RE:VERB —10 Classic Films That Linger

Bangkok’s House Samyan cinema has unveiled the next lineup for its ongoing House Classics season. The theme for the remainder of this year is RE:VERB — 10 Classic Films That Linger, with highlights including Sunset Boulevard in August, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (臥虎藏龍) in September, and One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest in October.

Affinities

The group exhibition Affinities at Nova Contemporary in Bangkok closes today. The exhibition, which opened on 26th April, features twenty-eight artists, though the clear highlight is Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook’s video The Treachery of the Moon.

Araya filmed herself sitting on a bench with her pet dogs, watching a lakorn (soap opera) on TV. Just past the half-way point in the video, news footage of various episodes of Thai political violence — including the 2010 crackdown on the red-shirts, and the 2004 Tak Bai tragedy — are projected onto the artist and the TV screen behind her.

The cycle of political violence in Thailand is as long-running and as repetitive as a soap opera, a point also made in Sanchai Chotirosseranee’s short film The Love Culprit. Stills from The Treachery of the Moon were first published in the Storytellers of the Town exhibition catalogue.

Chiang Mai Film Festival 2025Spirit of Local

The Chiang Mai Film Festival 2025 (เทศกาลหนังแห่งเมืองเชียงใหม่ 2568) will take place from 9th to 13th July at the Chiang Mai Cultural Centre. Exactly 100 short films have been selected, and highlights include Warat Bureephakdee’s Crazy Soft Power Love (screening on 10th July), Patipat Oakkharhaphunrat’s Black Hole (on 13th July), and Vichart Somkaew’s The Poem of the River (บทกวีแห่งสายน้ำ; on 11th July). This year’s theme is Spirit of Local (จิตวิญญาณแห่งท้องถิ่น).

Crazy Soft Power Love is a satire on the government’s soft power strategy, featuring a Songkran water fight that escalates into a brawl. In the surreal, black-and-white Black Hole, a young son discovers that his father, a corrupt military officer, has sold citizens’ digital data for personal gain. Both films include archive footage of the 6th October 1976 Thammasat University massacre.

The Poem of the River opens with a caption describing “a Royal Development Project, costing 100 million baht” to dredge the water from the Lai Phan canal in Phatthalung. The film juxtaposes tranquil images of the canal and its verdant, fertile banks — including some beautiful drone photography — with footage of the dredging process.

Crazy Soft Power Love and Black Hole were both previously shown at the fourth Amazing Stoner Movie Fest (มหัศจรรย์หนังผี ครั้งที่ 4). All three films were included in the Short Film Marathon 28 (หนังสั้นมาราธอน 28), and Black Hole was screened at The 27th Short Film and Video Festival (เทศกาลภาพยนตร์สั้น ครั้งที่ 27).

Crazy Soft Power Love has been screened at Can’t Stop Won’t Stop (ไปให้สุด หยุดไม่อยู่), White Love and White, and เทศกาลถนนศิลปะ ครั้งที่ 22 (‘the 22nd street art festival’). It was first shown at Wildtype 2024.

The Poem of the River has also been shown at the Isan Creative Festival 2025 (เทศกาลอีสานสร้างสรรค์). It had its Thai premiere as part of a mini retrospective of the director’s recent work, Vichart Movie Collection.

Donald Trump v. CBS:“The settlement does not include a statement of apology...”

Paramount, the parent company of CBS News, has reached an out-of-court settlement with Donald Trump, and will pay $16 million to a charity of his choice. The settlement was agreed yesterday, and Paramount noted that it did not include an admission of liability: “The settlement does not include a statement of apology or regret.” Trump sued CBS in 2024 — shortly before he won that year’s US presidential election — following an interview with former vice president Kamala Harris on the flagship 60 Minutes programme.

Trump had been seeking $20 billion in damages. The amount was completely unrealistic, but the entire case was equally dubious: his complaint was simply that CBS showed different portions of one of Harris’s answers in two different broadcasts. It’s common practice for TV networks to edit extended interviews for reasons of timing, using different clips and soundbites for various platforms or shows, yet Paramount has decided not to fight the case in court. It’s likely that the company wanted to avoid any rancour while the Trump administration is assessing its proposed merger with Skydance.

Harris was interviewed by CBS News correspondent Bill Whitaker, and clips from the interview were aired on Face the Nation on 5th October 2024. A longer version of the interview was broadcast on 60 Minutes on the following day. Harris was asked about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the lawsuit notes that “Kamala replies to Whitaker with her typical word salad” in the Face the Nation clip, while she “appears to reply to Whitaker with a completely different, more succinct answer” on 60 Minutes.

The Face the Nation clip shows Harris answering the question by saying: “Well, Bill, the work that we have done has resulted in a number of movements in that region by Israel that were very much prompted by or a result of many things, including our advocacy for what needs to happen in the region.” In the 60 Minutes segment, her answer is: “We are not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end.”

The lawsuit argued that the 60 Minutes interview was edited to make Harris appear more coherent. With his characteristic hyperbole, at a rally on 23rd October 2024 Trump said: “I think it’s the biggest scandal in broadcasting history.” CBS released a full transcript of the interview — something that Trump’s lawsuit had called for — which revealed that the Face the Nation clip was the first half of her answer to the question, and the 60 Minutes version was the second half of her answer to the same question.

Paramount’s settlement is another example of an American media company avoiding antagonising Trump in his second term. Similarly, ABC News settled a Trump defamation lawsuit in December last year, despite having a strong legal case.

Paetongtarn Shinawatra: “If you ask me whether I’m worried, I am...”

Thailand’s Constitutional Court has voted unanimously to accept a petition by thirty-six senators that accuses Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra of breaching ethical standards. The court also voted, by a 7–2 majority, to suspend Paetongtarn from office during its investigation. The petition was provoked by a leaked recording of Paetongtarn’s phone call to former Cambodian PM Hun Sen, in which the Thai leader seemed to side with Cambodia against her own military.

At a press conference yesterday, before the court voted to accept the petition against her, Paetongtarn said: “If you ask me whether I’m worried, I am.” She has good reason to be, as less than a year ago another group of senators successfully petitioned the Constitutional Court to dismiss her predecessor, Srettha Thavisin. Paetongtarn’s aunt Yingluck was also dismissed by the Constitutional Court, as were Samak Sundaravej and Somchai Wongsawat.

Apart from their run-ins with the court, there’s another connection between Paetongtarn, Srettha, Yingluck, Samak, and Somchai: they were all chosen as PM by Thaksin Shinawatra, who was barred from politics by the Constitutional Court in 2007. In fact, today’s announcement came the day after Thaksin attended the Criminal Court for a pre-trial hearing related to his lèse-majesté prosecution, so Thaksin and his daughter Paetongtarn now both have active legal cases against them. (Also, the Supreme Court is holding witness hearings while it considers the legality of Thaksin’s extended stay in hospital in 2023, when he avoided serving a jail sentence.)

