I a Pixel, We the People

Chulayarnnon Siriphol’s exhibition I a Pixel, We the People (ข้าพเจ้าคือพิกเซล, พวกเราคือประชาชน) is currently on show at Bangkok CityCity Gallery. The ambitious project is a video installation running for a whole day and night, divided into twenty-four one-hour episodes.

I a Pixel, We the People features excerpts from Chulayarnnon’s previous work, edited to create a new narrative. It also includes footage of the recent student protest movement, filmed by the artist on 20th September 2020 (when a new plaque was installed at Sanam Luang) and 18th October 2020 (when students rallied at Victory Monument).

The golden snail motif has been a key feature of Chulayarnnon’s work over the past few years, and I a Pixel, We the People begins, according to the exhibition leaflet, with the golden snail “aborted while still in his shell”. (This metaphor for the censorship of Chulayarnnon’s work at the Thailand Biennale can be traced back to a 2018 Dateline Bangkok post.)

Photographs from a meeting between Chulayarnnon and the Office of Contemporary Art and Culture — which banned his short film Birth of Golden Snail (กำเนิดหอยทากทอง) — are accompanied by captions describing the OCAC’s criticisms of the film. (Chulayarnnon discussed Birth of Golden Snail, and his other work, in an interview for Thai Cinema Uncensored.)

At twenty-four hours long, I a Pixel, We the People is a wide-ranging film covering many topics, though the story of the golden snail is a constant thread. In this new version of the snail’s life story, it is the son of a propaganda minister in an authoritarian government (the female figure in Chulayarnnon’s segment of Ten Years Thailand).

The snail joins an anti-government protest, represented by Chulayarnnon’s archive footage of red-shirts commemorating the May 2010 massacre. The protesters are suppressed, initially with water cannon (coverage from Nation TV of Siam Square on 16th October 2020), and later by more violent means, illustrated by clips from Chulayarnnon’s documentary ชวนอ่านภาพ 6 ตุลา (‘invitation to read images of 6th Oct.’) and by new footage of dead animals.

The exhibition opened on 26th April, and runs until 21st June. On the first day, the gallery was open for twenty-four hours, and the entire film was shown as a durational installation. Chulayarnnon’s previous exhibition at Bangkok CityCity, Give Us a Little More Time (ขอเวลาอีกไม่นาน), took place in 2020.

Due to the project’s marathon running time, I a Pixel, We the People has been divided into six seasons, like a long-running TV series, each containing four episodes:

Season 1: Star Wars
(สงครามอวกาศ)

1. This Is Not a Film (นี่ไม่ใช่ภาพยนตร์)
2. In God We Trust (อาจารย์แม่ช่วยด้วย)
3. Peoplization (และแล้วความเคลื่อนไหวก็ปรกฏ)
4. The Impossible Dream (ความฝันอันสูงสุด)

Season 2: One Family One Soft Power
(หนึ่งครอบครัวหนึ่งซอฟท์พาวเวอร์)

5. My Mother and Her Portraits (แม่และภาพเหมือนของเธอ)
6. Golden Snail (สังข์ทองลูกแม่)
7. Cyber Scout (ลูกเลือไซเบอร์)
8. My Teacher Is a Genius (ส่องสัตว์สิ้นตาน)

Season 3: The Star Light of Earth
(แสงดาวแห่งศรัทรา)

9. Comrades (สหาย)
10. Let It End in Our Generation (ให้มันจบที่รุ่นเรา)
11. Water Is Soft Power (พลิงละมุน)
12. Big Cleaning Day (แดนเนรมิต)

Season 4: The Massacre
(ฤๅเลือดไหร่มันไร้ค่า)

13. I Am Vaccinated (คนเช่นนี้เป็นตนหนักแผ่นดิน)
14. Next Life in the Afternoon (ตนยังคงยืนเด่นโดยท้าทาย)
15. Forced Disappearance (บึงดินบุคคลให้สูญหาย)
16. The Eternity of Golden Snail (กำเนิดใหม่หอยทากทอง)

Season 5: I a Pixel
(ข้าพเจ้าถือพิกเซล)

17. Voluntary Artist: Nopphon (ศิลปินจิตอาสา: นพพร)
18. Voluntary Artist: Kirati (ศิลปินจิตอาสา: กีรติ)
19. Voluntary Artist: Angsumalin (ศิลปินจิตอาสา: อังศุมาลิน)
20. Voluntary Artist: Red Eagle Sangmorakot (ศิลปินจิตอาสา: อินทรีแดง แสงมรกต)

Season 6: The Internationale Shall Certainly Be Realised
(แองเตอร์นาซิอองนาล จะต้องปรากฎเป็นจริง)

21. Artist Is Not National’s Property [sic] (ศิลปินไม่ใช่สมนิติของชาติ)
22. Long Live Microcinema (ภาพยนตร์ยิงให้เกิดปัญญา)
23. How to Explain “Monument of the Fourth International” to a Dead Snail (เรารักภูมิพลิงวัฒนธรรม ละมุนละม่อมนุ่มนิ่ม)
24. House of Tomorrow (บ้านของพรุ่งนี้)

“Publishers are not liable for honest mistakes...”

A jury has found that The New York Times did not defame Sarah Palin when it published an editorial on 14th June 2017. Palin had sued the newspaper for libel over a sentence in the editorial falsely implying that her campaign had encouraged the 2011 shooting of fellow politician Gabby Giffords: “Before the shooting, Sarah Palin’s political action committee circulated a map of targeted electoral districts that put Ms. Giffords and 19 other Democrats under stylized cross hairs.”

The newspaper had swiftly apologised for the editorial — “We got an important fact wrong, incorrectly linking political incitement and the 2011 shooting of Giffords” — and inserted a clarification into the online version of the article the day after its original publication: “no connection to the shooting was ever established.” The initial libel case ended on 15th February 2022, when a jury concluded that the editorial was not defamatory.

Palin appealed against that verdict, and she was granted a retrial on 28th August last year. Yesterday, the week-long retrial ended with a different jury reaching the same conclusion, that the newspaper did not intentionally defame Palin. After yesterday’s verdict, New York Times spokesperson Danielle Rhoades Ha said: “The decision reaffirms an important tenet of American law: publishers are not liable for honest mistakes.”

