Sixth Salaya Doc to open with The Scala

The Thai Film Archive's sixth annual Salaya International Documentary Film Festival  opens at 1pm on Saturday with The Scala, a 50-minute made-for-TV piece by Thai filmmaker Aditya Assarat, who takes his cameras inside Siam Square's imperiled landmark cinema.

Although the Scala has been threatened with redevelopment plans for years, the latest word is that it will be in business through 2018, and maybe longer. But Aditya seems resigned to a future without the Scala, and is seemingly bidding it farewell.

Here's Aditya's synopsis:

I always like to watch movies at The Scala. It reminds me of my childhood when all the cinemas in Bangkok were standalone cinemas. At the time, I never thought it was anything special. But now that I am older, I have become nostalgic. There are many things about it I wanted to document: the staff, who are all old now, the space, which is very beautiful, and the ideal, of movie-watching as a special event. In a way, The Scala is similar to all of us who persevere, despite the difficulties, to celebrate cinema in the way we remember it to be.

The Scala opened its doors in 1970. It had one thousand seats and every night, they were filled. In those days, going to the movies was something special. The cinema was a place where people got dressed up, went on dates, and fell in love. But today, everything has changed. There is a multiplex in every mall and the young generation watch movies on their phone. But at The Scala, time has stood still. The cinema is still run by many of the same staff who have been there from the beginning. It is now the last remaining standalone cinema left in Bangkok. And soon, its time will come to an end too. 

The Scala will get just one screening during the sixth edition of Salaya Doc.

Screening at the Busan fest last year, The Scala is part of a special Power of Asian Cinema package, co-produced by the Busan International Film Festival and Korean Broadcasting.

Other Salaya Doc programs are Sense and Sensibility, which groups together documentaries by female directors, and the Asean Documentary Competition, which has entries this year from Vietnam, Myanmar, Singapore, the Philippines and Indonesia.

A major highlight is The Memory of Justice, a 1976 film that looked at wartime atrocities, by the Germans in World War II, and by the Americans in Vietnam. Running 278 minutes, the landmark documentary was recently restored and presented at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival.

Another marathon screening will be Homeland: Iraq Year Zero, an award-winning chronicle of everyday life in Iraq before and after the U.S. invasion. It runs 334 minutes and will be presented in its entirety.

The fest is at the Film Archive in Salaya, Nakhon Pathom, from Saturday through Monday, and then from Tuesday shifts over to the Bangkok Art and Culture Center, where it runs through April 3.

The schedule is embedded below. You can state your interest in attending the opening film and ceremony on the Facebook events page. For more details, please check the fest's Facebook page.

In Thai cinemas: Love Say Hey and the return of the 9FilmFest

High-school seniors have to figure out how to balance love, friendship and their studies as they work to make a film together for their graduation project in Love Say Hey .. Yaak Say Wa Rak Ther (เลิฟเซเฮ.. อยากเซว่ารักเธอ).

Napat Jaitientum directs. He previously directed the gay romances, last year's Love Love You and 2014's Love's Coming.



Tomorrow, the 9FilmFest returns, with a screening of this year's finalist entries at the Friese-Greene Club, which is really just perfect for 9FilmFest because it has just nine seats in its boutique cinema. The show starts at 8. For more details, check the Facebook event page.

After taking a hiatus of a year or so, the 9FilmFest organized an online contest. Here are this year's winners:

• Best film: Uncle Aunty, Pankul Gupta, India
• Best director: Accomodations, Mikos Zavros, USA
• Best script: The Radio, Nuttorn Kungwanklai, Thailand
• Best cineatography: The Blue Room, Alhamdu LiLlah, Germany
• Best actress: Richa Kapoor, Uncle Aunty
• Best actor: Vijay Kalia, Uncle Aunty

Other finalists were Benjamin, Fish and Ice Cream by Mehmaz Rezvanfard from Iran; Flour Thailand-based John Lamond, The Most Beautiful Girl by Katon Thammavijidej of Thailand, In the Silence by Aroonakorn Pick of Thailand and Let Go by Sean Nellis of the UK.

For more information, check www.facebook.com/9filmfest, and see the 9FilmFest YouTube channel for this year's finalist entries.

Other happenings in Thai cinemas this week include the first 3D screenings at the Thai Film Archive on Saturday, which will show Pina and Every Thing Will Be Fine as part of Wim Wenders: A Retrospective, German Film Week at Paragon Cineplex and new experimental short films from around the world in Signes De Nuit in Bangkok at the Reading Room.

That's all in addition to usual new film openings, including Hail, Caesar!, London Has Fallen and the South Korean thriller Office.

9FilmFest goes online with new contest

On hiatus for the past year or so, Bangkok's 9FilmFest has returned in online form and has issued a call for entries for a contest that's taking place next year.

The idea behind the short-film competition is to create a new work of nine minutes in length that will contain a unique "9 Signature Item" or "9SI". This edition, the signature item is "flower".

The deadline for entries is January 29, 2016.

For more details, check the festival website or Facebook page.

Festival festival (and awards)! Ferris Wheel spins in Singapore, Checkers goes Golden, Keetarajanipon applauded in Hawaii

Ferris Wheel (ชิงช้าสวรรค์, Ching Chaa Sawan), a short film by up-and-coming indie filmmaker Phuttiphong Aroonpheng, won a special mention at the Singapore International Film Festival, which wrapped up yesterday.

An entry in the Singapore fest's Silver Screen Awards Southeast Asian Short Film Competition, Ferris Wheel follows a migrant woman from Myanmar and her young son as they navigate the border areas. There is an altercation in a gas station's convenience store, depicting the unfriendly attitudes of some Thais toward the migrants, and the mum and boy are separated. The kid is attracted to a nearby carnival by a man in a monkey costume, leading to panic by the mother.

Ferris Wheel premiered at the Busan International Film Festival as part of the Color of Asia – Newcomers program. Apichatpong Weerasethakul was a mentoring counterpart in the Color of Asia – Masters line-up with his own short, Vapour.

The Color of Asia project was initiated by China's Youku video-sharing website and Heyi Pictures, which on the strength of Ferris Wheel picked Phuttiphong to make a feature film. He'll be doing Departure Day, a project that previously won support from the Busan fest's Asian Cinema Fund.

Ferris Wheel will next head to France, where it's been selected for February's Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, which is the biggest and most prestigious short-film fest in the world.

I've actually seen Ferris Wheel, and it's powerful stuff, especially the haunting close-ups of the faces of Myanmar migrants spinning into frame as they ride a Ferris wheel. It was screened as a special treat for movie-goers who braved sleazy confines of the decrepit Laem Thong Theatre for the Bangkok premiere of Jakrawal Nilthamrong's Vanishing Point.

Other Thai shorts in the rebooted Singapore fest's line-up this year were Night Watch by Danaya Chulputhipong, which previously won an award in Rio de Janeiro and Sivaroj Kongsakul's Our,from the 19th Thai Short Film and Video Fest.

Thai features in the Singapore fest were Apichatpong's Cemetery of Splendour (which had an accompanying video-art installation) and the Thai Oscar entry How to Win at Checkers (Every Time).

And that leads me to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association's Golden Globe Awards, which have put How to Win at Checkers on its list of possible nominees for Best Foreign Language Film. This is the first I've heard of the Globes' foreign-film submissions being made public before the final shortlist of five actual nominees are announced, which leads to questions. Have any Thai films been submitted to the HFPA in past years? Also, who submits the foreign films?

