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Visual anthropologist and documentary filmmaker Robert Carleton-Chhaing focuses on art, particularly film and music, as tools for social change. He has produced numerous documentary and video projects within Cambodian and Cambodian American communities, including From the Heart of Brahma, a film about Cambodian classical dancer and LGBTQ activist Prumsodun Ok, as well as multiple shorts created with Meta House and the E.C.C.C. documenting civil parties in the Khmer Rouge international tribunal.  Robert is currently in post-production on two major works: a documentary on British photographer Colin Grafton’s rare images of Cambodia, and KhmerAspora, a film about hip-hop artist praCh Ly. He also served as cinematographer on the Smithsonian-produced films Satook and Akoun.

Robert sits on the advisory board of Cambodia Town, Inc. in Long Beach, California, where he has contributed to several community-based projects, including video oral histories of survivors of the Cambodian Genocide. He has also collaborated extensively with the Native American Tongva/Gabrielino community. His work includes a five-part grade-school educational series with Rancho Los Alamitos, a documentary on the sacred Puvungna site at California State University, Long Beach, a UCLA project focused on the Ballona Wetlands, and a cultural knowledge training program for Los Angeles County.

He is currently a camera person and editor with an ethnographic film production company, contributing to an anthropology learning series and films centered on psychological visual anthropology and a lecturer at California State University, Long Beach.