Stone: Ancient Craft to Modern Mastery

Stone: Ancient Craft to Modern Mastery, by Richard Rhodes, is one of the only publications in English to provide a general history of stone as an architectural material. The book includes an extensive glossary, endnotes, and bibliography, and it has an impressive cover that reproduces the surface texture of stone. In his introduction, Rhodes emphasises the cultural significance of stone buildings: “The ruins of stone and masonry architecture testify to war and destruction, to the rise and fall of cities and civilizations.”

Rhodes is apparently the last surviving apprentice of a medieval Italian guild of stonemasons. He stresses that this organisation is not affiliated with “the secret-handshake Masons”, though he describes it in equally conspiratorial terms. Several chapters of the book are devoted to the guild’s supposedly “Sacred Rules” of stonemasonry, and Rhodes claims that he is “sharing these secrets for the first time.” (This all feels a bit too much like Dan Brown to me.)

Stone is one of several recent books on architectural materials. Others include Concrete, Brick, Stone, and Wood (a series by William Hall); Glass in Architecture (by Michael Wigginton); Brick (by James W.P. Campbell); Architecture in Wood (by Will Pryce); Arish (by Sandra Piesik); Corrugated Iron (by Simon Holloway and Adam Mornement); and The Art of Earth Architecture (by Jean Dethier).

Spray Nation: 1980s NYC Graffiti Photographs

Martha Cooper collaborated with fellow photographer Henry Chalfant on Subway Art, a record of New York subway graffiti that became known as the graffiti bible. Almost forty years later, in 2022, a more substantial selection of Cooper’s photography was published in Spray Nation: 1980s NYC Graffiti Photographs. The book also includes essays on Cooper’s seminal influence on graffiti history, describing her as “the grand dame of street art photography”.

The very first book on street art was The Faith Of Graffiti, from 1974. Chalfant co-wrote Spraycan Art with James Prigoff. Trespass covers the history of graffiti. There are also two books on the Bangkok graffiti scene: Bangkok Street Art and Bangkok Street Art and Graffiti (สตรีทอาร์ตกับกราฟฟิตีในกรุงเทพฯ).

The Shattered Worlds: Micro Narratives from the Ho Chi Minh Trail to the Great Steppe

The group exhibition The Shattered Worlds: Micro Narratives from the Ho Chi Minh Trail to the Great Steppe (โลกร้าว เรื่องเล่าขนาดย่อมจากเส้นทางโฮจิมินห์ถึงทุ่งหญ้าสเต็ปป์) opened on 3rd April, and runs until 6th July. The exhibition is split between three venues, though the majority of the pieces are on show at Bangkok Art and Culture Centre.

Chulayarnnon Siriphol’s video triptych No More Hero in His Story, part of his Red Eagle Sangmorakot (อินทรีแดง แสงมรกตะ) installation, features the return of his saffron-robed monk wearing an incongruous motorcycle helmet. The character has previously appeared in Chulayarnnon’s short film Monk and Motorcycle Taxi Rider, and in his segment of the portmanteau film Ten Years Thailand. (Chulayarnnon discussed his depiction of monks in an interview for Thai Cinema Uncensored.)

For his installation The Tower of Bubbles, Thasnai Sethaseree created collages of published texts and photographs related to political violence, which he then painted over, almost — but not quite — obscuring them from view. He has used this technique before, covering newspaper pages with brightly coloured paint in works shown at the Dismantle (ปลด) and Cold War exhibitions. A large slogan painted onto the BACC’s wall, “WHAT YOU DON’T SEE WILL HURT YOU”, makes the point that the historical atrocities overpainted by Thasnai may be hidden from sight, but they still have the potential to reoccur.

Red’s Objects Dialogue

Almost exactly fifteen years ago, on 10th April 2010, the Thai military opened fire on pro-democracy red-shirt protesters in Bangkok. The Museum of Popular History is commemorating the anniversary of the crackdown with an exhibition of red-shirt memorabilia, which opened on 29th March at the Kinjai Contemporary gallery in Bangkok.

The exhibition, Red’s Objects Dialogue (เสื้อตัวนี้สีแดง), runs until 10th April, the date on which the army launched their assault. Red’s Objects Dialogue has been conceived as an interactive exhibition, with visitors encouraged to share any memories of the protests prompted by the items on display (including an impressive collection of hand-clappers, t-shirts, and VCDs).

Red’s Objects Dialogue includes several notorious items that were banned by previous governments: calendars issued in 2016 and 2019 by Thaksin and Yingluck Shinawatra, flip-flops featuring images of Abhisit Vejajjiva and Suthep Thaugsuban, and a Pheu Thai promotional water bowl. The bowl and calendars were previously displayed at the Never Again (หยุด) exhibition in 2019. One of the most intriguing exhibits is a transistor radio (a generic design, sold in Thailand as a Tanin TF-268) which has been rebranded a “RED RADIO”.

The tragic events of 10th April 2010 have also been commemorated in several previous exhibitions: Khonkaen Manifesto (ขอนแก่น แมนิเฟสโต้) and Amnesia in 2019, Future Tense in 2022, and 10 April and Beyond last year. They are also referenced in Pisitakun Kuantalaeng’s album Kongkraphan, Pen-ek Ratanaruang’s short film Two Little Soldiers (สาวสะเมิน), and in the poetry collection ลุกไหม้สิ! ซิการ์ (‘burning cigar!’).

A book commemorating the victims of the massacre, วีรชน 10 เมษา (‘heroes of 10th April’) by Ida Aroonwong and Warisa Kittikhunseree, was published in 2011. There are also plans to publish a book based on visitors’ responses to the artefacts on show at Red’s Objects Dialogue. Like the Museum of Popular History, the National Library of Australia also has an archive of red-shirt ephemera.

Last Week Tonight

Dr Brian Morley, former director of US private healthcare contractor AmeriHealth Caritas, has filed a $75,000 defamation lawsuit against John Oliver, host of the HBO comedy show Last Week Tonight. In a segment about Medicaid broadcast on 14th April last year, Oliver quoted Morley’s justification for reducing personal care support for a disabled man in Iowa who needed diapers: “I would allow him to be a little dirty for a couple of days.”

