The 10th World Film Festival of Bangkok continues its tradition of opening with an independent Thai film. This edition it's Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Mekong Hotel, which premiered at this year's Cannes Film Festival and has been a fixture on the festival circuit ever since.
One of the most buzzworthy titles from this year's Cannes fest, Holy Motors, will also screen. And, director Leos Carax will be present to receive the festival's Lotus Award, which is essentially a lifetime achievement award. A couple of Carax's earlier films, The Lovers on the Bridge and Mauvais Sang.
And, finally making it's way to Bangkok is Aki Kaurismaki's Le Havre, which was an award-winner at Cannes last year and was the French selection to the Oscars.
Other Thai films include Elephant Shaman, a documentary about an 85-year-old Hmong man who is believed to be the last elephant shaman in Thailand, and his efforts to pass on his knowledge to the generation. It's by Thai-Irish director Shane Bunnag, whose debut feature All for Nothing was screened at the 2006 edition of the festival.
Thailand's pachyderms are also featured in The Eyes of Thailand, which follows feisty activist Soraida Salwala's quest to help two elephant land-mine amputees walk on their own four gigantic legs with elephant-sized prostheses. It's narrated by Ashley Judd.
There's lots more Thai interest in the Short Wave package. It includes films from Chiang Mai's Friends Without Borders and their workshop for ethnic filmmakers, which generated Natpakal Khemkhao 's The Farmer, Tanit Jamroensuksakul's Ja Daw's Choice and Suthit Saja's A Belt and a Comb. All three won awards earlier this year at the 15th Thai Short Film and Video Festival, and here's an excellent change to see them if you haven't yet.
This is actually the second time this year the World Film Festival of Bangkok has been held. Last year's ninth edition was postponed to January because of the flooding disaster in Bangkok last October and November. But the 10th edition looks set to go on as scheduled, even though there are still things work out on the schedule. Keep an eye on the festival website for more details.
There have been several recent English-friendly releases of Thai films in various parts of the world.
Probably the most prominent is Headshot, Pen-ek Ratanaruang's unique and acclaimed hitman thriller. Thailand's submission to the Oscars, Headshot has been a fixture on the festival circuit this year and won a bunch of awards in Thailand. Released on DVD and Blu-ray in the U.S. by Kino Lorber (which includes an English dub in addition to the original soundtrack), it's the first time in years Pen-ek's had a Stateside release of one of his films.
Indie director Anocha Suwichakornpong's debut feature Mundane History (เจ้านกกระจอก, Jao Nok Krajok) has been released in the U.K. by Second Run. The drama is about a paralyzed young man from a wealthy family forming a friendship with his nurse, a young man from the rural northeast. A story of Thailand's great class divide that eventually goes back to the very forming of the cosmos, it's taken awhile for this acclaimed 2009 film to find its way to English-friendly DVD. Now, reviews are comparing it to newer movies, like Terrence Malick's Tree of Life or the French blockbuster Intouchables.
Anocha has self-released Mundane History on DVD in Thailand, but, of course, there are no English subtitles. There's an English-friendly Region 2 Dutch release, but it looks like the U.K. version is the one to get thanks to such extras as a booklet featuring a long essay by critic Carmen Gray. There’s also Anocha's 2006 graduate-thesis short film Graceland, which was the first Thai film to be selected for the Cannes Cinefondation competition. And there's an interview with her.
Meanwhile, there are a bunch of Thai genre films, mainly horror titles, out in Hong Kong.
Five Star's bumpy airplane thriller Dark Flight, the first Thai film actually filmed in 3D, is offered on Blu-ray in both 2D and 3D. There's also a 2D DVD release. Directed by Isara Nadee, who was part of the Ronin Team that did the Art of the Devil movies, and scripted in part by Ronin Team member Kongkiat Khomsiri, the haunted airliner tale stars Marsha Wattanapanich as a veteran flight attendant who's troubled past causes problems for passengers and fellow crew on a short, stormy hop from Bangkok to Phuket.
