My Father, Cherie and more Thai shorts in Rotterdam

Short films by Pimpaka Towira, Wichanon Somumjarn, Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit and Phuttiphong Aroonpheng are in the International Film Festival Rotterdam's Spectrum program:

Three of the shorts form the combined program Homecoming:

• All That Remains, Wichanon Somumjarn, 2010, 8 min. The filmmaker collects memories of his youth. His brother often told him about being stung by a poisonous jellyfish. Here he retells the story.
• My Father, Pimpaka Towira, 2010, 22 min. We watched the confrontation between those in power and the people in Bangkok on television. But who were the demonstrators? We follow one back to his village.
• Cherie Is Korean-Thai, Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit, 2010, 19 min. A matter of casting. A diva-like soap actress is given the role of a female builder, opening her eyes to the lives of others. Very witty.

All That Remains was previously screened at the World Film Festival of Bangkok. Pimpaka's politically colored My Father premiered at last year's Dubai International Film Festival in the Muhr Asia-Africa Competition for Short Films. And Nawapol's Cherie Is Korean-Thai was the top prize-winner at the 14th Thai Short Film & Video Festival.

Another Rotterdam shorts program, Memory and Loss, has A Tale of Heaven, a 6-minute work by Phuttiphong Aroonpheng. The Thai-Japanese production is described as "A delicate Thai Super-8 film in which a spirit comes back to visit the family. Something accepted as normal in Thailand."

Those are in addition to the Thai entries in Rotterdam: Sivaroj Kongsakul's feature Eternity (Tee Rak) and Jakrawal Nilthamrong's short Immortal Woman in the Tiger Awards competition, plus Wisit Sasanatieng's The Red Eagle and the pan-Asian shorts trilogy Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner by Wang Jing, Anocha Suwichakornpong and Kaz Cai.