DESCRIPTION : For sale is a HEBREW illustrated and photographed ADVERTISING FLYER for the ISRAELI PREMIERE in NATANIA - ISRAEL of the AWARDS winning legendary British FILM MOVIE of Roland Joffe "THE KILLING FIELDS" ( Which quite strangely received a brand new name by its Israeli distributors - TEARS OF SILENCE ) . The MOVIE was projected in "SHARON" cinema hall in NATANYA  . Written in Hebrew and English. Printed on one side. Greenish paper . 7 x 10" . Very good condition. Age tanning of paper ( Pls look at scan for accurate AS IS images ) .Will be sent inside a protective rigid packaging .

AUTHENTICITY : The advertising flyer is fully guaranteed ORIGINAL from 1985  , NOT a reproduction or a recent reprint , It holds a life long GUARANTEE for its AUTHENTICITY and ORIGINALITY.

PAYMENTS : Payment method accepted : Paypal & All credit cards.

SHIPPMENT : SHIPP worldwide via registered airmail  $ 19 . Flyer will be sent inside a rigid protective packaging . Handling around 5-10 days after payment. 

The Killing Fields is a 1984 British drama film about the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, which is based on the experiences of two journalists: Cambodian Dith Pran and American Sydney Schanberg. The film won eight BAFTA Awards and three Academy Awards; it was directed by Roland Joffé, and stars Sam Waterston as Schanberg, Haing S. Ngor as Pran, Julian Sands as Jon Swain, and John Malkovich as Al Rockoff. The adaptation for the screen was written by Bruce Robinson; the musical score was written by Mike Oldfield and orchestrated by David Bedford. Contents  [hide]  1 Plot 2 Critical reception 3 Home media 4 Casting of Haing S. Ngor 5 Awards 6 Related work 7 Main cast 8 See also 9 References 10 External links Plot[edit] This article's plot summary may be too long or excessively detailed. Please help improve it by removing unnecessary details and making it more concise. (May 2012)(Learn how and when to remove this template message) In the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, during May 1973, the Cambodian national army is fighting a civil war with theKhmer Rouge, a result of the Vietnam War overspilling that country’s borders. Dith Pran, a Cambodian journalist and interpreter for The New York Times, awaits the arrival of reporter Sydney Schanberg at the city's airport but leaves suddenly. Schanberg takes a cab to his hotel where he meets up with Al Rockoff (John Malkovich). Pran meets Schanberg later and tells him that an incident has occurred in a town, Neak Leung; allegedly, an American B-52 has bombed the town. Schanberg and Pran go to Neak Leung where they find that the town has been bombed. Schanberg and Pran are arrested when they try to photograph the execution of two Khmer Rouge operatives. They are eventually released and Schanberg is furious when the international press corps arrives with the U.S. Army. Two years later, in 1975, the Phnom Penh embassies are being evacuated in anticipation of the arrival of the Khmer Rouge. Schanberg secures evacuation for Pran, his wife and their four children. However, Pran insists that he would stay behind to help Schanberg. The Khmer Rouge move into the capital, ostensibly in peace. During a parade through the city, Schanberg meets Rockoff. They are later met by a detachment of the Khmer Rouge, who immediately arrest them. The group is taken through the city to a back alley where prisoners are being held and executed. Pran, unharmed because he is a Cambodian civilian, negotiates to spare the lives of his friends. They do not leave Phnom Penh, but instead retreat to the French embassy. Informed that the Khmer Rouge have ordered all Cambodian citizens in the embassy to be handed over and fearing the embassy will be overrun, the embassies comply. Knowing that Pran will be imprisoned or killed, Rockoff and fellow photographer Jon Swain (Julian Sands) of The Sunday Times try to forge a British passport for Pran; the deception fails when the image of Pran on the passport photo fades to nothing, as they lack adequate photographic developer. Pran is turned over to the Khmer Rouge and is forced to live under their totalitarian regime. Several months after returning to New York City, Schanberg is in the midst of a personal campaign to locate Pran. In Cambodia, Pran has become a forced labourer under the Khmer Rouge's "Year Zero" policy, a return to the agrarian ways of the past. Pran is also forced to attend propagandist classes where many undergo re-education. As