Songs of Eh Doh Shi opens the Fly Beyond the Barbwire Fence fest in Chiang Mai

The refugee film, music and art fair, Fly Beyond the Barbwire Fence Episode II: Ten Years Old starts this weekend in Chiang Mai, running from June 13 and culminating in a concert on June 20, World Refugee Day.

Put together by Friends Without Borders, the venue is the Center for Promotion of Art and Culture at Chiang Mai University.

The fest opens at 5 on Saturday, June 13, with a cultural performance and folk music. The opening film is The Songs of Eh Doh Shi, a moving docudrama that Friends Without Borders produced and first screened a couple of years ago.

During the week, shorts include Nok Paksnavin's Burmese Man Dancing, which comprises of scenes of fishing boats -- mostly crewed by Burmese people -- with subtitled statements by Thai people, who think the migrant workers are "spies" or are out to steal jobs from Thais.

There's also the award-winning student film of last year's World Film Festival of Bangkok Hongsa's Schoolbag by Supamok Silarak, and Nattachai Jaitita's intensely gripping 30-minute war drama Shan at the Dawn, which was an award-winner at the 12th Thai Short Film and Video Festival.

Features include the controversial A Jihad for Love and Sleepwalking Through the Mekong, the documentary on the Los Angeles-based Khmer-American rock band Dengue Fever.

The schedule of performances and films can be downloaded here.

And hey, it looks like the first 8 minutes of The Songs of Eh Doh Shi is on YouTube, on the Friends Without Borders channel. So I've gone ahead and embedded it below.



(Thanks Veena!)