Morley’s lawsuit, filed on 28th March at the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, argues that the quote was taken out of context. However, in the segment, Oliver preemptively addressed this point: “when I first heard that, I thought that has to be taken out of context. There is no way a doctor, a licenced physician, would testify in a hearing that he thinks it’s okay if people have shit on them for days. So, we got the full hearing, and I’m not going to play it for you, I’m just going to tell you: he said it, he meant it, and it made me want to punch a hole in the wall.”

Oliver then responded to Morley’s quote directly: “I guess I’d say fuck that doctor with a rusty canoe, I hope he gets tetanus of the balls. And if he has a problem with my language there, I’d say I’m allowed to be dirty. People are allowed to be a little dirty sometimes, apparently that’s doctor’s fucking orders.”

The show was previously sued for libel by Bob Murray, CEO of coal company Murray Energy, in relation to a segment broadcast on 18th June 2017. That lawsuit, filed on 10th October 2017, stated: “The statements that the plaintiffs alleged were defamatory included statements indicating that Mr. Murray had no evidence to support his assertion that an earthquake caused a mine collapse that killed nine people; a statement that Mr. Murray and Murray Energy “appear to be on the same side as black lung” and that their position on a coal dust regulation was the equivalent of rooting for bees to kill a child”.

Murray also argued that Oliver’s description of him as “a geriatric Dr Evil” was defamatory. The case was dismissed on 21st February 2018.

Skyline FilmCasablanca

Casablanca is the May highlight of Skyline Film’s monthly outdoor movie programme. Previous Skyline screenings (including Pulp Fiction, Annie Hall, and Singin’ in the Rain) were held at River City, though this year they have a new location: the rooftop of the impressive Siamscape building in Siam Square, in the centre of Bangkok (where they showed The Graduate in January).

Casablanca will be screened there on 4th May. Arguably the greatest (and surely the most quotable) Hollywood movie of all time, it had a theatrical rerelease in 2023. It was previously shown at the Scala in 2018, at Bangkok Screening Room in 2016, and (in 35mm) at the Lido in 2007.

From Oberhausen Manifesto to New German Cinema

“The old film is dead. We believe in the new one.”
— Oberhausen manifesto

In 1962, a group of young German film directors signed a manifesto at Oberhausen calling for a revival of the country’s cinema, and a shift away from the nostalgic, escapist German films of the 1950s. The group released their first feature films in 1966, most notably Alexander Kluger’s Yesterday Girl (Abschied von gestern). By the early 1970s, Wim Wenders, Werner Herzog, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder were leading a German new wave (das neue Kino) that lasted until Fassbinder’s death in 1982.

Yesterday Girl will be shown at Bangkok Art and Culture Centre on 19th April, alongside Herzog’s epic Aguirre, the Wrath of God (Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes), as part of a programme titled From Oberhausen Manifesto to New German Cinema (จาก Oberhausen Manifesto สู่ New German Cinema). The event is organised by Doc Club, which is currently arranging pop-up screenings at various venues after the closure of Doc Club and Pub.

Aguirre, the Wrath of God was previously shown in 2020 at Bangkok Screening Room, which was the original cinema in the location that eventually became Doc Club and Pub after BKKSR was itself forced to close in 2021. The Oberhausen manifesto is reprinted in Film Manifestos and Global Cinema Cultures.

Wildtype Masterclass no. 6Cinemine/d จากจอสู่ใจโปรแกรม

Wattanapume Laisuwanchai’s video The Body Craves Impact as Love Bursts (ร่างกายอยากปะทะ เพราะรักมันปะทุ) and short film Dreamscape will be shown as part of a retrospective of the director’s work programmed by Wildtype later this month. Cinemine/d จากจอสู่ใจโปรแกรม (‘a programme from the screen to the heart’), the sixth in Wildtype’s Masterclass series, will take place on 19th and 20th April.

Screenings will be held at arts venues arond Thailand: GalileOasis in Bangkok, A.E.Y. Space in Songkla, and Noir Row Art Space in Udon Thani. There will also be screenings organised by local film societies: Berng Nang Club at Ready for the Week-end in Khon Kaen, ดูหนังในห้องนั้น (‘watch a movie in that room’) at Loftster in Korat, and jointly by Untitled for Film and Dude, Movie at Suan Anya in Chiang Mai. The Body Craves Impact as Love Bursts and Dreamscape will both be shown on 20th April.

In The Body Craves Impact as Love Bursts, images of a man and woman are shown facing each other, yet separated. It was made in solidarity with the rapper Elevenfinger, who was jailed for possession of ping-pong bombs used in anti-government protests. The video ends dramatically with flashing images and footage of fireworks, filmed at Thalugaz protests in 2021.

The Body Craves Impact as Love Bursts was first shown as a video installation at the Procession of Dystopia exhibition last year. It has also been screened at The 7th Bangkok Experimental Film Festival (เทศกาลหนังทดลองกรุงเทพฯ ครั้งที่ 7) and Can’t Stop Won’t Stop.

Dreamscape is a record of the director’s Dreamscape Project, which was created as part of the Intimate Politik exhibition at Speedy Grandma in Bangkok, on display from 13th June to 5th July 2015. The project involved Wattanapume inviting members of the public to draw pictures representing their hopes and dreams for Bangkok’s future; he later scanned and animated the images, and projected them onto buildings around the city. (The project’s title is a reference to the optimistic dreams of the participants, and the cityscape of Bangkok.) The projections sometimes create provocative juxtapositions, such as a drawing of a homeless woman projected onto a wall in front of the Royal Hotel, which was used as the film’s poster.

The people who participated represented a diverse range of ages, incomes, and political viewpoints. (They were contacted in April 2015, less than a year after the 2014 coup, making discussion of politics almost unavoidable.) A high school student explains that King Rama IX is the only person able to solve Thailand’s political conflicts, citing the 14th October 1973 and 6th October 1976 massacres, though he says that he is only vaguely aware of the 1976 event. In a short documentary about the making of the film, The Journey of Dreamscape Project, a scout leader praises coup leader Prayut Chan-o-cha from the bottom of her heart.

Weekly Screening no. 34Now and Then:Experimental Animation

A programme of avant-garde animated films will be shown at Chulalongkorn University’s Faculty of Communication Arts in Bangkok on 2nd April. Now and Then: Experimental Animation is the thirty-fourth event in the Weekly Screening series organised by Nitade CU Movie Club.

