Saturday, August 23, 2025

MYSTERIOUS OBJECTS FROM THAILAND 2012-2013 PART 3

บทความนี้เขียนขึ้นในช่วงต้นปี 2012

       

21.Prap Boonpan (born 1981)

 

Prap Boonpan is undoubtedly one of the most important political filmmakers in Thailand, and he uses some techniques in his films which are not commonly found in other Thai films. His brand of techniques includes presenting long texts directly from textbooks and letting the characters talk about politics for a long time. These techniques, which he employs to present his thoughts directly to the viewers, are not considered "cinematic" or "artistic" by some viewers, but other viewers can find these techniques very powerful and useful, and in many cases, feel as if they are slapped in the face by the texts or the dialogues in Prap's films. Though it may look easy to argue for one's political belief by directly presenting texts or dialogues to support one's belief, these techniques are used very rarely in Thai films, partly because any directors who dare to use these techniques must really know about politics, or else the resulting film would look very stupid.

 

Prap's films which use political texts include Two Worlds in One World (2004, 18 min), which presents texts from some political textbooks to argue against the nationalistic thinking in a feature film called The Siam Renaissance (Surapong Phinijkhar, 2004); and Letter from the Silence (2006, 5 min), which presents two letters, one written by a taxi-driver who committed suicide to protest the military coup in Thailand in 2006, and the other written by some villagers who always suffer from the government's policies, no matter who controls the government.

 

Prap's searing political dialogues or monologues can be found in The Spectre: 16 Years Later (2006, 30 min), in which two friends talk about hot political topics at that moment; Material Fiction: A Biography of the Amulet (2008, 30 min), in which Prap talks about his dead friend and some political problems his friend might be involved in; The White Short Film/The Candle Light (2009, 20 min), in which two actors rehearse dialogues about political upheavals in Thailand in late 2008 and early 2009; Resistant Poem (2009, 20 min), in which Mainueng G. Guntee, one of the bravest Thai poets, recites his political poems; and The Bangkok Bourgeois Party (2007, 28 min), which is Prap's masterpiece. In The Bangkok Bourgeois Party, a group of middle-class people argue vehemently against a man who thinks differently. Later, the middle-class people murder that man in cold blood, and then the film turns into a silent black screen for about 3-5 minutes before the story continues. Prap made that film in 2007, but the murder in the film foreshadows the real massacre in Bangkok in May 2010.

 

Lately Prap has turned to record some interesting political events. In Other Nation (2010), he records the die-in protests in Bangkok. In Red Song (2010, 4 min), he records a gathering to mourn the victims of the massacre.

 

บทความนี้เขียนขึ้นในช่วงต้นปี 2012

 

22.Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke (born 1987)

 

Women and female sexuality are the main focus of many films by Ratchapoom. His female characters break moral rules gleefully and unashamedly. The female characters in Ma vie incomplete et inachevee (2007) voluntarily have sex with their own family members, both young and old. The film comes in the form of a colorful animation with French voiceover. Chutima (2007) is about a young prostitute who sometimes pay for sex and also about her motherhood. Unpronouncable in the Linguistic Imperialism of Yours (2008, 3 min) plays with the boundaries of art and the acceptance of female sexuality in Thai media. Bodily Fluid Is So Revolutionary (2009, 41 min), which is his thesis film and concerns a gay couple, has two very memorable supporting female characters. One is a doctor who openly flirts with her gay patient. The other is a nun who is tormented by her forbidden desire.

 

Though immoral female characters in other films are made to satisfy male viewers, every female character in Ratchapoom's films is uncompromising. They cross the moral boundaries with their heads held high, though the films may present their scenes in a comedic manner. Their behaviors defy society's attitudes towards women. Defining the roles and the aims of women in patriarchal society seems to be what Ratchapoom is really interested in.

 

What is interesting in Ratchapoom's films includes his playing with various elements of film, for example, in Bodily Fluid Is So Revolutionary, the characters in the films are annoyed by the fact that they exist in a scratched DVD. Ratchapoom's films like to make the viewers aware that they are watching a film. Sometimes the editing is intentionally not smooth. Sometimes the characters perform some weird activities without any reasons and without any connections to the story. Sometimes a scene is inserted into the middle of the film without any explanation. Memorable scenes in Bodily Fluid Is So Revolutionary include the scene in which the camera watches a character through a glass which is being filled with water, and a scene in which pictures on the wall can move by themselves without any reasons.