The Kick is a fairly entertaining mix of Korean and Thai martial arts, with a family of taekwando experts clashing with gangsters who've stolen a treasured ancient Siamese dagger. Along with the South Korean cast, the film directed by Ong-Bak and Chocolate helmer Prachya Pinkaew also features Jeeja Yanin and funnyman Mum Jokmok and action choreography by Panna Rittikrai. It's on DVD and Blu-ray.
And there's I Miss U (รักฉันอย่าคิดถึงฉัน, Rak Chan Yaa Khid Tueng Chang), director Monthon Arayangkoon's horror romance tale about a widowed, guilt-ridden chief surgeon (Jessadaporn Pholdee) who just won't let go of the memories of his dead wife (Natthaweeranuch Thongmee), and a plucky first-year resident doctor (Apinya Sakuljaroensuk) who finds herself haunted as she gets closer to the grieving guy. Inthira Charoenpura also stars. Controversially, studio M-Thirtynine released I Miss U in Thai cinemas with three different endings, which screened on different weeks during the movie's run. However, it appears there's only one ending available on the Hong Kong home-video release, even though the "alternate endings" gimmick seems tailor-made to be a bonus feature. It's on DVD and Blu-ray.
“Pride of the Nation #1 Tony Jaa” at Bangkok's Artery Postmodern Gallery features various interpretations of the Ong-Bak star, from his fierce side, as represented in a Hulk-like green-hued painting, to his gentler side, as symbolized by a little boy in a pink bunny costume, his arms clutched around the trunk of an elephant.
“I’m into martial arts, so I get my inspiration from watching Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee and Jet Li,” he said at the opening of an exhibition of art that he in turn inspired.
Jaa put on a show of his own while musicians played and graffiti makers did their thing.
In another corner, Patcharapon “Alex Face” Tangruen explained that Jaa’s affection for animals led him to draw the actor as a cute boy with an elephant. “I noticed his soft side during our workshop.”
Cecê Nobre from Brazil emphasised Jaa’s eyes in a portrait of bravery and determination. “He doesn’t need to flex the muscles to show his courage.”
Good stuff, but Jaa believes everyone can succeed in whatever they do. “You’ve just got to have belief in your work.”
Bangkok's neon-lit seedy side lends itself well to Blade Runner-like dystopian film-noir settings, a notion that hasn't gone overlooked by dozens of authors, artists and, of course, filmmakers.
One of the latest filmmakers to get on the "Bangkok noir" bandwagon is Stephan Zlotescu, a special-effects specialist who directed the sci-fi short True Skin. Shot by H1, the video, embedded above, hit the Web about a week ago and in Thailand, especially among Bangkok's expat community, it's been the talk of social networks like Twitter.
It's the story of a guy in the future who gets hooked on robotic implants. They have been outlawed elsewhere, so the narrator travels to anything-goes Bangkok where there's an open market. The video visits the usual scuzzy sex-tourist traps, like Soi Cowboy and Silom Road. The robotic-implant special effects are stylishly overlayed on touts, vendors and go-go dancers.
The eye-popping short seems to have been made with the intention of landing a movie deal, and it did the trick, with The Hollywood Reporter saying that Warner Bros. and Harry Potter producer David Heyman have picked it up.
There are hopes among the local film-industry community that the movie will actually be made here, but it's early days yet, and as blogger Saksith Saiyasombut points out on Twitter, Warners will probably want to relocate the setting to North America.
Meanwhile, Film Business Asia reports on a crime thriller that will be made in Thailand and Singapore – Pharmacide – a thriller about the illegal pharmaceuticals industry. Thailand's Living Films, Singapore's Blackmagic Design and the U.K.'s Soho Films have teamed up for the production to be directed by Mark Hammond. It's expected to start shooting in mid-2013.
Celebrated annually worldwide, Home Movie Day this year falls on Saturday, October 20, and the Thai celebration is set for 11am to 6pm in the FA Cinematheque on the second floor of the Bangkok Art and Culture Center.
