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The First Witness, known as THE FIRST, is a short documentary film narrated by Ho Van Tay, a member of the Vietnamese Journalists League, who was invited by Pol Pot and leng Sary to tour and record by photographs and video select Cambodian sites during the reign of the Khmer Rouge (1975-1979). After the Khmer Rouge collapsed in January 1979, Ho Van Tay had the opportunity to discover the infamous Phnom Penh prison S-21, where he and his comrade, Dinh Phong witnessed the aftermath of the horrors that were perpetrated there. The film also references Cambodia’s first archivist, Yin Nean, who at some personal risk embarked on an effort to locate and preserve the official archives of the Khmer Rouge regime for the benefit future generations of Cambodians and as a testimony for the world of the mass atrocities committed by the regime.