Now and Then is split into two sessions: Then is a discerningly curated selection of short films spanning the entire history of animation, and Now features animation in contemporary cinema. The key pioneers of experimental animation — Émile Cohl, Oskar Fischinger, Len Lye, Stan Brakhage, and Jan Švankmajer — are all represented.

Highlights include one of the very first animated films, Cohl’s Fantasmagorie (‘phantasmagoria’). Fischinger’s Optical Poem is a beautiful abstract film made with paper circles. Lye’s Free Radicals features scratches cut into the film negative. For Mothlight, Brakhage stuck moths’ wings and other materials directly onto the celluloid, to create the first literal collage film.

Masterpieces in Black and White: Prints from the Rembrandt House Museum

Arthur M. Hind’s A History of Engraving and Etching is the standard work on the subject, and Hind praises Rembrandt as a singularly accomplished master of the art form: “In the whole history of art Rembrandt stands out as one of the solitary and unapproachable personalities who have struck their own style, and stamped their influence, for good or for bad, on posterity. In his etched work his unique position is realised to an even greater advantage than in painting”.

Rembrandt’s etchings are currently on show at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, in Masterpieces in Black and White: Prints from the Rembrandt House Museum, the first leg of a touring exhibition of works on loan from Amsterdam. (After Birmingham, it will transfer from the UK to the US.) The exhibition opened on 6th March at the impressive Victorian neoclassical museum, and runs until 1st June. The sixty works on display confirm Hind’s view that “in the range of his genius Rembrandt still stands alone.”

Naya Bharat ('new India')

Indian comedian Kunal Kamra is the subject of a police investigation in the state of Maharashtra after he criticised a politician from the region in his stand-up show Naya Bharat (‘new India’). Kamra performed a few satirical songs during the set, and they appeared with karaoke-style subtitles when he uploaded a video of the show to his YouTube channel on 23rd March. He was charged with defamation on the following day.

The lyrics to one song, a parody of the theme to the Bollywood film Dil To Pagal Hai (‘the heart is crazy’), include the word ‘gaddar’ (‘traitor’), in an oblique reference to politician Eknath Shinde. After footage of the performance circulated online, a mob of Shinde’s supporters ransacked The Habitat, the Mumbai studio where Kamra had recorded the live show. A spokesperson for Shinde’s political party Shiv Sena has called for Kamra’s arrest.

The Habitat was also the venue for another controversial comedy last month, when an episode of the podcast India’s Got Latent was recorded there. A guest on the show, Ranveer Allahbadia, asked a contestant: “Would you rather watch your parents have sex every day for the rest of your life, or would you join in once and stop it forever?” The episode was released on YouTube on 10th February, and multiple police complaints were filed against Allahbadia. India’s Supreme Court described Allahbadia’s question as obscene on 18th February, though it stopped short of filing criminal charges against him.

In a similar case in 2021, Ashutosh Dubey, an adviser to India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, filed a legal complaint against comedian Vir Das in relation to a live performance in Washington D.C. Das recited his poem Two Indias at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on 12th November 2021, and uploaded it to YouTube four days later. As he predicted in the words of the poem itself, “I come from an India that will accuse me of airing our dirty laundry”.

Alexander Wang

Fashion brand Alexander Wang released an image on social media today showing a man and woman, both skimpily dressed, with a puppy. Such imagery is not unusual in fashion advertising, though in this campaign the models are shown being saluted by uniformed officers, implying a formal state occasion and making an incongruous contrast with their clothing.

Out: How Brexit Got Done and the Tories Were Undone

After All Out War, Fall Out, and No Way Out, Tim Shipman’s final Brexit book, Out: How Brexit Got Done and the Tories Were Undone, was published late last year. His quartet, a definitive account of UK politics since the country voted to leave the EU, tells “the full story of the most explosive period of domestic British politics since the Second World War.”

Out, 900 pages long, is (fortunately) the least Brexity of the four books. Spanning the entire Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, and Rishi Sunak governments, it has the same insider’s access and all-sides coverage that made Shipman’s previous accounts so unique and compelling.

Shipman argues that, for better or worse, Johnson was “the most consequential figure of the period”, having achieved far more than his predecessor: “Theresa May was defined by the things she failed to do, Boris by the things he did — both excellent and execrable.” In an example from the execrable category, Johnson asked the attorney general not to inform ministers that prorogation of parliament may be illegal: “don’t spook the cabinet by talking about the litigation risk.” Shipman calls this “one of the nadirs of Johnson’s premiership.”

Shipman has consistently reported some of the most remarkable pull quotes in recent British politics. In Out, he quotes an unprecedented confrontation between a prime minister (Johnson: “Are you threatening me?”) and a senior adviser (Dominic Cummings: “Yes, I’m fucking threatening you.”) An even more extraordinary quote comes from Elizabeth II, who joked with her staff after Johnson resigned: “at least I won’t have that idiot organising my funeral now.”

Unsurprisingly, Shipman is dismissive of Johnson’s successor: “Liz Truss need not detain us long here.” He cites several Downing Street staff who describe her as “fucking mental”, and one who calls her “psychologically unfit to be prime minister.” (This recalls Alastair Campbell’s description of Gordon Brown’s “psychological flaws”, quoted in Andrew Rawnsley’s Servants of the People.) A secretary “broke down in tears” after Truss rebuked them for bringing her the wrong type of coffee (like Mugatu in Zoolander).

Before introducing Sunak at a 2024 election campaign event, Johnson asked his aides: “Why am I doing this? This guy’s a fucking cunt.” Shipman’s assessment of Sunak is also critical though, of course, more measured: “the lack of a driving political vision gave him no political cover from failures of delivery.”

Arcadia Rooftop CinemaHard-Boiled

The Rooftop Cinema programme of open-air movie screenings at Bangkok’s Arcadia bar continues this evening with John Woo’s classic Hard-Boiled (辣手神探), starring Chow Yun-Fat and Tony Leung. Hard-Boiled is a key example of the 英雄片 (‘hero films’) or ‘heroic bloodshed’ subgenre of gangsters-with-guns Hong Kong action thriller, the template for which was set by Woo’s A Better Tomorrow (英雄本色).

