Extra Virgin unlocks indies with Distance, Rice Trilogy and Island Funeral

Extra Virgin, the indie production and distribution shingle run by producer-director Pimpaka Towira, has a new initiative with SF cinemas in Thailand, Unlock Indies, a film series that opened last week with the multi-country co-production Distance.

Others in the series will be The Rice Trilogy by Uruphong Raksasad and Pimpaka's own latest feature, The Island Funeral
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The films are being released in a very limited run. Don't blink, or you will miss them. For example, Distance was initially released at SF World Cinema at CentralWorld and SFX Cinema Central Rama 9 in Bangkok, and at SFX Maya Chiang Mai. Today, it's down to just one screening a day at CentralWorld.

Next week, the program changes to what's now known as Uruphong's Rice Trilogy, with Stories from the North, Agrarian Utopia and The Songs of Rice (เพลงของข้าว, Pleng Khong Kao) taking turns on the big screen. They are among my favorites, and I hope he makes more films like these.

And on July 21, Pimpaka will release her own film, The Island Funeral (มหาสมุทรและสุสาน, Maha Samut Lae Susaan), which premiered last year in Tokyo and has been on a tear around the world, screening in places like Seattle, Aichi and Valetta and winning awards in Tokyo and Hong Kong. The Island Funeral will also be shown at the Singapore Festival of the Arts.

Meanwhile, Distance is an ambitious project headed up by Singaporean director Anthony Chen, winner of the Camera d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival for his 2013 debut drama Ilo Ilo. He gets help from Thai producer Aditya Assarat, who also wrote one of the segments.

With Distance, Chen and Assarat pay tribute to their Taiwanese and Chinese cinema influences and rounded up three young-buck award-winning Asian directors to do the job. They are Tan Shijie from Singapore, Xin Yukun from China and Sivaroj Kongsakul from Thailand. Each take a crack at directing Taiwanese actor Chen Bo-lin in segments that explore the notion of "distance" and what it means in our societies.

In Thai cinemas: Embracing Khemarat, Keep Scala petition

Three loosely connected stories of romance take place in Embracing Khemarat (อ้อมกอดเขมราฐ, Aom-Kod-Khemarat), set in an idyllic small town in Ubon Ratchathani on the banks of the Mekong.

They involve a young female physician who is posted to the local hospital and runs into cute conflict with the owner of a local coffee shop. Other stories have a young Lao immigrant woman who falls for a photographer and a "nerdy girl" who has attracted the eye of a quiet and shy schoolboy rock musician.

Among the stars are Miss Thailand 2009 runner-up Kobkullaya Chuengprasertsri, who is an actual physician. Other stars are "Fluke" Teerapat Lohanan, "Palmy" Nantariya Namboon, "Tao" Phusin Warinrak, "Nong" Puttason Seedawan and "Golf" Anuwat Chucherdwattana.

The film is written and produced by Dr Ritt Pokkrittayahariboon, a surgeon and businessman who settled in Khemarat and wanted to make a movie to promote the town and its attractions. The Nation had a bit more about it.





Apart from a new Thai movie, there is also news about an old Bangkok cinema – the Scala.

Despite the threat of imminent closure by landlord Chulalongkorn University, the leaseholder and the theater's management remain devoted to the profession of showing films. Recently, the Scala installed a new screen because the old one was showing its age and was long past due for an upgrade. The result is a much clearer and brighter picture that makes going to movies at the Scala well worth your while. It is the best value in movie-going in Bangkok. Please support the Scala while it exists, which will hopefully be through 2017 and into 2018.

Meanwhile, general Thai public awareness of the Scala's plight is finally starting to emerge, perhaps too little, too late. There was a Nation editorial this week, and there is also a Thai-language Change.org petition that asks Chula U. to "keep Scala" open and recognize that its unique cultural and architectural values outweigh the supposed economic benefits of building yet another shopping mall in a city already saturated by shopping malls.

Along with Captain America: Civil War, which is held over at the Scala for a third week, newer movies in local cinemas include the Oscar-nominated Colombian adventure Embrace of the Serpent; which is brought in by indie distribution outfit HAL Film. There is also The Man Who Knew Infinity, The Angry Birds Movie and the great Sammo Hung in The Bodyguard. More new releases are detailed on the other blog.

The Scala marquee on opening day for Captain America: Civil War, April 27, 2016. Photo by Wise Kwai.

Bangkok Asean Film Festival review: Manila in the Claws of Light, Bitcoins Heist

The titan of Filipino cinema, Lino Brocka, always focused on the unfairly exploited working class. His gripping 1975 picture, Manila in the Claws of the Light (Maynila: Sa mga kuko ng liwanag) is the pulpy story of a young man from a fishing village, who comes to the cruel metropolis to track down his ex-girlfriend Ligaya. She was lured away by a pig-woman, with promises of working in a factory and furthering her education. Yeah, right. We all know how that goes.

In rough-and-tumble Manila, he's zeroed in, locating her likely whereabouts to a certain shophouse on Misericordia Street, which he watches like a hawk.

To support his stalking efforts, Julio takes jobs in construction, and, um, other fields.

Much of the film deals with the hardships of big-city construction work, where laborers push wheelbarrows, shovel gravel, haul on ropes and die. They are building the flashy concrete high-rises that inundate the metropolitan skyline. Later, he's laid off from the construction job, and drifts into the sex trade, which Brocka depicts with flamboyantly entertaining flair.

More than a few folks in the classic film's one-off screening at the Bangkok Asean Film Festival were murmuring about how Julio, played by still-steady-working actor Bembol Roco, looked just like Thai action star Tony Jaa. So it turned into an exercise of folks imagining what it would be like if Tony mostly ditched the flying double-knee-drops and just did dramatic acting. Where, indeed, is my elephant?

Anyway, Manila in the Claws of Light is a marvel. And Martin Scorsese was well aware of the film's power. He supported efforts to have a 4K digital restoration done. One of the cinematographers, Mike de Leon, cast his eyes on the laborious wet-scanning process, and shepherded through the color-grading effort, making sure all the grit, grime and blood clearly and vividly pop off the screen with no muss and no fuss. It is Taxi Driver. It is Mean Streets. And it kicks the butts of both those films. (5/5)

Speaking of kicking butts, there's Vietnamese action cinema, which has rapidly grown and matured since the early 2000s arrival of many U.S.-schooled Vietnamese returnees who grew up watching Spielberg movies and working in Hollywood. They jump-started Vietnam's commercial film industry and make solidly mainstream box-office hits in all the crowd-pleasing genres.