intellectuals are made to disappear, Pran feigns simple-mindedness. Eventually, he tries to escape, but is recaptured. Before he is found by members of the Khmer Rouge, he slips into a muddy cesspool filled with rotting human corpses; in doing so, he stumbles upon the infamous killing fields of the Pol Potregime, where as many as 2 million Cambodian citizens were murdered. In 1976 Sydney Schanberg is awarded a Pulitzer prize for his coverage of the Cambodian conflict. At the acceptance dinner he tells the audience that half the recognition for the award belongs to Pran. Later in the restroom, he is confronted by Rockoff, who harshly accuses him of not doing enough to locate Pran and for using his friend to win the award. Schanberg defends his efforts, saying that he has contacted every humanitarian relief agency possible in the time since Pran's disappearance. Rockoff suggests that Schanberg subtly pressured Pran to remain in Cambodia because Pran was so vital to Schanberg's work. This accusation hits close to home, and Schanberg begins to wonder whether he put his own self-interest ahead of Pran's safety. He finally confesses that Pran "stayed because I wanted him to stay". Pran is assigned to the leader of a different prison compound, a man named Phat, and charged mostly with tending to his little boy. Pran continues his self-imposed discipline of behaving as an uneducated peasant, despite several of Phat’s attempts to trick him into revealing his knowledge of both French and English. Phat begins to trust Pran and asks him to take ward of his son in the event that he is killed. The Khmer Rouge are now engaged in a border war with Vietnam. The conflict reaches Pran's region and a battle ensues between the Khmer Rouge of the compound and two jets sent to destroy the camp. After the skirmish has ended, Pran discovers that Phat's son has American money and a map leading to safety. When Phat tries to stop the younger Khmer Rouge officers from killing several of his comrades, he is ignominiously shot. In the confusion, Pran escapes with four other prisoners and they begin a long trek through the jungle with Phat’s young son. The group later splits and three of them head in a different direction; Pran continues following the map with the fourth man. However, Pran’s companion activates a hidden land mine while holding the boy. As Pran pleads with the man to give him the boy, the mine goes off, killing the pair. Pran mourns for a time and continues on. One day he crests the escarpment of the Dângrêk Mountains and sees a Red Cross camp near the border of Thailand. The scene shifts to Schanberg calling Pran's family with the news that Pran is alive and safe. Soon after, Schanberg travels to the Red Cross camp and is reunited with Pran. He asks Pran to forgive him; Pran answers, with a smile, "Nothing to forgive, Sydney", as the two embrace and John Lennon's song "Imagine" is heard in the background. The following credit scene gives short-sentenced conclusions on the characters' lives after the events of the movie. Critical reception[edit] This section requires expansion.(April 2010) The Killing Fields holds a 93% rating at the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, based on 40 reviews from notable publications.[2] Critic Roger Ebert wrote in theChicago Sun-Times: "The film is a masterful achievement on all the technical levels—it does an especially good job of convincing us with its Asian locations—but the best moments are the human ones, the conversations, the exchanges of trust, the waiting around, the sudden fear, the quick bursts of violence, the desperation."[3] Home media[edit] The Killing Fields was released on DVD by Umbrella Entertainment in March 2010. The DVD is compatible with region code 4 and includes special features such as the theatrical trailer, audio commentary with Roland Joffé, an interview with David Puttnam and a BBC documentary titled The Making of The Killing Fields.[4] In April 2013 Umbrella Entertainment released the film on Blu-ray.[5] Casting of Haing S. Ngor[edit] Haing S. Ngor, who plays Pran, was himself a survivor of the Khmer Rouge regime and the labour camps.[6] Prior to the Khmer Rouge's 'Year Zero' he was a doctor based in Phnom Penh. In 1975, Ngor was one of millions who were moved from the city to forced labour camps in the countryside. He spent four years there before fleeing to Thailand.[7] Haing S Ngor had never acted before appearing in The Killing Fields. He was spotted by the film's casting director, Pat Golden, at a Cambodian wedding in Los Angeles.