In Thai politics over the last two decades, the same cycle has played out several times:

1. A prime minister makes an error of judgement.
2. This triggers street protests in Bangkok.
3. The protests escalate, disrupting an election.
4. This leads to political stalemate.
5. This establishes the conditions for a coup.
6. The military overthrows the government.

This process happened in 2006, when Thaksin sold his stake in Shin Corp., sparking the yellow-shirt protests that resulted in a coup. It was repeated in 2014, when protests against Yingluck’s political amnesty policy provoked another coup.

There are already signs that the cycle is beginning again, and anti-Shinawatra protest leaders are preparing to follow the same playbook. The Hun Sen phone call prompted a rally of more than 20,000 nationalist protesters at Victory Monument on 28th June, calling for Paetongtarn’s removal from office, and — if the past is any indicator — they’re likely to achieve their goal.

LeMan

Six members of staff working for the satirical Turkish magazine LeMan were detained by police in Istanbul yesterday, after a cartoon led to protests outside their offices. They are accused of violating article 216 of Turkey’s penal code, which covers insults against religion. Images of the cartoon were shared on social media, and a riot broke out; police fired rubber bullets and tear gas at around 300 demonstrators.

LeMan’s current issue (no. 1699), published on 26th July, includes a cartoon showing two men — one Muslim, the other Jewish — with angel’s wings. The men appear to represent civilian casualties on both sides of the Israel–Gaza war, and greet each other as bombs rain down around them. The Muslim character introduces himself as Muhammed, and the Jewish figure says his name is Musa. These are the Arabic versions of Mohammed and Moses — the most revered prophets in Islam and Judaism, respectively — though they are also common Arabic given names.

Islam forbids visual depictions of its prophets, though LeMan’s editor Tuncay Akgün told the AFP news agency: “This cartoon is not a caricature of the Prophet Mohammed... the name of a Muslim who was killed in the bombardments of Israel is fictionalised as Mohammed. More than 200 million people in the Islamic world are named Mohammed.”

Censorship in Turkey

LeMan was previously censored in 2016, when an issue was banned due to its cover illustration. In 2022, a Turkish singer was also charged with insulting religion, as was a Penguen cartoonist in 2011. Two cartoonists were charged with defamation after caricaturing former president Abdullah Gül in 2008.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has a long history of filing criminal charges against cartoonists and journalists, most recently in 2022. He has filed defamation charges against the newspaper Cumhuriyet (in 2004 and 2014), and the magazines Penguen (in 2014) and Nokta (in 2015). In 2006, he sued the artist Michael Dickinson over the collages Good Boy and Best in Show. In 2020, he filed charges against the French magazine Charlie Hebdo.

In 2016, Erdoğan sued a German comedian who recited a poem mocking him. The poem was read out in solidarity in the German parliament, and The Spectator launched an anti-Erdoğan poetry competition that was won by Boris Johnson. Ironically, Erdoğan himself was imprisoned in 1999 for reciting a poem: in a 1997 speech, he had quoted lines from a poem by Ziya Gökalp — “The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets, and the believers our soldiers” — and was sentenced to ten months in jail as a result.

Mohammed Cartoons

A Danish newspaper caused worldwide controversy in 2005 when it published a dozen caricatures of Mohammed. In response, many liberal newspapers and magazines in other countries printed their own Mohammed cartoons in solidarity. (The twelve Danish cartoons were reprinted by Charlie Hebdo in 2020, and Cherian George’s book Red Lines covers the Mohammed cartoon debate in considerable detail.)

Mohammed cartoons have been censored in Bangladesh, India, and Palestine. In France, a dozen staff at Charlie Hebdo were killed by terrorists in 2015, and the magazine’s offices were firebombed in 2011, after it published a series of offensive Mohammed cartoons, beginning in 2006. Barely a week after the 2015 terrorist attack, Charlie Hebdo published yet another front-page Mohammed cartoon.

From Oberhausen Manifesto to New German Cinema

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 Khontemporary in Khon Kaen this afternoon, 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.

The From Oberhausen Manifesto to New German Cinema programme was first shown at Bangkok Art and Culture Centre earlier this year. Aguirre, the Wrath of God was previously shown in 2020 at Bangkok Screening Room. The Oberhausen manifesto is reprinted in Film Manifestos and Global Cinema Cultures.

Glastonbury Festival 2025

In the UK, Avon and Somerset Police are investigating the punk duo Bob Vylan after their performance at the Glastonbury Festival yesterday. Bobby Vylan, the group’s front man, led the crowd in a chant of “death, death to the IDF”, a reference to the Israel Defense Forces. The police issued a statement on social media: “Video evidence will be assessed by officers to determine whether any offences may have been committed that would require a criminal investigation.”

Police are also examining video of the Irish rap group Kneecap’s performance at Glastonbury on the same day. On stage, Móglaí Bap called for fans to “start a riot” outside court when his fellow band member Mo Chara’s trial on terrorism charges begins. (A few minutes later, after realising that his comments could be construed as an incitement to violence, he explained that he wasn’t literally asking people to riot.)

Taklee Genesis

“Make sure we’re not forgotten.”
— Taklee Genesis

Chookiat Sakveerakul’s Taklee Genesis (ตาคลี เจเนซิส) will be shown at the Thai Film Archive in Salaya on 14th and 23rd July, as part of the พระเจ้าช้างเผือกและหนังเพื่อสันติภาพอื่นๆ (‘The King of the White Elephant and other peace films’) season. Taklee Genesis features time travel, dinosaurs, kaiju monsters, zombies, cavemen, the Cold War, a dystopian future, and the 6th October 1976 massacre at Thammasat University, all woven together into an ambitious sci-fi epic.

In a prologue that takes place in May 1992 (an unspoken reference to ‘Black May’), a young girl witnesses “dead bodies falling from the sky.” These are students who died during the Thammasat tragedy, their bodies teleported by the Taklee Genesis device, a time machine that can create alternate realities. As one character says: “Taklee Genesis was used to cover up a massacre.”

When the girl, Stella, grows up, she learns that her father was a CIA agent involved in the development of the Taklee Genesis. One of the project’s test subjects, Lawan, was transformed into a forest-dwelling spirit, like the monkey ghost in Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (ลุงบุญมีระลึกชาติ), another supernatural personification of the legacy of the Cold War.

Stella and her friend Kong use the Taklee Genesis to travel back in time to Thammasat on 6th October 1976, after Kong discovers that he is one of the massacre victims who fell from the sky. Chookiat recreates the violence of that day, showing Red Gaur militiamen gunning down students. A young boy stands alone on a balcony laughing at the carnage, in a reference to a smiling onlooker in a photograph by Neal Ulevich. (The artist Khai Maew created a model of the child, which he called Happy Boy.)

