The 6th Bangkok Experimental Film FestivalRaiding the Archives

The 6th Bangkok Experimental Film Festival (เทศกาลหนังทดลองกรุงเทพฯ ครั้งที่ 6) begins on 28th January, and runs until 5th February. This year’s theme is Raiding the Archives, with screenings taking place at Bangkok Art and Culture Centre. (The previous festival took place at the Esplanade cinema.)

Highlights include Chulayarnnon Siriphol’s A Brief History of Memory (ประวัติศาสตร์ขนาดย่อของความทรงจำ) showing as part of the Was Here, Was Now programme on 29th January, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s 0116643225059 in the Poetics of Longing programme on 4th February, and Taiki Sakpisit’s A Ripe Volcano (ภูเขาไฟพิโรธ) in the No-where? programme on 5th February. 0116643225059 was previously shown at Tomyam Pladib (ต้มยำปลาดิบ), and Apichatpong is one of the festival’s co-founders.

9th World Film Festival of Bangkok

The 9th World Film Festival of Bangkok (เทศกาลภาพยนตร์โลกแห่งกรุงเทพฯ ครั้งที่ 9) opened yesterday, and runs until 27th January. (It was originally scheduled for 4th to 13th November last year, though the dates were postponed due to flooding in Bangkok.) Whereas the 6th, 7th, and 8th festivals were held at Paragon, the 9th will return to the festival’s older venue, Esplanade Cineplex. The 5th festival (the last one held at Esplanade) featured several retrospectives and sidebar events, though subsequent festivals have been less extensive.

The 9th festival includes Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Werner Herzog’s documentary about primitive art filmed at Chauvet, France, which will be screening in 3D on 23rd and 25th January. Exceptionally, Herzog was granted permission to film inside the Chauvet cave, which contains the earliest paintings ever discovered. The cave walls contain paleolithic images of wild animals painted approximately 32,000 years ago, and the 3D camera captures the undulations of the cave’s geology.

Hiroshima Mon Amour

Last week, Bangkok's Alliance Francaise screened the horror classic Les Diaboliques, and this week's classic film is Hiroshima Mon Amour. Directed by Alain Resnais, who also made the disturbing Nuit & Brouillard and the cryptic L'Annee Derniere A Marienbad, Hiroshima Mon Amour is set in the aftermath of the Hiroshima bomb; it will be shown on 18th January, and the screening is free.

Criss+Cross

Criss+Cross: Design From Switzerland 1860-2012 features a broad range of Swiss designs, from fashion to safety equipment. Familiar brand names, such as Victorinox and Swatch, are displayed on pine crates. The exhibition opened at TCDC last year, on 25th November, and will close on 22nd January.

Les Diaboliques

The classic thriller Les Diaboliques will be screened at Alliance Francaise, Bangkok, on 11th January. Les Diaboliques is a masterpiece of Hitchcockian suspense, and the screening is free.