 

The emphasis that you are watching a movie, the disorientation of elements in his films, and the uncompromising quality of his stories all contribute to create another layer in his films. There seems to be the main story and the second layer of story wrapping around the main one, and that means when you are watching Ratchapoom's films, you may have to pay attention to both the story and "the role" of story.

 

                         

23.Sasithorn Ariyavicha

 

Sasithorn has been making experimental films since the early 1990s. My First Film (1991, 5 min) shows us the inspirations she may get from other filmmakers, including Jean-Luc Godard. Drifter (1993, 8 min) shows us the views in and around a ferry boat on the Atlantic Ocean. It is as captivating as the last scene of News From Home (Chantal Akerman, 1976). Winter Remains (2002, 19 min) is a haunting, hypnotic film showing some landscapes in the snow. It should be screened together with Suburbs of Emptiness (Thomas Koener, 2003). After that came her masterpiece: Birth of the Seanéma (2004, 70 min).

 

Birth of the Seanéma is a black-and-white, silent film. Shadowy images of Bangkok, the sea, and other things slowly appear in this film, but they seem to tell no story by themselves. Many images in this film don't have obvious connections to the images which come before or after them. There are also strange letters bubbling up on the screen from time to time. These letters belong to a nonexistent language, but the English subtitles translate what they mean, and they seem to try to tell fragments of a story which may correspond a bit to the gloomy images.

 

Undoubtedly, the gloomy images in this film make some viewers feel very bored and puzzled, especially the viewers who want to watch a film which tells a story, which has the beginning, the conflicts, and the full resolution of the conflicts, and presents images according to the story. Birth of the Seanéma is the total opposite of mainstream films, because it realizes the true potential of cinema. It reveals to us the deeper dimension of moving images, how exquisite images can be when they are not enslaved by narrative, and how we can be surprised by new feelings and emotions when we experience these liberating and liberated images. Birth of the Seanéma is a cure for those who are too accustomed to mainstream films, because this film ignores or forgets the rules of narrative, and pays attention to feelings and emotions which arise from "the gaze". Birth of the Seanéma shows us the power of cinema as an art form, and shows us that cinema is not inferior to any other art forms at all. The moving images in Birth of the Seanéma have free hands and legs, because they are not bound by the story, and they also have a heart, because they are really alive.

 

Birth of the Seanéma is uncompromising. It lets the viewers use their own imagination, and doesn't try to please the mainstream audience at all. But that means it doesn't look down on its audience, because in many cases, when the filmmakers start to worry about the audience, in a way they kind of look down on the audience, assuming beforehand that the audience will never understand the filmmakers if the filmmakers do what they really want to do. To be loyal to yourself and let the viewers judge your films by themselves should be the most important thing for filmmakers. Birth of the Seanéma is a perfect example of that.

 

Unfortunately, Sasithorn hasn't made a new film yet after Birth of the Seanéma, but we are still hoping to see a new film by her soon.

 

 

บทความนี้เขียนขึ้นในช่วงต้นปี 2012

 

 

24.Sompot Chidgasornpongse (born 1980)

Sompot Chidgasornpongse grew up in Samutprakarn, a province near Bangkok. In 2001, he co-wrote with Panu Trivej a critically acclaimed play You're Gorgeous, Dear and won Sod-Sai Award for Best Play and Best Script. After graduating with a Bachelor's Degree in Interior Architecture and receiving Best Thesis Award from Chulalongkorn University, he began working in both local and international film industry. He worked as an assistant director in many shorts and feature films by Apichatpong Weerasethakul. His personal shorts were also shown in many film festivals. He recently graduated from a MFA Film/Video program at California Institute of the Arts.

