Breaking the Cycle

Aekaphong Saransate and Thanakrit Duangmaneeporn’s documentary Breaking the Cycle (อำนาจ ศรัทธา อนาคต) will be shown at the Chiangrai Contemporary Art Museum on 25th October. Before the screening, Thanakrit will give a presentation titled นั่งคุยตุลา ใน อำนาจ ศรัทธา อนาคต, discussing the making of the film. Uruphong Raksasad will also give a presentation, titled บันทึกข้างถนนที่ถูกจองจำ.

Breaking the Cycle is a fly-on-the-wall account of the Future Forward party, which was dissolved by the Constitutional Court in 2020. (Future Forward was founded as a progressive alternative to military dictatorship. The party came third in the 2019 election, after a wave of support for its charismatic leader, Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, though he was disqualified as an MP by the Constitutional Court.)

The film begins in 2014 with Thanathorn’s determination to end the vicious cycle of military coups that has characterised Thailand’s modern political history. This mission gives the film its title, and Future Forward co-founder Piyabutr Saengkanokkul asks: “Why is Thailand stuck in this cycle of coups?” The documentary benefits from its extensive access to every senior figure within Future Forward. The directors were even able to film Thanathorn as he reacted to the guilty verdicts being delivered by the Constitutional Court.

The documentary ends with the caption “THE CYCLE CONTINUES”, which is sadly accurate: Future Forward’s successor, Move Forward, was dissolved by the Constitutional Court last year despite winning the 2023 election. The movement’s third incarnation, the People’s Party, endorsed Anutin Charnvirakul as Prime Minister, on the condition that he agreed to call a new election within four months.

Breaking the Cycle went on general release last year. It was later shown at the Thai Film Archive, as part of the Lost and Longing (แด่วันคืนที่สูญหาย) season. It was also screened at A.E.Y. Space in Songkla, and at the Bangsaen Film Festival (เทศกาลภาพยนตร์บางแสน) at Burapha University. It was part of the Hits Me Movies... One More Time programme at House Samyan in Bangkok, and earlier this year it was screened at Thammasat University and Chulalongkorn University. It was also shown in Bangkok last month.

Ghost:2568Wish We Were Here

Capital Complex, a tent set up outside the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, could be mistaken for a tourist information booth, featuring a map of Bangkok. But in fact it’s an art installation by Tanat Teeradakorn, and the map shows sites that certainly aren’t promoted by the tourist board: the locations of violent clashes that took place during the crackdown on red-shirt protesters in 2010.

Capital Complex is similar to Pisitakun Kuantalaeng’s 10 Year project, which also featured maps documenting the violence of 2010. It’s part of the city-wide Ghost:2568 exhibition, whose slogan this year is Wish We Were Here (หากเราได้อยู่ด้วยกัน).

Ghost:2568 runs from 15th October to 16th November. (2568 in the Buddhist Era calendar is the equivalent of 2025.) This year is the final Ghost event; the first, Ghost:2561, took place in 2018.

Paper Monument

This month at VS Gallery in Bangkok, Apiwat Apimukmongkon is staging a completely new exhibition every day, with each one lasting just a single day. The project is titled Everyday I Solo, and today’s incarnation is Paper Monument, marking the anniversary of the 14th October 1973 protest that led to the collapse of a military government.

For Paper Monument, Apitwat wrote the names of seventy protesters who died in 1973, each on a different sheet of paper. He then scrunched up each sheet, and placed it on the gallery floor. The medium of paper is a deliberate contrast to more traditional stone momuments, as the fragility of paper highlights the precarious nature of Thai democracy and society’s fading memory of the victims.

The daily exhibition for 18th October will be Thainism (ไทยนิยม), including a work inspired by Mauricio Cattelan’s infamous work Comedian. (Cattelan taped a real banana to a gallery wall, provoking a debate about the limits of conceptual art.)

Thainism is one of a handful of new ‘isms’ created by Thai artists. Pan Pan Narkprasert’s 2011 Gagasmicism exhibition was inspired by Lady Gaga. Noshpash Chaturongkagul’s exhibition Roboticlism From Unconscious Mind was held in 2016. Three young artists showed their work at the Neo Thaiism group exhibition in 2020. Earlier this year, Kant Kantawat held an exhibition showcasing his Cu(te)bism paintings.

Media Arts and Design Festival 2025

The Media Arts and Design Festival 2025 (บึงเบ๊ง) opened at Chiang Mai University Art Center on 10th October. An impressive multimedia exhibition, the MADs degree show runs until today.

The exhibition includes Eternal Wounds (เงา-อำนาจ-บาดแผล), an installation by Jiraphon Jomthonglang commenting on state violence. The installation features a drawing on a rock inspired by the famous Neal Ulevich photograph of the 1976 Thammasat University massacre. The description on the gallery label refers to the work’s English-language title: “Soldiers still stand above the people, their power inherited as a wound without end.”

