From 6 to 6, Aditya Assarat's short film for the King

The Film Festival in Commemoration of the Celebration on the Auspicious Occasion of His Majesty the King's 83rd Birthday Anniversary begins today at SF World Cinema at CentralWorld in Bangkok.

Commissioned by the Office of Contemporary Art and Culture,
Ministry of Culture, the shorts are Six to Six (เพลงชาติไทย, Pleng Chat Thai) by Aditya Assarat, Terribly Happy (สุดสะแนน, Sudsanan) by Pimpaka Towira, Superstitious (เกษตร ...ตะกอน) by Nonzee Nimibutr and The Greatest Love (รักที่ยิ่งใหญ่) by Sirisak Koshpasharin and Pranpaporn Srisumanant.

Here's more about Aditya's Six to Six:

One afternoon, Kaen, Noi, and Pa Nit, employees of an old apartment building, are cleaning the master’s room on the top floor. They eat lunch, chat about this and that, and enjoy the cool breeze from the canal. At six o’clock they wait for the national anthem to mark the passing of another peaceful day in the kingdom.

Director’s Statement

I’m just a normal person. I’ve never met the King, never even seen him, except on TV. I suspect most Thai people are like me. So I wanted to make a film from the perspective of the small people living in this kingdom. As a man we may not know His Majesty, but as a symbol, his presence is felt all around us, like the warm sunlight or the cool breeze of an afternoon, a constant amid the conflicts currently afflicting our nation.

Three of the shorts are from Silpathorn Award laureates – Nonzee, Pimpaka and Aditya. The award is a prestigious contemporary arts honor, given by the OCAC.

There's also a trailer for Pimpaka's Terribly Happy.

The Greatest Love, a melodrama extolling the virtues of His Majesty's "sufficiency economy" theories, is screened in 3D as well as 2D. The 3D version screens by itself at 10.30 daily until Friday. The 2D version is screened with the other three shorts.

There are also two feature films, So the short films aren't screening in all sessions. There's also The Ultimate Dream (ปิดทองหลังพระ ตอน ความฝันอันสูงสุด), about military heroes, starring Maj-Colonel Wanchana Sawatdee (Naresuan) and Sornram Theppituk, and 9 Mahasan-Ong-Rachan-Palang-Pan-Din (๙ มหัศจรรย์ องค์ราชัน พลังแผ่นดิน), which is a compilation of segments about nine miracles.

The screenings are at SFW CentralWorld. Free tickets are at a table in the lobby. You can also check this spreadsheet for the schedule.