Finally, here's one more item for this edition of "Festival festival!" Keetarajanipon, the short-film omnibus that is inspired by musical compositions of His Majesty the King, won an audience award at the recent Hawaii International Film Festival. That's according to IndieWire and Film Business Asia. News of the award came as the film was on a revival run in Thai cinemas, screening over the weekend as part of celebrations for His Majesty the King's 88th birthday and Thai Fathers' Day. Keetarajanipon has well made, highly polished devotional segments by Nonzee Nimibutr, Yongyoot Thongkongtoon, Parkpoom Wongpoom and Wallop Prasopphol. More festival appearances are scheduled, including next year's East Winds Film Festival.

Festival festival! Awards in Tokyo and Lisbon, Motion in Toronto

Pimpaka Towira with her Asian Future Award at the Tokyo International Film Festival. Photo via The Nation.

Though she's been making films since the late 1990s, it's taken awhile for the men in charge of world cinema to get around to recognizing Pimpaka Towira, who was honored over the weekend at the Tokyo International Film Festival with the Asian Future Award for her new film The Island Funeral (มหาสมุทรและสุสาน, Maha Samut Lae Susaan).

It's her sophomore fictional feature, which follows her 2003 debut One Night Husband and the 2007 documentary The Truth Be Told: The Cases Against Supinya Klangnarong.

Of course, Pimpaka has also been kept quite busy over the years making short films, producing films by other directors, lending her expertise to workshops and serving as a festival programmer, juror and panelist. The award for her new film seems quite overdue, but is still most welcome.

Here is more about her Tokyo award from The Nation:

"I am so excited right now. The film took so many years to complete. I'd like to thank the Tokyo International Film Festival and all the crew and the actors who made the big effort until we could finish this project," Pimpaka said in her acceptance speech.

The film tells the story of Laila, a Muslim woman from Bangkok who travels to Pattani to meet her long lost aunt. "I was not sure initially as my film was different from other films, but the feedback from the audience was very nice," Pimpaka said later in an interview. After One Night Husband, which premiered in the Forum Section of the Berlin International Film Festival in 2003, she had to put in a lot of effort to make her second feature.

"During the production stages, I was not sure if this film was good enough. I had to revise the editing so many times. The award proves that at least the jury and the audience saw something in this film," said Pimpaka, whose film was praised by the jury for showing the landscape and politics of the country with strong cinematic language. The jury members were Olivier Pere, managing director of Arte France Cinema, Jacob Wong of the Hong Kong International Film Festival and Tatsushi Omori, director of the critically acclaimed Japanese film The Ravine of Goodbye.

Shot partially in Pattani with 16mm film, The Island Funeral went through a lot of problems and was almost left unfinished. "At one point, I didn’t feel like I wanted to finish the project. There were lots of problems, from myself, from the source of funding, and what happened around me, but in the end I made a decision to finish the film even though the result was unforeseeable."

The Island Funeral premiered in Tokyo alongside another new Thai film, Kongdej Jaturanrasmee's Snap, which will open the upcoming 13th World Film Festival of Bangkok. Folks in Thailand will have to wait awhile for The Island Funeral though. Pimpaka and her team plan to tour the festival circuit for the next year or so, building up more anticipation for the film's eventual Thai release. There's more about the film in another article in The Nation.

Elsewhere in the festival world, the short film That Day of the Month was among the prize winners at the 19th edition of Queer Lisboa, which was held in September. Thanks to a Facebook reader for sending me the tip about this one.

Directed by Jirassaya Wongsutin, That Day of the Month was named the Queer Lisboa's best short film, winning a 1,500-euro prize and Portugal's RTP2 public TV channel picking up broadcast rights. Jirassaya had previously won the White Elephant Award for student films at last year's Thai Short Film and Video Festival.

Finally, here's news of an upcoming Thai film screening overseas – Bangkok in Motion, a short directed by Bangkok-based filmmaker Jimmie Wing – has been selected for the Toronto International Short Film Festival, which runs from November 11 to 13. It's a smoothly rolling portrait of Bangkok, shot from the perspective of a disabled cameraman in a wheelchair.

I found out about this one because Jimmie saw me at a film event, and actually walked over and spoke to me. He told me that his short film was going to be in the film festival in Toronto. So now I've reported that news here. Funny how that works.

Festival festival! Masters and Newcomers in Busan, premieres in Tokyo and Taipei, an award in Rio

The autumn film festival season is upon us, with Thai films highlighted in Busan, Tokyo and Taipei. I also have an item from late in the summer, of an award in Rio.

The Busan International Film Festival gets underway on Thursday, paying tribute to the masters of Asian cinema.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul will of course be taking part in that. He's among the festival's "Top 10 directors" and was also among the experts polled for the fest's "Asian Cinema 100", listing the 100 best Asian films of all time. The top 10 (actually 11) will screen at the fest.

And Apichatpong's latest feature, Cemetery of Splendour will screen at Busan as part of the Window on Asian Cinema. Splendour has been on a tear since taking the Cannes Film Festival by storm back in May, recently playing in Toronto and in New York.

Apichatpong also contributed to a new collection of short films for the Busan fest, Color of Asia – Masters, along with Naomi Kawase, Wang Xiaoshuai and Im Sang-soo. Apichatpong's short is called Vapour, "a lyrical piece absent of any dialogue". There's a trailer embedded below.



Busan also highlights newer talents with another shorts compilation, Color of Asia – Newcomers. Up-and-coming indie filmmaker Phuttiphong Aroonpheng is behind the segment titled Ferris Wheel, about a migrant-worker mother and her son attending a rural carnival and encountering a creepy stranger in a monkey costume. Again, there's a trailer for that one, and it's embedded below.



Beyond Splendour and the short films, Busan also has a couple of Thai documentaries. There is Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit's talking-head parade The Master, which has Thai film luminaries reminiscing about Mr. Van, the guy who briefly ruled Bangkok's pirate-movie scene in the days before bittorrent. It was shopped at last year's Asian Project Market.

Aditya Assarat also looks into the Thai movie-going scene with The Scala, a 52-minute piece about Bangkok's endangered landmark Scala cinema. The link on the BIFF website sent me in a circle back to the homepage, so I turned to the director for help. He provided me with a PDF that details the Power of Asian Cinema project of the Korean Broadcast System and the Busan fest, which brought together 10 Asian directors to make documentaries for South Korean TV. All 10 will be shown during the festival. Aditya's short recalls his memories of the Scala. Here's the synopsis:

I always like to watch movies at The Scala. It reminds me of my childhood when all the cinemas in Bangkok were standalone cinemas. At the time, I never thought it was anything special. But now that I am older, I have become nostalgic. There are many things about it I wanted to document: the staff, who are all old now, the space, which is very beautiful, and the ideal, of movie-watching as a special event. In a way, The Scala is similar to all of us who persevere, despite the difficulties, to celebrate cinema in the way we remember it to be.

The Scala opened its doors in 1970. It had one thousand seats and every night, they were filled. In those days, going to the movies was something special. The cinema was a place where people got dressed up, went on dates, and fell in love. But today, everything has changed. There is a multiplex in every mall and the young generation watch movies on their phone. But at The Scala, time has stood still. The cinema is still run by many of the same staff who have been there from the beginning. It is now the last remaining standalone cinema left in Bangkok. And soon, its time will come to an end too.