There's a crop of "found footage" movies playing now in Bangkok cinemas, like Sinister, Paranormal Activity 4 and even End of Watch. They aren't necessarily all bad, but here's a chance to see real found footage.
For the event put on by the Thai Film Archive, the theme is Thai home movies from Southeast Asian countries, just to get into the spirit of preparations for the Asean Economic Community 2015.
According to Limitless Cinema, the movies will include footage shot by King Rama VII when he visited neighboring countries in 1929-30, a clip of Italian-born artist Silpa Bhirasri (1892-1962) sculpting the monument of King Taksin the Great and Chun Suwannaboon's film of the opening ceremony of the Lam Tong Game (1959).
From 2 to 3pm, Khonthaptip Veeraprawat will talk on her family's home movie collection. Film Archive Director Dome Sukwong will talk from 5 to 6 on "The Surprising Discovery in Home Movies".
Home Movie Day comes at a busy time for Bangkok movie-goers. This weekend, there's also the Indian Centenary Film Festival. And on Saturday afternoon, there's the screening of the Filipino drama Niño as part of the BACC's Cinema Diverse series. A reception at 5pm will welcome the film's director Loy Arcenas and star Fides Cuyugan Asensio.
Cannes Golden Palm winner Apichatpong Weerasethakul has a new film out, and you won't have to trek to a film festival, arthouse cinema or art gallery to see it – it's online.
Cactus River (Khong Lang Nam) debuted over the weekend on the newly launched Walker Channel of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota, which commissioned the short film by Apichatpong.
With Cactus River, the work’s title provides the sense of mystery that we have come to know through all of Weerasethakul’s work: a desert plant with the name of a waterway. It doesn’t make geographic sense, but conjures an image of what will happen to the Mekong if anticipated dams are built — making a veritable cactus-filled river. But this is more than a film about last year’s floods in Thailand and the threat of drought. In describing Cactus River, Weerasethkul tells the story of how actress Jenjira Pongpas changed her name to Nach, which means water. She has acted in his films since 2009, including Syndromes and a Century and Uncle Boonmee, both of which screened at the Walker in 2011. Convinced that her new name will bring good luck, Nach soon meets and marries Frank, a retired soldier from the small US town of Cuba, New Mexico. Cactus River opens with a scene of Nach and her husband in their new home on the Mekong River as they go about their daily life. She is cooking or knitting baby socks for sale while he gardens and watches a Thai television program with the sound turned off. We see the wind off the nearby river and the flowing of two waters, Nach and Mekong.
Cactus River is Weerasethakul’s diary of his visit with the couple. He explains, “The flow of the two rivers — Nach and the Mekong — activates my memories of the place where I shot several films. Over many years, this woman whose name was once Jenjira has introduced me to this river, her life, its history, and to her belief about its imminent future. She is certain that soon there will be no water in the river due to the upstream constructions of dams in China and Laos. I noticed, too, that Jenjira was no more.
Shot in black and white, much of it is in fast motion – though there is a spectacular slow-mo skateboard stunt. The video, available on YouTube, is embedded below.
Cactus River appears to be another element from Apichatpong's project about "water, specifically the Mekong". It also closely follows the low-fi, fragmented aesthetics of his previous work, Ashes, which was shot with the hand-cranked Lomo Kino camera and also debuted online.
Meanwhile, Apichatpong's latest feature, Mekong Hotel, is continuing to make the rounds at film festivals. It'll screen at the Walker later this month. Rumor is Mekong Hotel will appear soon in Bangkok, but details are yet to be confirmed.
It's the little film that could. In a stunning win, Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit's 36 shared the top prize at the 17th Busan International Film Festival, which wrapped up on Saturday.
He's "a young filmmaker who invented his own film language,” the jury headed by Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr said, calling 36 "breathtaking, artful, economic. [It] never included an unnecessary word."
The other winner of the New Currents Prize, given to directors making their first or second feature, was Lebanon's Maryam Najafi for Kayan.