[8] Of his role in the film, he told People magazine in 1985: "I wanted to show the world how deep starvation is in Cambodia, how many people die under Communist regime. My heart is satisfied. I have done something perfect."[9] Awards[edit] The film was nominated for 13 BAFTA Awards, and at the 38th British Academy Film Awards ceremony on 5 March 1985 it won eight of them: Best Film, Best Actor(Haing S. Ngor), Best Adapted Screenplay (Bruce Robinson), Best Cinematography (Chris Menges), Best Sound (Bill Rowe, Ian Fuller, Clive Winter), Best Editing(Jim Clark), Best Production Design (Roy Walker), and Most Promising Newcomer to Film (Haing S. Ngor). The five awards it was nominated for but didn't win were: Best Actor (Sam Waterston), Best Direction (Roland Joffé), Best Score (Mike Oldfield), Best Special Visual Effects (Fred Cramer), and Best Makeup Arist (Tommie Manderson). The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Director, Actor, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Film Editing andCinematography. At the 57th Academy Awards on 25 March 1985, it won the Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actor (for Haing S. Ngor), Best Editing (for Jim Clark), and Best Cinematography (for Chris Menges). Consistently placed high on film ranking lists, it is 100th on the BFI Top 100 British films list, 30th on the 100 Greatest Tearjerkers,[10] and 60th on the American Film Institute's list of America's most inspiring movies. Related work[edit] The screenplay is adapted from a Sydney Schanberg story in The New York Times Magazine entitled "The Death and Life of Dith Pran: A Story of Cambodia".[11] In 1986, actor Spalding Gray, who had a small role in the film as the American consul, created Swimming to Cambodia, a monologue (later filmed by Jonathan Demme) based upon his experiences making The Killing Fields. A book of the film was written by Christopher Hudson.[12] Main cast[edit] Sam Waterston as Sydney Schanberg Haing S. Ngor as Dith Pran John Malkovich as Al Rockoff Julian Sands as Jon Swain Craig T. Nelson as Military Attache Spalding Gray as U.S. Consul Bill Paterson as Dr. MacEntire Athol Fugard as Dr. Sundesval Graham Kennedy as Dougal Katherine Krapum Chey as Ser Moeun (Pran's Wife) Oliver Pierpaoli as Titony (Pran's Son) Edward Entero Chey as Sarun Tom Bird as U.S. Military Advisor Monirak Sisowath as Phat (K.R. Leader 2nd Village) Lambool Dtangpaibool as Phat's Son Ira Wheeler as Ambassador Wade David Henry as France Patrick Malahide as Morgan Nell Campbell as Beth Joan Harris as T.V. Interviewer Joanna Merlin as Schanberg's Sister Jay Barney as Schanberg' Father Mark Long as Noaks Sayo Inaba as Mrs. Noaks Mow Leng as Sirik Matak Chinsaure Sar as Arresting Officer Hout Ming Tran as K.R. Cadre - First Village Thach Suon as Sahn Neevy Pal as Rosa See also[edit] Alive in the Killing Fields (book) BFI Top 100 British films List of historical drama films of Asia THE KILLING FIELDS THE KILLING FIELDS (1984) Drama, Foreign, History Rated R 141 minutes   |  Roger Ebert January 1, 1984   |   Print Page There's a strange thing about stories based on what the movies insist on calling "real life." The haphazard chances of life, the unanticipated twists of fate, have a way of getting smoothed down into Hollywood formulas, so that what might once have happened to a real person begins to look more and more like what might once have happened to John Wayne. One of the risks taken by "The Killing Fields" is to cut loose from that tradition, to tell us a story that does not have a traditional Hollywood structure, and to trust that we'll find the characters so interesting that we won't miss the cliché. It is a risk that works, and that helps make this into a really affecting experience. WATCH NOW The "real life" story behind the movie is by now well-known. Sydney Schanberg, a correspondent for the New York Times, covered the invasion of Cambodia with the help of Dith Pran, a local journalist and translator. When the country fell to the communist Khmer Rouge, the lives of all foreigners were immediately at risk, and Schanberg got out along with most of his fellow Western correspondents. He offered Pran a chance to leave with him, but Pran elected to stay. And when the Khmer Rouge drew a bamboo curtain around Cambodia, Pran disappeared into a long silence. Back home in New York, Schanberg did what he could to discover information about his