Monday, August 23, 2010

Bangkok IndieFest readies Golden Shirt Awards, seeks shirt designer


Red shirts, yellow shirts and now Golden Shirts.

Bangkok IndieFest, held from August 6 to 8, touted itself as being one of the first international movie events to take place in Bangkok since red-shirt political protests only a little more than two months before.

It's now working on giving its first Golden Shirt Awards, and the festival needs a designer of the Golden Shirt.

For details, e-mail info [at] bangkokfest.com or contact the fest at www.BangkokFest.com.

Winners of the Golden Shirt Awards to be announced online on or before August 31.

You can also read festival director Jason Rosette's post-festival statement.

Rosette calls for more grass-roots, "bottom up"-type arts events to aid in Thailand's recovery after the violence of the political protests. He also points to a lack of venues that would be suitable to held such events.

Here's more:

As our budget was extremely limited, we sought to secure low or no-cost subsidized exhibition venues as a high priority. We discovered that such venues were not readily available here in Bangkok. Most venues here are priced to accommodate the budget of significantly subsidized festival events; this exclusionary barrier does not appear to contribute effectively to the cultivation of a sustainable, lateral, and diverse independent film industry.

Our recommendation would be for the local government in Thailand or other relevant agencies to support – via subsidy or other mechanism – affordable smaller venues or ‘microcinemas’ which are readily accessible, affordable, and most importantly transparently and democratically available to emerging filmmakers and media practitioners alike.

Private sector entrepreneurs may also consider establishing microcinema (60 seats or less) venues to address what appears to be a viable and significant niche, especially for the vital and vibrant ‘indie’ community. A cost-benefit analysis of the viability of any such venue should weigh accessibility by public transportation as an important variable, although the appropriately positioned neighborhood movie house
may also be sustainable.

Our efforts to secure such an arts-friendly, subsidized (i.e., no cost) venue included diligent outreach to the Bangkok Art and Culture Center; however, our numerous calls, emails, faxes and personal visits following the submission of our proposal yielded no definitive, meaningful response from that organization or its staff.

Read on for details of how the festival came together at HOF Art with sponsors that included EPSON, Singha, Apple iStudio, Location Thailand, the US Embassy Ratchada Spa and Resort and others.

You can also look at photos of the fest at Shutterfly.

Production company Camerado, meanwhile, has announced plans to hold the fourth Cambofest from March 1 to 9 at the Royal Theatre in Kampot, highlighted by the official Cambodian premiere – 88 years later – of Robert Flaherty's Nanook of the North.

For more on Cambofest, read this gripping account of the festival's struggles.

(Photo via Bangkok IndieFest)

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