SWIMMING TO CAMBODIA (1987)

SPALDING GRAY'S

Noted playwright, novelist and monologuist Spalding Gray spent eight weeks in Asia as an actor in Roland Joffé's Academy Award Winning historical drama The Killing Fields, chronicling the history of the Khmer Rouge regime. In his famed one man show, Swimming to Cambodia, Gray laid bare his experiences on set and contextualizes his anecdotes with the stark history of the region. 

Directed for the screen by Jonathan Demme (Stop Making Sense), rendering Gray's heartfelt, often very funny, monologue cinematic with the help of collaborators like cinematographer John Bailey (Mishima: A Life In Four Chapters), editor Carol Littleton (Beloved), and multidisciplinary artist Laurie Anderson, who is responsible for the film's evocative score. Cinématographe is proud to bring one of the great performance films, and an oft-overlooked entry in Jonathan Demme's career, to blu-ray for the first time in the world in a 2K new restoration from its original camera negative.

Special Features and Technical Specs:

• NEW 2K RESTORATION OF THE FILM
• New audio commentary with film critic Scout Tafoya
• Lifting Up the Carpet - a new video interview with Roland Joffé, director of The Killing Fields
• A Good Story is a Good Story - a new video interview with executive producer Ira Deutchman
• The Great Sensorium of the World - a new video interview with producer Edward Saxon
• Archival video interview with Jonathan Demme from 2013
• Two episodes of the Pure Nonfiction podcast: Jonathan Demme's Real Life Characters, recorded in 2016, featuring Demme discussing Swimming to Cambodia; and Jonathan Demme & Renée Shafransky on Spalding Gray, recorded in 2017
• New text essays by film critics Marya E. Gates, Chris Shields, Keith Uhlich and David M. Stewart, author of There's No Going Back: The Life and Work of Jonathan Demme
• English SDH subtitles
• REGION-A "LOCKED"