friend; for example, he wrote about four hundred letters to organizations like the Red Cross. But it was a futile exercise, and Schanberg had given up his friend for dead, when one day four years later word came that Pran was still alive and had made it across the border to a refugee camp. The two friends were reunited, in one of the rare happy endings that come out of a period of great suffering. As a human story, this is a compelling one. As a Hollywood story, it obviously will not do because the last half of the movie is essentially Dith Pran's story, told from his point of view. Hollywood convention has it that the American should fight his way back into the occupied country (accompanied by renegade Green Berets and Hell's Angels, and Rambo, if possible), blast his way into a prison camp, and save his buddy. That was the formula for "Uncommon Valor" and "Missing in Action," two box-office hits, and in "The Deer Hunter" one friend went back to Vietnam to rescue another. Sitting in New York writing letters is not quite heroism on the same scale. And yet, what else could Schanberg do? And, more to the point, what else could Dith Pran do, in the four years of his disappearance, but try to disguise his origins and his education, and pass as an illiterate peasant --one of the countless prisoners of Khmer Rouge work camps? By telling his story, and by respecting it, "The Killing Fields" becomes a film of an altogether higher order than the Hollywood revenge thrillers. The movie begins in the early days of the journalistic coverage of Schanberg. We meet Schanberg (Sam Waterston) and Pran (played by Dr. Haing S. Ngor, whose own story is an uncanny parallel to his character's), and we sense the strong friendship and loyalty that they share. We also absorb the conditions in the country, where warehouses full of Coca-Cola are blown up by terrorists who know a symbolic target when they see one. Life is a routine of hanging out at cafes and restaurants and official briefings, punctuated by an occasional trip to the front, where the American view of things does not seem to be reflected by the suffering that the correspondents witness. The whole atmosphere of this period is suggested most successfully by the character of an American photographer, played by John Malkovich as a cross between a dopehead and a hard-bitten newsman. He is not stirred to action very easily, and still less easily stirred to caring, but when an occasion rises (for example, the need to forge a passport for Dith Pran), he reveals the depth of his feeling. As the Khmer Rouge victory becomes inevitable, there are scenes of incredible tension, especially one in which Dith Pran saves the lives of his friends by some desperate fast talking with the cadres of adolescent rebels who would just as soon shoot them. Then there is the confusion of the evacuation of the U.S. Embassy and a last glimpse of Dith Pran before he disappears for four years. In a more conventional film, he would, of course, have really disappeared, and we would have followed the point of view of the Schanberg character. But this movie takes the chance of switching points of view in midstream, and the last half of the film belongs to Dith Pran, who sees his country turned into an insane parody of a one-party state, ruled by the Khmer Rouge with instant violence and a savage intolerance for any reminders of the French and American presence of the colonial era. Many of the best scenes in the film's second half are essentially played without dialogue, as Pran works in the fields, disguises his origins, and waits for his chance. The film is a masterful achievement on all the technical levels -- it does an especially good job of convincing us with its Asian locations -- but the best moments are the human ones, the conversations, the exchanges of trust, the waiting around, the sudden fear, the quick bursts of violence, the desperation. At the center of many of those scenes is Dr. Haing S. Ngor, a non-actor who was recruited for the role from the ranks of Cambodian refugees in California, and who brings to it a simple sincerity that is absolutely convincing. Sam Waterston is effective in the somewhat thankless role of Sydney Schanberg, and among the carefully drawn vignettes are Craig T. Nelson as a military attach -- and Athol Fugard as Dr. Sundesval. The American experience in Southeast Asia has given us a great film epic ("Apocalypse Now") and a great drama ("The Deer Hunter"). Here is the story told a little