Sleepwalking Through the Mekong follows Los Angeles-based band Dengue Fever on their recent journey to Cambodia to perform 60s and 70s Cambodian rock n’ roll in the country where it was created and very nearly destroyed. The odyssey is a homecoming for the band’s lead singer, Chhom Nimol, and a transformation for the rest of the band as they perform with master musicians and record new songs along the way. Cambodia is often synonymous with the brutal Khmer Rouge regime that left millions dead and scattered refugees around the globe. This tragedy overshadows the story of Cambodia’s music scene in the 1960s and 1970s when Cambodian musicians reinvented Western rock n’ roll with a distinctly Khmer flavor to create a sound that is at once familiar and completely original. Sleepwalking Through the Mekong celebrates this vibrant but long-overlooked genre and reveals the power of music to weave a common thread between extremely different cultures.
As a director John Pirozzi has made music videos for Queens of the Stone Age, Calexico, Victoria Williams, Vic Chessnut, Earthlings, Dengue Fever and the Japanese Metal band Outrage. As a Cinematographer he has numerous documentary credits including Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man which premiered in Sundance last year, Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession with a premier in Cannes, Too Tough To Die: A Tribute to Johnny Ramone, Speed Racer: The Story of Vic Chesnutt and the forthcoming Bling A Planet Rock which explores the Diamond Wars of West Africa. John’s Cinematography credits also include the feature films Broken English by Zoe Cassavetes, Matt Dillon’s City of Ghost for which he was the 2nd unit Cinematographer and Kimberley Pierce’s Boys Don’t Cry for which he shot the distinctive time lapse photography.