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When the Khmer Rouge carried out the genocide of nearly 2 million Cambodians in the late 1970s, it also nearly obliterated Cambodia's arts and culture. Kong Nay, one of the last living masters of the Cambodian guitar, is trying to keep those traditions alive.

Actress Sarah Polley (The Sweet Hereafter) makes her directorial debut with Away from Her, a new movie based on a short story by Alice Munro; it stars Julie Christie as a woman with Alzheimer's.

Critic-at-large John Powers reflects on what he thinks is the single greatest movie ever made about the city of Los Angeles — Killer of Sheep, an independent film made in the late '70s by Charles Burnett. It's on the Library of Congress' National Film Registry; it will be showing in selected theaters in the next few months, and it comes out on DVD this September.

Pianist Barry Douglas is working with the Rediscover Northern Ireland project, which seeks to raise awareness about revitalized cities and culture. He's the founder of the Camerata Ireland orchestra.

Mike White is the Hollywood screenwriter behind hit films including The School of Rock, The Good Girl and Chuck & Buck. Now he has directed Year of the Dog, a "not very funny" comedy about a woman grieving for her lost pet; it stars Peter Sarsgaard and Saturday Night Live veteran Molly Shannon.

Was Hamlet criminally responsible for killing his ex-girlfriend's father, Polonius? That is the question argued in a mock trial, part of a Shakespeare festival in Washington, D.C. Lawyers Abbe Lowell and Miles Ehrlich presented oral arguments before a jury.

Hisham Nitar's semi-autobiographical debut novel In the Country of Men was short-listed for the 2006 Mann Booker Prize. Matar was born in New York City in 1970 to Libyan parents and spent his childhood in Tripoli, Libya, and later in Cairo, Egypt. He has lived in Great Britain since 1986. Matar's father, a critic of the Libyan regime, was arrested in 1990. Matar has been unable to find out what happened to him.

Historic buildings in the Islamic world are often covered with breathtakingly intricate geometric designs. Both artists and mathematicians have long puzzled over them, wondering how the patterns were created. A new study suggests the artisans worked from templates that drew upon advanced math principles.

The Lives of Others is set in communist East Berlin in the days before the fall of the Berlin Wall. It focuses on a police captain who is forced to put a wire tap on a famous playwright.

The story of FBI agent-turned-spy Robert Hanssen is told in the new film Breach with Chris Cooper as Hanssen and Ryan Phillippe and Laura Linney as his pursuers.