closer to the ground, of people who were not very important and not very powerful, who got caught up in events that were indifferent to them, but never stopped trying to do their best and their most courageous. IN 'THE KILLING FIELDS,' A CAMBODIAN ACTOR RELIVES HIS NATION'S ORDEAL By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN Published: October 28, 1984 FACEBOOK TWITTER GOOGLE+ EMAIL SHARE PRINT SINGLE PAGE REPRINTS During ''The Killing Fields'' - a film about friendship, separation and reunion set against the Khmer Rouge's genocidal revolution in Cambodia - the central character, a Khmer Rouge captive named Dith Pran, grows a small tomato plant. Its feeble fruit is part of survival amid rice gruel and endless labor. Then, as Dith Pran watches in impotence, a girl soldier of 12 or 14 rips the plant out of the earth. When that moment was filmed, Dr. Haing S. Ngor, who portrays Dith Pran, ran off the set screaming. ''Khmer Rouge, Khmer Rouge,'' he insisted to Roland Joffe, the director. ''She is Khmer Rouge.'' The girl, Mr. Joffe assured him, was a Thai who had been hired on location. But in her flat, dead eyes - the eyes of the thousands of children in the Khmer Rouge - Dr. Ngor saw again the horrors both he and Mr. Dith had actually endured. Dr. Ngor (he puts his surname last in American fashion) never acted before being cast as Mr. Dith, the assistant and friend to The New York Times correspondent Sydney Schanberg, the winner of a Pultizer Prize for his reporting on Cambodia. But to say that Dr. Ngor acted, that he merely played a role, is woefully inadequate. To an eerie degree, his experiences in Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge takeover in 1975 parallel those of Mr. Dith. ''For me, movie not different,'' Dr. Ngor said, still trying to master the language of his new land. ''I have enough experience in Communist times. I put emotion into the movie. We have a lot of scenes like in Khmer Rouge time. Everything the same.'' ''One thing I know,'' said Mr. Dith, who is now a photographer for The Times, ''this is a true story. Only someone who got trapped like me could do this part. Haing did well because he lived like me. When I see the movie, I try to say, 'That's past. That's past. Don't give away your tears anymore.' I try to pull myself out, but you cannot pull all the way out. You say, 'Oh my God, I am there again.' '' Although it takes some artistic liberties, ''The Killing Fields,'' which opens Friday at Cinema 1, essentially follows the true story of Mr. Dith and Mr. Schanberg. It is based upon Mr. Schanberg's 1980 article in The Times's Sunday Magazine, entitled ''The Death and Life of Dith Pran.'' Like the article, the movie shows how Mr. Schanberg (played on screen by Sam Waterston) and Mr. Dith collaborated to cover the Cambodian civil war and the ultimate triumph of the Khmer Rouge. When the American Embassy is evacuated as the Khmer Rouge advance on Phnom Penh, Mr. Dith's family leaves. But Mr. Dith and Mr. Schanberg, thinking mistakenly that the killing will soon end, stay. Instead, Khmer Rouge soldiers soon capture and prepare to execute Mr. Schanberg. Only Mr. Dith's pleas convince the soldiers to free Mr. Schanberg, and the men reach the safety of the French Embassy. But when the Khmer Rouge demand that all the Cambodians in the embassy be surrendered to them, Mr. Schanberg cannot save Mr. Dith. Mr. Schanberg returns to New York guilt-ridden, Mr. Dith vanishes into the tragedy of Cambodia, and the friends do not reunite until Mr. Dith's escape to Thailand more than four years later. ''The Killing Fields'' represents the first attempt by a commercial film to grapple with the Cambodian genocide. In the name of their ''peasant revolution,'' the Khmer Rouge drove the two million residents of Phnom Penh, among them Dr. Ngor and Mr. Dith, into the countryside. Other cities, like Kompong Speu, were literally bulldozed out of existence. By the time the Vietnamese ousted the Pol Pot regime in 1979, anywhere from one million to three million Cambodians, out of a population of seven million, had perished, some by starvation, some by murder. The Cambodian Genocide Project, an American group researching the Khmer Rouge atrocities, in 1982 read the scrupulous records of executions at Tuol Sleng political prison; inmates were clubbed to death, the Khmer Rouge wrote, because ''bullets could not be wasted.'' The parts of Dith Pran and Sydney Schanberg are co-equal in ''The Killing Fields,'' but