Hamiltonian Calvin Keo’s film follows his father on moving Cambodian odyssey

Moy Keo was either born with the perfect face for his own story or he willed it into being to express the incredible texture of his journey. In that face you can almost believe you're reading the book, the portfolio, of his life.

In any case, it's a face that lingers with you hauntingly, but pleasantly, as well - there is a humble, measured triumph in it or at least a sigh of survival - long after spending the two hours with him that filmmaker Calvin Keo, his son, asks of you. It's time well spent.

It is the face of a man who wanted simply to be a farmer in Cambodia where he grew up but got forced into being a child soldier by the Khmer Rouge, for a short time, before he fled, with parents and siblings, scrambling through jungles and across fields, booby-trapped with landmines, to the border.

From there, Moy and his family moved across into a Thai refugee camp, where they'd spend the next 10 years. A decade during which they suffered, wept, laughed, loved - Moy met his future wife there, married her there, had their first child, a daughter whom they had to bury there, not quite a year old.

It is where Moy met his best friend, only to be separated from him, it is where his beloved sister was peeled away from the rest of the family because she decided to stay with her undocumented husband and child and return to Cambodia. It is where Calvin was born.

And it is where Moy got his first camera, in his late teens, and learned how to use it.

This we learn from a wonderful documentary, an ode, really, of filial debt, from a man to his father, to both his parents, called The Photographer."

Maybe it was the journey that shaped Moy's face or maybe his son's camera that draws the hard stories out of the map of his features. Especially Moy's eyes, which are full of weariness, strength, sadness, at times great joy, as when he is reunited with an old friend, and a certain quality of hard-won peace. It is a face filled with memory.

It started as a 20-minute short," says Calvin Keo, son of Moy and Phan, with a yeah, right" kind of laugh in his voice. It turned into a two hour, 10 minute odyssey on film, a two-year odyssey in the making, with twists and turns, including an Ontario Arts Council grant that came in just after his hopes had been dashed by a Canada Council grant that didn't.

Buoyed by that OAC news, Calvin threw in with his gut feeling - do it up right. He and his father got on a plane to Bangkok, in search of the Thai refugee camp, Khao-I-Dang.

The Photographer" follows Moy down some blind alleys, often on a rented scooter, and along broken pathways through scrubland to find the refugee camp which no longer exists except as an education centre. And, later, through Cambodia to find his sister and his best friend. Does he succeed? Suffice it to say, there are powerful scenes.

The film begins in Canada with Moy squatting on the floor in his home, looking through albums, the camera coming in on his face. And we see here the photographs, mostly portraits, that Moy took in the camp, chronicling life there, marking weddings, including his own, and other occasions.

He saw a UN (United Nations) photographer in the camp," says Calvin, and was hooked. He managed to acquire a camera through his aunt who was a Buddhist nun and visited the camp periodically.

These opening scenes are intercut, as foreshadowing, with scenes of Moy, stubbly, unshaven, walking through the scraggly forest overgrowth where the camp used to be. In one tender moment, Moy, in his home, is gently wiping a photograph of his daughter who perished in the camp. Later, we see him lay flowers at the ruins of the camp temple, an offering in her memory.

She had a fever that wouldn't come down so a camp doctor' soaked her in cold water, which got in her lungs," says Calvin.

Calvin, who inherited his father's passion for film, has been living in Hamilton for several years now, a Fanshaw graduate working in television and film production. The Photographer" is co-produced by his partner, Hamiltonian Linna Bun, whose family lived in the same refugee camp as Calvin's.

It's a beautifully made film. Calvin is hoping now to get The Photographer" into film festivals, such as London's (Ontario). It premiered at Hamilton Film Festival in November and in March at the Cambodian International Film Festival in Phnom Penh. (Calvin couldn't travel there because of COVID-19.)

Jeff Mahoney is a Hamilton-based reporter and columnist covering culture and lifestyle stories, commentary and humour for The Spectator. Reach him via email: jmahoney@thespec.com