Salaya Doc 2012: Vietnam and Malaysia are the winners

A scene from Hard Rails Across a Gentle River.

Documentaries from Vietnam and Malaysia were chosen as the winners in the first Asean Competition at the Salaya International Documentary Film Festival.

The special jury prize went to World Without Shadow by Khoo Eng Yow. It's a look at the wayang kulit shadow play of Malaysia's Kelantan state, which has come under threat by conservative state policies and Islamic puritanical influences.

And the Best Asean Documentary prize went to Hard Rails Across a Gentle River by Tran Thi Anh Phuong, Do Van Hoang, Pham Thu Hang and Tran Thanh Hie. Produced by the Hanoi Doc Lab, it chronicles the people who live, work and play around a railroad bridge, among them a group of nude swimmers.

Now in its second year, Salaya Doc introduced the Asean Documentary competition this year. There were seven entries in all, both feature-length and shorts, coming also from Burma, Indonesia and Thailand.

Some of the Salaya Doc films will be shown again on Saturday and Sunday, March 31 and April 1, at the Bangkok Art and Culture Center. Look for the schedule at the festival blog.

The Salaya Doc blog has the jury's statements. The jurors were film critic Prawich Taeng-aksorn, filmmaker Pimpaka Towira and the Singapore National Museum's Zhang Wenjie.