Thanks to the Taklee Genesis, Kong has the chance to fight back against the vigilantes who have stormed the campus. This fantasy scenario, in which a Thammasat victim is given the agency to tackle his potential killers, is similar to the alternate history narrative in Preecha Raksorn’s comic strip Once Upon a Time at..., in which the victim in Ulevich’s photograph escapes from his assailant.

Discussion of the Thammasat massacre was suppressed for years, not by the fictional Taklee Genesis device, but instead by successive military governments. Today, it’s primarily through photographs of the event, particularly the famous image by Ulevich, that the incident is remembered. In one of the film’s most powerful moments, Kong takes a roll of film from the camera of his Thammasat classmate and gives it to Stella, telling her: “Make sure we’re not forgotten.”

The Thammasat massacre is a notorious incident in Thailand’s modern history, though it has rarely been represented on screen. The 6th October scenes in Taklee Genesis are almost unprecedented: the only previous attempt to dramatise the brutality of the event was in the horror film Haunted Universities (มหาลัยสยองขวัญ), which was cut by the Thai film censors.

Jaws (4k blu-ray)

Steven Spielberg’s iconic blockbuster Jaws was first released fifty years ago, in 1975. The new fiftieth anniversary 4k blu-ray from Universal is a repackaging of the previous edition, though it does include one additional blu-ray disc: the new documentary Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story. The feature-length documentary was directed by Laurent Bouzereau, who made the excellent The Making of Jaws for the film’s ‘signature edition’ laserdisc in 1995. (Bouzereau also directed the superb The Making of Psycho for that film’s ‘signature edition’ laserdisc.)

Jaws @ 50 has an awkward title (surely the ‘@’ symbol wasn’t necessary?), but it includes new interviews with Spielberg, who is more open about the personal impact of Jaws than he has been in previous interviews. Its release on blu-ray came almost a month before its 10th July broadcast on the National Geographic Channel.

There have already been a handful of decent Jaws documentaries — Bouzereau’s in 1995, In the Teeth of Jaws from BBC2 in 1997, The Shark Is Still Working in 2007, and Jaws: The Inside Story from the Biography Channel in 2010 — but Jaws @ 50 still manages to present some previously unseen behind-the-scenes footage and new production anecdotes. (The Shark Is Still Working, which covers the film’s cult following in a bit too much detail, is included on recent Jaws blu-ray and 4k releases.)

Unfortunately, none of the many Jaws releases on DVD, blu-ray, and 4k — including the fiftieth anniversary edition — has ever featured a lossless version of the film’s original mono soundtrack. This means, incredibly, that the laserdisc’s PCM audio is still the best version of the film’s soundtrack. (Incidentally, the same is true for The Godfather and Taxi Driver: their laserdisc PCM tracks are also superior to the audio available on any DVD, blu-ray, or 4k discs.)

Doc Talk 05 Boundary

Doc Club’s Doc Talk series of discussions with documentary filmmakers continues next month with its fifth installment: Nontawat Numbenchapol’s controversial documentary Boundary (ฟ้าต่ำแผ่นดินสูง). The film will be shown at Thammasat University’s College of Innovation on 18th July, and Nontawat will take part in a Q&A after the screening.

Boundary documents the 2008 conflict between Thailand and Cambodia when the disputed Preah Vihear Temple was exploited for nationalist political gain. The issue was so sensitive that the director couldn’t even reveal his identity while filming at the temple. As he told me in an interview for Thai Cinema Uncensored: “I could not tell anyone in Cambodia that I’m Thai, because it would be hard to shoot. I had to tell everybody I’m Chinese-American... My name was Thomas in Cambodia.”

Boundary is composed largely of silent, still sequences depicting the serenity of rural life, as a counterpoint to the fierce border dispute surrounding the temple. Nontawat begins by interviewing Aod, a young soldier, in his home village. Idyllic sequences of novice monks bathing and Aod’s father fishing are contrasted with Aod describing his military conscription and the army’s crackdown against red-shirt protesters in 2010.

After footage of the Thai military firing at their Cambodian counterparts near Preah Vihear, we see damage to houses and a school close to the temple, caused by bombs and gunfire from Cambodian troops. Finally, at the end of the film, Nontawat’s camera explores the temple itself, the ruined Khmer compound that has been the subject of such bloodshed and ultra-nationalism.

Next month’s screening is especially timely, as another border dispute between Thailand and Cambodia is currently taking place. At a time when the Cambodian government is inflaming tensions, and nationalist groups in Thailand are exploiting the political crisis, Boundary represents a plea for de-escalation on both sides, and a reminder of the dangers of history repeating itself.

The film was previously shown at Lido Connect and Warehouse 30 in Bangkok in 2019, and its most recent screening was at the Thai Film Archive in Salaya earlier this year. It has been subject to censorship twice: it was cut before its theatrical release in 2013, and a screening in Chonburi was prohibited by the military in 2015. (Thai Cinema Uncensored discusses the censorship history of Boundary in much more detail.)

Hungry for Freedom

“Do we really have to starve to death, before we get bail?”
— Netiporn Sanesangkhom

Rachata Thongruay’s documentary Hungry for Freedom, a profile of political prisoners Netiporn Sanesangkhom and Nutthanit Duangmusit, will be shown at Artcade in Phayao on 28th July. The event, ความสูญเสียในโลกที่ไม่เคยหยุดเจ็บ (‘loss in a world that never stops hurting’), marks the closing of the Phayao Through Poster exhibition, and Nutthanit will take part in a Q&A after the screening.

Netiporn died of cardiac arrest last year, after going on a prolonged hunger strike to protest against the jailing of political protesters. A leader of the Thalu Wang protest group, she had been charged with lèse-majesté, and was released on bail only after a previous hunger strike of sixty-four days.

Rachata interviewed Netiporn and Nutthanit while they were out on bail after their initial hunger strike. Netiporn tells him: “I thought... do we really have to starve to death, before we get bail?” The film has had two previous Thai screenings: last year at Thammasat University’s Rangsit campus, and earlier this year at Bangkok Art and Culture Centre during the Remembering Her, Remember Us (“บุ้ง เนติพร” วันที่เธอหายไป) event.

Sony TR-610

Sony released its TR-610 transistor radio in 1958, and sold around 500,000 of them — an unprecedented international success for the company. This was the product that established Sony as a world-leader in consumer electronics, a position it retained for the next forty years. Sony’s TR-610 was also the first truly pocket-sized radio, meaning that — two decades before the Walkman — consumers could carry around a personal audio device.