Among them is Ham Tran, who made his breakthrough in 2007 with the post-American War drama Journey from the Fall. Since then, he's become solidly involved in the Ho Chi Minh City film industry, racking up a dozen or so credits as editor, including the action films The Rebel and Clash.

Adding writer and director to his name, his latest effort is Bitcoins Heist (Siêu Trộm), an action-comedy-romance that is basically the Vietnamese Ocean's Eleven, with perhaps a bit of Now You See Me tossed in.

So darn slick, I kept sliding out of my seat, Bitcoins Heist enjoyably hits the usual and expected beats of the heist flick, with team assembly, double crosses, triple crosses and sleight of hand.

The attractive and colorful cast is toplined by actresses, chiefly Kate Nhung from Tran's Hollow as Dada, Vietnam's top cyber-crime cop. She is in pursuit of Ghost, a cyber-criminal who remotely takes over people's laptops and demands ransom in bitcoins or else the device will be bricked.

An early attempt at capturing Ghost's accountant Phuc (Thanh Pham) does not go well, and Dada has to turn in her badge and gun. Ngô Thanh Vân, the action heroine from The Rebel and Clash is featured in early scenes as a sexy, tough-as-nails bodyguard to the accountant.

Now working an undercover, off-the-books operation, Dada assembles a team of con-artists, starting with a former boyfriend, the pickpocketing sleight-of-hand specialist Magic Jack (no, it's Jack Magique, he insists), played by the irrepressible Petey Majik, whose acting credits include Tran's How to Fight in Six Inch Heels.

There's a veteran jewel thief and career criminal, played by long-time Ham Tran hand Jayvee Mai The Hiep. He is assisted in thievery by his precocious acrobatic pre-teen daughter (Lam Thanh My).

And, of course, they need a hacker, a plucky young woman whose tech-savvy brother was severely wounded in the film's opening sequence, when the action tumbled into a mobile-phone repair shop. She's Vi, played by freestyling rapper Suboi, who has cyberpunk attitude to spare.

Bitcoins Heist is a welcome genre diversion from the preponderance of Southeast Asian arthouse-focused indie dramas that tend to be programmed at film festivals. It was the Vietnamese entry in the Bangkok Asean Film Festival, running April 22 to 26 at CentralWorld, with movies from all 10 countries of the Asean bloc. Even Brunei was there with the unusual female-focused martial-arts drama Yasmine. Add in the "Asean Classic" selection of three films that included Manila in the Claws of Light, there was something for everyone, and Bitcoins Heist was one for me. (4/5)

See also:

• Bangkok Cinema Scene special: Bangkok Asean Film Festival 2016

On DVD: Zero Tolerance

I saw the action thriller Zero Tolerance more than a year ago as part of the very unique Thailand International Film Destination Festival.

It was a treat to see, because it was accompanied by a question-and-answer session with director Wych Kaosayananda, star Dustin Nguyen, plus actors Sahajak "Pu" Boonthanakit and Kane Kosugi.

The film, which went on to home-video releases in the U.K. and other territories, has finally come out on DVD in Thailand. In celebration of that, I want to link to an article I did for The Nation back in February 2015.

It was written out of devotion to Dustin, Thai action cinema, the Thailand Film Office's very strange festival, and as a mea culpa to Wych Kaos, who I had so heartlessly trashed in my early blogging days, back when he was trying to make it in Hollywood with the roundly assailed Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever, a film I think everyone would rather forget.

I reckon it was the outspoken Wych's participation in the documentary The Stunt that altered my view on his place in the biz.

Here's an excerpt from The Nation piece:

"What happened with Ballistic really pretty much broke me," Wych told the audience. "I didn't want to make films for a while. I turned to music videos and commercials. I worked on other people's films.

"Now I'm over all that. When I started my first professional job, I was 23. Now I'm in my 40s. So, perspective," he said. "I've done three movies that I consider my own – Fah, Ballistic and Zero Tolerance. And ironically, the world has only seen one my movies that is my version, and that's Fah.

"If I'd seen [Zero Tolerance] 10 years ago, it would have upset me. But sitting back there just now, I enjoyed it."

Viewers who have only seen Ballistic might also enjoy Zero Tolerance, with its relative coherence and zippiness being an eye-opener – a more-accurate representation of what the passionate and savvy Kaos is capable of accomplishing.

The rest of the piece is still available on The Nation website.

The DVD, meanwhile, has English and Thai soundtracks and subtitles and is available in Thai shops, including retailers like Boomerang and Cap records.

The story has Dustin in the lead as a former paramilitary operative who comes to Bangkok seeking answers about the death of his daughter Angel. He’s assisted by a former covert-ops colleague, Royal Thai Police officer Peter (Sahajak Boonthanakit). They tangle with various bad guys, including a drug-dealing Westerner (Scott Adkins) and (at least in the version I saw) the owner of a sleazy bar (Gary Daniels). Kane Kosugi also gets his kicks in.

As for the Thailand International Film Destination Festival, which is all about foreign-film productions made in Thailand, word around town is that it might happen again. However, details remain sketchy and probably won't be fully known until right before the festival is set to actually take place.

Salaya Doc review: The Scala

Note: An encore screening of The Scala has just been added to the Salaya International Documentary Film Festival. It's at noon on Sunday, April 3, at the Bangkok Art and Culture Center.

"What if we're still doing this when we're 50?"

"It would be nice to have that kind of job security."

That exchange from young downwardly mobile tech professionals in the movie Office Space came to mind as I watched The Scala last weekend, the opening film of the Salaya International Documentary Film Festival. A documentary by Thai filmmaker Aditya Assarat, The Scala is an intimate and mournful portrait of Bangkok's last operating single-screen movie palace.

To put a relatable human face on the grand old lady of Siam Square, Aditya chose four theatre employees, all of whom have been working at the Scala since it opened in 1970. Like those Office Space characters, they probably never imagined they'd still be there more than 40 years later doing the same job.