Next up is the Tokyo International Film Festival, which has two world premieres of Thai films, Kongdej Jaturanrasamee's Snap and Pimpaka Towira's The Island Funeral (มหาสมุทรและสุสาน, Maha Samut Lae Susaan).

Part of Tokyo fest's main competition, Snap is a romantic drama produced by TrueVisions and is set against a period of martial law in Thailand. It stars newcomer actress Waruntorn Paonil as a young woman returning to her hometown for a friend's wedding. The wedding photographer (Toni Rakkaen) turns out to be a young man from her past.

Pimpaka's long-awaited second dramatic feature The Island Funeral is in the Asian Future program. A road drama, it features a screenplay by film critic and documentary filmmaker Kong Rithdee. Check out the trailer, embedded below.



Moving on to Taipei, there's the Golden Horse International Film Festival, which will open with Distance, an omnibus feature put together by Singapore's Anthony Chen, who made the Cannes' Camera d'Or winner Ilo Ilo. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Distance stars Taiwanese actors Chen Bolin and Yo Yang alongside Hong Kong star Paul Chun. "The experimental drama sees Chen play three separate roles in each of three stories, separately helmed by Xin Yukun, Tan Shijie and Sivaroj Kongsakul. The directors hail, respectively, from China, Singapore and Thailand."

Sivaroj is the maker of tear-jerking sentimental short films as well as the emotional drama Tee Rak (Eternity), which was a prize-winner at Rotterdam and other fests.

Finally, here's some award news, which a reader gave me a tip on – Night Watch, a short film by Danaya Chulphuthiphong won the Special Jury Prize at the Fronteira Festival in Rio de Janeiro in August. According to a review, the experimental short takes place during a coup d'etat and the unrest that accompanies it, as seen from scenes on the streets and through television images. Danaya previously served as a cinematographer on Endless, Nameless, which was the top-prize winner at last year's Thai Short Film and Video Festival..

And so ends my second "Festival festival!" round-up of festival news. Thai filmmakers, if you have film in an upcoming festival or won an award somewhere, please feel free to let me know.

Festival festival! Young Man in Venice, Vanishing Point in Sao Paulo

[Note: Festival festival! is a reboot of a recurring feature on this blog, in which I will attempt to offer periodic updates about Thai films at festivals around the world. It was something I did quite often in the past, but not so much in recent years due to time constraints and other issues. Thai filmmakers, please feel free to let me know if you have an entry in an upcoming festival, and when I collect two or three items I will make a posting.]

Martin Scorsese's The Audition is out of the picture at the Venice International Film Festival, but there's still a cool short screening.

Wichanon Sumumjarn (Four Boys, White Whiskey and Grilled Mouse) will be in Venice's Orizzonti competition with The Young Man Who Came from the Chee River (Jer Gun Muer Rao Jer Gun), a 16-minute drama. Here's the description from the festival website:

Golf works as a debt collector in Khon Kaen. One day he wakes up early to go to work as usual. He meets many people, including a desperate man in debt who falls critically ill. The situation forces Golf to weigh his professional duty and his moral sense against each other.

Hear the roar of the motorbike in the trailer (embedded below) from Isan New Wave Production.



Meanwhile, a major Thai fixture on the festival circuit this year, Jakrawal Nilthamrong's debut feature Vanishing Point (วานิชชิ่ง พอยท์), has been making more appearances since winning the Tiger Award at Rotterdam. It has screened in Taipei, Hong Kong, Wroclaw, Poland and Moscow. Currently, Vanishing Point can be seen in São Paulo, Brazil, at the  Indie Festival.

São Paulo also has another Thai film that's been a hit at festivals this year, a little indie movie called Cemitério do Esplendor. I'll aim to have more on that soon.

Back to Vanishing Point, it got a positive review from The Hollywood Reporter in Taipei. Here's a snip:

Apart from the Richard C. Sarafian countercultural cult hit with which Jakrawal's film shares its name – a borrowing most probably down to the prominence of cars and crashes in the story here – Vanishing Point also contains a smattering of references from a few other classics from the "New Hollywood" era, ranging from the odd nods to the paranoia-drenched thrillers of Klute and The Conversation to the grand visual gestures of Michelangelo Antonioni's American forays of Zabriskie Point and The Passenger.

Another plus, Vanishing Point will actually come to Thai cinemas this year, with a release set for Bangkok's SF World Cinema on October 22, and other cities to follow. Keep track of those developments at the film's Facebook page.

Watch this: A Photographer in Chinatown

It was just over a year ago here when filmmaker and journalist Bradley Cox shared a short video of the Friese-Greene Club in Bangkok.

The video received a favorable response, so Cox thought it would be just swell if I posted another.

Here, the maker of the Peabody Award-winning documentary Who Killed Chea Vichea?, presents another view of Bangkok. It's part of his ongoing Long Story Short series of videos.

In A Photographer in Chinatown, Cox turns his lens on another lensman, Bangkok-based photojournalist Yvan Cohen, who has lived in Asia since 1991 and covers assignments all over the region.

Cohen has a "passion for shooting in Chinatown, which he's been doing for a number of years now," Cox says. The video is a look at the way Cohen works and his motivations for doing so.

The YouTube version of the video is presented above, but it's also on Vimeo, which is better looking, but is also more dependent on a reliable Internet connection.

Thai Short 19: Winners, R.D. Pestonji and Payut Ngaokrachang reviews

Deeply personal relationships were a common thread running through many of the prize-winning entries in the 19th Thai Short Film and Video Festival, which wrapped up on Sunday at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre.

The festival’s top prize for general filmmakers, the R.D. Pestonji Award, went to After Image by Patana Chirawong. Full of warmth and humour, After Image was about an elderly gay man contacting his university crush, a straight guy who years ago had promised to take him on a date if he reached the age of 70. They meet in the forest, at an archaeology dig for dinosaur fossils. The promise of youth has faded away, and these old fellows are in touch with a past that is older than either can remember. A shadowy figure of a brontosaurus ambles by. Pretty nifty.

Runner-up winners were Neither Here Nor There by Skan Aryurapong, which was a succinct portrait of a wheelchair-bound man and his caretaker/lover, while the meta-heavy Motherland dealt with a young pregnant woman seeking advice from a co-worker at a factory.

And a special mention went to Hta Kwa’s Our Footprints, another prize-winning entry from the Chiang Mai NGO Friends Without Borders, which looks at the continuing struggles of Thailand’s indigenous people to continue their traditional ways of life in the forest. The disappearance of Karen activist Pholachi Billy Rakchongcharoen looms in the backdrop.

A scene from After Image, winner of the R.D. Pestonji Award.

Another major award winner was Dreamscape by Wattanapume Laisuwanchai. An entry in the Duke Award documentary competition, it won the Popular Vote from audience polling as well as the BACC Award.

Other notable finalists in the Pestonji competition included Our, a tender portrait of a young just-married couple taking their honeymoon by the beach. It's directed by Sivaroj Kongsakul of Eternity/Tee Rak fame, who has developed ninja skills in tugging heartstrings with his highly emotional shorts.