Buariyate Eamkamol’s short film A Fire 9 Kilometers Away (previously shown at Wildtype 2025) is also part of the exhibition. The film is a blend of documentary and fiction, and features a poem dedicated to Samaphan Srithep, one of the youngest victims of the crackdown on protesters in Bangkok in 2010. Projected as a diptych, the film makes ironic juxtapositions, showing military snipers on 10th April 2010 alongside footage of revellers firing water pistols during the April Songkran festival.

(Buriyate’s forthcoming short film Red Is the Orangest Color marks the fifteenth anniversary of the 2010 crackdown. The film’s title refers to red-shirt former Pheu Thai voters who now support the progressive ‘orange movement’ represented by the People’s Party. This trend is hardly surprising, as Pheu Thai broke their repeated pledges not to join forces with the pro-military Palang Pracharath.)

Mob 2020–2021

Supong Jitmuang’s documentary Mob 2020–2021 will be shown at Kinjai Contemporary in Bangkok today, as part of the Once Upon a Time 63 (กาลครั้งหนึ่งของฉันในปี 63) exhibition. (The film received its first public screening at the same venue in 2022.)

Mob 2020–2021 covers the first twelve months of the recent anti-government protest movement. Supong and his camera were at Thammasat University on 19th September 2020, for the overnight rally that later occupied Sanam Luang. On 14th October 2020, he filmed the march to Government House, after which a state of emergency was declared. On 17th November 2020, he was on the front line when protesters used inflatable ducks to protect themselves from water cannon fired by riot police. (Sorayos Prapapan’s short film Yellow Duck Against Dictatorship documents the same event.)

The protests were at their most intense in the summer of 2021, and Mob 2020–2021 shows the rally at Democracy Monument on 18th July 2021 marking the first anniversary of the campaign. That August, there were almost daily confrontations between riot police and protesters, but rather than filming each event, Supong summarises them in a general written caption noting the “multiple continuous clashes that lasted many weeks”.

Mob 2020–2021 was the first feature-length documentary covering the student protest movement. It’s an invaluable record of a profound social and political change in Thailand. Supong’s film also includes a written timeline of the protests, and its matter-of-fact neutrality is maintained throughout, except for a single reference to the “parasitic” government.

The film was first shown online, in the Short Film Marathon (หนังสั้นมาราธอน), as part of the 25th Thai Short Film and Video Festival (เทศกาลภาพยนตร์สั้น ครั้งที่ 25). It has also been screened at the Hom Theatre in Uttaradit, at the 2nd Anniversary of We Volunteer (งานครบรอบ 2 ปีกลุ่ม We Volunteer) exhibition, and at the third Moving Images Screening Night (คืนฉายภาพเคลื่อนไหว).

Once Upon a Time 63, organised by the Museum of Popular History, runs from today until 25th October. Mob 2020–2021 will be screened continuously throughout the exhibition. Veerapong Soontornchattrawat’s short documentary Then and Now, profiling three people charged with lèse-majesté, will be shown as part of the exhibition on 18th October.

The exhibition features the personal belongings of protesters who joined the student demonstrations in 2020. There are also items from the Museum of Popular History’s collection, including rubber bullets, tear gas canisters, and the t-shirt worn by Payu Boonsophon when he was hit in the eye by a rubber bullet in 2022. Some of these exhibits were also on display at ความรุนแรง (ต้อง) ไม่ลอยนวล — ‘violence (must not be) unpunished’ — earlier this year.

A similar exhibition, also showcasing objects related to the student protest movement, is currently being held at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre. Whereas Once Upon a Time 63 features the objects themselves, the BACC exhibition The Persistence consists of photographs of protest props by Napin Mandhachitara and Pichak Tanunchaibutra.

Coincidentally, both exhibition posters feature yellow rubber ducks, which became symbols of the protest movement. The Persistence opened on 8th October, and runs until 2nd November.

The Bouquet and the Wreath

The Bouquet and the Wreath (ข้อมาลา), a retrospective exhibition covering Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook’s entire artistic career, opened at MAIIAM in Chiang Mai on 26th July. The exhibition runs until 25th May 2026, and a second phase (إكليل باقة الأزهار) will be shown in Dubai later this year.

The show includes several works from Araya’s Conversation with Death on Life’s First Street (สนทนากบความตายบนถนนสายแรกของชวต) series, contemplative videos filmed at a morgue. The Class 1–3 (ชั้นเรียน 1–3) are shown in an installation appropriately resembling a classroom, and the triptych Chant for Female Corpse (สวดเพื่อร่างตายหญิง) is installed inside a wooden hut. (The Class 1–3 were previously shown at Dialogues in 2011, and Chant for Female Corpse was shown during Galleries’ Night in 2014.)