House Classics

House Samyan’s ongoing programme of classic films will feature two essential titles next month: City Lights and La haine (‘hate’). City Lights is showing on 16th and 19th April, to celebrate Charlie Chaplin’s birthday. La haine, directed by Mathieu Kassovitz, will be shown on 17th–20th, 26th, and 27th April. The House Classics strand was launched in 2019 with an initial selection of a dozen films, to celebrate the House cinema relocating to Samyan Mitrtown in Bangkok.

This Essay Need No Words

Dziga Vertov’s silent classic Man with a Movie Camera (Человек с кино-аппаратом) will be shown tomorrow, as part of Bangkok University’s This Essay Need No Words [sic] (บทความนี้ ... ไร้ตัวอักษร) programme of essay films. The event, the fifteenth screening in the JuBchaii (จับฉาย) series, will take place at the university’s School of Digital Media and Cinematic Arts.

Man with a Movie Camera is perhaps the greatest documentary ever made. It was also screened at Jam Ciné Club in 2017, and at The 2nd Silent Film Festival in Thailand in 2015. Previous films in the JuBchaii series have included Fear Eats the Soul (Angst essen Seele auf) and From Forest to City (อรัญนคร).

Heat and Sweat

In his famous opening line to The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot wrote that “April is the cruellest month”, but in Thailand April is always the hottest month. In recognition of the sweltering summer, the Thai Film Archive in Salaya has programmed a season of classic Thai and Hollywood films titled Heat and Sweat, running from 2nd to 24th April. The season includes Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, screening on 13th and 24th April. (Rear Window was previously shown at Bangkok Screening Room in 2016.)

Arcadia Rooftop CinemaBlade Runner

Bangkok’s Arcadia bar will celebrate its third anniversary on 2nd March with a rooftop screening of its signature film, Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. (Arcadia’s logo uses the same typeface as the Blade Runner poster, and some of the bar’s décor, designed by owner Todd Ruiz, was also inspired by the film.)

Arcadia also screened Blade Runner when the bar first opened, and had another screening for its second anniversary last year. Blade Runner has also been shown at other Bangkok venues: at House Samyan in 2023, at Jam in 2019, and at Bangkok Screening Room in 2017.

The 60th Year

Chulalongkorn University’s Faculty of Communication Arts will hold two days of film screenings in Bangkok later this week, to celebrate the faculty’s sixtieth anniversary. The 60th Year (สดุดีปีจอ) includes a screening of Breaking the Cycle (อำนาจ ศรัทธา อนาคต) on 27th February, followed by a Q&A with its directors Aekaphong Saransate and Thanakrit Duangmaneeporn. Come and See (เอหิปัสสิโก) will be shown on the next day, followed by a talk by director Nottapon Boonprakob.

Both films are documentaries that challenge established institutions, and both attracted controversy in the process. Charges of sedition were filed against the makers of Breaking the Cycle, as their film — accurately and objectively — described the 2014 coup as undemocratic. When Nottapon submitted Come and See to the censorship board, they explained that they had some reservations about it. Would he mind if they rejected the film, they asked. But the Thai Film Director Association publicised the case online, and — presumably to avoid negative publicity — the censors told Nottapon that they no longer had a problem with the film.

Breaking the Cycle

Breaking the Cycle is a fly-on-the-wall account of the Future Forward party, which was dissolved by the Constitutional Court in 2020. (Future Forward was founded as a progressive alternative to military dictatorship. The party came third in the 2019 election, after a wave of support for its charismatic leader, Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, though he was disqualified as an MP by the Constitutional Court.)

The film begins in 2014 with Thanathorn’s determination to end the vicious cycle of military coups that has characterised Thailand’s modern political history. This mission gives the film its title, and Future Forward co-founder Piyabutr Saengkanokkul asks: “Why is Thailand stuck in this cycle of coups?” The documentary benefits from its extensive access to every senior figure within Future Forward. The directors were even able to film Thanathorn as he reacted to the guilty verdicts being delivered by the Constitutional Court.

The documentary ends with the caption “THE CYCLE CONTINUES”, which is sadly accurate: Future Forward’s successor, Move Forward, was dissolved by the Constitutional Court last year despite winning the 2023 election. The movement’s third incarnation, the People’s Party, will need a landslide victory in the next election to challenge the current pro-military coalition led by Pheu Thai.

Breaking the Cycle went on general release last year. It was later shown at the Thai Film Archive in Salaya, as part of the Lost and Longing (แด่วันคืนที่สูญหาย) season. It was also screened at A.E.Y. Space in Songkla, and at the Bangsaen Film Festival at Burapha University. It was part of the Hits Me Movies... One More Time programme at House Samyan in Bangkok, and it was screened last week at Thammasat University.

Come and See

Come and See examines the practices of the Wat Phra Dhammakaya temple complex (in Pathum Thani province, near Bangkok) and its former abbot, Dhammajayo, who has long been suspected of money laundering. (Dhammakaya is a Buddhist sect recognised by the Sangha Supreme Council, though it closely resembles a cult. Come and See interviews both current devotees and disaffected former members of the organisation.)

The Dhammakaya complex itself is only twenty years old, and its design is inherently cinematic. The enormous Cetiya temple resembles a golden UFO, and temple ceremonies are conducted on an epic scale, with tens of thousands of monks and worshippers arranged with geometric precision. The temple cooperated with Nottapon, though his access was limited. Come and See doesn’t investigate the allegations against Dhammajayo, though it does provide extensive coverage of the 2016 DSI raid on the temple and Dhammajayo’s subsequent disappearance.

One of the film’s interviewees, a Buddhist scholar, hits the nail on the head when he argues that the long-running Dhammakaya scandal is not an anomaly; rather, Dhammakaya is simply a more extreme version of contemporary Thai Buddhism, which has become increasingly capitalist. Come and See also hints at the institutional corruption and hidden networks of influence that characterise the modern Thai state.

The Critics

Yesterday, a female news anchor was questioned by police on charges of defamation and violation of the Computer Crime Act, following a legal complaint by a lawyer representing former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Her home was searched by more than a dozen police officers, though she has not yet been arrested.

The online news organisation The Critics published a video on 3rd January reporting on an opinion poll in which Thaksin had been voted the world’s worst leader. (The video is still online, on the Thai Move Institute’s YouTube channel.) The anchor told police that she was not the journalist who wrote the story, and had merely been reading from a script.