Nawapol's film is a highly experimental effort. It's the story of a young woman (Vajrasthira Koramit) who works as a location scout for a movie company who gets into a relationship with an art director (Tee-Rak's Wanlop Rungkamjad). Later on, the guy moves on and the woman is stuck with a broken portable hard drive containing all the photos she took with him. She struggles to reconstruct those fragmented memories. Running 68 minutes, it's composed of 36 static shots, each a single-camera setup, and often from odd angles that obscure the faces of the actors.
It was released in Thailand earlier this year through an experimental effort by Nawapol, who executive produced the film and shepherded it around to various alternative venues like the Bangkok Art and Culture Center and the Alliance Française Bangkok. He promoted the screenings through Facebook and charged 100 baht a head, selling out most shows. It also had a run at Bangkok's House cinema, playing to capacity crowds.
The production also had support from Aditya Assarat's Pop Pictures and the big film studio GTH, as well as A Day magazine, which Nawapol writes for.
In addition to making many acclaimed short films, like Bangkok Tanks and Cherie is Korean-Thai, Nawapol is a screenwriter, film critic and film programmer. His varied career includes screenwriting on such hit Thai mainstream commercial films as Bangkok Traffic Love Story and Top Secret Teenage Billionaire. He also co-founded Third Class Citizen, which organizes screenings of independent Thai films.
Other Thai films at Busan this year were Nonzee Nimibutr's psychological thriller Distortion, Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Mekong Hotel, Boonsong Nakphoo's Four Stations and the short film Oriole by Kaynipa Polnikorn. Nonzee, a fixture at Busan, was interviewed this year by the Hollywood Reporter Festival Daily.
Last January there was a Thai movie poster show at a gallery in Palm Springs, California, called Eyegasm: The Art of Thai Movie Posters that was pretty cool and got a lot of attention.
While the earlier show featured some action and sci-fi titles, this one is totally devoted to horror cult classics, like The Evil Dead II, Day of the Dead and Frogs. There's even an old Thai ghost movie, Krasue vs. Phi Pop (Filth-Eating Ghost vs. Liver-Eating Ghost).
They are all from the M. Wright Collection, and most are very rare, Wright says, adding: "We are not making money on this event, our intent is the exposure of Thai movie posters to a Western audience."
The show started on September 28 and runs until November 4, with a reception next Saturday, October 20, from 8 to 10pm.
If you can't make it out to the desert haven, have a look at online gallery.
Following the critical success of last year's monastic mystery thriller Mindfulness and Murder (ศพไม่เงียบ, Sop Mai Ngeap), De Warrenne Pictures producer-director Tom Waller continues to mine the grittier side of Thai culture with his next project, Chavoret: The Last Executioner, which he's shopping around this week at the Busan International Film Festival's Asian Film Market.
The fact-based biographical drama is about Chavoret Jaruboon, the last person to hold the job of executing prisoners with a rifle. He died in May of this year. In his younger days, Chavoret was a "wild rock-and-roller" who played guitar for American GIs during the Vietnam War. He then took a "respectable" job with the Corrections Department and became the one-man firing squad responsible for executing condemned prisoners. The film will portray him as a devoted family man who struggled to reconcile the good and bad karma.
The film is being produced by Waller and Michael Pritchett, with Somboon Vichaisre and Oscar Kahar as associate producers. The screenplay is being written by Thailand based expat Don Linder, who interviewed Chavoret and sourced recollections of his life from his wife, lifelong friends and children. Producition is expected to begin in early 2013.
The project will reunite Waller with his Mindfulness and Murder star Vithaya Pansringarm – both nominees for this year's Subhanahongsa Awards for Best Director, Best Actor and Best Screenplay. Vithaya, who is also featured in the upcoming Nicolas Winding Refn-Ryan Gosling film Only God Forgives, will portray Chavoret in this later years. They are still looking for a younger actor to take on the role of Chavoret during his rock 'n' roll days.
Waller is at the Asian Film Market along with delegates from the Federation of National Film Associations of Thailand.
