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Are you a fan of independent cinema? Well it looks like we’ve got some great treats about to be served up at The Asia South East – Short Film Festival happening at Meta House Cultural Centre in Phnom Penh on December 9th and 16th. The festival is being curated by Rod Fraser who is also the festival director of two other film fests that happen in the UK; the London-X4 Seasonal Short Film Festival and London-Worldwide Comedy Short Film Festival. We asked him a few questions about the upcoming event.

K440: Can you tell us why you decided to hold a film festival in Phnom Penh?

RF: Well I lived in Phnom Penh three years ago and knew Meta House and Nico who runs it and thought it was a great venue for a film festival. Phnom Penh has quite a bohemian side to it with a lot of Cambodian Forum creative ex-pats and locals who I thought would be up for checking out some less mainstream films. The festivals I run in the UK are great but we tend to show many films originating from the western hemisphere. This festival will also have plenty of films from the western hemisphere but I also wanted to be able to screen more films from the eastern and southern hemispheres. The only continent we don’t have films from is Antarctica and we’ve tried to remedy that by emailing Morgan Freeman and asking him to put us in touch with any emperor penguin filmmakers he might know. He hasn’t got back to us yet though which is a bit rude if you ask me. Manners cost nothing.