The transistor itself, and the first transistor radio, were American inventions, though Sony (and, shortly afterwards, other Japanese manufacturers) quickly overtook the US in transistor radio development. The TR-610 set the standard for all subsequent transistor radios, and its iconic design was imitated by dozens of other electronics companies: it’s the quintessential portable radio.

“Opposition to the Thai government, such as the 2nd Army Region commander...”

A leaked recording of a phone call between Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra and former Cambodian leader Hun Sen is putting Paetongtarn under intense pressure. During the conversation, she criticised Boonsin Padklang, a regional military commander: “As for the opposition to the Thai government, such as the 2nd Army Region commander, he could say anything that doesn’t benefit the country — anything just to make himself look cool”.

There is an active border dispute between Thailand and Cambodia, and Boonsin commands troops in Thailand’s northeastern region, which includes the Thai–Cambodia border. In the phone call, Paetongtarn appears to side with Cambodia against her own military, and seems to accept Cambodia’s conditions to resolve the dispute. This doesn’t bode well for Pheu Thai, considering the military’s history of political interventions and the prominent nationalist sentiment in Thailand — a new alliance of yellow-shirt and disaffected red-shirt protesters, including รวมพลังแผ่นดิน (‘unite the land’) and the Thailand Watch Foundation, have announced a rally on 28th June at Victory Monument.

The phone call took place on 15th June. A nine-minute extract was leaked online yesterday, and the Cambodian government then released the complete seventeen-minute recording. Anutin Charnvirakul has used the controversy as a pretext to withdraw his Bhumjaithai party from the coalition government. (Bhumjaithai joined the coalition in 2023. There had already been credible rumours that Anutin would quit, as he was likely to be replaced as Minister of the Interior in an upcoming cabinet reshuffle.)

A previous government, also backed by Paetongtarn’s father Thaksin, faced similar accusations of disloyalty in 2008 over another territorial dispute with Cambodia. At that time, People Power Party foreign minister Noppadon Pattama endorsed Cambodia’s ownership of the Preah Vihear Temple, and was forced to resign after the Constitutional Court ruled that he had acted unanimously.

Rewind: A Brief History of Leaked Tapes

In 2013, Thaksin himself was caught out by a leaked recording of his private conversation with Yuthasak Sasiprapha, who was deputy defence minister at the time. (It became known as the ‘cordyceps tape’, as the two men discussed the health benefits of eating this fungus.) Neither Thaksin nor Yuthasak has confirmed that the recording is genuine, though it’s widely believed to be authentic. It was broadcast by ASTV, and a transcript appears in Wad Rawee’s book Old Soldiers Never Die, Old Royalists Die (โอลด์รอยัลลิสต์ดาย).

Last year, in leaked audio of a conversation between Palang Pracharath Party leader Prawit Wongsuwon and an unidentified man, Prawit could be heard complaining that he had not yet become prime minister: “I want the people to give me a chance to be the number one.” Former PM Abhisit Vejjajiva was the victim of a fake audio clip in 2009: in the recording, he appeared to call for the suppression of red-shirt demonstrators “using all forms of violence”, though the tape was later revealed to be a hoax.

In the US and UK, there have been some notorious leaked recordings of private conversations. The most consequential of all was the ‘smoking gun’ tape that led to Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1974. British tabloids reported on the so-called ‘Camillagate’, ‘Dianagate’, ‘bastardgate’, and ‘Majorgate’ tapes in the early 1990s and, a few years later, Linda Tripp’s surreptitious tapes of her phone calls with Monica Lewinsky were used as evidence of Lewinsky’s affair with Bill Clinton.

Two of the biggest scandals of US President Donald Trump’s first term were related to leaked conversations. American presidential elections are often preceded by an ‘October surprise’ — a last-minute revelation — and one of 2016’s October surprises was the infamous recording of Trump boasting to TV anchor Billy Bush about groping women: “Grab ’em by the pussy.” Trump was impeached in 2020 after a transcript of his phone call to President Zelensky of Ukraine showed that he had tried to pressure Zelensky into digging up dirt on Joe Biden in exchange for military aid (“I would like you to do us a favour, though”).

Ghosts: Confronting the Dead in Thailand

Ulf Svane and Paul McBain’s new documentary Ghosts: Confronting the Dead in Thailand includes an interview with Thongchai Winichakul filmed at Thammasat University. Dozens of students at Thammasat were killed on 6th October 1976, and Thongchai is Thailand’s foremost authority on the history of that brutal event. (He has written about it extensively, including in his English-language book Moments of Silence.)

In the documentary, Thongchai discusses Thammasat’s notorious ‘red elevator’, which — according to legend — is haunted by victims of the 1976 attack. There are unlikely to be genuine apparitions haunting the lift, though such tales of ghosts are a reminder of the spectre of history: Thongchai stresses the need to “confront the ghost, or talk about the ghost”, in order to come to terms with traumatic historical events.

Ghosts is the latest of more than fifty films that refer to 6th October 1976. Previously, the Thammasat elevator inspired the horror film Haunted Universities (มหาลัยสยองขวัญ), which was censored to remove dramatisations of the violence that took place on that day. Also, a photograph of the elevator doors, titled Half Day Closing, was part of filmmaker Taiki Sakpisit’s exhibition Dark Was the Night (ผีพุ่งไต้).

It’s about Time:Performing between the Past and Tomorrow in Chulayarnnon Siriphol’s I a Pixel, We the People

Chulayarnnon Siriphol’s exhibition I a Pixel, We the People (ข้าพเจ้าคือพิกเซล, พวกเราคือประชาชน) will close later this month, and the artist took part in a Q&A session with Sam I-shan at BangkokCityCity Gallery yesterday. The event was titled It’s about Time: Performing between the Past and Tomorrow in Chulayarnnon Siriphol’s I a Pixel, We the People, named after an essay on Chulayarnnon’s work published by the gallery.

Chulayarnnon spoke about the two phases of his artistic career. His early short films were more personal, whereas his work became more overtly political following the Ratchaprasong crackdown in 2010: “it quite changed my life when the Thailand political crisis came, about 2010”. This aligns him with the “Post-Ratchaprasong art” movement identified by the journal Read (อ่าน; vol. 3, no. 2), and he made a similar comment in an interview for Thai Cinema Uncensored, explaining when he “turned to be interested in the political situation.”

In the Q&A, Chulayarnnon also discussed the consequences of the political climate for artists: “self-censorship is still existing: for me, sometimes I did that.” He contrasted the student protests of 2020 and 2021 — when Thai artists were more blunt in their political satire — with the current atmosphere: “for now, we need thought-provoking [art], but no need to be hardcore”. He also highlighted the threats that “hardcore” artists face: “I don’t want to be in jail, but I respect them.”

