B I O G R A P H Y RITHY DOURNG - SCREENWRITER, D.O.P, ACTOR Rithy was born in a war-torn village in Kandal Province of Cambodia in the early 1980s. He spent twelve years in Cambodia before moving to Australia in 1994. During his early years in Australia Rithy encountered many difficulties, particularly with his schooling and assimilating into the society due to language barriers. These obstacles concealed Rithy's true passion for the performing arts and conditioned him to be "stage-fright". However surprisingly, in the year 2000 Rithy participated in a series of theatre performances known as "Theatre of the Oppressed". After the performance Rithy's passion for acting began to surface. He enjoyed acting more and more, and became very actively involved in acting. Rithy went on from stage acting to acting in public places, and eventually to acting in front of cameras. In early 2001, Rithy performed in a documentary with his "Theatre of the Oppressed" acting peers, which was later shown on TV. The documentary was based around social and life issues, which young people experience; and the aim of the documentary was to try and bring about solutions to problems, in an effort to curb social issues and family problems. Thereafter, Rithy participated in a number of Tim Pek's music videos for his leisure and hobby. He enjoyed working on the music video very much; "I can just get up and do it again, and again, and again, and can never get sick of it. It's because it's different all the time. like you get to play and portray different characters in each different song; and I really enjoy the variety and variation in the characters that I play". In early 2003 Rithy completed a TV Acting Course with Susan Johnston, which has given him a valuable insight into acting as well as directing. In 2004 after an informal audition session, Rithy was offered a small role to play in a short film called "Chhay", along side Tim Pek. Rithy learnt a lot from this experience, and led him to further his understanding and vision in acting, script writing, and directing. In late 2004, Tim informed Rithy about his new short film called "The Red Sense" (TRS). Initially, TRS was going to be a short film of about 15 minutes in duration; however due to the positive feedbacks from interested audience throughout the globe, Tim and Rithy decided to extend TRS and make it a features film in response to the overwhelming support. Through his active involvement in the film, and his talent in script writing and vision for directing, Rithy landed the roles of Screen Writing, Director of Photography, as well as acting in TRS.