After making Auad Dee (2003, 10 min), Sompot first gained international recognition with To Infinity and Beyond (2004, 11 min), which was shown in the International Film Festival Rotterdam. In this film, we see people look up at the sky outside in a field. Sompot initially doesn't reveal what they are looking at. He also leaves out the sound at first. A text tells the story of Laika, the dog that was shot into space by the Russians in the 1950s. In the second chapter, the images are effectively repeated. Then there is sound, and we learn what the villagers are looking at. They are looking at hand-made rockets which the villagers shoot to the sky to beg for the rain. This tradition of rocket shooting in northeastern Thailand is called "Boon Bung Fai". This film explores the juxtaposition between simple secretive documented footage and fictional narratives, silence and sound, folk tale and modern-day news reporting, as well as relationships between man and nature, earth and sky ,dream and reality, east and west, and most importantly, the past and the present that will lead us to the future.

In Bangkok in the Evening (2005,16 min), Sompot shows us that though Bangkok is the city where everything is moving and changing fast, where all activities happen concurrently and continuously, there's still a time, in the evening, when people seem to stop to pay respect to the National Anthem in public space. Bangkok in the Evening was shot in different angles on various locations around Bangkok, only 40 seconds a day, using 6 cameramen. This 16-minute film has no story, but the meanings are there for the viewers to explore. Almost at the end of the film, there is a scene of Bangkok landscape with construction of buildings and a temple. This film is playing with space and time and also making a question on the conservativeness and the modernity in Thailand. Bangkok in the Evening is also one of a few films which deal with the Thai National Anthem or use it in an interesting way. Other films dealing mainly or partly with this Anthem include 8:00 AM. (Kajitkwan Kitvisala, 1996, 2 min), National Anthem (Chai Chaiyachit, 2008, 27 min), 6 to 6 (Aditya Assarat, 2010, 20 min), 6PM (Sinjai Piraisangjun, Palakorn Jiamtiranat, 2011, 20 min), Before the Sabotage (Viroj Suttisima, 2011, 8 min), and Planking (Chulayarnnon Siriphol, 2011).

Now, Sompot is currently working on his first feature film Are We There Yet?, which is in post-production and expected to be released in 2012. All of this film was shot in trains which went all over Thailand. Sompot tried to observe the people who were traveling on the trains. Like in his other films, he uses simple semi-documentary, semi-experimental style to open another side of the world to the viewers.

25.Suchart Sawasdsri (born 1945)

Suchart is a famous writer and magazine editor. He has been doing literary works for many decades, and started making experimental films in 2006. His films are very personal. He makes his films by using the camera to capture some beauty, and presenting this beauty in films via his personal memories, while storytelling becomes the least important thing in his films. He also calls some of his films "video paintings", which means these films are paintings in which the screen becomes the canvas.

Suchart's films can be divided into several groups. The first group is full of non-narrative images which may reflect some abstract ideas, and may also represent the spirit of youth inside this experienced artist. The films in this group concern his personal life, for example, In the Light of Love (2006, 7 min), Dancing Moon (2006, 5 min), and The Long Silence (2006, 9 min) concern the writers or the literary works that he likes; In the Light of Love and Secret Garden (2006, 4 min) concern his wife. This group of films, which also include After the Rain Fall (2006, 4 min) and Journey to the End of the Night (2006, 6 min), shows us the "inside" of Suchart.

Another group of films shows us the "outside" of Suchart, including his political thinking. This group includes The Body Gatherer (2006, 2 min), which presents us the noisy sound of the city and a story outside his personal life; Midsummer Nightmare: Thai-American Movies (2006, 3 min), which asks questions about wars; "Red" At Last (2006, 6 min), which concerns a victim of the massacre on October 6, 1976, at Thammasat University; and Don't Even Think About It (2006, 15 min), which shows us indirectly the pain of people who have been affected for so many years by politics and how they look back at their pain in the past. The calm tone and the historical content in this film make this film stand out from other political films made by young Thai filmmakers at that moment, because their films focus more on the contemporary issues and the tone of their films is a bit angrier than Suchart's.

The other group of Suchart's films represents his calmness of mind. This group includes Song of Joy (2006, 5 min), which is a return to an adolescent dream with nostalgia and warm feelings, and the erotic quality of this film can be compared to Dancing Moon; The Giving Tree (2006, 10 min), which is adapted from Shel Silverstein's book, and seems to present Suchart's view on the world, not only on nature conservation, but also on something else; and Turn Turn Turn (2006, 8 min), which is like a conclusion of many films made by Suchart. It seems to say that after all everything is emptiness or is like the cycle of seasons which always return every year.

