PHOTO FESTIVAL NEWS

After last year’s sad debacle surrounding the cancelled Angkor Photo Festival, the good news is that work has already started on this year’s celebration and dates have now been set.

The sixth edition of the festival is now back to a week-long event, to run from November 20-27, and is supported by the French Culture and Communication Ministry.

Siem Reap’s engaging French entrepreneur Jean-Yves Navel is back as director, while the president and ambassador-at-large is the illustrious Roland Eng, a former Cambodian ambassador to the US, and a one-time actor who starred in the 1993 Cambodian film, See Angkor and Die.

The esteemed Françoise Callier resumes her role as program coordinator, and another of the festival’s driving forces, the vivacious Paris-based general coordinator Camille Plante, has returned to the fold and is already issuing press releases.

Plante quit the festival in the middle of last year but has now obviously unquit, which is a relief following the non-communication in the wake of her 2009 departure.

Calls for submissions to the festival will begin on April 1.

NEW CKS DIRECTOR

Michael Sullivan’s appointment as director of the Centre for Khmer Studies, flagged in this column late last year, is now 100 percent official, according to a press release issued earlier in the week.

In part, the release read: “Dr Lois de Menil, chairman, also announced that acting director, Dr Michael Sullivan, was appointed director by the CKS board, as of January 1, and would henceforth lead CKS’s educational and publishing programs. Dr Sullivan, a distinguished graduate of the School of Oriental and African Studies, is a political scientist with a scholarly interest in the impact on Cambodia of Chinese investment.”

The centre has also announced that, with the completion of its snazzy new library, the existing building that formerly housed the entire library and offices will now be renovated and expanded by 30 percent to provide additional seating in the public reading room.

During the three months of renovation, readers will be accommodated temporarily in the centre’s adjacent conference hall.

NEW ART GALLERY

Siem Reap now has yet another new art gallery.

The Angkor Art Gallery, on East River Road beside Molopor Café, opened on January 7 with an exhibition of contemporary work by local artist Asasax.