Here are the characters:

• The Caretaker – From vacuuming the carpets to totalling up the day's receipts, the Caretaker does it all. A thin man in a crisp white button-down shirt, he's generally the guy who rips your ticket as you enter. He also washes the linen headrest covers, by hand. Remember that next time you think about wiping your popcorn-grease hands there, you slob. And the Caretaker is never very far away. He's always watching. After two marriages, he now resides with his true love, the Scala, and stays in an apartment on the cinema's roof.
• The Manager – Phuangthong Siriwan was put to work in her uncle's theatre when she was a young woman. Now with a bobbed mop of grey hair, she still carries a youthful gleam in her eyes, a bright spark to let folks know someone's there. She frets over the chipped marble in the Scala's signature curving double staircase, which has become worn under the billions of feet that have made their ascent to movie heaven.
• The Technician – The lights in the marquee. He keeps them lit. The sound in the speakers. He makes sure it's heard clearly. He's the guy behind the guy who ensures the Scala is running smoothly. He's also responsible for keeping the Scala's sister cinema the Lido spruced up. Take note of the new lights on the sign as you pass by next time.
• The Projectionist – Showing movies off a hard drive or satellite network just isn't as much fun as spooling up films for the projector, says the Projectionist, a thin, shaven-headed man who has weathered the recent changes in movie-going technology. He has to make a couple trips back and forth from his spiffy new digital system to the office to get a password to show the film. You will know his pain. Another resident of the Scala, with his own designated sleeping corner, he takes solace in his early morning bicycle rides around Siam Square.

A highlight of The Scala is the cleaning of the five-tier chandelier, a laborious process that requires all hands on deck. You won't believe how they do it, and it's something you have to see to believe.

Running a concise 50 minutes, The Scala overviews the history of the place, which opened in 1970 with the 70-millimetre John Wayne western The Undefeated. It joined a trio of similarly grand Siam Square movie palaces operated by Pisit Tansacha and his Apex group, the Siam, which mysteriously burned in the 2010 anti-government protests, and the Lido, which caught fire in 1991 and was converted to the three-screen multiplex we know today.

Back when the Scala opened, movie-going was something special, and all 1,000 seats in the theatre were filled with patrons, who had dressed in their finest for the evening out. Over the years, the number of seats has shrunk to around 700, with most of the seats taken out to accommodate a large stage that's used for concerts, talk shows and special events, which help supplement the Scala's dribs and drabs of income from movies.

Anywhere else, the Scala probably would have closed ages ago, but with the Tansacha family earning its bones from the Nong Nooch Gardens tourist attraction in Pattaya, the Scala and Lido remain in business out of sheer devotion to the theatres themselves and the loyal staff.

But there's a sinking feeling among the staff, as well as the filmmaker, that the Scala's days are numbered. After all, movie can be watched on phone screens, or at fancy mall multiplexes, all over the country. Siam Square landlord Chulalongkorn University has indicated it is keen on tearing down the old cinemas in order to build more shopping malls, though currently there's an agreement in place to keep Lido and Scala running through 2018.

Part of the Power of Asian Cinema documentary series commissioned for last year's Busan International Film Festival by KBS Busan television, The Scala is an enduring portrait of an endangered landmark. Following the one-off screening at Salaya Doc, Aditya says he's sold The Scala to TrueVisions' Thai movie channel, so keep an eye out for it there later in the year. He also reckons he'll one day screen The Scala at the Scala.

"My real hope is that one day, if the Scala does indeed close, I would hope they can show this at the farewell party," he says.

Related posts:

• Sixth Salaya Doc to open with The Scala
• Festival, festival! Masters and newcomers in Busan

(Cross-published in The Nation)

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: Kyushu the Movie, Snap sneaks in

Multi-hyphenate entertainer Worawech “Dan” Danuwong joins with his musician pal Pongjak “Aeh” Pitthanaporn for Kyushu the Movie, a road-trip comedy about the Thai singing duo SanQ on a busking tour of Kyushu Island, Japan.

They have 30 days to survive with no money; their only currency is 999 CDs of their songs, which they can sell or trade. It's at SF cinemas.

And making its bow in a wide sneak-preview run this week is Snap (แค่..ได้คิดถึง, Kae .. Dai Kit Tung), writer-director Kongdej Jaturanrasmee's latest sharp observations about contemporary Thai society.

A romantic comedy-drama, Snap premiered in competition at the Tokyo International Film Festival and opened the 13th World Film Festival of Bangkok. Set just as the military declared martial law last year, the story follows a young woman who is about to be married to a military officer. She returns to her provincial-capital hometown of Chanthaburi for a wedding of high-school friends and becomes nostalgic as she reconnects with her old boyfriend, who is the wedding photographer.

You can read more about it in an article in The Nation. There's also a nice review in the newspaper.

It's in sneak previews from around 8 nightly at the Apex cinemas in Siam Square and most other multiplexes, and then moves to a wider release next week.

Other new releases in Thai cinemas this week include the Jack Black family comedy Goosebumps and the Will Ferrell comedy Daddy's Home, as well as a final Documentary Club entry for the year, Iris. And Star Wars: The Force Awakens is held over for a second week at the Scala in Siam Square. Go see it there if you haven't already.

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.

13th WFFBKK capsule reviews: Ruined Heart, Underground Fragrance, About a Woman, Arabian Nights

Ruined Heart: Another Love Story Between a Criminal and a Whore – Remember that weird and wonderful time in the early 2000s when Pen-ek Ratanaruang made a couple of movies with Japanese cult-film actor Tadanobu Asano and Wong Kar-wai's cinematographer Christopher Doyle? That was fun, right? Well, Filipino indie filmmaker/punk rocker Khavn de la Cruz thought so, and he got Asano and Doyle back together for Ruined Heart: Another Love Story Between a Criminal and a Whore. Set in the tin-shack slums of the Philippines, it is the punk-rock opera adaptation of Peter Greenaway's The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover that I never thought I needed, nor really deserved. But I got it anyway. Without much in the way of dialogue, owing I suppose to language differences, Ruined Heart has Asano as an enforcer for a mobster who falls disastrously in love with the mobster's special lady friend. Bathed in a dreamy blue haze by Doyle's lighting and set to an original rock 'n' roll soundtrack, Ruined Heart is an oddball music-video appendix that would play comfortably alongside screenings of Pen-ek's Last Life in the Universe and Invisible Waves. (4/5)

About a Woman – Each year at the film festivals, there are Southeast Asian movies about maids, and I for some reason always end up seeing at least one. This year's entry into the canon was Indonesian director Teddy Soeriaatmadja's latest, About a Woman. It has a well-to-do widow whose maid up and quits, leaving her to figure out how to cook dinner, put the heavy water bottle up on the dispenser and shut off the lights at the end of the day. Set in a fancy house with a dark, polished wood interior, it's a quiet, slow-moving drama that took me awhile to get into. But the turning point was when the widow's daughter shows up to look in on her mother, and they have a conversation. No biggie, just one of those moments of truth in cinema with a mother and daughter are having a heart-to-heart, and the daughter is just sitting there, looking like dynamite in her Muslim hijab, smoking a cigarette. The mother, a bit jealous, admits she could never quite pull that look off. Anyway, that's the first of many little moments. Another is when the sketchy son-in-law drops by with some of the honey he's hawking, and amid sweet talk he determines that what his mother-in-law needs is a young man around the house. So a jeans-clad, emo-haircut-sporting nephew shows up. And sparks almost instantly fly between the young man and the lonely, somehow eerily attractive widow. She's played by Tutie Kirana, a veteran Indonesian actress with credits that stretch back to the 1970s. From then, I was like Peter Stormare in Fargo, holed up in a cabin, engrossed in a soap opera on a snow-covered TV set, just engrossed to the point where I audibly gasped at a scene I'd already seen in the trailer. I know I annoyed the heck out of the serious Thai cinephiles seated around me. Sorry guys, I just got swept up. (4/5)

Those are the Southeast Asian films I got to see at the 13th World Film Festival of Bangkok last month. Other films I quite liked included the well-made Chinese indie Underground Fragrance and the Russian teen drama 14+.