There will also be Thai Night on Tuesday, put on by the Commerce Ministry and presided over by movie-star Princess Ubolratana, with an aim to promote Thailand as a film location.
Directed by Suthat Phawilairat, Disporn Sampattawanit, Phithak Rueangrotsin, Adirek Phothong, Pirun Anusuriya, Seree Lawchonnabot, Siriphon Prasatthong, Thanyawan Mepnom, Nuttorn Kangwanklai, Rapeemon Chaisayna, Kiattisak Wibunchat and Oliver Woonsan
Released in Thai cinemas on September 13, 2012; rated 15+
Wise Kwai's rating: 4/5
Horror-omnibus movies remain a staple of Thai cinema, especially as a fun way to put a bunch of young indie directors to work on a mainstream-industry film.
The genre is given a slight twist in the enjoyable and entertaining low-budget horror anthology 9-9-81 (บอก-เล่า-9-ศพ, Bok Lao 9 Sop). Twelve directors take part. But instead of them telling different stories in their segments, they each weave together a single tale with surprisingly cohesive results.
The story is about a bride-to-be (Patitta Attayatamavitaya) who jumps to her death from the roof of her creepy old rundown apartment building after she learns her fiancé has died. But he hasn’t. What really happened? The points of view of those close to the girl as well as a couple of innocent bystanders are recounted in nine segments.
First up is The Waiter by Sivalat Phawilairat, about a teenage boy who works at his aunt's streetside stall and has the job of delivering food trays to tenants of the apartment block. He's had a longstanding crush on the dead bride, going so far as to steal a pair of her underpants, into which he masturbates. After her high dive into the pavement – splat, right in front of him – he has the dilemma of returning the panties so that her ghost won't haunt him.
An innocent bystander who's caught up in all this is The New Tenant by Pitak Rueangrotsin. He's a comic-book illustrator who's moved into the room formerly occupied by the dead bride. He's also a cancer patient, and has apparently moved into the room while waiting to die, biding his time by drawing comics and smoking cigarettes. He comes across some of her former belongings, but is then called out of the room for mysterious circumstances. He returns to find it haunted. He shouldn't go into that bathroom, but he does because this is a horror film.
Not-so-innocent is the main character in Friend by Adirek Phothong and Siripon Prasatthong, chronicling the part the bride's best friend played. The obese girl, jealous of her attractive gal pal, is recruited by the handsome fiancé to take part in a scheme, which is further detailed in the next segment, The Lover, by Oliver Woonsan. Karma, for both of them, is a bitch. A disturbing picture emerges that the dead girl likely had pretty severe psychological troubles, causing the groom to have second thoughts.
More about what happened in the dead girl's apartment after the comic-book artist moved in is revealed in The Maid by Seree Lawchonnabot. It's one of the more comical segments, featuring a couple of superstitious old ladies as they use the apartment to cast black-magic spells in hopes of the dead girl's spirit giving them lottery numbers.
Mother by Nuttorn Kangwanklai and Thanyawan Mepnom profiles the dead bride's domineering mother, offering more hints about what caused the girl to turn out like she did.
The seventh segment, The Groom by Pirun Anusuriya profiles the person who was probably the only true friend the bride had – the proprietor of a wedding shop where she got all her supplies. With much tenderness and care, he takes part in a bizarre wedding ceremony with her corpse in a bid to appease her angry spirit.
Old Soldier by Rapeemon Chaisayna profiles the bride's father, a retired military man who perhaps did not have as strong a role in his daughter's upbringing as he should have. He is reluctantly drawn into his wife's scheme to avenge their daughter's death.
Finally, there's Old Dog by Disporn Sampattawanit and Kiattisak Wibunchat, about an alcoholic police detective who's doggedly trying to make sense of what happened. Despite his boozing, the detective connects the dots, but the constant haranguing phone calls from his police chief causes him to walk away, shaking his head, case unsolved.
In all, 9-9-81 entertains with laughs more than scares. Its low-budget aesthetics probably won't make it a big draw overseas, except for possibly genre festivals and direct-to-DVD releases.
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