Suchart also makes some films about his friends, for example, The Happy Life of Rong Wongsawan (2010, 8 min), which is about a famous writer; and The Show Must Go On (2010, 12 min), which is partly about Sonthaya Subyen, one of the best film programmers in Thailand.

What is interesting about Suchart's films is the fact that he tries to experiment on the possibility of sound and images like young artists, instead of making films like what we would expect from an old man. Though he doesn't succeed in every experiment and some of his films are too personal to understand, his films are still very interesting. The fact that he dares to try what he hasn't tried before should encourage young filmmakers to try something new in their films, too, instead of falling into the traps made by themselves.

Another interesting thing about Suchart is that he is one of very few established Thai writers who make a few experimental films. Other famous Thai writers make experimental films, too, but they don't make as many of them as Suchart. These writers include Prabda Yoon, who made The Way of Dust (1999, 15 min), Uthis Heamamool, who made Discourse, Earth (2001, 25 min), and Fah Poonvoralak, who made Cotton, Kites, and Windmills (2008, 8 min)

 

บทความนี้เขียนขึ้นในช่วงต้นปี 2012

 

26.Taiki Sakpisit

 

To experience Taiki's films is like to cross into a new kind of space and time. Any images we see on the screen and any sound we hear from the films don't convey the usual meanings any more. It is as if these images and sound have traveled from another planet, and they don't need our interpretation. These images and sound don't communicate under our symbolic order, but they have slipped away from that order and now belong to another world or another dimension. The world of Taiki's films may look like our world, but things in that world don't carry the same meanings. This is the world which exists behind the eyes of the director and in the heads of the viewers.

 

Viewers can experience an extreme joy from these films by constructing their own stories out of these moving images, which may appear disconnected from one another. Viewers can have great fun trying to find the relationship between some scenes, or the relationship between this sound and that word in the film, etc. At the end of the films, each viewer will have his own fragments of a story inside his head, and the story in each viewer's head may not correspond to what Taiki originally thought at all, but that is the fun and the joy of seeing this kind of films.

 

Some of Taiki's films, such as Whispering Ghosts (2008, 13 min)(11), Deathless Distance (2009, 13 min), Three Kings (2011, 6 min) and A Ripe Volcano (2011, 15 min), may look a little bit similar in their structures, because these films show us a succession of enigmatic scenes with mysterious sound. The viewers don't know the meanings or the chronological order of these scenes. The viewers can only see shadows and lights, trees swaying in the wind, a garden under night lamps, a bird's-eye shot of people who later vanish, a slow motion scene of a boxing ring, shoes of people, light from headlights, an empty hotel, etc. These images are like words, and they all form a poem for our eyes, a visual poem which is so mysterious, frightening, and exquisite.

 

บทความนี้เขียนขึ้นในช่วงต้นปี 2012

 

27.Tanatchai Bandasak

 

Tanatchai's experimental films are very hypnotic. Things in his films barely move or move in an extremely slow manner, so slow that you feel that the movement in his films is like the movement of wind in the darkness. To experience his films is to stroll into the night with calm mind and then walk into a mysterious, cold, and dark pond with faint ripples on the surface.

 

In Endless Rhyme (2008, 27 min), the film takes us to explore the gentle rhythm of the night by observing three people late at night. We see a man watching a TV series before turning off the TV and going to sleep. We also see a woman who wakes up late at night to lull her baby to sleep. We also spend some time watching this tranquil night. Then morning comes, and the loyal slaves of time must repeat their daily activities again.

 

In Drift (2008, 3 min), we see a still picture of a policeman's side with a radio antenna protruding out of his shirt pocket. Then this still photo starts  disintegrating while the radio signals that we hear become fainter and more unstable, as if someone tries to attune the radio to find the appropriate channel. The still photo gets more blurred, while the desired radio channel is never found. Everything fades away in the end. This is the three minutes of a hopeless search.

 

In Sweetheart Garden (2009, 22 min), we see a porn DVD shop late at night. We see a couple making love, before the camera zooms into the sex organ and enters a tunnel for the subway train of desire. This is a sexy film which is full of pleasurable gazing and enigmatic scenes. The poetic quality in this film makes the viewers feel as if they are diving into a luscious pond and making love with the images on the screen.