I also liked Spaghetti by Sittisak Kum-ai, which had a guy struggling to keep up a long-distance relationship with his girlfriend, who he hopes will return to him before the expiration date on a package of pasta he's tucked away in a cabinet.

There were chuckles for some other entries, such as Jakkrapan Srivichai's Horror Radio, in which a security guard who listens to spooky radio serials calls into the station one night with his own story. Symmetry by Ukrit Malai had an older fellow reflecting on a different, parallel life of a brother (or was it his son?), which sees living-room recliners and a Playstation (also a ping-pong table) transported magically from a house to an open field. And there was good fun to be had in Director and Actor, directed by and starring Weera Rukbankeru, which had him struggling to direct himself in various scenes.

And the festival wouldn't be complete without at least one mysterious jungle thriller. Perennial festival entrant Pramote Sangsorn headed into the woods for Sudd Song Nor, which had a reporter camping out with a big-game hunter in search of the last rhino. Homoerotic tendencies surface in a discussion about taking the rhino's horn, but leaving the unseen beast alive. Later on, both men cover themselves from head to toe with mud.

Prince Johnny, winner of the Payut Ngaokrachang Award.

I really connected with the block of animated entries in the Payut Ngaokrachang Award competition, which is named for Thailand's pioneering maker of animated shorts and features. The audience was sparse for the Sunday morning show, but included a cool farang dad who brought his two small children. Still, I heard gasping from the kids when the cartoons took dark turns, which were frequent.

The top prize Winner Prince Johnny by Patradol Kitcharoen was wonderfully morbid with its story of a fairy-tale prince trying to revive the corpse of a long-dead princess locked in a tower. Bleaker still was a runner-up winner Sound of the Silence by Akapop Khansorn, which deals with an imprisoned woman.

There was conflict aplenty in Stained White by Thanchanok Phruetkittiwong, Vichuda Surattichaikul and Supisara Songpirote, in which Red City kids and Green City kids just want to play together but instead have to fight. There was also the special mention winner Black-White by Jaturon Jetwiriyanon, which had Germanic-looking chess pieces in an endless war – no worries about Nazi imagery here, it's used to show the horror of war and isn't glorified as it has been in cases that crop up from time to time in news about Thailand.

Simply entertaining entries included the special mention winners Breaking Zoo by Prakasit Nuansri (about an escaped overheated gorilla); Lamp by Narueporn Winiyakul (about a fishing cat making friends with cute anglerfish) and the fun football-themed Kickoff by Twatpong Tangsajjapoj.

Luukmaai, a finalist entry in the Payut Ngaokrachang competition.

I'm surprised Luukmaai by Rachaneekorn Uthaithammarat didn't win a prize. The story of a forest-dwelling man who befriends a tree spirit, the character design really reminded me of Payut's work in The Adventure of Sudsakorn, which to me is remarkable, because not many Thai animators actually seem to be influenced by Payut, who had his own style, but could be compared to Tex Avery or maybe Disney.

These days, most Thai animation takes Japanese anime as its cue, not that there's anything wrong with that. The anime style was especially evident in the crazily sick Gokicha Love Story by Chidchanok Saengkawin, which had a cockroach who thinks she's a princess trying to woo a guy, but the guy is horrified because he only sees her as an insect. Festival Rush by Chawanat Rattanaprakarn also looked like anime, but told a distinctively Thai story, with a boy at a temple fair chasing down masked criminals who stole the doll he won for his sweetheart.

And 3D computer graphic animation continues to progress. Aside from the award-winners like Black-White and Breaking Zoo, memorable entries included the heist comedy The Sneaker by Chattida Ajjimakul, and the nature-themed To the Light by Jane Horsakul.

Worth noting is this year's festival title, a "bumper" that is created new each year by various notable filmmakers. This year, it was the turn of Chulayarnon Siriphol, a perennial award-winner in past years, whose entries are thought-provoking, satiric and, most importantly to me, entertaining. Chualyarnon actually did two titles. One had images of soldier statues and people offering prayers to a shrine, and an auditorium with an empty movie screen. I won't comment further on what I think it means. Chulayarnon also did a stop-motion thing involving birthday candles with nails stuck in them so they resembled insects, crawling over someone's skin. Of course, both festival titles had images of eggs, which is part of the iconography of the Thai Short Film and Video Festival.

New to the festival this year is an additional cash prize, free equipment rental and use of a production crew to the top-prize winner of the R.D. Pestonji Award from VS Service, a company that has long been involved with providing services to foreign movie productions. Established in 1985 with a single generator to hire out, among VS Service’s early clients was Santa Film, a production services firm run by a son of Pestonji, who is regarded as Thailand’s first auteur filmmaker. The award is especially symbolic for the head of VS Service, cinematographer Pithai "Pete" Smithsuth, who has now taken over the company his father started.

Symmetry, a finalist entry in the R.D. Pestonji competition.

Anyway, here are the winners in the 19th Thai Short Film and Video Festival:

Popular Vote

• Dreamscape by Wattanapume Laisuwanchai

International Competition

• Best Short Film: Rene R Letters by Lisa Reboulleau (France)
• Special Mention: Fallen Leaves by Masha Kondakova (Ukraine) and Moving in Circles by Maxim Dashkin (Russia)

R.D. Pestonji Award

• Winner: After Image by Patana Chirawong
• Runner-up: Motherland by Varinda Naronggrittikun; Neither Here Nor There by Skan Aryurapong
• Special Mention: Our Footprints by Hta Kwa

White Elephant Award (undergraduate students)

• Winner: Rose Moon and the Missing Sun by Tulyawat Sajjatheerakul
• Runner-up: The Country Boys by Krailas Phondongnok; Temperature of Roomtone by Pamornporn Tandiew
• Special Mention: Glowstick by Pahphawee Jinnasith; Once Upon a Time by Jantraya Suriyong and Siripassorn Umnuaysombat; Oun Kwa Nhee Kor Phee Leaw by Yanisa Pornawalai

Special White Elephant (youth films)

• Winner: Last Summer by Dapho Moradokpana
• Runner-up: What a Wonderful World by Jirapat Thaweechuen, Thanawat Noomcharoen and Pu-ton Thongtan
• Special mention: Untitled by Rachapol Sangsri and Tanyawat Sajjateerakul

Payut Ngaokrachang Award (animation)

• Winner: Prince Johnny by Patradol Kitcharoen
• Runner-Up: Fragile by Pennapa Chanwerawong; Stained White by Thanchanok Phruetkittiwong, Vichuda Surattichaikul and Supisara Songpirote; Sound of the Silence by Akapop Khansorn
• Special Mention: Breaking Zoo by Prakasit Nuansri; Lamp by Narueporn Winiyakul; Black-White by Jaturon Jetwiriyanon and Kickoff by Twatpong Tangsajjapoj

Duke Award (documentary)

• Winner: Sinmalin by Chaweng Chaiyawan
• Runner-up: Michael’s by Kunnawut Boonreak; The Spirit of the Age by Wichanon Somumjarn
• Special Mention: Chumchon Khon Khaya by Thitipat Rotchanakorn and Pawee Melanon; Pak Bara by Apichon Rattanapayon and Watcharee Rattanakree

Cinetoys Best Cinematography Award

• Last Scene by Rajchapruek Tiyajamorn

Vichitmatra Award

• My Grandfather’s Photobook by Nutthapon Rakkhatham and Phatthana Paiboon
• Fon by Aekaphong Saranset
• If You’re a Bird, I’ll Be Your Sky by Visuta Matanom
• Yhahok by Nathan Homsup

BACC Award

• Once Upon a Time by Jantraya Suriyong and Siripassorn Umnuaysombat
• Dreamscape by Wattanapume Laisuwanchai

Pirabkhao Award

• Sinmalin by Chaweng Chaiyawan

Best Actor

• Arachaporn Pokinpakorn from Glowstick

(Adapted from an article in The Nation)

John Torres given shelter in Bangkok

One of the more interesting filmmakers to emerge from the Philippines New Wave, John Torres mixes searing self-confessionals and personal memories with the tumultuous history of his country.