I also saw all three volumes of Miguel Gomes' Arabian Nights and I am glad I did. I'm not sure I can put into words my feelings about the films. However, I did try, but only because I was assigned to by The Nation.

In Thai cinemas: German Open Air, Lav Diaz and the appearance of Vanishing Point

Along with the return of beer gardens and the strains of festive-season music in the air, there’s another indicator of Bangkok’s most joyous time of year – the return of the German Open Air Cinema Season at the Goethe-Institut Thailand.

With screenings on Tuesday nights from December 1 to 15 and January 5 to February 16 at the Goethe-Institut off Sathorn Soi 1, the Open Air Cinema series opens next week with a German movie that was made in Thailand.

Directed by Susanna Salonen, Patong Girl is a family drama and romance about a German family on vacation in Phuket. There, amid the salacious nightlife of Patong Beach, the family's teenage son falls for a young Thai woman and runs off. The mother soon runs off too, going in search of the boy. She ends up finding herself. Salonen and members of the cast will be present for a talk after the screening. There's a trailer, and it's embedded way down below.

Meanwhile, the devoted Thai cinephile club Filmvirus has put together two one-off screenings of films by Filipino auteur Lav Diaz. With support from the Japan Foundation, Filmvirus will show two recent Diaz entries, the Locarno Golden Leopard-winner From What Is Before and Storm Children on December 6 and 7.

Another one of Diaz' freeform black-and-white dramas, From What Is Before (Mula sa kung ano ang noon) tracks social decay in a small town as it comes under martial law during the Marcos regime in the 1970s. In addition to the Golden Leopard – the first for the Philippines – From What Is Before won prizes at the Gawad Urian Awards (the Philippines' top film honors) and the World Premieres Film Fest. Running around 5.5 hours, it screens at 3pm on December 6 at House cinema on RCA.

The other Bangkok screening will be Storm Children (Mga Anak ng Unos, Unang Akla), which has Diaz training his firmly affixed camera on a typhoon-wrecked town. A documentary, The Storm Children, looks at the devastation of Typhoon Yolanda, which is probably the worst storm to hit the Philippines. Running 143 minutes, it will be at Cloud, an art space and gallery in Bangkok's Chinatown. The show is at 2pm on December 7. A talk with Diaz himself is planned afterwards.

Filmvirus has previously organized other screenings of Diaz films in Thailand, including the "In Lav We Trust" event in 2013 and a major retrospective in 2009, which served to make Lav Diaz a patron saint of sorts for Thai cinephiles and their farang hangers-on. The Filmvirus folks do a good job, and I highly recommend their events.

Finally, there's another chance to catch Jakrawal Nilthamrong's award-winning Vanishing Point in Bangkok cinemas. Following its premiere at the Laem Thong Theatre, a limited run in SF cinemas and an appearance in the World Film Festival of Bangkok, Vanishing Point is now screening at House on RCA. Go see it.

In Thai cinemas: World Film Fest, Father and Son, Love Next Door 2, Tiger Women, Sang Sudthai Khong E-Hien

The 13th World Film Festival of Bangkok is upon us, opening to the public on Saturday and running until November 22 at SF World Cinema at CentralWorld.

The schedule is available for downloading.

The opener is Snap, the latest feature from Kongdej Jaturanrasmee. Set during a time of martial law in Thailand, it's about a high-ranking military officer's daughter who is set to marry a junior military man. But before her own wedding, she heads back to her hometown for a friend's nuptials, and reconnects with her former sweetheart, who is the wedding photographer. Snap premiered in competition at the Tokyo International Film Festival. According to a story in The Nation, Snap is set for a general theatrical release in Thailand on December 31.

The opening night will also see the presentation of the festival's annual Lotus Award for lifetime achievement. This year it will go to Dome Sukvong, founder of the Thai Film Archive. A filmmaker, scholar and historian, Dome has worked tirelessly over the decades to build up the Thai Film Archive from nothing, and he's done much to raise awareness for the need for film preservation. Without his efforts, much of Thailand's film legacy would be lost.

Other Thai highlights of the WFFBKK include the award-winning Vanishing Point, the art-house psychological drama by Jakrawal Nilthramrong, which got a limited release in Bangkok a couple of weeks ago and has also been playing in Chiang Mai. The World Film Fest brings it back to Bangkok for a spin with the festival crowd.

There are at least a couple of Thai live-action shorts, among them The Young Man Who Came From Chee River (Jer Gun Muer Rao Jer Gun) by Wichanon Somumjarn, which earlier screened in Venice. It follows an upcountry debt collector as he sees to his duties. It's in the Shortwave 1 program alongside Free Falling by artist-filmmaker Namfon Udomlertlak. Described as "docu-fiction", Free Falling "traces the journey of a young women who uses the making of the film to investigate the relationship between herself and her family and to understand the complexities involved before telling her parents about her life’s 'free falling'".

Thai animation is featured in the second edition of the Franco-Thai Animation Rendezvous, which packages Thai animated shorts with French ones. The Thai entries include award winners from the 19th Thai Short Film and Video Festival. Among them are the very weird, dark and delightful Prince Johnny by Patradol Kutcharoen, the funny CG animated Breaking Zoo by Prakasit Nuansri, the football-themed Kickoff by Twatpong Tangsajjapoj, Lamp by Nareporn Winiyakul, and the heist tale The Sneaker by Chattida Ajjimakul. Others are the darkly comic Gokicha’s Love Story by Chidchanok Saengkawin, A Knight on Horse and Backward by Panupun Jungtrakarn, Fragile by Jan Bhromsuthi, LUNAe by Nuntinee Tosetharat and Trapped by Phet Thaveesak.



