Gachot Films, 2000
...AND THE BEAT GOES ON
In my first film about Dr. Beat Richner, Bach at the Pagoda, he was described by a colleague at Richner's Kantha Bopha hospitals as a veritable locomotive, a man who will leave you trailing behind. It is just as hard for a director to keep up with him.
In November 1996, my camera team and I travelled to Cambodia to start shooting Bach at the Pagoda. Dr. Richner had opened his second hospital shortly before. When work began on producing the film three years later &endash; in November 1999 &endash; his third hospital was already standing. It had not been built in Phnom Penh but in Siemreap, close to one of Cambodia's most significant historical sites: the enchanting temple complex of Angkor. There could have been no more impressive setting for my latest film. The new hospital bears the name Jayavarman VII, after the king who, at the end of the 12th and beginning of the 13th century, built a series of Buddhist temples and 102 hospitals.
Within just eight years, Dr. Beat Richner's children's hospitals have become a Cambodian institution. More than two million children have received out- and inpatient care, exerting a considerable influence on the future of the country. This new film lets the Cambodians have their say, most notably King Norodom Sihanouk. He honoured Richner's work with an invitation to his birthday party in Phnom Penh; and we were allowed to witness the event with cameraman Matthias Kälin and sound engineer Dieter Meyer.
But the most memorable moment of the shooting came on our return to the first Kantha Bopha hospital &endash; three years after our last visit. Waiting patiently at the entrance were hundreds of families and their sick children. The children were like a wave, a nightmare that returns with tidal regularity. It suddenly occurred to me just how many sick children must have gone to the Kantha Bopha hospitals for help. And I felt compelled to ask myself what the last eight years would have been like had it not been for these hospitals and for Beat "Beatocello" Richner.
...And The Beat Goes On is a film about the unstoppable tide of sick children, and about a man who, against all the odds, has had incredible success in stemming it.