 

In Air Cowboy (2010, 3 min), we see the superimposition of two images: one is the image of cows on a truck in a rural road in Thailand, the other is the image shot through a windshield of a car focusing on rain at night. These scenes leave the viewers unexplainable feelings, and the title of the film may make the film even more puzzling.

 

In the end, any attempts to describe Tanatchai's films are bound to be futile, because the best thing in his films is the experience of gazing, which cannot be described.

 

 

28.Teerath Whangvisarn (born 1994)

 

In this age of digital technology, it is not strange any more to see some high school students making short films. These teenage filmmakers multiply rapidly and form a network for themselves. They established a group called Young Filmmakers of Thailand, which is like a meeting hub for secondary school and high school filmmakers. The earliest members of this group have grown up and become university students now. Teerath is one of the most talented filmmakers in this group. Though Glue Boy(12), his first film, is not widely known, he became famous with MEN & WOMEN (2010, 29 min) and Damned Life of Yoi (2010, 16 min)(13), both of which won big awards in the 14th Thai Short Film and Video Festival.

 

What is interesting in Teerath's films is how he adapts culture and many things he experiences for the benefits of his films, which always come with some distinct flavors of his own. He likes Japanese films and cartoons like many Thai teenagers, so the manga style and the styles of some famous directors can be detected in his films, especially in MEN & WOMEN, but what makes him stand out from other teenage filmmakers is the fact that he can combine very well the styles of other people with his own restless energy and angry attitudes towards society. In a way, we can say shortly about Teerath's films like this: Damned Life of Yoi and Fuck Education (2010) talk about the education system and domineering parents; Lesbian Fantasy (2011, 21 min) is the result from an attempt to make a film in Wong Kar-wai's style combining with the fantasy of male teenagers; Mizu (2010, 13 min)(14) is a tribute to Kiyoshi Kurosawa; MEAL(s) (2010, 22 min) is a remake of Noriko's Dinner Table (Sion Sono, 2005). Every film bears the marks of both Teerath and people who inspire him.

 

Apart from making short films, Teerath also made a fake trailer for a nonexistent film called Gay Muen Ho in order to parody a mainstream romantic comedy film called Guan Muen Ho (Hello Stranger, Banjong Pisanthanakun, 2010). The fake trailer is very successful. It became a viral video which got more than 1 million views in Youtube. But he doesn't try to build on this kind of success. He lets his friends make other fake trailers instead of keeping on making them by himself. Anyway, the phenomenon of Gay Muen Ho proves that Teerath is very clever in playing with pop culture. What we can see first in Teerath's works can also be seen later in Thai mainstream films such as Suck Seed (Chayanop Boonprakob, 2011) and ATM (Mez Tharatorn, 2012), which also play with pop culture, contemporary culture, and manga aesthetics like Teerath.

 

We are very eager to see in which way Teerath's style will be developed in the future, when he grows up and experiences a lot more things in his life.

 

 

29.Thunska Punsittivorakul (born 1973)

 

Thunska Pansittivorakul graduated from the Department of Art Education, Faculty of Education, Chulalongkorn University. He used to be a columnist of many magazines including Thai Film Quarterly and "a day". His short films, documentaries and feature films were screened in over 100 international film festivals, including Berlin International Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Hong Kong International Film Festival, Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival, etc. He made a lot of homoerotic films, including Private Life (2000, 15 min), Unseen Bangkok (2004), After Shock (2005, 11 min), You Are Where I Belong To (2006, 10 min), and Middle-earth (2007, 10 min). He won the Grand Prize award at The 4th Taiwan International Documentary Festival 2004 for his second documentary feature Happy Berry, which is about a group of trendy friends who opened a clothes shop and became a pop band for a while. In 2007, he received the Silpathorn Award from the Ministry of Culture's Office of Contemporary Arts, which is awarded to one outstanding film artist each year. After the coup d'état in 2006, the subject in his films is always about politics, for example, This Area is under Quarantine (2008), Reincarnate (2010), The Terrorists (2011), and Kiss (2011). Kiss is a video installation beautifully shot by Vorakorn Ruetaivanichkul. It features two naked men kissing passionately in an open field while buffaloes looking on. Kiss reinterprets the fairy tale of Snow White, but the Snow White here symbolizes the real democracy in Thailand which may have been put to sleep many decades ago and hasn't been woken up yet.