The World Film Fest also has many Southeast Asian films, including Teddy Soeriaatmadja's About a Woman from Indonesia. There's a tribute to past projects of Produire au Sud, the funding workshop hosted by the WFFBKK. The entries are the Filipino comedy-drama Anita's Last Cha Cha by Sigrid Andrea P. Bernardo, which was supported by the Produire au Sud Nantes in 2010, and Liew Seng Tat's Malaysian social satire Men Who Save the World, which was backed by Produire au Sud Bangkok 2008. And most intriguing is Filipino indie stalwart Khavn de la Cruz's Ruined Heart: Another Love Story Between a Criminal and a Whore. Just like Pen-ek Ratanaruang with Last Life in the Universe and Invisible Waves, Khavn got cult-favorite Japanese leading man Tadanobu Asano to be in his film, and he got Hong Kong lensman Christopher Doyle to bath it all in a bluish light.

In addition to the film festival, there are new Thai films in general release, including two gay films, Love Next Door 2 and Father and Son (Phor Lae Lukchai, พ่อและลูกชาย).

Love Next Door 2 is a sequel to a hit 2013 indie gay romantic comedy. It's about a virginal young man (Angkoon Jeenukul) who becomes the object of lust for customers at the restaurant where he works. Ratthapol Pholthabtim, Tanwarin Sukkhapisit and Jenny Panan are among the stars. Rated 18+

Father and Son, meanwhile, has a more serious tone, with its story of a gay dad who has raised his surrogate son alone after the death of his partner. The kid, weary of being bullied, seeks to break out on his own. He takes up with a guy who it turns out has a crush on the kid's dad. In limited release at CentralWorld and Esplanade Ratchada, Father and Son is rated 20-.

Another new Thai film is Tiger Women (Phromajan Suay Phan Sayong, พรหมจรรย์ สวยพันธุ์สยอง). An erotic jungle thriller, it's about a young woman who is possessed by a tiger spirit. Released by Thana Entertainment, it's directed by Atsajun Sattakovit. He previously directed a movie called Soul's Code.

And as if all that isn't enough, there's also ountry comedy. In the same cornpone vein as Yam Yasothon, Mon Love Sib Muen and Poo Bao Tai Baan E-San Indy, Sang Sudthai Khong E-Hien (แสงสุดท้ายของอีเหี่ยน) involves a country girl who comes to the city to search for her mother but ends up losing all her money and cannot return home.

Other new movies in Thai cinemas include The Gift, American Ultra and Life. They are covered at the other blog.

In Thai cinemas: Hand in Glove, Produire au Sud Bangkok, Teacher's Diary

Thai and Japanese talents combine both in front of and behind the lens for this quirky indie romantic comedy, which is so light it is practically inconsequential.

Thai actor-musician Chanon Rikulsurakan stars as an oddball glove-clad prince from a fictional country, who is visiting Kumamoto, Japan. Desperate to escape the pressures and protocols of being the heir to the throne, he sneaks out of his hotel and meets a local woman, who accompanies him on sightseeing trips. His minder is played by Selina Weismann, and I think she and the hotel manager conspire to let the prince believe he's sneaking away.

Directed by Japanese actor-director Yusuke Inaba, it was shot in Kumamoto by Thai cinematographer Pairach Khumwan, who is noted for his work on Thai director Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit’s 36 and Mary Is Happy, Mary Is Happy. Hand in Glove first screened in Bangkok in January during the Japanese Film Festival, so here's a chance for more folks to see it. It's in Japanese with English and Thai subtitles at House on RCA.

There are two other movies this week in addition to the usual Wednesday screening at the Alliance Française Bangkok, where tonight and tomorrow, there are Southeast Asian films as part of the Produire au Sud Bangkok film-funding workshop, which is organized by the World Film Festival of Bangkok and the Three Continents Film Festival in Nantes, France.

The workshops give up-and-coming independent filmmakers experience in pitching their projects and finding backers to fund their films.

Tonight's screening, at 7pm, is the Filipino comedy-drama Anita's Last Cha Cha, which was supported by the Produire au Sud Nantes in 2010. And tomorrow at 6.30pm is the Malaysian social satire Men Who Save the World by Liew Seng Tat. It was pitched at Produire au Sud Bangkok in 2008 and screened in the recent Bangkok Asean Film Festival. Both films will also screen in the World Film Festival of Bangkok, which opens on November 13.

There are five teams pitching projects this year. They are:

• Love for Life, directed by Pyae Zaw Phyo and produced by Myat Noe, Myanmar
• Birdshot, directed by Mikhail Red and produced by Pamela Reyes, Philippines
• Art Studio, directed by Jiekai Liao and produced by Jeremy Chua, Singapore
• Sydney, directed by Wasunan Hutawet and produced by Parinee Buthrarsi
• Cha Cha Cha, directed by Trung Do and produced by Trang Ngo, Vietnam

Wasunan, the director of the Thai project, is an alumnae of the Berlinale Talent Campus in 2012. Seeking to make her feature debut, she previously took Sydney to the Thai Pitch in Cannes.

The Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand's Contemporary World Film Series closes out another year with a Thai film, the award-winning 2014 romantic drama The Teacher's Diary (คิดถึงวิทยา, Kid Tueng Wittaya).

It's the sweetly sentimental tale of two teachers who are posted to an isolated floating schoolhouse a year apart. Despite never having met, they fall in love with one another through a diary they share at the school. Directed by Nithiwat Tharatorn and starring "Ploy" Chermarn Boonyasak and "Bie" Sukrit Wisetkaew, it won many awards for its screenplay, art direction and music. It was also Thailand's submisssion to this year's Oscars.

Nithiwat will attend the screening, which is at 7pm on Monday and is supported by the GTH film studio and a wine brand. Admission is 150 baht for non-members and 100 baht for the wine.

Other movies opening include the new Bond film Spectre, and the gore-filled Tag, which has director Sion Sono killing as many Japanese schoolgirls as he can put on camera. There's also Spanish Film Week, which last just four days, at SF World. Check the other blog for more details.

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.

In Thai cinemas: Ghost Ship, Love Arumirai

It's Halloween weekend, so studios, distributors and theater chains have all conspired to cram horror films down our throats whether we want them or not.

Along with a mixed bag of tricks that includes Scouts Guide to the Apocalypse, the nu-horror Regression and yet another Ju-on movie, there's a couple of Thai films.

Among the local offerings is Mon Son Phee (มอญซ่อนผี, a.k.a. Ghost Ship), which has venerable Thai studio Five Star Production getting back into the water.

Set aboard a cargo ship, the story plays on that ancient nautical notion that women are bad luck at sea, and the superstitious crew have much to fear when they find the corpse of the captain's wife boxed up in the hold. Spooky stuff starts happening as the boat heads into a storm.