Sam I-shan’s essay booklet is twenty-four pages long, and has been published in a limited edition of twenty-four copies (each with a unique cover photos), reflecting the twenty-four-hour duration of Chulayarnnon’s video installation. The author identifies subtle political metaphors in the exhibition: she notes that the day-long running time “might parallel the cyclical nature of Thai politics,” and she argues that the piles of clothes in the gallery space “stand for all people disenfranchised by... Thailand’s political system, with some of these bodies literally absent, having been imprisoned, exiled, disappeared or killed.”

Paris Match

French magazine Paris Match has agreed to pay Gisèle Pelicot €40,000 in damages for invasion of privacy. Pelicot sued the magazine after it published paparazzi photographs of her in its 17th April issue (no. 3963). The settlement was confirmed on the eve of the court case, which was due to begin yesterday, and Pelicot will donate the money to charity.

Pelicot’s former husband was convicted on multiple charges last year, after systematically drugging her and allowing other men to rape her, in a case that shocked the country. Considering the trauma she went through, splashing her photo on Paris Match’s front page was clearly insensitive.

Famously, almost thirty years ago, Paris Match published an unauthorised photograph of former French president François Mitterrand on his deathbed (in its 18th January 1996 issue, no. 2434). The magazine was also censured after it printed CCTV images of a 2016 Bastille Day attack in Nice.

Privacy is generally respected by the French media, with the exception of celebrity magazines such as Paris Match, Closer, and Voici. Prince William and Kate Middleton won damages from Closer after it printed topless photos of Middleton in 2012. George and Amal Clooney sued Voici in 2017. Valerie Trierweiler sued Closer in both 2012 and 2014. Also in 2014, Julie Gayer sued Closer, and Aurelie Filippetti won damages from the magazine.

Justin Baldoni v. The New York Times

As expected, actor and director Justin Baldoni’s defamation lawsuit against The New York Times has been dismissed, after judge Lewis Liman concluded that the NYT’s coverage of Blake Lively’s allegations of sexual harassment against him was not biased. The judge wrote: “the Times reviewed the available evidence and reported, perhaps in a dramatized manner, what it believed to have happened. The Times had no obvious motive to favor Lively’s version of events.”

Baldoni had been seeking $250 million in libel damages from the NYT, after it published details of Lively’s complaints against him. But it reported Lively’s claims accurately, based on court documents, so Baldoni’s lawsuit was bound to fail: whether her allegations were true or not, it’s not libellous to report them. (Baldoni filed his legal action sixty years after a 1964 Supreme Court decision required proof of ‘actual malice’ in libel lawsuits against public figures, in a case that also involved the NYT.)

Pain(t)ing

Today is the final day of the Pain(t)ing thesis exhibition at Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, featuring work by students from the Poh-Chang Academy of Arts. The exhibition opened on 27th May.

One of the highlights is Narissara Duangkhun’s No War but the Class War no. 4, a satirical commentary on contemporary Thai politics. The painting includes a depiction of a Reuters photograph taken thirty years ago during the notorious Tak Bai incident in 2004. Narissara’s work resembles that of Navin Rawanchaikul (albeit on a smaller scale), with its dense, brightly coloured collage of wide-ranging visual references. Her painting also features a slot machine displaying ‘112’, a reference to the lèse-majesté law, which is article 112 of the Thai criminal code.

Serving...

Miriana Conte’s song Kant was selected as Malta’s entry for this year’s Eurovision Song Contest, though the singer was forced to change the title and lyrics, as ‘kant’ (the Maltese word for ‘singing’) was deemed too phonetically close to ‘cunt’. The song was a pun on the c-word, with its chorus of “Serving kant” sounding almost exactly like ‘serving cunt’. For the Eurovision TV broadcast, its title was changed to Serving, and the word ‘kant’ was dropped from the lyrics.

The c-word is becoming increasingly common in contemporary pop lyrics, thanks to the influence of ballroom drag culture. RuPaul’s Drag Race popularised ballroom terms such as ‘serving’, and used ‘cunt’ as an acronym for ‘charisma, uniqueness, nerve, and talent’, to describe drag queen qualities. Drag artist Kevin Aviance’s single Cunty was sampled by Beyoncé on her song Pure/Honey in 2022, and this year Marina released her single Cuntissimo, a feminist anthem from her album Princess of Power.

Veronica Electronica

Madonna will release a collection of remixes, Veronica Electronica, on 25th July. The new vinyl EP is named after her alter ego from the Ray of Light era, and it contains remixes of songs from that critically acclaimed album.

Veronica Electronica also includes one previously unreleased song, Gone, Gone, Gone (in a demo version). But it’s easy to see why the song was originally rejected: it’s a ballad (with simplistic lyrics) set to an inappropriate drum and bass track.

Veronica Electronica is one of several named alter egos Madonna has used at various stages of her career. Erotica begins with the line “My name is Dita”, a persona she also adopted in her book Sex. She performed Material Girl on her Blond Ambition tour as Gladys, wearing a bathrobe, and she played a character called Louise Oriole in the video for her single Bad Girl. She styled herself Madame X — complete with an eyepatch — for her most recent studio album.

Veronica Electronica features seven remixed tracks: Drowned World/Substitute for Love, Ray of Light, Skin, Nothing Really Matters, Sky Fits Heaven, Frozen, and The Power of Good-Bye. But unfortunately, most of them are edited versions, like those on her dance remix albums Finally Enough Love and 50 Number Ones.

“Salacious and defamatory accusations...”

Music producer Russell Simmons has filed a defamation lawsuit against HBO and the makers of the documentary On the Record, which features interviews with women who have accused him of sexual assault. He is seeking $20 million in damages.

On the Record (directed by Kirby Dick and Amy Zieling) premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on 25th January 2020, and was released on the HBO Max streaming platform later that year (on 27th May). The lawsuit describes the documentary as “a film that tremendously disparaged and damaged Mr. Simmons with salacious and defamatory accusations”.

Simmons is one of three disgraced figures from the music industry currently suing filmmakers who have exposed accusations of sexual misconduct, and all three men stand very little chance of winning their libel cases. Chris Brown filed a libel lawsuit in January, as did Sean Combs. Combs, better known as Diddy and Puff Daddy, has since filed another libel lawsuit: he is seeking $100 million in damages over allegations of sexual assault in the documentary Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy, which was released on NBC’s Peacock streaming service on 14th January.

Justin Baldoni v. The New York Times

A high-profile celebrity lawsuit was dismissed yesterday after Blake Lively withdrew her claims of emotional distress against Justin Baldoni, her co-star in the film It Ends with Us. Lively had filed a suit against Baldoni, who also directed the film, on 20th December last year, and the document was immediately leaked to the The New York Times, which published a lengthy article about the case on its website the following day.

