[music] [background noise] -There are 20,000 Cambodian Americans living in the city of Long Beach, California.

-Happy Cambodia New Year.

-It's the largest population outside of Cambodia.

Most of them are refugees who fled Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge.

As a kid, I didn't understand what being Cambodian meant.

It was a country I could point to on a map.

I lived with my great grandma.

I didn't speak the Cambodian language, Khmer, and she didn't speak English, but did know the phrase, love you, and said it often.

Whenever she said it, I felt like we truly understood each other.

She was the one who taught me about Cambodian culture.

I was nine when my family moved out of my great grandma's house.

It felt as if everything I had learned about being Cambodian slowly started to fade away.

In my first year of high school, she passed.

Monks came every night, three nights in a row, to chant for her soul.

Losing her felt like losing a part of who I was.

For the first time, I felt the need to know where I came from.

Growing up, I had never seen anything about Cambodians in my textbooks or the movies I watched.

The only connection I had to the country was my family.

My great grandma gave birth to seven sons in Cambodia.

Two of her sons and her ex-husband were killed by the Khmer Rouge, a radical communist party that forced millions of Cambodians into labor camps.

The Khmer Rouge only lasted four years, but approximately three million people were killed during that time, a quarter of the population.

My family still refuses to talk about the horrors they faced.

How do I learn more when the people closest to me are the ones that say the least?

It feels like there's a divide between us that I cannot cross without knowing what they went through.

I've always used art as my way of understanding the world around me.

Film is how I choose to express myself.

I sought out someone like me who uses their art to connect with culture.

[music] [rain] -My name is Mea Lath, and I am a professional Cambodian classical dancer and instructor.

[background noise] [music] -Traditionally, Cambodian classical dancers are the embodiments of the carvings of Angkor.

They act as the bridge between heaven and earth.

They communicate the offerings from the people to the gods.

There is a lot of emphasis on the revival of dance.

A lot of the stories and the work was lost because it's an oral tradition.

As dancers pass away, their knowledge goes with them.

One of the reasons why I teach dance is to continue the work and the knowledge that they've worked so hard to maintain.

What I hope to pass on to my students is the love and the respect for our culture, and the understanding that to be Cambodian is to be resilient.

[music] -90% of artists, including dancers, were executed or died of starvation.

Dance today is survived by the 10%.

-There's always been a part of me that feels ashamed for not knowing more.

I don't look very Khmer, and I don't speak Khmer.

[background noise] -I always feel like I'm just pretending to be Cambodian.

Yes.

Would it fit?

-Oh, yes, it fits.

You can try it on.

-Okay.

Let me see.

That one's so cute with the flower and the heart.

-Yes.

-Do you think it will fit?

-Yes.

Okay.

Fine.

-Okay.

-Put it on.

That's it.

Assemble it.

You have to be in the front.

-Oh.

-Yes.

-That makes sense.

-Yes.

-Like this?

-Yes.

-Thank you.

-Okay.

Bye-bye.

-Bye.

I wanted a chance to immerse myself more in the culture.

I met with Mea to learn more about her experiences and what guided her to dance.

At what point did you want to keep preserving the culture?

-When I started teaching dance, I was still in college.

I knew the importance of teaching the culture mainly because of being one of the only Cambodians there.

I wanted to shine a light on the more beautiful aspect of our culture.

One of them is dance.

-I want to learn more and know more, but I just don't know how to go about it.

-Is there anything you're going to be doing to continue this learning of your other culture?

-Maybe looking into online resources like you said, or just maybe future taking community college courses.

I left wanting to know more, to see if there was anyone else who would talk to me about their experiences.

-It's crunchy.

-Oh, yes.

Can you put this in your shirt?

-Yes.

You pretend that today you're going to be a Cambodian girl?

-[laughs] Oh, wow.

-Yes, it's like that because-- Yes, that's it, nice cut.

-Does it look nice?

-Yes, it look nice.

-[laughs] -It better.

Sometime I don't want to talk about the past, but when I talk, it remind me everything that I've been there.

They kill people every day.

Sometime they kill with the gun.

Sometime they kill with the-- Sometime they die with nothing to eat, no food.

It's very hard.

It's very difficult time for us, that time, yes.

We are lucky now.

It's we survive.

-Is it hard for you to teach your children and your grandchildren Khmer?

-Yes, a little bit, but I try the best I can because I want my kid to understand about my language, especially in my first language, Cambodia.

After that, they can learn English, Spanish, or any language that they want to learn.

Mostly, I want to teach all my kids to understand Cambodia, my own language.

I love it.

-It's been almost 10 years since my great grandma's death.

As more of my family gets older, the more our history goes away.

After years of being too afraid to ask, I feel as if I have finally found my voice.

I hope that one day I can continue to pass on the knowledge of my family and the culture.

[music]