It's the feature debut by Achira Nokthet, who previously served as an art director on Tanwarin Sukkhapisit's It Gets Better and the horror-comedy films of Poj Arnon (he even helmed a segment of Poj's Tai Hong Tai Hian).

Sean Jindachote stars, along with Phuwadon Wetchawongsa, Akkarin Akaranithimetrath and gay-film cult actor "Fluke" Pongsatorn Sripinta.

The other Thai entry in local cinemas is Love Arumirai, which seems to be taking a page from the recent Amazon series Red Oaks, which had an honest-to-goodness body-swap episode.

The story has to do with the seven-year marriage between Geng (Phisanu Nimsakul) and fashion model Bella (Cheeranat Yusanon) turning stormy. The bickering husband and wife face their toughest test yet when they wake up one morning and get a shock when they go to the mirror.

Seree Phongnithi is the screenwriter on this feature from start-up shingle Munwork Production.



Apart from the spooky offerings, Thailand's new Documentary Club offers a demonstration of counter-programming that is also complementary, bringing in the Oscar-winning 2008 documentary Man on Wire, which is the story behind the death-defying 1974 high-wire stunt by Philippe Petit at New York's World Trade Center. It's a slice of history that has made a comeback thanks to Robert Zemeckis' The Walk, which is a dramatization of Petit and his stunt. But while the phobia-inducing 3D camerawork of The Walk earned accolades, the movie bombed at the box office and was slapped by a backlash from critics, who urged viewers to instead seek out Man on Wire.

That new release and others are covered at the other blog.

Review: Vanishing Point

• Directed by Jakrawal Nilthamrong
• Starring Ongart Cheamcharoenpornkul, Drunphob Suriyawong, Chalee Choueyai, Suweeraya Thongmee
• Reviewed at premiere screening on October 16, 2015 at the Laem Thong Theatre, Bangkok; rated 15+
• Wise Kwai's rating: 4/5

What is the point of Vanishing Point (วานิชชิ่ง พอยท์)? That’s a question that has vexed me since I saw the film in a rundown porn cinema in Bangkok.

Directed by Jakrawal nilthamrong, Vanishing Point is the culmination of everything the artist-filmmaker has done up to now. It won the Hivos Tiger Award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam and has been selected for many other fests. Like another prominent Thai artist-filmmaker, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Jakrawal is a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and he’s much-respected in the art and indie filmmaking community. In his art installations and short films, Jakrawal explores strict Buddhist themes, reflecting on the dangers of greed and materialism.

An unapologetic art-house film, Vanishing Point is a cavalcade of experimental techniques and abstractions. The story, as nearly as I can make out, has two central characters, a journalist and a family man, whose lives run in parallel trajectories until they converge at that “vanishing point” on the horizon.

The film is also autobiographical in nature, since it opens with an image of a car twisted horrifically in half. The picture is from a 1983 newspaper report on a car being struck by a train, which left Jakrawal’s own parents with severe physical and emotional scars.

The wrecked car is something this Vanishing Point shares with the 1971 Hollywood counterculture film of the same title. Both movies are about existential crises, with the earlier film’s Kowalski at first having a purpose for driving his Dodge Challenger at flat-out speeds across the desert, but as that story goes on, he just drives for the sake of driving.

In Jakrawal’s Vanishing Point, the two central characters’ reasons for living are murkier. They are headed for the same destination as Kowalski – just far more slowly.

There’s also a sleazy 1970s vibe about the new Vanishing Point, an aesthetic that Jakrawal highlighted in choosing a cinema from that era as the venue for its debut in Bangkok. This business of life can be a dirty thing, and amid the mould and grime of Klong Toey’s Laem Thong Theatre, he wanted his audience to revel in it.

In the Thai universe of Vanishing Point, the fractured timeline shifts to the forest, where a reporter (played by Drunphob Suriyawong) is covering a police crime re-enactment. They have a suspected rapist acting out his deeds with a giant teddy bear. It’s a scene that will probably seem routine to Thais who see such things in the newspapers every day, but to foreigners it’s a bizarre situation. I too wonder just what these re-enactments really prove.

The reporter, who thinks the same, departs the scene to follow the police. He eventually turns up at a short-time motel, where he spends time with a senior hooker (Suweeraya Thongmee).

His visit is recorded on video by the movie’s other major character, a businessman (Ongart Cheamcharoenpornkul) who is in the midst of an existential crisis. He’s got a large stack of videotapes of hotel guests having sex, but appears to get no joy from watching them. At home he shares a meal in total silence with his wife and daughter. It seems there is no joy there either.

The guy, who runs a condom factory in addition to his sideline as the maker of amateur porn films, eventually turns up at a Buddhist temple, where a monk is meditatively sweeping the grounds. Played by the charmingly impish Chalee Choueyai, the saffron-wrapped clergyman launches into a long monologue that’s right up there with Robert Shaw’s USS Indianapolis story in Jaws.

In short, the monk’s lesson – and the movie’s – is that there are no easy answers. Not for the journalist, nor the businessman, nor me.

The ones who seem to fare best in Vanishing Point are the sketchiest characters – that monologuing monk and the senior hooker. They are at least honest about who they are and what they do, while the journalist and the factory owner seem only to be seeking merit or approval.

And perhaps that monk might not be a monk after all. Or perhaps Jakrawal is musing on what makes a monk. Is a monk still a monk once out of his robes? In this way, Vanishing Point offers more potent commentary on the state of contemporary Thai Buddhism that is potentially more controversial than the briefly banned Arbat, with its scenes of a misbehaving novice monk. That picture had to be toned down to get unbanned and was released as Arpat, but it didn’t really have much to say about Buddhism at all.

Dazzling cinematography by up-and-coming filmmaker Phuttiphong Aroonpheng is a highlight of Vanishing Point, and his work includes a bravura tracking shot that follows the businessman’s teenage daughter roller-skating through her small town, with the cameraman seemingly towed from behind and the girl’s knees framing the shot.

More technical prowess is displayed by score composer Pakorn Musikboonlert and sound designer Chalermrat Kaweewattana, who come up with an ominously hypnotic series of pulsating burbles and bloops to give the film a sickening heartbeat.

See also:

• Official website

Related posts:

• In Thai cinemas: Vanishing Point, Hor Taew Taek 5, Water Boyys the Movie
• Festival festival! Young Man in Venice, Vanishing Point in Sao Paulo
• Vanishing Point takes top prize at Rotterdam
• Vanishing Point – no, not that Vanishing Point – appears in Rotterdam's Tiger competition

(Cross-published in The Nation)

In Thai cinemas: The Down, So Very Very, P'Chai My Hero

Five twentysomething Thais who just happen to have Down syndrome are spotlighted in The Down (เดอะดาวน์), a documentary that aims to show people with Down syndrome in a positive light, living ordinary lives and making contributions to society. It's a passion project of producer-director Wongthanong Chainarongsingha, founder of A Day magazine.