The article, headlined “Alleged Effort To Strike Back At Star Actress”, appeared in the NYT’s print edition on 23rd December. It included extracts from text messages sent between publicists Jennifer Abel and Melissa Nathan, suggesting that they were attempting to smear Lively and protect Baldoni’s reputation. One message, sent by Nathan, said: “You know we can bury anyone”. (This was used as the article’s online headline.) The article included a disclaimer that “messages have been edited for length”, and Baldoni sued the newspaper on New Year’s Eve arguing that the messages had been “stripped of necessary context and deliberately spliced to mislead”.

Lively’s claims against Baldoni, which included extensive allegations of sexual harassment, were criticised on social media, in the same way that Amber Heard’s reputation was trashed online after her allegations against Johnny Depp. Baldoni’s defamation lawsuit against the NYT, seeking $250 million in damages, is unlikely to proceed to trial: on 4th March, judge Lewis Liman noted that the newspaper had demonstrated “substantial grounds for dismissal”, and that “its motion to dismiss is likely to succeed on the merits.”

SpotlightSpy in the IRA

A jury at the High Court in Dublin has awarded Gerry Adams €100,000 in damages after a month-long libel trial. Adams had sued the BBC over its documentary Spy in the IRA, in which an anonymous source — identified only by the first name Martin — accused Adams of authorising the IRA’s killing of Denis Donaldson in 2006.

In the programme, reporter Jennifer O’Leary said: “Martin believes that the shooting of Denis Donaldson was sanctioned by the man at the top of the republican movement, Gerry Adams.” When O’Leary asked Martin, “Who are you specifically referring to?”, he answered: “Gerry Adams. He gives the final say.” The programme followed this reply with a disclaimer stating that Adams insisted he “had no knowledge of, and no involvement whatsoever, in Denis Donaldson’s killing.”

Spy in the IRA, an episode in the investigative series Spotlight, was broadcast on 20th September 2016 on BBC1 in Northern Ireland, and repeated on BBC2 in Northern Ireland the following day. During the libel trial, O’Leary testified that she had corroborated Martin’s claim with five other sources — this suggests responsible, well-informed journalism, not bias. When he gave evidence at the trial, Adams denied under oath ever having been a member of the IRA, though his status as a former senior IRA leader is common knowledge among journalists and historians.

It’s conceivable that some members of the jury were from generations who came of age after the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, and have no personal recollection of the era known as ‘the Troubles’, during which Adams was certainly not regarded as a peacemaker. Also, it’s highly likely that Adams benefited from his decision to bring the case in the Republic of Ireland rather than Northern Ireland, to ensure a more sympathetic jury.

Another alleged former IRA member has also launched a libel suit in relation to a different unsolved murder. Marian Price is suing the makers of the TV series Say Nothing, a dramatisation of the IRA’s 1972 abduction and killing of Jean McConville. Although noone has been convicted of McConville’s murder, the drama shows her being shot by Price.

The shooting takes place in Say Nothing’s final episode, titled The People in the Dirt, directed by Michael Lennox. The episode ends with a written disclaimer stating that Price “denies any involvement in the murder of Jean McConville.” The series was released on the Hulu and Disney+ streaming services on 14th November last year.

Yingluck Shinawatra: “10 billion baht is impossible for me to repay...”

Thailand’s Supreme Administrative Court has ordered former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra to pay ฿10 billion ($300 million) to the Ministry of Finance, in recompense for losses incurred by her government’s rice subsidy policy. The verdict overturns an earlier judgement from the Central Administrative Court, and also seems to contradict a prior ruling by the Supreme Court.

Yesterday’s announcement from the Supreme Administrative Court came on the eleventh anniversary of the coup that deposed Yingluck in 2014. Writing on Facebook, Yingluck challenged the judgement and said: “The debt of 10 billion baht is impossible for me to repay in a lifetime”.

Starting in 2011, Yingluck’s Pheu Thai government bought rice from farmers at up to 50% above the market rate, intending to withhold it from the world market and thus drive up the price. The result, however, was that other countries such as India and Vietnam increased their rice exports, the government was left with vast stockpiles of rice that it could not sell, and therefore it could not pay the farmers for the rice they had supplied.

Charges relating to Yingluck’s role in the rice scheme were originally filed by the National Anti-Corruption Commission in 2014. As a result, she was impeached in 2015, and the Attorney General launched a criminal investigation into charges of dereliction of duty. Ultimately, the Supreme Court sentenced her to five years in prison, though she fled the country before the verdict was announced.

In 2016, the Ministry of Finance ordered Yingluck to repay ฿37.5 billion ($1 billion), though she appealed against that decision and her appeal was granted by the Central Administrative Court on 30th March 2021. That appeal verdict was quashed yesterday by the Supreme Administrative Court, though Yingluck’s fine was reduced to ฿10 billion.

The Supreme Court case related specifically to contracts for rice sales to private Chinese companies, arranged by the Thai Ministry of Commerce, which were falsely designated as non-competitive government-to-government deals. In its 2017 judgement against Yingluck, the Supreme Court ruled that she was aware that the government-to-government deals were fraudulent, though — in contrast to yesterday’s Supreme Administrative Court verdict — it did not hold her personally accountable for the financial losses incurred.

“This is a carnival of distraction...”

Mo Chara, a member of the Irish rap group Kneecap, has been charged with a terrorism offence, and will appear at Westminster Magistrates Court in London on 18th June. The charge relates to a concert in London on 21st November last year, at the O2 Forum Kentish Town during the band’s final show on their Fine Art Tour, when Chara appeared on stage draped in the Hezbollah flag. Hezbollah is classified as a terrorist group under UK law, and yesterday the Metropolitan Police charged Chara with displaying the flag “in such a way or in such circumstances as to arouse reasonable suspicion that he is a supporter of a proscribed organisation”.

Kneecap published a collective written statement via their Instagram account today, saying: “We deny this ‘offence’ and will vehemently defend ourselves.” The band also accused the Met of political bias: “This is political policing. This is a carnival of distraction.” Their new single The Recap begins with a clip of a newsreader announcing that “counter-terrorism police will investigate the rap trio Kneecap”.

Isan Creative Festival 2025

Two of Vichart Somkaew’s short films will be shown at this year’s Isan Creative Festival (เทศกาลอีสานสร้างสรรค์) in Khon Kaen. The Letter from Silence (จดหมายจากความเงียบ) and The Poem of the River (บทกวีแห่งสายน้ำ) will be screened as part of the Isan Cinema House programme on 28th June.

The festival runs from 28th June to 6th July. Koraphat Cheeradit’s short film Yesterday Is Another Day was one of the highlights of last year’s event.

