The story of the little garbage girl in which Buck artistically fell in love and because of whom I spent my weekends on the Phnom Penh garbage dump

Hi guys!
We already told you a lot about Detlev Buck's journeys in our clips and reports.
During one trip to Cambodia he went to a garbage dump, where he met a little girl he wanted to have badly in his film. How he managed that and what Jan Müller had to go through to make it happen, is written down in the following text:

It was going at the moment in June 2008. I'd been in Cambodia for four years already and so I was of course very predestinated to guide my new friends from Boje Buck, producer Jan, development chief Wenka and the boss Bucki, through some well selected areas of the country, which could have become possible film locations for the shooting, well, location scouting. After struggling with our motorbikes through small, idyllic Cambodian villages for a couple of days, a particularly romantic location had to be investigated on this day: Phnom Penhs garbage dump. Thanks to “durchzechter” night, of course it was our turn a little later than wanted, the sun was almost already in the plumb line in the sky and this means in Cambodia that this becomes very hot here. Everyone was on the Phnom Penh garbage dump for the first time and Buck came to indulge himself immediately in this and remembered his unique childhood in the German countryside when he used to dig in the waste on a nearby garbage dump at that time, wasn't that glorious!!

One must imagine this extraordinary location like this:

a landscape of gigantic garbage heaps extending up to the horizon which rot in the South-East-Asian heat for years, most disgusting ugly smell which particularly burns into your nose after caroused “durchzechten” nights and hangover with slack stomach. And above on the garbage hills, a village populated with people who have hardly seen something else than garbage in their whole life.

Oh yes. Not to forget: drifting garbage. These are these places where you believe it was your last step, because everything drags you in the garbage silt to below. The first shoe, ok, was away, so continuing walking barefoot over the dump. (All for the art). It was hot.
Meanwhile Buck, Jan and Wenka were enraptured full of joy: So, one can imagine one of the first scenes in Samesame, a logical sequence: Country - garbage - city, an approach to Phnom Penh.
Sudden: This is what for a bizarre situation: Lollis distributed by a group of good people of any organization wrapped up into whole body condoms, gloves and breath protective masks to the children rooting in the garbage. Good. It got hotter. "One must pay attention, here not simply exhibiting the misery" the boss thought. At this moment a small group of "garbage girls" showed up, 8 to 10 year old girls armed with bags in order to collect everything useful which can be found in the waste. Buck (the one with the special nose for castings) noticed one girl immediately by their particularly cheeky and impudent way. "I would put her in the movie in any case!" I heard the boss say…. This hopefully doesn't last any longer, I thought, who became more and more queasy. It got even hotter and in my opinion time to push off. I came in the game again there: "Ask with your Khmer how the little girl is called and where it lives!" It works aha, she's called Srey Toy and lives someplace in the radius of 5 kilometers around the garbage dump, if it has a firm place to live at all. This little girl rocked so much, that Buck took pictures of her with his I phone all the time… I phone because all of us had forgotten our cameras, so what, it’s just location scouting for a major cinema production… no problem.
Jan, do we find her again here?" I heard just shadowy, because slowly the mixture of hangover, heatstroke and toxic gasses came so hard that my perception was detracted." Yes, yes, we'll find this one in any case.. I'll do that. Let us push off!" like as of here. Incapably of speaking or even thinking I head back to the bike with only one flipflop left. It wasn't still clear to me at this time that the weekends of the following months should become no more right weekends without garbage dump visit.

Well, the Boje Bucks had been returned to good old Berlin again and I was thinking about the casting of all kinds of characters for the movie. Garbage girl….OK, let’s dash back to the garbage dump and have a look what else one can find there. Of course I asked everyone for the small Srey Toy, but typically Khmer style, nobody knew her or wanted to know her. Anyway, because there was a horde of other sweet garbage girls available….. someone will fit, I thought. I noted down literally all their names, living places incl. pictures of them, but there was still one more small garbage village to go...

But Buck wanted this ONE girl, who Jan had to find. And if he did a good job, you can check out next time, when Jan is going to continue his report!

STAY TUNED and thanx for reading!