The news report (which is essentially clickbait) refers to a survey on the website The Top Tens. Thaksin is indeed currently listed there as the worst leader in the history of the world, with Adolf Hitler in second place, though the voting has been manipulated by Thai netizens. (Thaksin’s entry has more than 6,000 vitriolic comments, from people who apparently believe that he was worse than genocidal dictators such as Hitler.)

There are equally hyperbolic comparisons between Thaksin and Hitler in two documentaries by Ing K. In the fourth episode of her Bangkok Joyride (บางกอกจอยไรด์) series, a protester describes Thaksin as “worse than Hitler”. This echoes a quote from Ing’s Citizen Juling (พลเมืองจูหลิง): “We talk of Hitler... But villagers, all citizens nowadays fear PM Thaksin 10 times more.” (These examples are discussed in Thai Cinema Uncensored.)

During Thaksin’s premiership, he was notorious for his use of lawsuits to intimidate his critics. Pimpaka Towira’s documentary The Truth Be Told (ความจริงพูดได้), for example, examined the charges filed by Thaksin’s Shin Corp. against media campaigner Supinya Klangnarong after she was interviewed by the Thai Post (ไทยโพสต์) newspaper on 16th July 2003. (The Thai Post was also named in the writ. This case is also covered in Thai Cinema Uncensored.)

Supinya had alleged that Shin Corp. benefitted from the policies of Thaksin’s government, and therefore that his ownership of the company represented a conflict of interest. Her book about the lawsuit, พูดความจริง (‘speak the truth’), was published in 2007, after the case was dismissed.

Can’t Stop Won’t Stop

Warat Bureephakdee’s Crazy Soft Power Love will be shown this evening at Rx Cafe in Chiang Mai. The screening is part of the Can’t Stop Won’t Stop (ไปให้สุด หยุดไม่อยู่) arts festival, which is raising awareness of the political crisis in Myanmar since the violent coup that took place there in 2021. (The festival’s Burmese title is မဆုတ်တမ်း မရပ်တမ်း.) The event began yesterday, and runs until the end of this month.

This will be Crazy Soft Power Love’s third screening this week, and its second screening today. It will also be shown in Korat this afternoon, as part of the With Love and White festival, and it was shown at เทศกาลถนนศิลปะ ครั้งที่ 22 (‘the 22nd street art festival’) in Khon Kaen on 16th February.

Crazy Soft Power Love is a satire on the government’s soft power strategy, culminating in a Songkran water fight that escalates into a brawl, intercut with footage from the 6th October 1976 massacre at Thammasat University. It was previously shown at Wildtype 2024, at the fourth Amazing Stoner Movie Fest (มหัศจรรย์หนังผี ครั้งที่ 4), and at last year’s Short Film Marathon (หนังสั้นมาราธอน).

Wattanapume Laisuwanchai’s video The Body Craves Impact as Love Bursts (ร่างกายอยากปะทะ เพราะรักมันปะทุ) will be shown at Rx Cafe tomorrow, also as part of the Can’t Stop Won’t Stop festival. In Wattanapume’s film, images of a man and woman are shown facing each other, yet separated. The project was made in solidarity with the rapper Elevenfinger, who is serving a prison sentence for possession of ping-pong bombs used in anti-government protests. The video ends dramatically with flashing images and footage of fireworks, filmed at Thalugaz protests in 2021.

The Body Craves Impact as Love Bursts was first shown as a video installation at the Procession of Dystopia exhibition last year. It was also screened at The 7th Bangkok Experimental Film Festival (เทศกาลหนังทดลองกรุงเทพฯ ครั้งที่ 7).

With Love and White

Warat Bureephakdee’s Crazy Soft Power Love will be shown tomorrow at Boonwattana School in Korat, as part of the one-day With Love and White festival of short films. This will be its second screening this week, as it was also shown at เทศกาลถนนศิลปะ ครั้งที่ 22 (‘the 22nd street art festival’) in Khon Kaen on 16th February.

Crazy Soft Power Love is a satire on the government’s soft power strategy, culminating in a Songkran water fight that escalates into a brawl, intercut with footage from the 6th October 1976 massacre at Thammasat University. It was previously shown at Wildtype 2024, at the fourth Amazing Stoner Movie Fest (มหัศจรรย์หนังผี ครั้งที่ 4), and at last year’s Short Film Marathon (หนังสั้นมาราธอน).

ภาพสุดท้ายบนผืนผ้า สงครามเย็นไม่เคยจากไปไหน(‘the final images on cloth’)

Chulayarnnon Siriphol’s Birth of Golden Snail (กำเนิดหอยทากทอง) will be shown in Chiang Mai on 1st March as part of The Golden Snail Series (วัฒนธรรม​หอยทากทอง), a programme of five short films by the artist that feature his golden snail motif, followed by a Q&A with Chulayarnnon. (The five films were also shown last month, at A.E.Y. Space in Songkla and Lorem Ipsum in Hat Yai.)

The Golden Snail Series is the final event in the three-day ภาพสุดท้ายบนผืนผ้า สงครามเย็นไม่เคยจากไปไหน (‘the final images on cloth: the Cold War never goes away’) film festival, which begins on 27th February. The festival — organised by Dude, Movie — explores the continuing legacy of the Cold War, and will be held outdoors at Suan Anya. The films shown will be the last ones to be projected onto the venue’s cloth screen, which will soon be replaced with a more substantial screen.

Birth of Golden Snail was banned from the Thailand Biennale in 2018, and had its first public screening at the following year’s 30th Singapore International Film Festival. Its Thai premiere was at the 23rd Thai Short Film and Video Festival (เทศกาลภาพยนตร์สั้น ครั้งที่ 23), and it was shown last year at Infringes. Chulayarnnon discussed the film in an interview for Thai Cinema Uncensored.

The other short films in The Golden Snail Series programme are Golden Spiral (โกลเด้น สไปรัล), The Internationale (แองเตอร์นาซิอองนาล), ANG48 (เอเอ็นจี48), and How to Explain “Monument to the Fourth International” to the Dead Golden Snail (เรารักภูมิพลังวัฒนธรรมละมุนละม่อมนุ่มนิ่ม). Golden Spiral was first shown at Ghost:2561. ANG48 was first shown at Shadow Dancing, and later at Wildtype 2023, ใช้แล้ว ใช้อยู่ ใช้ต่อ (‘I’ve used it, I’m using it, I’ll keep using it’), The 27th Thai Short Film and Video Festival (เทศกาลภาพยนตร์สั้น ครั้งที่ 27), and the Short Film Marathon 27 (หนังสั้นมาราธอน 27).