The Letter from Silence and The Poem of the River were both included in last year’s Short Film Marathon (หนังสั้นมาราธอน). The Poem of the River was also shown at Hat Yai last year. The Letter from Silence has also been screened at The 28th Thai Short Film and Video Festival (เทศกาลภาพยนตร์สั้น ครั้งที่ 28), Resonance of Revolt, and Save It with Our Eyes.

The Letter from Silence features extracts from letters by lawyer and pro-democracy campaigner Arnon Nampa to his family, written while he serves a prison sentence for lèse-majesté. Arnon’s letters are often heartbreaking, as he faces the prospect of many years in jail if convicted on further charges, separated from his wife and their two young children.

The film is silent, except for ambient sounds recorded at night in a quiet neighbourhood. It avoids the explanatory captions of Vichart’s previous documentaries 112 News from Heaven and Cremation Ceremony (ประวัติย่อของบางสิ่งที่หายไป), instead letting Arnon’s words stand alone. This makes the film all the more powerful, and emphasises the hopelessness of Arnon’s situation.

The Letter from Silence’s focus on Arnon’s letters themselves has echoes of another short film with a similar title, Prap Boonpan’s Letter from the Silence (จดหมายจากความเงียบ). Prap’s film documented the suicide note left by Nuamthong Praiwan, who had protested against the 2006 coup by crashing his taxi into a tank.

The Poem of the River opens with a caption describing “a Royal Development Project, costing 100 million baht” to dredge the water from the Lai Phan canal in Phatthalung. The film juxtaposes tranquil images of the canal and its verdant, fertile banks — including some beautiful drone photography — with footage of the dredging process. (The effect is similar to Yesterday Is Another Day, in which scenes set in a woodland are interrupted by shots of a JCB digging up the area.)

Pink Flamingos: A Screenplay

“Filth is my politics, filth is my life!”
— Babs Johnson

The script for Pink Flamingos, by John Waters, was published this month as Pink Flamingos: A Screenplay. (It was previously available as part of Trash Trio and Pink Flamingos and Other Filth, collections of three Waters screenplays.) The script begins with a note of self-deprecation, describing “the atrocious voice of the Narrator” — the film was narrated by Waters himself. It ends with a description of the film’s infamous final sequence, involving what was intended to be “a Hungarian sheepdog.”

Pink Flamingos is a masterpiece of bad taste. On its first release in 1972, it was described as obscene and compared to Luis Buñuel’s notoriously shocking silent film Un chien andalou (‘an Andalusian dog’). It remains the ultimate example of transgressive cinema, breaking every cultural taboo, and it’s been shown twice in Thailand: in 2017 at the Bad Taste Café in Bangkok, and in 2023 at the Thai Film Archive in Salaya.

Screenprints: A History

Screenprinting is a relatively recent technique, when compared to other forms of printmaking such as engraving, aquatints, monotypes, and lithography. Even the term ‘screenprint’ itself has not yet been standardised, as it’s used synonymously with ‘serigraph’ and ‘silkscreen’.

There have been several general histories of printmaking, including Six Centuries of Fine Prints (by Carl Zigrosser, who coined the term ‘serigraph’) and Prints (co-written by Richard S. Field, who curated the Silkscreen exhibition in 1971). Also, Fritz Eichenberg’s monumental The Art of the Print has chapters on screenprinting. But it was only this year that the first history of screenprinting as an artistic medium was published.

Screenprints: A History, by Gill Saunders, traces the origins of screenprinting to Japanese katagami and French pochoir stencilling techniques. The book also covers artists such as Andy Warhol, who produced Pop Art screenprints with Chris Prater, the printer who was “almost single-handedly responsible for the metamorphosis of screenprinting into a fine art.” Eduardo Paolozzi collaborated with Prater on a dozen screenprints titled As Is When, described by Saunders as “the medium’s first masterpiece.”

Screenprints is a comprehensive history of its subject. Published by Thames and Hudson, it’s also elegantly designed and typeset. Most, though not all, of its illustrations are from the Victoria and Albert Museum collection, and the book is the first in an annual V&A series covering the histories of individual printmaking techniques. Given the high standard set by this first book, the others — on linocuts, etchings, and woodcuts, forthcoming over the next three years — are now eagerly anticipated.

Bitch: The Journey of a Word

“If bitch is to be reclaimed, only women can reclaim the word. But reclamation isn’t the answer for everyone... we have to concede that bitch hasn’t been entirely rehabilitated. But we have to acknowledge its fluidity. Bitch is a flexible word that can be both good and bad. For centuries, bitch was an insult. In recent decades, some women have adopted bitch as an empowering label. Others reject the word. Bitch is battling a long history of invective use and many simply don’t like the word and don’t want to reclaim it.”
— Bitch

Karen Stollznow’s Bitch: The Journey of a Word, published last year, is a fascinating cultural history of ‘bitch’. The book covers changing social attitudes towards the word, and feminist efforts to reappropriate it: “Taking control of the word and turning the definition on its head, bitch got a feminist facelift, becoming a descriptor for an ambitious, independent, and strong woman.”

It was Jo Freeman, in The Bitch Manifesto, who launched the first campaign to reclaim ‘bitch’: “A woman should be proud to declare she is a Bitch, because Bitch is Beautiful. It should be an act of affirmation by self and not negation by others.” (The Bitch Manifesto first appeared in a 1970 anthology of feminist theory, alongside Kate Millett’s essay Sexual Politics.) The word’s reclamation went mainstream in the 1990s, when Bitch became the title of a long-running feminist magazine and a hit Meredith Brooks single.

Stollznow’s book is well researched and comprehensive, though it does become quite repetitive. For example, she poses the same question at least three times: “Has bitch truly been rehabilitated to mean something wholly positive? Can bitch be reclaimed... should it be?... Has bitch been — can it be — reclaimed?... Can bitch ever be fully reclaimed? The truth is that it probably won’t be.”

Also, when it comes to answering this question, Stollznow tends to sit on the fence: “Of course, there are ongoing attempts to reclaim bitch, to take out its sting. There is also much backlash against this reclamation, which will likely continue too... Some people will continue to try to reclaim the word. But for others, bitch isn’t reclaimed, and can’t be, because of its considerable baggage.” Ultimately, she concludes that the word’s reappropriation must be universal before it can be effective: “Unfortunately, the ways women try to reclaim bitch do not diminish its stigmatizing power in the hands of others, and especially men.”

Sluts: The Truth about Slutshaming and What We Can Do to Fight It

Beth Ashley’s Sluts: The Truth about Slutshaming and What We Can Do to Fight It, published last year, is the latest in a series of feminist books about the misogynistic term ‘slut’. It follows This Is What a Feminist Slut Looks Like, a 2015 account of the SlutWalk movement, and Wordslut, a 2019 guide to reclaiming sexist language.

