The recordings of the Reamker epic by Takrut, a famous 1960s storyteller, are the earliest known audio documents of an oral Khmer tradition. The recordings capture this ancient story in its full integrity. The ancient art of storytelling was nearly extinguished during the Khmer Rouge period in the 1970s; remarkably, the recordings survived that era thanks to the fact that they were taken to France by scholars Alain Daniel and Jaques Bunnet for their research and analysis, and Takrut’s rendition of the epic is accepted as the authoritative one as the best surviving exemplar of the art.

Deriving from the Indian Ramayana, which arrived in Cambodia around the 2nd century AD, the Reamker evolved into one of the principal elements of Khmer culture which, at the height of the Angkor empire (from the 9th to the 13th century AD) covered most of mainland South East Asia. It is considered to be a fundamental epic of the Khmer people, embodying their memory, perception of the world and their culture. It is widely reflected in Khmer art forms including theatre, literature and dance from ancient times until today. For centuries, oral tradition was the primary means of transmitting knowledge, values and ideas.

The documents as inscribed were restored and digitized by the Bophana Audiovisual Resource Center in 2011 , with the support of Cambodian National Commission for UNESCO, UNESCO Office in Phnom Penh and guidance from Professor Alain Daniel. They consist of a digitised master file, a 10-hour reconstruction assembled from incomplete analogue audio tape sources which are now degraded and no longer accessible. The digital file is therefore considered the authoritative preservation copy.

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The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum Archive is a testimony of the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia in 1975-79 during which over 2 million people lost their lives. The Archive contains about 12,000 negatives and photos of the staff and 5,000 of the 15,000 prisoners held captive in the Tuol Sleng Prison and interrogation centre as well as prison documents.

“Tuol Sleng was, before the seizure of power by the Khmer Rouge in 1975, a prestigious secondary school surrounded by grass playing-fields. The Khmer Rouge converted the school into the S-21 Interrogation Centre. The classrooms were divided into tiny cubicles in which inmates were manacled to steel frames and tortured until they confessed to imaginary crimes, after which they were taken and killed, many by having their heads smashed in. The buildings were converted into the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum immediately after the Khmer Rouge regime fell in 1979 with the manacles, steel frames and instruments of torture left as they were discovered when the Khmer Rouge fled. Copies of photographs of the dead, taken from the Museum Archive, look down on the site of their agony. Over 15,000 prisoners were held and tortured here, all but a dozen or so subsequently killed.

An archive of the prisoners held, including their photographs, biographies and copies of confessions, was kept by the Khmer Rouge torturers. While some of the material was lost when the Khmer Rouge regime was overthrown, photographs and other details of over 6,000 prisoners survive. This archive, held in the nightmarish surroundings of the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, so civilized on the outside, so horrific on the inside, is a unique monument to the dark side of human nature. It provides an immensely valuable insight into the insane cruelties of the Khmer Rouge regime : during whose three years, eight months and twenty days in power, nearly a third of all Cambodians perished. This archive is of world significance as a warning and a grim example. It was inscribed on the International Memory of the World Register in 2009