Next weekend, Bangkok movie lovers get a chance to see all his films in a two-day event, A Child Outside: Retrospective to John Torres, put on by Filmvirus, which previously brought another Filipino indie stalwart, Lav Diaz, to Bangkok.

With support from the Japan Foundation, the retrospective will present Torres’ short films and all his features on June 27 and 28 at the Reading Room on Silom Soi 19.

Up first will be a selection of shorts, made from 2004 to 2011, and his two 2008 autobiographical features, Todo Todo Teros, which blended found footage and home-video clips, and won several awards, and Years When I was a Child Outside, which won an award at the Bangkok International Film Festival in 2008.

I think Todo Todo Teros will bring back bittersweet memories for the Filmvirus crowd, because the cast includes Diaz with film critic Alexis Tioseco, who died about a month after he visited Bangkok in August 2009.

Back to the Torres line-up, June 28 has his two dramatic features, 2010’s Refrains Happen Like Revolutions in a Song, about a young woman who takes on different roles as she travels from village to village. I like how the title is a play on a 1987 Filipino film, Revolutions Happen Like Refrains in a Song, by Nick Deocampo. There's also 2013’s Lukas the Strange, a coming-of-age yarn about an awkward teenager coming to grips with his manhood just as a film crew comes to his village.

And Torres himself will close off the event with a talk.

Shows start at 1pm. The venue is a fourth-floor walk-up in a shophouse on Silom Soi 19, opposite Silom Center. Recent Filmvirus events there have been packed to the rafters, so be sure to arrive early to ensure you'll have a seat.

For further details, check the Facebook events page.

(Cross-published in The Nation)

Thai documentaries on order for Doc Weekend 2015

 Ten recent Thai documentaries will screen this Saturday and Sunday during Doc Weekend at TK Park at CentralWorld in Bangkok.

It’s a chance to see some films that played in local cinemas but maybe you missed, including Somboon, Mother and Wish Us Luck.

It’s also an opportunity to catch up, with such examples as Siam Park City, a 2011 effort by Chonlasit Upanigkit, the film student who earned plaudits last year for his debut feature, W., a drama that was his graduation project and premiered in the Busan International Film Festival, and also had a limited local cinema run.

Curated by local filmmaker Supakit Seksuwan, who put together last year's Thai Aurora the Horizon, and organised by Streamline Film and TK Park, the line-up starts at 11am on Saturday with a trio of shorts, The Burmese in Thailand by Suree Kantayalongote, award-winner Panu Saeng-xuto’s Consider, which examines what happened when a transgender student was humiliated in front of the school by the principal; and The Cockpit, Napasorn Limchaiyawat’s profile of female Muay Thai fighter Petch JiJa, making her comeback in the ring.

At noon, it’s Wish Us Luck, in which twin-sister filmmakers Wanweaw and Weawwan Hongwiwat chronicle epic their journey home to Thailand from school in England. They took the train most of way, travelling through Russia, China and Vietnam. Their film made the rounds of festivals and was also screened in Thai cinemas.

That’s followed at 2pm by Somboon, Krisda Tipchaimeta's emotional portrayal of a couple in their winter years, a husband devoted to the round-the-clock care of his chronically ailing wife of 45 years. The film opened last year's World Film Festival of Bangkok and later had a limited theatrical run.

And Saturday’s closing entry at 4pm is Utopia, a brand-new feature by Kirimag Boonrom, who goes underneath a bridge to look at the people forced to live there, and what will happen when they are forced out.

Sunday’s programme starts at 11am with Siam Park City, Chonlasit’s 2011 observance of the many activities in Bangkok parks, from dawn to dusk.

That’s followed at noon by Mother, Vorakorn Ruetaivanichkul’s brave look at his own family, and their unstable matriarch, who was left bedridden after a suicide attempt.

At 2pm, it’s The Missing Piece, Patana Chirawong’s project that enlisted youths with various disabilities to make films telling their own stories, and showing that they aren’t much different from anyone else.

And Doc Weekend wraps up at 4pm on Sunday with No Violence to Freshy, which looks at the long-standing tradition of freshmen hazing in Thai universities. It’s directed by Natpakhan Khemkhan.

Admission is Bt20, and it might not hurt to have an ID handy. TK Park is on the eighth floor of the CentralWorld shopping mall in Bangkok, above the Central Foodhall.

For details, check the Facebook events page, and you find out more at the fest's Exteen blog.

Look of Silence, Y/Our Music set for Salaya Doc

The Look of Silence, an award-winning followup to Oscar-nominated The Act of Killing about genocide in Indonesia, and the SXSW entry Y/Our Music, which covers on-the-fringe Thai musicians, will be the opening and closing entries of the fifth Salaya International Documentary Film Festival, which runs from March 21 to 28 at the Thai Film Archive in Salaya, Nakhon Pathom, and from March 24 to 27 at the Bangkok Art and Culture Center.

Noteworthy films include Southeast Asian Cinema – When the Rooster Crows, covering directors Brillante Mendoza from the Philippines, Garin Nugroho from Indonesia, Eric Khoo from Singapore and Pen-ek Ratanaruang from Thailand, and Flowers of Taipei: Taiwan New Cinema, which traces the influence of such filmmakers as Edward Yang and Hou Hsiao-hsien. Among the filmmakers and artists testifying are Apichatpong Weerasethakul – he's in a trailer embedded below.

Other special screenings include Frederick Wiseman's National Gallery, Love Is All: 100 Years of Love and Courtship, featuring rare footage from the British Film Insitute and Yorkshire Film Archive; No Word for Worry, covering the fading "sea gypsy" culture of Myanmar; and The Wages of Resistance: Narita Stories, which is a followup to a long-running series of 1960s documentaries about farmers opposed to the ever-expanding Tokyo airport.

Also, there will be the controversial Diving Bell: The Truth Shall Not Sink with Sewol. The film, which caused an uproar at the Busan fest, will have a Q-and-A with the directors following a one-off BACC screening.

Acclaimed Dutch-Indonesian auteur Leonard Retel Helmrich, known for his "single-shot cinema" technique, is this year's "director in focus". Four of his award-winning films will be shown: Eye of the Day, Shape of the Moon, Position Among the Stars and Promised Paradise. He'll also conduct a masterclass for registered participants and be on hand after some screenings for a talk.

And the centerpiece of Salaya Doc is the Asean competition, which this year has seven entries, both shorts and features, from Cambodia, Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Most of that program is detailed over at Bangkok Cinema Scene.