The Day the Sky Trembled

Nutchanon Pairoj, a founder member of the United Front of Thammasat and Demonstration protest group, has been found guilty of lèse-majesté and sentenced to two years in prison. He was originally found not guilty by the Thanyaburi Provincial Court on 8th November 2023, though that verdict was overturned today by the Court of Appeal.

Nutchanon was one of several people in a truck that was stopped by police in Pathum Thani on 19th September 2020. They were en route to Thammasat University, intending to distribute copies of the booklet The Day the Sky Trembled (ปรากฏการณ์สะท้านฟ้า 10 สิงหา) to protesters gathered at the university. Police confiscated 45,080 copies of the booklet, and detained the occupants of the truck, though ultimately only Nutchanon was charged.

The Day the Sky Trembled — so notorious that it has become known simply as ‘the red booklet’ — contains transcripts of speeches given by UFTD protest leaders at Thammasat on 10th August 2020. Nutchanon is not quoted in the booklet, though today’s judgement convicted him of knowingly attempting to distribute material that contravened the lèse-majesté law.

เทศกาลถนนศิลปะ ครั้งที่ 22(‘the 22nd street art festival’)

Warat Bureephakdee’s short film Crazy Soft Power Love will be shown today at เทศกาลถนนศิลปะ ครั้งที่ 22 (‘the 22nd street art festival’) organised by Art Lane. The outdoor screening will take place at Khon Kaen University’s Faculty of Fine and Applied Arts. The event began on Valentine’s Day and finishes today.

Crazy Soft Power Love is a satire on the government’s soft power strategy, culminating in a Songkran water fight that escalates into a brawl, intercut with footage from the 6th October 1976 massacre at Thammasat University. It was previously shown at Wildtype 2024, at the fourth Amazing Stoner Movie Fest (มหัศจรรย์หนังผี ครั้งที่ 4), and at last year’s Short Film Marathon (หนังสั้นมาราธอน).

30 Years of ‘Democrazy’

One way that artists satirise Thai politics is by punning on the Thai word for democracy itself. The earliest and most common example is ‘democrazy’, highlighting the craziness of the Thai political system, which dates back thirty years. Since then, there have been more than a dozen other Thai puns on ‘democracy’.

Democrazy

The band Heavy Mod released their album Democrazy on cassette and CD in 1995. (Its Thai title was ประชาธิปไตย, which translates simply as ‘democracy’.) Democrazy was also the title of a single by another band, Dogwhine, from their EP Dog of God, released on CD in 2019. The animated music video for the song features the folding chair and hanging corpse from an infamous Neal Ulevich photograph. Democrazy (ประชาธิปไทย) is also the title of a 2020 painting by Luck Maisalee.

The fashion brand Russian Roulette designed a Demo-crazy t-shirt in 2023. Bangkok Democrazy was the strapline of the 4th Bangkok Experimental Film Festival, which took place in 2004. Democrazy Theatre Studio was founded by Pavinee Samakkabutr and Thanapol Virulhakul in 2008, and the edgy Bangkok performance venue closed down in 2019.

Thunsita Yanuprom and Sarun Channiam directed the short film Democrazy.mov in 2019. In the film, a cellphone signal is jammed by a 44GHz frequency, in reference to article 44 of the interim constitution, which granted absolute power to the leaders of the 2014 coup.

Demockrazy

Duangporn Pakavirojkul directed the short film Demockrazy (ประชาทิปตาย) in 2007. The film was an immediate reaction to the 2006 coup: set in a classroom, an authoritarian teacher symbolises the coup leaders. Its title is a clever double pun on ‘crazy’ and ‘mockery’.

Demoncrazy

Ready Myth Demoncrazy was a retrospective exhibition of art by Panya Vijinthanasarn, held in 2018. Similarly, the fashion brand Plus One designed a Demo(n)cracy hat in 2023.

Dreamocracy

Parit Wacharasindhu’s book Dreamocracy (ประชาธิปไตยไม่ใช่ฝัน) was published in 2022. Parit is a People’s Party MP, and his book is a personal manifesto proposing solutions to the country’s social and economic problems.

Drunkmocracy

Warat Bureephakdee directed the short film Drunkmocracy (สุราธิปไตย) in 2023. A documentary on Thai alcohol laws, it was released online as part of the ไทยถาม (‘Thailand questions’) series by Thai Rath (ไทยรัฐ).

ประชาฉิปตาย

The song title ประชาฉิปตาย translates as ‘democracy dies’, in a particularly effective Thai-language pun. (‘Democracy’ and ‘die-ocracy’ are near-homophones in Thai.) The track is featured on the Heavy Mod album Democrazy, and it’s similar to Die mo cracy, a slogan on a t-shirt sold by the band Speech Odd last year.

Paradoxocracy

Pen-ek Ratanaruang and Pasakorn Pramoolwong’s documentary Paradoxocracy (ประชาธิป'ไทย) was released in 2013. (Pen-ek discussed the film at length in Thai Cinema Uncensored.)

‘Happy-ocracy’

Ing K.’s film Shakespeare Must Die (เชคสเปียร์ต้องตาย) includes a satirical parody of authoritarian propaganda: “Dear Leader brings happy-ocracy!” The line turned out to be a remarkably prescient prediction, as coup leader Prayut Chan-o-cha released a propaganda song titled Returning Happiness to the Thai Kingdom (คืนความสุขให้ประเทศไทย) in 2014. (Ing discussed the film in Thai Cinema Uncensored.)

PrachathipaType

The design studio PrachathipaType was founded in 2020, and its name translates as ‘democratic typography’. The anonymous designer behind PrachathipaType also created a new typeface, PrachathipaTape (ประชาธิปะเทป), for Rap Against Dictatorship’s music video Homeland (บ้านเกิดเมืองนอน).