The five subjects are Sutthiphot "Bank" Kanoknak, who works at a Uniqlo store, Kamonporn "Pan" Vachiramon, an AIS customer service staffer, twin Special Olympics bocce-ball champs Onnipa "Orm" and Atiya "Un" Kanjanasiri, and Starbucks employee Sirinluck "Beer" Chalat.

You can find out more about the movie in an article in The Nation. It is showing at Major Cineplex and SF cinemas. The trailer is embedded below.

Fresh from its run at House cinema, the South Korean-Thai romantic comedy So Very Very (จริงๆ มากๆ, Jing Jing Mak Mak) comes to The Friese-Greene Club tonight for the first of two special screenings. Tonight, director Jack Park will be on hand to talk about his film, which follows a struggling young South Korean filmmaker as he falls in love with a Thai woman and marries her. So Very Very also screens at the club next Thursday. To attend, check out the Facebook events page. And for the trailer, check out an earlier post.

You have another chance to see the charming indie film P'Chai My Hero (พี่ชาย My Hero) this week at select Major Cineplex branches as it is released back into cinemas. Also known as How to Win at Checkers (Every Time), the coming-of-age drama is experiencing an "Oscar bump" as the result of being Thailand's submission to the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Feature. With plenty of warmth and humor, it deals with many hot-button issues, including gay themes and Thailand's unique military draft lottery.

Also of note in Thai cinemas this week is the local release of the unusual Hungarian film White God, which won prizes at the Cannes Film Festival last year. It is the second feature brought in by the new indie distribution outfit HAL Film, which made its debut a few weeks back with another buzzworthy Cannes 2014 title, The Tribe. The man behind HAL is Dhan Plewtianyingtawee, the owner of a film school who wanted more Thais to see the kinds of weird and wacky films he likes. You can read a story about him in BK magazine.

And there's a Thai film that has slipped into that hidden classification of the ratings system – the banned category. The Buddhist-themed thriller Arbat has been banned at the behest of Buddhist groups, which objected to the film's depiction of a young monk falling in love with a teenage girl.

Other new releases this week include Robert Zemeckis' terrific The Walk and Guillermo del Toro's Crimson Peak. They are covered over on the other blog.

In Thai cinemas: May Who? and Shnit fest

Teenage angst takes the form of electricity in the Thai teen romance May Nhai .. Fai Raeng Fer (เมย์ไหน..ไฟแรงเฟร่อ, a.k.a. May Who?), which is about a schoolgirl who is afflicted with a powerful electrical charge, which she releases when her heartbeat reaches 120 beats per second. This makes it difficult for her to get close to anyone.

Sutatta Udomsilp stars as May. She keeps a low profile at school in order to keep her shocking condition a secret, but her heart gets racing whenever she sees the star athlete Fame (Thanapob Leeratanakajorn). Her superpower is discovered by classmate Pong (Thiti Mahayotharak), a shy guy who also keeps to himself but has a crush on the school's most popular girl (Nareekul Katepraphakorn). So May agrees to help Pong score with his crush if he keeps her secret and helps her hook up with Fame.




May Who? has movie studio GTH doubling down on the last few months of the year, as the film is being released less than a month after the studio's current hit Freelance. Usually the studio makes just two or maybe three films a year, and spreads them out more. Sure to also do well at the box office, May Who? is directed by Chayanop Boonpakob, a former indie filmmaker who got his big commercial break with the 2011 hit SuckSeed, about a teenage rock band. Along with the special effects related to the girl's superpower, May Who? also includes animated segments, inspired by notebooks Chayanop drew in when he was in high school.

The new film has been accompanied by the usual promotional blitz by GTH, but it's been a bit awkward because talented young actress "PunPun" Sutatta has been suspended from working by the company after she and members of the cast of Hormones the Series misbehaved on a train while visiting Japan. They posted a clip of their rowdy behavior on social networks, not realizing that being disruptive on public transport is seriously frowned upon in orderly Japan. To prevent the breach in etiquette from becoming a major international incident, GTH made all involved issue apologies, and they punished PunPun and the others by banning them from social media and suspending them from work. And PunPun's suspension doesn't end until sometime next week, too late to support her new film before its release.

You can read more about the movie in an article in The Nation.

Next week is the third Bangkok edition of the Shnit International Short Film Festival, which runs from Wednesday until October 11 at the Lido multiplex in Siam Square.

Now in its 13th year, the Switzerland-based Shnit fest is held simultaneously in several cities, with Bangkok joining Bern, Buenos Aires, Cairo, Cape Town, Moscow, San José and Hong Kong.

The selection includes new short-film entries from around the world plus a special bloc of "Made in Thailand" shorts.

Find out more at the festival's Facebook events page.

Other new releases in Thai cinemas this week include the The Tribe, the troublemaking entry at Cannes last year. For more, please see the other blog.

Art review: Chulayarnnon Siriphol's Behind the Painting

If Chulayarnnon Siriphol's Behind the Painting were a mechanical drawing, the current art exhibition of his short film would be the "exploded view", as it's broken up, magnified and detailed on more than a dozen screens across four galleries at the Silpakorn University Art Center in Bangkok.

It's also a refreshing approach to interpreting classical literature, as Behind the Painting is yet another one of those Thai stories that has over the decades been repeatedly adapted for film, television and stage.

Written by Sri Burapha, Behind the Painting is very much a product of 1930s Thailand, following the country's adoption of the constitutional monarchy, which gave rise to the different-thinking educated middle class of today. The romantic tragedy, set in Japan, centers on a young Thai man studying there. The student Nopporn is contacted by a family acquaintance, an elderly Japanese gentleman who is coming home with his new wife Kirati, a younger Thai woman of noble birth. He wants Nopporn to squire Kirati around and help her adjust to life in Japan. Naturally, unrequited romance develops between the two young people.

Chulayarnnon is one of those Thai filmmakers whose work is primarily seen in art galleries. His contemporaries in this area include Apichatpong Weerasethakul, who still does art installations even as he has found broader fame for his feature films at the Cannes Film Festival, and Jakrawal Nilthamrong, who broke into features this year with Vanishing Point, now touring the festival circuit.