The schedule has just been completed and can be found on the Salaya Doc Facebook page. Also, it is possible to reserve seats online. You can do so at bit.ly/booking-for-salayadoc5.

Academy for Southeast Asian Filmmakers workshops set for Bangkok, Jakarta

Mofilm, an outfit that puts on short-film contests around the world and acts as a social-network for indie filmmakers, will launch the Academy for Southeast Asian Filmmakers with workshops in Bangkok and Jakarta in May.

Here's a bit more about it from an e-mail:

Chevrolet and Mofilm have partnered to celebrate, foster and nurture filmmakers from across Southeast Asia, through the Academy for Southeast Asian Filmmakers (ASAF). The Academy workshops will be a free three-day course that will develop filmmaking expertise. The course, created and delivered by experts from the local filmmaking industry, will cover several aspects of filmmaker theory and practice, with a focus on developing the storytelling skills. Spaces on the Academy workshops – held in Jakarta from May 11 to 13 and Bangkok from May 15 to 18 – are limited and subject to application. The creative brief by Chevrolet will be a key part of the seminars, but is also open to creatives who didn’t attend the workshops. More details about the programme or to apply please visit mofilm.com/ASAF.

Spaces are limited. The application deadline is on March 31.

Vanishing Point – no, not that Vanishing Point – appears in Rotterdam's Tiger competition

Each year, the International Film Festival Rotterdam provides a good look at things to come in indie Thai cinema, and this year's big highlight is the world premiere of Vanishing Point (วานิชชิ่ง พอยท์), a new feature from video artist and indie helmer Jakrawal Nilthamrong.

Containing a car – though likely not a 1970 Dodge Challenger – and twisted wreckage, Vanishing Point is not a remake of the cult-classic car-chase drama, though like the characters in that 1971 flick, the folks in 2015's Vanishing Point are also dealing with existential crises.

It's actually a partly autobiographical picture by Jakrawal, who opens it with photos and words from Thai newspaper articles from 1983, reporting on a horrific car-train wreck that left his mother severely injured and his father permanently disabled. From there, he branches out with a fictional drama, involving various characters struggling with their beliefs.

Here's the festival synopsis:

A serious film about serious, complex issues (including a dramatic car crash), presented in a light, playful way. The film follows two very different men, each of whom changes his life in his own way. This doesn’t seem to be a direct result of the choices they make. Change can be like that.

Vanishing Point is an exercise in self-examination, even if Thai director Jakrawal Nilthamrong doesn’t appear directly in the film. It opens with images of a car crash involving Nilthamrong’s parents. Disturbing original news photos are initially used, but the director quickly switches to a fictional reconstruction at the scene of a crime, deep in a wood. We don't yet know how this shocking crime is related to the car accident. Various facts and stories are cautiously presented; the pieces of the puzzle don’t fall into place straight away.

Vanishing Point follows a young reporter who attends the reconstruction without being particularly impressed. He is against injustice, but is unable to give concrete expression to this feeling. Another storyline involves motel owner Yai, a joyless voyeur with little feeling for his family. His attempts to escape his day-to-day existence don’t really help.

The film is not sombre, however. Nilthamrong makes good use of diverting elements such as karaoke videos and popular music to develop his themes with a light touch. The question of how his parents’ accident has affected his life is a serious sidelight: how all of our actions affect the rest of our lives.

For more details, check the production PDF or Facebook. There's also a trailer. Just keep scrolling.

As usual, IFFR has a passel of Thai short films as well. Here's the line-up:

• Auntie Maam Has Never Had a Passport – Sorayos Prapapan's well-travelled festival entry satirizes Thailand's foreign affairs and even film festivals like Rotterdam with a story about an elderly lady who appears in Thai indie films who gets a chance to travel overseas to a film fest.
• Deleted – Nitas Sinwattanakul directs this 2013 short, about a man who continues to post on Facebook even after he dies, and his wife is powerless to block him.
• Endless, Nameless – Pathompon "Mont" Tesprateep's wacky experimental short was shot on Super 8 film that was hand-processed. Yes. It's a flm made on actual film. Not sure what the heck it's about, but it won the top prize at last year's Thai Short Film and Video Festival.
• Thursday – Festival regular Anocha Suwichakornpong, who got her big break in Rotterdam with her debut feature Mundane History, collaborates with Sarajevo filmmaker Sejla Kameric on a 44-minute visual dialogue that offers wordless impressions from old Europe and changing Asia.

The International Film Festival Rotterdam runs from January 21 to February 1.

EXpatZ sets Thai premiere

ExpatZ, a short film made in Thailand that has been screening and winning awards at fests worldwide, will make its Bangkok premiere next week at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand.

Directed by Jimmie Wing, ExpatZ is a psychedelic horror-comedy mash-up set in the totally fictional country of Wighland, which bears no resemblance at all to Thailand. Nope. Not one bit. Anyway, in this strange land, a foreign TV journalist encounters all sorts of colorful characters as he tracks down a rogue retired American military officer.

Here's more details:

A foreign television reporter specializes in interviewing bizarre foreigners living in Wighland. The reporter and his local partner, Professor Roasted Squid, take off to find an especially peculiar retired American military officer. Ordinarily, the boss of a local hamburger joint, the retired officer hides a secret culinary technology. When a few of the reporter’s jealous "friends" show up on the scene, they get caught up in a long and unexpectedly strange trip. The hilarious antics and cross-cultural relationships of these crazy white people perfectly set the scene for this wild adventure.

In awarding Jimmie Wing's film the grand prize for best short film, the Urban Nomad Film Festival (Taiwan’s largest independent film confab) said, "Adopting a humorous and visually alluring style, EXpatZ describes the strange and twisted stories of Westerners in Asia and the adventures of one Asian people’s turnabout in fortunes. The film is a satire on the ridiculousness of the superiority of white people and lampoons standards of racial stereotyping. Through extreme subversion and sabotage, EXpatZ presents a multi-faceted view of the relative relationship between the West and Asia within the ecology of Southeast Asian colonialism.”

The screening is set for Wednesday, November 19, at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand. The event starts at 6pm with hamburgers, followed by the film at 7pm. Wing will talk and answer questions later, along with co-leads Soontorn Meesri and Lex Luther. Kamonrat Ladseeta, who plays Madame Quoits, the wife of Commander Quoits (Darren Potter), will also field questions.

Check out the trailer, embedded below.

Bangkok Cinema Scene special: World Film Festival of Bangkok, October 17-26

The 12th World Film Festival of Bangkok opens this Friday at SF World Cinema at CentralWorld with Somboon, a documentary by young Thai director Krisda Tipchaimeta that follows the lives of Grandpa Somboon and Granny Miad, a couple married for 45 years. With Miad suffering from acute kidney disease, Somboon stays by her side, providing constant care.

Among the highlights of the festival are entries from this year's Cannes Film Festival, including Jean Luc-Godard's latest, Goodbye to Language, an experimental 3D drama, and Mommy, by French-Canadian badboy Xavier Dolan. Both films were jury prize winners at Cannes. Also from Cannes is The Blue Room, a fresh adaptation of the Georges Simenon crime novel by Mathieu Almaric, about childhood friends reunited as adulterous lovers.

Two French classics will unspool, Godard's 1965 comedy, Pierrot le Fou and from 1980, Francois Truffaut's World War II drama The Last Metro. The fest will also screen the newly restored version of Metropolis, with footage rediscovered a few years ago.