‘ประชาธิปตู่’

Yuthlert Sippapak’s film Nednary (อวสานเนตรนารี) features a pun on Prayut’s nickname, Tu. When a boy scout, with the same nickname as Prayut, is asked what type of democracy he wants, he replies: “ประชาธิปตู่” (‘Tu-ocracy’). (Yuthlert discussed the film in Thai Cinema Uncensored.) The period of undemocratic military government led by Prayut between 2014 and 2023 is known as ‘Prayutocracy’.

‘Thaksinocracy’

Thaksinocracy (ทักษิณาธิปไตย) describes the populist politics of Thaksin Shinawatra, prime minister from 2001 to 2006. (A slight variation, สู่ทักษิณาธิปไตย, was translated as Thaksinomics, the title of a book by Rangsan Thanapornpun published in 2005.)

‘Kukritocracy’

Kukritocracy, a term coined by Tamara Loos, describes the cultural role of royalist author Kukrit Pramoj during the Cold War. Loos will give a presentation titled Kukritocracy at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, University of Wisconsin–Madison, on 21st February, as part of their Friday Forum series. (I gave a Friday Forum presentation in 2021.)

‘Premocracy’

Premocracy (เปรมาธิปไตย) describes the period of quasi-democracy from 1980 to 1988, when Prem Tinsulanonda led the government as an appointed prime minister. เปรมาธิปไตย is also the title of a book by Adinan Phromphananjal, published in 2020.

‘Coupocracy’

In her book Dictatorship on Trial, released last year, Tyrell Haberkorn coined the term ‘coupocracy’ to describe the period covering the 2006 and 2014 coups.

‘Dancemocracy’

The new book Made in Thailand includes Anna Lawattanatrakul’s essay Dancemocracy as Political Expression in the 2020 Thai Pro-democracy Movement, a reference to the Dancemocracy (คณะราษแดนซ์) troupe of pro-democracy dancers and protesters. (Made in Thailand, edited by Viriya Sawangchot, also includes an interview with Pisitakun Kuantalaeng, who discusses his album Absolute Coup.)

Shifting Shadows of Identity

Shifting Shadows of Identity, an evening of short films from different regions of Thailand, presents new perspectives on Thai national identity. The event is organised by The Basement — an underground collective of emerging visual artists — and the films have been selected by Srinakharinwirot, Chulalongkorn, Thammasat, Silpakorn, and Bangkok university film clubs. The screening will be held on 21st February, on the rooftop of the Apron Bar in Bangkok, and is taking place alongside the bar’s Expanding Pecel Lele programme celebrating Indonesian culture, as part of Bangkok Design Week 2025 (which runs from 8th to 23rd February).

Possathorn Watcharapanit’s Selfie of My Run to My Return from Runaway is one of the highlights of Shifting Shadows of Identity. Possathorn films himself with a selfie stick as he jogs around his home town, the black-and-white images accompanied by a voiceover from the director. Slowly, another image begins to emerge, gradually dissolving into view: footage of anti-government protesters gathered around a burning brazier. This scene (filmed by Voice TV) eventually replaces Possathorn’s selfie shot, and the film ends with a caption heralding the “flame of the birth of a new era.” (Selfie of My Run to My Return from Runaway was previously shown in the Angry Young Citizen strand of Wildtype 2022.)

Shifting Shadows of Identity will conclude with an early video piece by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Haunted Houses (บ้านผีปอบ). A documentary in which villagers perform lakorn scripts, the film plays on the link between ‘media’ and ‘medium’: the Thai collective fascination with both mass entertainment (TV soap operas) and the spirit world. (Haunted Houses was previously shown at Alliance Française in 2017, and at the Jim Thompson Art Center in 2011.)

Resonance of Revolt

Chiang Mai University’s Faculty of Social Sciences will show a programme of provocative political documentaries as part of their ดูหนังกับสังวิท (‘watch movies with Social Sciences’) season. The event, Resonance of Revolt, will take place on 19th and 26th February, and includes Uruphong Raksasad’s Paradox Democracy and Vichart Somkaew’s Contemporary Thai Political Trilogy (ไตรภาคการเมืองร่วมสมัยไทย).

Paradox Democracy documents the recent student protest movement, and features clips from rally speeches by Arnon Nampa and other protest leaders, intercut with extracts from The Revolutionist (คือผู้อภิวัฒน์), a play about Pridi Banomyong staged by the Crescent Moon theatre group in 2020. The film’s working title was Paradox October, and it includes footage shot at the 6th October 1976 commemorative exhibition at Thammasat University in 2020.

Contemporary Thai Political Trilogy is a portmanteau project combining three of Vichart’s recent short films: Cremation Ceremony (ประวัติย่อของบางสิ่งที่หายไป), 112 News from Heaven, and The Letter from Silence (จดหมายจากความเงียบ). The anthology’s structure reflects three eras of modern Thai politics: 1932–1957 (the establishment of democratic institutions), 1957–1992 (prolonged military dictatorship), and 1992 to the present day (liberal reforms, followed by political polarisation).

Paradox Democracy was previously shown at The 28th Thai Short Film and Video Festival (เทศกาลภาพยนตร์สั้น ครั้งที่ 28) in Salaya. Contemporary Thai Political Trilogy was shown last year as part of ซิเนมากลางนา (‘cinema in the middle of a rice field’), a rural outdoor screening held in a rice field in Phayao. Previous ดูหนังกับสังวิท screenings have included Ing K.’s Dog God (คนกราบหมา) and Shakespeare Must Die (เชคสเปียร์ต้องตาย).

Monrak Transistor

The Thai Film Archive at Salaya will show a three-day film programme to celebrate Valentine’s Day. The event, Night @ Maya City 5, includes Pen-ek Ratanaruang’s popular classic Monrak Transistor (มนต์รักทรานซิสเตอร์) on 14th February, with screenings of other romantic films on 15th and 16th February. Monrak Transistor will be shown in a restored 35mm print, and Pen-ek will take part in a Q&A after the screening.

Monrak Transistor was last shown in 35mm at One Nimman in Chiang Mai in 2022, and it had a previous Valentine’s Day screening at Museum Siam in 2011. It was also shown at True Digital Park in 2022, and it had multiple screenings in 2018: at Bangkok Screening Room, Alliance Française, the Jam Factory, and House RCA.

Another Valentine’s-themed film programme, Fear Eat the Love, is taking place today at Bangkok University. An altogether racier Valentine’s film event, Erotica Love Film, was held in 2023.