Chulayarnnon is still sticking with art galleries, though his inventive shorts have been a highlight of the recent editions of the Thai Short Film and Video Festival. He was chosen this year to produce the festival's annual new title sequence, a brief "bumper" that is shown before each program. He actually did two title sequences for this year's fest. One involves soldier statues "guarding" a military base, a blank movie screen in an empty auditorium and villagers praying to shrine. It includes an egg, one of the icons of the Thai Short fest. He also did a stop-motion animation, with insect-like birthday candles and a spiky egg.

He employs multiple experimental-film techniques in his multi-layered works, so the art gallery is really the best place to see Chulayarnnon at his freest range of expression.

Behind the Painting is the result of his participation in the artist-in-residence program last year at the Aomori Contemporary Art Center in Japan. It was previously exhibited there as part of the Aomori's Media/Art Kitchen program curated by Hiroyuki Hattori. In Bangkok, the exhibition is supported by the Japan Foundation, so be sure to complete the survey and reassure them that their efforts are most welcome.

Set in a colonial-style building on Silpakorn University's historic campus, right across the street from the Grand Palace in the old part of Bangkok, Behind the Painting gets progressively more interesting the deeper into it you go.

And it's actually pretty interesting right out of the gate, with the first room devoted to "Forget Me Not", a mixed-media work that comprises a 1:23-minute one-channel video loop of a key scene from Chulayarnnon's film, when Kirati hands Nopporn a "forget me not" flower. Text from a crucial hand-written note that says "forget me not" is rendered in neon and lights up the room, which came pre-installed with a checkerboard tile floor that seems like it has always been part of the exhibit.

The bulk of the short film is in the next room, a darkened gallery with 12 small lightbox/video screens suspended from the ceiling. On the back of each box is a watercolor painting of a still from a key scene, while the front of the box has the video. Each scene, about 2 to 4 minutes or so, runs on a loop.

You walk into the room looking at what I think is the back of the lightboxes – the side with the paintings. I found the best approach to appreciating the piece is to walk around the room clockwise as you enter, and watch each video starting with "The Letter from Siam", in which Nopporn is informed of the impending arrival of the Japanese man and his wife. The tale of Behind the Painting is further spelled out down the line, from "The First Trip" to the reflective epilogue, "Behind the Painting".

Others are "The Last Moment", "Nopporn's Letter", "Nopporn's Dream", "Kirati's Letter", "The Death of Chaokhun", "The Return of Nopporn", "Bad News", "Nopporn's Wedding" and "The Death of Kirati". The titles all read as if they are lifted from sequels to a goofy B-movie franchise. Which makes them great.

In addition to the suspended video screen/lightboxes are those janky little earphones that all galleries use for exhibitions like this. There are English subtitles, but if you listen in, you'll hear dialogue that's lifted from an actual Thai movie of Behind the Painting. It's the one from 2001 that was the last film of revered auteur Cherd Songsri – a director who had an inimitable knack for being faithful to the text of the old stories while still making his films relevant to modern audiences.

Chulayarnnon has employed a similar technique before. For one of his very early works, Golden Sand House, he used the audio from the 1980 Jarunee Saksawat classic Baan Sai Tong over his own version of the often-adapted tale of blue bloods feeling threatened by commoners, filming it in his own home with members of his family, including his very aged and infirm grandparents. Helpfully to me, Golden Sand House was part of a Filmvirus retrospective put on in Bangkok last year, during which Chulayarnnon offered a sneak preview of the partly finished Behind the Painting.

Another of Chulayarnnon's trademarks is that he often appears in his films, and he's an immediately relatable, friendly everyman character. In Behind the Painting, he plays both the Thai student Nopporn and, to hilariously entertaining effect, the refined noblewoman Kirati.

With the help of photo doubles and filmmaking magic that is convincing in various degrees, he puts Nopporn and Kirati in the same scene. He also uses that schoolboy trick of wrapping his arms around his shoulders so from the back it looks like he's making out with someone. Still, it's pretty slick.

About halfway through the lightbox display, I got over Chulayarnnon's drag act and despite his 5 o'clock shadow, I began see him as Kirati, not as a dude playing Kirati. And I suppose that's a commentary on the increasingly fluid nature of society's perceptions of gender and sexuality – notions that are being challenged right now in mainstream culture with TV shows like Transparent and Orange is the New Black winning Emmys, and the debate over same-sex marriage licenses in Kentucky.

As far as acting goes, Chulayarnnon is particularly good in the scene titled "Bad News", in which Nopporn, seeming very cheerful and pleased with himself, announces to Kirati that he's getting married. Kirati's face just drops right to the floor, even though in Chulayarnnon's mind her crestfallen expression was probably much more subtle.

Another fun scene is "Nopporn's Wedding", in which the tuxedo-clad Nopporn and his lovely Thai bride in her white wedding gown cavort in the landmark places where Thai brides and grooms tend to have their photos taken, like Sanam Luang, the public park that's a stone's throw from the art gallery and the Grand Palace. They also twirl about at the Democracy Monument, a symbolic spot I'm not so sure is very popular with couples or anybody these days.

Further concessions to contemporary comfort are found in the scenes from modern Tokyo, including Nopporn meeting Chaokhun and his bride outside the Japan Railways station.

After I did a round or two of the room with the lightboxes, I ventured deeper into the museum and was happily surprised to find there's more. Among the other works prepared for the exhibition is a table with an unfinished jigsaw puzzle on it. It's from "Nopporn's Dream". Titled "Incomplete Dream", it's 1,000 puzzle pieces, arranged just so the couple's faces are not yet filled in. If you visit, especially you obsessive-compulsive types, please don't feel compelled to complete the puzzle.

And finally, there's the piece "Mitake", in which you can actually go behind the painting of the painting from Behind the Painting. One one side of the 8-foot-wide lightbox is the titular watercolor work that the classically trained artist Kirati made of her and Nopporn sitting by a pool in a Technicolor forest. The other side has the video, containing scenes of Kirati's art education and her isolated, noble upbringing.

Helpfully, there's a little nook behind the painting, with stools arranged to sit on to view the video. It's also a good spot to take a break and soak it all in, which I needed after spending I guess close to an hour viewing the pieces. Meanwhile, a smattering of other visitors, including a small group, breezed in and out in what seemed like five minutes. Give it more time than that.

After seeing the incomplete version of Behind the Painting last year, I told Chulayarnnon that I did't feel the need to see any other version of that story. Of course at the time, I had no idea what he was planning, so now it's the art-gallery edition that must be seen and experienced, and for me it is the definitive version of Behind the Painting.

Chulayarnnon Siriphol's Behind the Painting opened on September 10 at the Art Center of Silpakorn University Wang Thapra. It is on show until October 13, 2015. Directions to the gallery are available online.