There's a block of French animation in a festival sidebar, the French-Thai Animation Rendezvous, which offers five recent French animated features in various styles – A Cat in Paris, The Congress, the 3D Minuscule, Valley of the Lost Ants, Ernest and Celestine and Tales of the Night.

Another festival sidebar groups together Israel films, going back as far as 1988's Aviya's Summer up to 2013's Cupcakes. Others are The Band's Visit, A Matter of Size, Noodle and Footnote.

There's the Cine Latino and Cinema Beat programs, which feature entries from across Latin America, the US, Canada and beyond. The selection includes the Sundance winner Whiplash, which will also get a general release in Thai cinemas.

Other festival sections include Doc Feast, Asian Contemporary and Short Wave.

The fest closes on October 26 with The Tale of Princess Kaguya, a new anime feature from Japan's Studio Ghibli.

Tickets cost Bt120. There are 500 special packages offering five movies for Bt500.

This year, for the first time, the World Film Festival of Bangkok will have many films with both Thai and English subtitles, which will travel to the provinces, taking a selection of movies on Blu-ray to SF cinemas in Khon Kaen from November 7 to 9, Pattaya from November 14 to 16 and Chiang Mai from November 20 to 23.

Find out more at www.WorldFilmBkk.com.

Filmvirus puts Chulayarnnon Siriphol in spotlight

Chulayarnnon Siriphol is a perennial award winner at the Thai Short Film and Video Festival, where his films, usually satiric views on Thai society, are a highlight. They include documentaries, spoof documentaries and experimental films.

This Saturday, Filmvirus and the Reading Room offer a chance to see a bunch of them all at once with Wildtype Masterclass 001: Fuck Alligator.

The selection goes back as far as 2005 with Golden Sand House, and includes his 2008 winning student film Danger (Director's Cut), 2011's award winners Mrs. Nuan Who Can Recall Her Past Lives and A Brief History of Memory and this year's award-winner Myth of Modernity.

There are two programs, at 1 and 3.30pm, followed at 6 by a masterclass and talk by Chulayarnnon.

The venue is the Reading Room, a fourth-floor walk-up gallery on Silom Soi 19, opposite Silom Center.

Thai Short 18: Endless, Nameless takes top prize

Cabezón (Big Head), winner of the International Competition.

Endless, Nameless, a highly experimental film that was actually shot on film, won the top-prize R.D. Pestonji Award for general Thai filmmakers at the 18th Thai Short Film and Video Festival on Sunday.

Directed by Pathompon Tesprateep and shot on Super 8 footage that was then processed by hand, the flickering images depicted soldiers gathered in a high-ranking officer's backyard. They are pitted against various objects, inanimate and otherwise, including a hissing cobra, which sways back and forth.

The pick of Endless, Nameless came as the Thai Short Film and Video Festival paid tribute to the Thai Film Archive's 30th anniversary, with Archive EX, a special program of Thai experimental films from pre-digital age.

But the triumph of the 8mm experimental film also comes as one of the festival's long-running awards, the Kodak Filmschool Award, for student films made with Kodak stock, is no more. Aside from Endless, Nameless, no other competition entries were made on film – all were digital productions. Meanwhile, two production service companies, VS Service and Cinetoys, stepped in this year with two new special awards, both honoring movies about movie-making.

The Cinetoys' prize went to Rest in Peace by Nonthakorn Patphol (The Thai title ภาพยนตร์เรื่องสุดท้ายพระเอกตายตอนจบ refers to the action-movie hero dying in the end) while VS Services' gong went to Endslate, capturing a day on the set of an indie movie.

Other entries in the R.D. Pestonji competition, named for Thailand's pioneering auteur of the 1950s, included the runner-up Endlessly by Sivaroj Kongsakul, about a grandmother and her grandchild spending a day together. It was also among winners of the Vichamatra Award for distinctive achievements in filmmaking.

Another Pestonji entry, Isan Mars, about a project to send workers from Thailand's rural Northeast to Mars, was among the winners of the BACC Award, instituted last year by the Bangkok Art and Culture Center, which hosts the festival.

Also from the Pestonji line-up was The Way of Life, Tah Kwa's look at the forced ouster of indigenous people from their traditional homes in the upland forests to the lowlands. It won a special mention in the Pestonji category and the Pirabkhao (White Dove) Award from the 14 October 73 Memorial Foundation for films highlighting social concerns.

In the International Competition, the top prize went to Cabezón (Big Head), a Chilean comedy in which a painter is tasked with painting a portrait of a client's pet dog – an old stubborn and lazy mastiff. The painter eventually bonds with his subject, plying the epically drooling canine with sliced ham.

The White Elephant Award top prize went to the coming-of-age friendship drama Menstrual Synchrony by Jirassaya Wongsuthin, which also shared the Popular Vote award with The Second Friendship Book by Pakchayos Charanchol, which competed in the Special White Elephant category for filmmakers under 18.

In animation, the Payut Ngaokrachang Award went to Neither Lit Nor Dark by Chanon Treenate. The prize is named after Thailand's pioneering animator. Among the runners-up was I Can Fly by perennial award-winner Twatpong Tangsajapoj, which also won a Vichamatra Award. A special mention went to The Bird and the Fish by Kanitrin Thailamthong, in which a lifelike cartoon pigeon witnesses a fish falling from the sky. It also won a BACC Award.


BACC Award

• The Bird and the Fish by Kanitrin Thailamthong
• Isan Mars by P. Sangsorn

Special Award from Cinetoys and Services Co., Ltd.

• Rest in Peace by Nonthakorn Patphol

Special Award from VS Service Company Limited

• Endslate by Chinnavorn Nongyoa

Pirabkhao award

• The Way of Life by Tah Kwa

Duke Award (documentaries)

• Special Mention – Khon Tie Tor by Kittipat Kanoknak and Dad by Tipwan Narintorn
• Runner-up – Once in a Year by Teerapan Ngaojeeranan and Lice in the Wonderland by Boonyarit Wiengnon
• Grand-Prix – Rao Choana Yoo Kub Kwai (เราชาวนาอยู่กับควาย ) by Wachara Kunha

R.D. Pestonji Award International Competition

• Special Mention – Mama by Lidia Sheinin, Russia
• Best International Short Film – Cabezón (Big Head) by Jairo Boisier, Chile 

R.D. Pestonji Award (for general Thai filmmakers)

• Special Mention – The Way of Life by Tah Kwa, Auntie Maam Has Never Had a Passport by Soroyos Prapapan and Narayana’s Arrow Spaceship: Between the Orbits of Mars and Jupiter by Paranoid Team
• Runner-up – Endlessly by Sivroj Kongsakul, Somewhere Only We Know by Wichanon Somumjarn and Myth of Modernity by Chulayarnnon Siriphol
• Grand Prix – Endless, Nameless by Pathompon Tesprateep

Payut Ngaokrachang Award (animation)

• Special Mention – The Bird and the Fish by Kanitrin Thailamthong, Congratulations by Pathompong Thititan and Aelio by Pongpreecha Kittiporniwat
• Runner-Up – I Can Fly by Twatpong Tangsajapoj and The Blanket by Pasraporn Tampanon
• Grand Prix – Neither Lit Nor Dark by Chanon Treenate