Ashley writes about the social and linguistic stigmatisation of promiscuous women, but can ‘slut’ ever be reappropriated as a positive term? She explains that reclamation is not straightforward: “There is immense power in taking ownership of language traditionally used against you. Many people see this as an act of strength, handing it back to the people who’ve been originally hurt by the words. But it’s important to note that not everyone is there yet... ‘Slut’ is a difficult word for a lot of us. That’s no surprise. It has heavy connotations and a painful history; it’s loaded with stigma.”

Ultimately, Ashley concludes that reappropriating ‘slut’ is both desirable and achievable: “Personally, I want to reclaim the word... I believe that if we shout it loud enough, the term could eventually become used in the right way. For me and many others, taking back the word slut is a powerful, rebellious thing to do. It allows people to exercise freedom, release themselves from shame, cope with past trauma and celebrate their sexuality.”

Ashley cites Bikini Kill singer Kathleen Hanna, who wrote ‘SLUT’ on her stomach in the early 1990s, as a trailblazer of reclamation. But there are other women who have also self-identified as sluts. Madonna, for example, named her video company Slutco in the 1980s and, writing in The Sunday Times (24th August 2003), Kate Spicer argued: “A fashionable woman can take those phallocentric terms of abuse like slut and slag and nasty girl and turn them into labels of postfeminist fabulousness”. The issue was even covered by Sex and the City, in an episode titled Are We Sluts? (“Are we simply romantically challenged or are we sluts?”)

Germaine Greer’s pioneering 1971 article I Am a Whore, published in the underground press magazine Suck (no. 6), laid the groundwork for all subsequent feminist writing on ‘slut’ and similar pejoratives. Greer argued that, rather than using ‘whore’ as an insult, “you’ve got to come out the other way around and make whore a sacred word like it used to be and it still can be”. (Her biographer, Christine Wallace, fundamentally misread Greer’s argument, writing that “it takes a truly eccentric and bizarre kind of feminism for one to identify as a prostitute”.)

ความรุนแรง (ต้อง) ไม่ลอยนวล (‘violence (must not be) unpunished’)

Next week, artefacts related to political violence will be displayed at Sappaya-Sapasathan, Thailand’s parliament building in Bangkok. The exhibition, ความรุนแรง (ต้อง) ไม่ลอยนวล, has been organised by the parliamentary Committee on Legal Affairs, Justice, and Human Rights. Its title translates as ‘violence (must not be) unpunished’, emphasising the lack of legal consequences for political violence, and the injustice of such impunity.

Items on display will include a ฿100 banknote retrieved from the body of a sixteen-year-old boy, Imron, a victim of the Tak Bai tragedy. Two bloodstained shirts will also be displayed: a red t-shirt worn by Payu Boonsophon (who was blinded in one eye by a rubber bullet while protesting near the APEC summit in 2022), and a white shirt worn by another protester, Sirawith Seritiwat (who was attacked by thugs in 2019). The exhibition will also feature rubber bullet casings and tear gas canisters fired by riot police at Din Daeng in 2021. Most of the artefacts are from the collection of the Museum of Popular History.

The exhibition runs from 19th to 25th May. Imron’s banknote — one of seventeen personal belongings of Tak Bai victims in the collection of the Deep South Museum and Archives — was previously included in the Heard the Unheard (สดับเสียงเงียบ) exhibition in 2023. Last year, the seventeen items were also shown at exhibitions in Bangkok and Narathiwat.

Payu and Sirawith’s shirts were previously part of the Evidences of Resistance [sic] (วัตถุพยานแห่งการต่อต้าน) exhibition at Thammasat University’s Museum of Anthropology, from 20th February to 26th May 2023. Sirawith’s shirt has also been shown at the Murdered Justice (วิสามัญยุติธรรม) and Never Again (หยุด ย่ำ ซ้ำ เดิน) exhibitions.

Evidences of Resistance was held in room 112 of the museum, in a coded reference to the lèse-majesté law, which is article 112 of the Thai criminal code. Similarly, the film Arnold Is a Model Student (อานนเป็นนักเรียนตัวอย่าง) featured a table labelled ‘112’ in a school computer lab. The play Wilderness (รักดงดิบ) included a recipe stating that food should “dry in the sun for 112 hours”. The catalogue for Wittawat Tongkeaw’s exhibition Re/Place cost ฿112, and some of his paintings measure 112cm². Two poetry books — เหมือนบอดใบ้ไพร่ฟ้ามาสุดทาง (‘we subjects, as if mute and blind, have found ourselves at the end of the line’) and ราษฎรที่รักทั้งหลาย (‘dear citizens’) — were each priced ฿112. Elevenfinger’s single Land of Compromise was released at 1:12pm. The documentary 112 News from Heaven features 112 headlines from a 112-day period, and 112 photographic portraits.

Remembering Her, Remember Us

“Do we really have to starve to death, before we get bail?”
— Netiporn Sanesangkhom

Exactly a year ago, Netiporn Sanesangkhom died of cardiac arrest after going on a prolonged hunger strike to protest against the jailing of political protesters. Netiporn — a leader of the Thalu Wang protest group — was charged with lèse-majesté, and had been released on bail only after a previous hunger strike of sixty-four days. Today, on the first anniversary of her death, Netiporn is being commemorated at Remembering Her, Remember Us (“บุ้ง เนติพร” วันที่เธอหายไป), an all-day event at Bangkok Art and Culture Centre.

Rachata Thongruay’s half-hour documentary Hungry for Freedom, about Netiporn and her fellow hunger striker Nutthanit Duangmusit, will be shown as part of the event. Rachata interviewed Netiporn and Nutthanit while they were out on bail after their initial hunger strike. Netiporn tells him: “I thought... do we really have to starve to death, before we get bail?”

This will be the film’s second screening in Thailand; it was previously shown on 10th November 2024 at the House of Wisdom community space on Thammasat University’s Rangsit campus. A large portrait of Netiporn was included in last year’s Murdered Justice (วิสามัญยุติธรรม) exhibition, held at BACC just a week after her death.

Netiporn and Nutthanit conducted public opinion polls, asking people to vote with coloured stickers whether they supported or opposed lèse-majesté prosecutions. It was this activity that resulted in lèse-majesté charges against the pair, though two of their sticker boards are on display at Remembering Her, Remember Us. (Murdered Justice featured a similarly controversial exhibit: the t-shirt worn by Tiwagorn Withiton that led to lèse-majesté charges against him.)

Hungry for Freedom is one of several documentaries that focus on individual protesters. We Need to Talk About อานนท์ (‘we need to talk about Arnon’) and The Letter from Silence (จดหมายจากความเงียบ), both released last year, are about Arnon Nampa. The Cost of Freedom — which was screened in New York in 2023, but has not yet been shown in Thailand — is about Panusaya Sithjirawattanakul.