rehearsal and performance footage meant as progress reports for Sy’s family back in Cambodia are repurposed as the movie’s spine. Sy returns home to watch the kids perform at his old dance school and, in the final minutes, mentions how he no longer feels he belongs anywhere. It’s a rare self-reflective moment in a gauzy, dewy movie that accentuates the positive because it flatters his patrons, none more so than Bass, who happens to be the film’s director.

Objectivity is a mythical requirement for documentary. But perspective is a must. If it ever occurred to Bass that she risked the charge of vanity by using her already problematic charitable impulse to get a movie shown in the world’s art houses, we never see it. “Dancing Across Borders’’ — that title makes Sy’s experience seem so easy — avoids all the thorny culture clashes of East being shoehorned into West. It makes “The Blind Side’’ seem like a complex critique of race, class, and self-congratulation in the American South. Sy is less passive than the Michael Oher character in that film. But his life never seems entirely in his own hands, either.

Of course, it doesn’t feel like Bass set out to make a documentary at all. Well-meant though it may be, the movie has an advertorial gloss. It’s more convincing as the work of people looking to reap a return on their investment.

Wesley Morris can be reached at wmorris@globe.com. For more on movies, go to www.boston.com/movienation.

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