Special White Elephant (students under 18)

• Special Mention – Past Perfect by Wethaka Jarampornsakul and Sirya Lertsmithwong and The Second Friendship Book by Pakchayos Charanchol
• Grand Prix – The Misplaced Flower by Zo Chamuleur

White Elephant (student films)

• Special Mention – Duct Move Past by Nichapa Trongsiri  , Hula Hoop by Reawadee Ngamloon, Khmer Talisman by Pissamai Duangnoi and /'Spel,baund by Nat Eiamkhunthongsuk
• Runner-Up – 329 by Tinnawat Chankloi and Gandharva by Theerapat Ngathong
• Grand Prix – Menstrual Synchrony by Jirassaya Wongsuthin

JENESYS 2.0 Award (Japan-East Asia Network of Exchange for Students and Youth)

• A-ANT by Natpong Prasri
• Inspiration by Punya Choo
• Red Shoes by Wannisa Pinjai
• Dream and Bad Day by Pakawadee Pongisrapan
• Home by Apinya Mahatham
• Brush by Nat Watanakul
• Do you? by Patraporn Rachatakittisuntorn
• Illusive Dream by Patrin Chaopanich
• Window Job by Parunyu Chaisri

Best Actor

• Ornanong Thaisriwong from Anna

Vichitmatra Award

• Scent of the Morning Sun by Monkham Khukhuntin and Harin Paesongthai
• Goodbye by Nakorn Chaisri
• I Can Fly by Twatpong Tangsajapoj
• Endlessly by Sivaroj Kongsakul

Popular Vote

• Menstrual Synchrony by Jirassaya Wongsuthin
• The Second Friendship Book by Pakchayos Charanchol

Post by Thai Short Film & Video Festival.

Vientiane in Love premiere set for 2014 line-up of Luang Prabang Film Festival

Vientiane in Love is one of four Lao films in the fest.

The world premiere of Vientiane in Love, an omnibus romance by four Lao directors, will open the fifth edition of the Luang Prabang Film Festival, set for December 6 to 10 in the Unesco World Heritage former royal capital of Laos.

Screening on the main screen in the festival's 800-seat outdoor main venue, Vientiane in Love is by four directors from Lao New Wave Cinema, Vannaphone Sitthirath, Xaisongkham Induangchanthy, Phanumad Disattha and Anysay Keola, who made his debut in 2012 with the thriller At the Horizon.

Three other features from Laos' newly emergent film industry will also screen – Really Love by Jear Sirivongsa, which had a successful theatrical run in Laos, Tuk-Tuk by the Lao-French director Simon Luang Kiyé, and the Lao-Thai co-production by My Teacher, by Thai director Niyom Wongpongkham.

Celebrating the best in Southeast Asian cinema, the festival will feature works by such well-known auteurs as Cambodia's Rithy Panh, and his Oscar-nominated autobiographical documentary The Missing Picture, and Indonesia's Riri Riza, whose latest is The Jungle School. Also from Cambodia is Chhay Bora's new film, the drama 3.50, in which a documentary filmmaker tries to rescue a girl sold into prostitution.

Other festival highlights are the crowd-pleasing Thai hits Pee Mak Phra Khanong and Mary Is Happy, Mary Is Happy and Singapore's Cannes Golden Camera winner Ilo Ilo.

Documentaries include the coffee-infused Aroma of Heaven from Indonesia, the Thai environmental disaster of By the River, The Boatbuilders of Mermaid Island from Malaysia, and The Songs of Rice, an explosive music-and-dance-laden look at the festivals that accompany rice cultivation in Thailand.

Vietnamese offerings include the award-winning musical The Talent by first-time director Nguyen Quang Huy, which won six Golden Kites, including best feature, the country's top film award.

Among the Filipino films is the crime drama The Patriarch, romance with Shift, coming-of-age drama in Catnip and young-punk adventures in Iskawalags.

Myanmar is represented by Midi Z and his partly autobiographical coming-home drama Return to Burma.

Other Thai features include Lee Chatametikool's Concrete Clouds, starring Lao-Australian leading man and festival favorite Ananda Everingham, and the hit GTH romance The Teacher's Diary.

All screenings and activities of the festival are free and open to the public. Selected by LPFF's Motion Picture Ambassadors (film experts in each of the participating countries), the feature films in the 2014 festival will be:

• 3.50, directed by Chhay Bora, Cambodia
• Aroma of Heaven, directed by Budi Kurniawan, Indonesia
• The Boatbuilders of Mermaid Island, directed by Azharr Rudin and Imri Nasution, Malaysia
• By the River, directed by Nontawat Numbenchapol, Thailand
• Catnip, directed by Kevin Dayrit, Philippines
• Concrete Clouds, directed by Lee Chatametikool, Thailand
• Ilo Ilo, directed by Anthony Chen, Singapore
• Iskalawags, directed by Keith Deligero, Philippines
• The Jungle School, directed by Riri Riza, Indonesia
• Madam Phung’s Last Journey, directed by Tham Nguyen Thi, Vietnam
• The Mangoes, directed by Tonny Trimarsanto, Indonesia
• Mary Is Happy, Mary Is Happy, directed by Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit, Thailand
• The Missing Picture, directed by Rithy Panh, Cambodia
• My Teacher, Niyom Wongpongkham, Laos
• The Patriarch, directed by Borgy Torre, Philippines
• Pee Mak Phrakanong, directed by Banjong Pisanthanakun, Thailand
• Really Love, directed by Jear Sirivongsa, Laos
• Return to Burma, directed by Midi Z, Myanmar
• Sayang Disayang, directed by Sanif Olek, Singapore
• Shift, directed by Siege Ledesma, Philippines
• The Songs of Rice, directed by Uruphong Raksasad, Thailand
• Streetside, directed by Daniel Ziv, Indonesia
• The Teacher’s Diary, directed by Nithiwat Tharathorn, Thailand
• The Talent, directed by Nguyen Quang Huy, Vietnam
• Tuk-Tuk, directed by Simon Luang Kiyé, Laos
• Vientiane in Love, directed by Vannaphone Sitthirath, Xaisongkham Induangchanthy, Phanumad Disattha and Anysay Keola, Laos
• We Are Moluccan, directed by Angga Dwimas Sasongko, Indonesia

In addition to these feature film screenings, LPFF will have short films, including all 18 entries from DocNet Southeast Asia's second ChopShots fest. Short-film competition entries from Laos' other film festival, the Vientianale, will also be shown.

As always, LPFF will create a space for regional film professionals and fans to network, dialogue and encourage local film production. There will be panel discussions, question-and-answer sessions, music, dance and puppetry performances.

Festival-goers can expect an update on the Southeast Asia Movie Theater Project (the director of which will be speaking later this month at TEDx in Chiang Mai), as well as other film-related exhibitions.

In an exciting new partnership, representatives of leading Thai theater chain Major Cineplex will be in attendance and one of the festival’s films may be selected for theatrical distribution.

Coca-Cola is one of the festival’s biggest sponsors once again this year, having also made a very generous donation to LPFF’s Lao Filmmakers Fund, a publicly-generated fund that allows filmmakers in Laos to apply for grants to help realize their film projects. This year, filmmakers are able to request up to US$10,000 in support.

For further information, visit www.lpfilmfest.org or stay up to date at Facebook.com/lpfilmfest.