it is Mr. Dith who is, perhaps, the emotional center of the film, for he personifies the suffering of millions of his countrymen. As Gregory Stanton of the Cambodian Genocide Project once put it, ''After you've gotten to know people in Cambodia and heard their stories - and everyone has lost someone - you begin to realize how personal mass murder is. Impersonal to the murderer, but personal to the victim.'' The search for someone to play Dith Pran consumed months. Both Mr. Joffe and Pat Golden, the casting director, realized that they could not cast a Caucasian in the role. But most of the Cambodian and Thai actors they met were trained in the highly stylized Asian theater tradition, one ill-suited for a realistic film. It fell to Miss Golden to scour the Cambodian expatriate communities in California, New York and Washington, D.C., and between January and April 1983 she interviewed 300 prospective Dith Prans. None fit. Dr. Ngor, meanwhile, had heard about Miss Golden's efforts. A fellow Cambodian in southern California kept telling Dr. Ngor to audition and Dr. Ngor kept resisting. ''I didn't think I'm a movie star,'' he said. ''The producer or director want to choose a handsome, young guy. I think I have 100 percent no chance. I am not handsome. I am too old.'' IN 'THE KILLING FIELDS,' A CAMBODIAN ACTOR RELIVES HIS NATION'S ORDEAL Published: October 28, 1984 FACEBOOK TWITTER GOOGLE+ EMAIL SHARE PRINT SINGLE PAGE REPRINTS (Page 2 of 2) Miss Golden did not think so. Her casting search took her to a Cambodian wedding in Oxnard, Calif., at which Dr. Ngor was a guest. She asked him to remove his glasses and took his picture. He resembled Mr. Pran closely enough to merit a screen test, which was essentially a series of improvisations. In one, Dr. Ngor and Miss Golden acted out an argument between Mr. Dith and Mr. Schanberg. In another, Dr. Ngor had to react as if his wife had just been killed. ''It was the most astonishing thing,'' Miss Golden said. ''I'd never seen anything like it.'' When Mr. Joffe, the producer David Puttnam and others watched footage of the screen test in London, there were tears. The authenticity should not have been surprising. Dr. Ngor's fiancee died under the Khmer Rouge, as did virtually all of his relatives. So close was Dr. Ngor's experience to Mr. Dith's that - although Mr. Waterston, for instance, spent almost a week with the real Sydney Schanberg and read all of his notebooks and dispatches from Cambodia - Dr. Ngor never even met the man he would recreate on film. Like Mr. Dith, Dr. Ngor was a relatively Westernized Cambodian, a doctor who spoke fluent French. And like Mr. Dith, Dr. Ngor realized that his only chance of survival among the Khmer Rouge lay in denying his past. On April 17, 1975, the day the Khmer Rouge seized Phnom Penh, Dr. Ngor and a colleague were in a military hospital, operating on a man wounded in the bombing of the city. ''I am operating on my patient,'' he recalled. ''I am cleaning out the intestine. It is 9 o'clock when a Khmer Rouge get into the operating room. He put a gun on my right ear. He ask me, 'Are you a doctor?' I say, 'No, he just left by back door. I am not a doctor.' The Khmer Rouge ran away to find the doctor. So I tell my friend, 'We leave the patient.' He says, 'No, we must finish.' I say, 'We must leave. If the Khmer Rouge come back, we will be killed.' '' But like both the real Mr. Dith and Mr. Schanberg, Dr. Ngor at first underestimated the ferocity of the Khmer Rouge. When Pol Pot's forces ordered Cambodians out of Phnom Penh, Dr. Ngor recalled, they said it was only to protect them from American bombing. Everyone would go back home in three hours. ''We don't know,'' Dr. Ngor said. ''We don't know the Khmer Rouge lying.'' Even after a three-day march to a Khmer Rouge encampment, Dr. Ngor added, ''We still think over and over again, maybe the Khmer Rouge call the people back to the city.'' In the maelstrom, Dr. Ngor somehow found his brother and father, his fiancee and her mother. Together, on May 28, 1975, they began another march, to a camp near the Vietnamese border and to the heart of Cambodia's darkness. From 4 A.M. to 1 P.M. every day, Dr. Ngor broke boulders into bits small enough for paving roads. His tool was a household hammer. At 1 P.M., the workers received their first meal of the day - ''A little watery rice. One tiny, small bowl. No, not even one bowl.'' He returned to the rocks until 7 P.M., when he got another bowl of rice. After that, there was