 

บทความนี้เขียนขึ้นในช่วงต้นปี 2012

 

30.Tossapol Boonsinsukh (born 1982)

 

Tossapol has made more than 100 films, including two features: Afternoon Times (2005, 90 min), and Under the Blanket (2008). Many of his films deal with these issues or have some of these things in them: loneliness, friendship, memories, unexplainable events, atmospheric quality, static long takes, and juxtaposition of scenes which are unconnected to one another. The loneliness in his films is a little bit like the one found in Jun Ichikawa's films. The unexplainable events in his films, especially in Wolf Song (2010, 14 min) and Spider (2011), give roughly the same feeling as the time-stopping scenes in The Future (Miranda July, 2011). Afternoon Times, which is his masterpiece, is about a restaurant owner who falls in love with a delivery boy. The film has a heartbreaking fourteen-and-a-half-minute-long static take, in which the heroine is closing down the restaurant, thinking that she may never find the delivery boy again. Other examples of static long takes can be found in the following films: No One at the Sea (2005, 3 min)(15), which shows a static long take of the sea for the whole film; The Audience (2005, 10 min), which shows two static long takes of the faces of several audience members in a concert; Nice to Meet You (2005, 25 min), which is about two college friends remembering good times they used to spend together, and which has a six-minute-long static take, in which the hero is singing a song about a promise to remember to the heroine; Are You Gonna Miss Me? (2006, 8 min), which is about two friends trying to say goodbye to each other, and which has a six-minute-long static take; and Under the Blanket (2008), which is about the loneliness of a Thai woman in Japan, and which has a nine-minute-long static take, in which a woman is trying to alternately draw and erase a picture.

 

Two masterpieces of Tossapol are composed of unconnected scenes--Don't Warm an Egg in Micowave Or Else It Will Explode! (2005, 14 min) and Life Is Short 2 (2006, 12 min). The first one is composed of eight scenes which give various feelings, but the warm feelings come out on top. The second one is composed of ten scenes which give various feelings, but the lonely feelings come out on top. So Long (2008, 13 min) is composed of two stories which seem not to be connected to each other. Summer Storm (2009, 6 min)(16) shows us scenes of cloudy sky, two guys playing ping pong, and images of a flood on a street together with the sound of ping pong playing. Nuan (2004, 6 min) presents us scenes which are connected to each other, but the conversations between the two characters in these scenes jump from one topic to another topic in an unexplainable way, and leave the viewers feeling blissfully disorientated like in other films by Tossapol.

 

Another masterpiece of Tossapol is 30 (2010, 15 min), which is about friendship and a guy who has to leave his friends at the end in order to live his own life. The film tells the whole story via voiceover, while the viewers only see images of circles and rectangles moving around. The geometric images in 30 may reminds the viewers of such films as Rhythm 21 (Hans Richter, 1921) and Gaze and Hear (Nontawat Numbenchapol, 2010, 10 min), while the minimalistic quality in 30 can also be found in Tossapol's Ageru (2010, 3 min)(17), which shows us images of a ribbon moving through various colorful pegs, and in Between Us One Morning (2005, 5 min), which is about complicated feelings between friends conveyed by punctuation marks. The technique of telling story via voiceover in 30 can also be found in When Will We Meet Again? (2006, 22 min), in which the viewers see a black screen for four minutes while hearing a guy reading a film script.

 

Tossapol is also a musician and a writer. He sometimes create an art event out of his own films, such as when he create an art project out of his film She Is Reading a Newspaper (2005, 8 min)(18), which is about the transference of happiness from one stranger to another stranger. In this art project in 2009, Tossapol asked two musicians to create a piece of drum and guitar music inspired by this film, then he asked a choreographer to create a new dance inspired by this piece of music, and so the chain of inspirations go on like this, involving two piano players, a poet, a cartoon drawer, and Tossapol's wife to create something new along the way(19).


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