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.

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, Patipat Oakkharhaphunrat’s Black Hole, and Vichart Somkaew’s The Poem of the River (บทกวีแห่งสายน้ำ). 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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.)

“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.”

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.

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.

The Scars of War

The Thai Film Archive in Salaya has programmed a season of war films running from yesterday until the end of this month. The season, The Scars of War (สงครามและบาดแผล), includes two screenings of Nontawat Numbenchapol’s controversial documentary Boundary (ฟ้าต่ำแผ่นดินสูง), on 6th and 25th May.

Boundary documents the 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 was previously shown at Lido Connect and Warehouse 30 in Bangkok in 2019. The film 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.)

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. The video projections are surrounded by large piles of old clothing, hoarded by the artist’s family.

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. I a Pixel, We the People begins with an extract from his short film Birth of Golden Snail (กำเนิดหอยทากทอง), before documenting the processs by which that film was banned from the Thailand Biennale. The first episode of I a Pixel, We the People likens the ban to the golden snail being “aborted while still in his shell”. (This metaphor can be traced back to a 2018 Dateline Bangkok post.)

Photographs from a meeting between Chulayarnnon and the Office of Contemporary Art and Culture, the organisation that banned Birth of Golden Snail, are accompanied by captions describing the OCAC’s criticisms of that film, followed by records of emails and phone calls with OCAC officials and exhibition curators. There is also footage of a secret 1st November 2018 screening of the film in Krabi, on the eve of the Biennale. (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, the snail 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.

I a Pixel, We the People also acts as a recontextualised retrospective of Chulayarnnon’s video works, and a reminder of Thai political and cultural events from the past two decades. Some of this material has not been shown for many years, if at all. Nothing to Say (ไม่มีอะไรจะพูด), for example, was an evening programme of fifty-three silent short films, shown at the Pridi Banomyong Institute on 31st October 2008. Produced by the now-defunct ThaiIndie collective, the Nothing to Say short films have since disappeared from the public record: even Chulayarnnon’s entry, เพลงของคนโง่ (‘song of a fool’), doesn’t appear on his filmography.

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, with visitors staying overnight to watch all twenty-four episodes. Chulayarnnon’s previous exhibition at Bangkok CityCity, Give Us a Little More Time (ขอเวลาอีกไม่นาน), took place in 2020, and some of his satirical collages from that exhibition are on display again as part of I a Pixel, We the People.

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)

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.

A Trip Down Memory Lane

The exhibition A Trip Down Memory Lane (ในทรงจํานําทางอันรางเลือน) opened at Museum Siam in Bangkok on 28th March, and runs until 1st May. There will be an outdoor screening of the documentary Lumière! on 20th April.

Lumière! is a compilation of 114 meticulously restored short films by the Lumière brothers. Narrated by Thierry Frémaux, it’s similar to the earlier documentary The Lumière Brothers’ First Films, a compilation of eighty-five Lumière films narrated by Bertrand Tavernier. (In both compilations, the short films are arranged thematically rather than chronologically.)

Lumière! was shown at the Film Archive in Salaya last year, and at Doc Club and Pub in Bangkok. It was previously shown at the Alliance Française in Bangkok in 2018.

Skyline FilmCasablanca

Casablanca is the May highlight of Skyline Film’s monthly outdoor movie programme. After several screenings (including The Graduate) at Siamscape, Skyline will return to its previous venue, River City, for its rooftop screening of Casablanca on 4th May.

Arguably the greatest (and surely the most quotable) Hollywood movie of all time, Casablanca 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. Previous Skyline movies have included Pulp Fiction, Annie Hall, and Singin’ in the Rain, all of which — along with Casablanca — are among Dateline Bangkok’s 100 greatest films.