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 twenty-four different 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.”

Sunset Boulevard

This year is the seventy-fifth anniversary of Billy Wilder’s bitter Hollywood satire Sunset Boulevard. The film will be shown at House Samyan in August, as part of the cinema’s House Classics strand.

Sunset Boulevard was also screened at the Thai Film Archive last year, at Smalls in 2019, and at Bangkok Screening Room in 2016. The House Classics programme began in 2019, to celebrate House relocating to Samyan Mitrtown in Bangkok.

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.

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 released 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.

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.

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

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

Wildtype Masterclass no. 6Cinemine/d จากจอสู่ใจโปรแกรม

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

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

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

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

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

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

Weekly Screening no. 34Now and Then:Experimental Animation

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

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

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

Arcadia Rooftop CinemaHard-Boiled

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

House Classics

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

This Essay Need No Words

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

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

Heat and Sweat

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