work on an irrigation canal until almost midnight. In Dr. Ngor's second Khmer Rouge commune, the 7,000 workers received not even rice; they lived or died on whatever they could forage - insects, mice, lizards, snakes, scorpions. It is with no trace of irony that Dr. Ngor says, ''If you have mice to eat, lizards to eat, that's the best food. One hundred percent.'' The real Dith Pran survived by similar desperation; the character in the film eats small lizards and at one point sneaks into the commune's stable to cut the skin and then suck the blood from a water buffalo. Caught, he is tortured. That, too, harkens to Dr. Ngor's experience. The Khmer Rouge jailed him three times, trying to wring from him the admission he was a doctor. Having seen two other doctors executed, Dr. Ngor refused to tell. ''The Khmer Rouge ask me all the time, 'Are you a doctor or not?''' he remembered. ''I say, 'I am no doctor.' They still didn't believe me. I tell them I was a taxi driver. I change my name.'' The Khmer Rouge then tortured Dr. Ngor, once binding his limbs until they went numb, once searing his leg with an ember and once putting a plastic bag over his head until he almost suffocated - a torture reenacted at points in ''The Killing Fields.'' Ultimately, Dr. Ngor escaped into Vietnamese-held territory and then to Thailand, the same path Dith Pran followed. The two men crossed the border within months of each other in 1979. The film makers went to great lengths to evoke life under the Khmer Rouge, as well as in Phnom Penh before the takeover. First, Mr. Puttnam - best known as the producer of the Oscar-winning ''Chariots of Fire'' - selected in Mr. Joffe a director who had made his career in documentaries. Mr. Puttnam, Mr. Joffe and the screenwriter Bruce Robinson all interviewed Mr. Schanberg and Mr. Dith on several occasions and the director met with Cambodian refugees in the United States, Europe and Thailand. The depiction of life in the Khmer Rouge camps was drawn from refugees' recollections and from Yugoslav and East German film footage. Mr. Joffe also talked to United States State Department experts on Cambodia and read the writings of Pol Pot. The film speculates on the reasons for the rise of the Khmer Rouge. Several times Mr. Joffe juxtaposes footage of President Nixon - in one case denying the invasion of Cambodia, which was already underway - with scenes of the Khmer Rouge's horrors. Mr. Waterston also gives a speech, based on remarks the real Sydney Schanberg made to the Overseas Press Club, that criticizes the United States for intervening in Cambodia and implies that the incursion helped the Khmer Rouge gain strength. ''The film isn't anti-American; it's anti-ideology,'' Mr. Joffe maintains. But he went on to say: ''The argument is that the degree of bombing on a peasant country creates a kind of distress and a fury. The average age of the Khmer Rouge troops that came into Phnom Penh was 17, and those troops had had 75 per cent casualties. That would psychologically affect you. What the film is saying is that the world isn't filled with strange and bizarre acts for no reason.'' Pressed further on the point, Mr. Joffe said that the Khmer Rouge's atrocities - an almost unparalleled example of genocide committed against one's own people - grew out of more than American bombing. ''I think the most terrifying thing in Pol Pot's writing,'' the director said, ''was the outstanding mediocrity and crudeness. One realized a mind that mediocre couldn't see the ridiculousness of his ideas. It was close to being psychotic. The other thing I detected in Pol Pot was an intense nationalism and traces of paranoia - paranoia of the West, of Vietnam, of Thailand, even of China. Pol Pot had the idea of rebuilding the ancient peasant empire of Angkor Wat. He became an expression of the terror and hysteria of a whole country just as Hitler did.'' While Holocaust survivors have helped perpetuate the memory of Nazi infamy, the Cambodian genocide is already being forgotten. Which is part of the reason Dr. Ngor decided to play the part of Dith Pran. ''When Pat Golden ask me how much money I want, I said I don't care about salary,'' he recalled. ''She say $800 a week. I say I don't care. I want to be this actor. I want to show the world how the Communists really were. If any country get into a war, people killed by gun. In Cambodia, we are killed by rice; we are killed by starvation. If I die from now on, O.K. The film will go on 100 years.'' EBAY1859