The installation Prostitute’s Room (ห้องโสเภณี) is another highlight: a small, semi-enclosed space containing three bowls of the artist’s blood, some of which has spilled onto the gallery floor. The piece has not been exhibited for thirty years; when it was first shown in 1995, it featured bowls of the Araya’s menstrual blood.

Many of Araya’s video works will be shown at another retrospective, The Same Old Karma (กรรมเก่าเดิม), at 100 Tonson Foundation in Bangkok. This exhibition, organised in conjunction with MAIIAM, runs from 16th October until 18th January 2026.

When My Father Was a Communist

Vichart Somkaew’s documentary When My Father Was a Communist will be shown at the Tenessarim monument at Yang Nam Klat Nuea in Phetchaburi on 29th November. The screening is part of an event marking the eighty-third anniversary of the Communist Party of Thailand.

For When My Father Was a Communist, Vichart interviewed his father, Sawang, and other former members of the CPT. The film is a valuable social history, as the veterans explain their decisions to join the party, and describe their experiences in the forests of Phatthalung.

When My Father Was a Communist is also a record of the state’s violent suppression of communist insurgents, hundreds (potentially thousands) of whom were burned in oil drums in 1972. These so-called ‘red barrel’ deaths were most prevalent in Phatthalung, and have never been officially investigated. (The names of the victims are listed before the film’s end credits.) There have been other documentaries about the red barrels, but When My Father Was a Communist stands out for Vichart’s close connections to the subject: this is a deeply personal project, as he was born in Phatthalung, and he is documenting the memories of his elderly father.

The film notes that the repressive atmosphere of the 1970s has not disappeared. One speaker says that the political system has barely changed since the military dictatorship after the 1976 coup. Another makes a direct comparison between the suppression of political opponents then and now: “dissolving political parties, slapping people with Article 112 charges... It’s like arresting them and throwing them in red barrels, but they do it in a different way now.”

When My Father Was a Communist was first shown at the Us coffee shop in Phatthalung on 10th July. It was screened at Phimailongweek (พิมายฬองวีค) in Korat, and at the Chard Festival (ฉาด เฟสติวัล) in Phatthalung. It had four screenings on 10th August — at the Chinese Martyrs Memorial Museum in Chiang Rai, Suan Anya in Chiang Mai, Sakon Nakhon Rajabhat University, and Samakichumnum in Nakhon Phanom — as part of the nationwide ความฝันประชาชน (‘people’s dream’) arts event. Other screenings have included: Vongchavalitkul University in Korat on 23rd July, A.E.Y. Space in Songkla on 26th July, Lorem Ipsum in Hat Yai on 27th July, Phattalung’s red barrel memorial building on 7th August, Hope Space in Bangkok on 16th August, Walailak University in Nakhon Si Thammarat on 27th August, and Bookhemian in Phuket on 19th September.

Bedtime Stories: The Untold Chapter

Just a few months after Veronica Electronica, Madonna will release another remix EP, Bedtime Stories: The Untold Chapter, on 28th November. On vinyl and CD, it will include two previously unreleased demo tracks: Love Won’t Wait (co-written by Shep Pettibone, who produced Madonna’s greatest material) and Right on Time.

Other highlights include an edit of Freedom — a song that previously appeared on the charity album Carnival! — and a remix of the B-side Let Down Your Guard. The other tracks are alternate versions of Don’t Stop, Survival, Secret, and Human Nature, all songs from the original Bedtime Stories album.

Japanese Cinema: A Personal Journey

Peter Cowie’s Japanese Cinema: A Personal Journey profiles some of Japan’s greatest directors and features concise reviews of their key films. Cowie has previously written a more substantial book on Akira Kurosawa, which divided Kurosawa’s films into modern and historical narratives (the traditional Japanese distinction between gendai-geki and jidai-geki), though in Japanese Cinema he focuses almost entirely on Kurosawa’s samurai films.

The book is a short primer on the major figures in Japanese film, and includes chapters on Kurosawa, Yasujiro Ozu, Kenji Mizoguchi, Hayao Miyazaki, and others. It’s dedicated to the late Donald Richie, who wrote influential studies of Kurosawa (The Films of Akira Kurosawa) and Japanese cinema history (A Hundred Years of Japanese Film). Cowie writes a chapter on the Japanese new wave, though David Desser’s book Eros Plus Massacre is a more comprehensive account.

Cowie has written and published dozens of books on cinema, from an early monograph on Orson Welles (A Ribbon of Dreams) to a recent biography of Ingmar Bergman (God and the Devil). His books on the making of The Godfather and Apocalypse Now are indispensable; his second Godfather book was published fifteen years after the first, and he also wrote a book on another 1970s classic, Annie Hall.

49 ปี 6 ตุลา(‘49 years since 6th Oct.’)

The forty-ninth anniversary of the 6th October 1976 massacre was commemorated at Thammasat University today. Two short plays were staged at the Sri Burapha Auditorium, and the Museum of Popular History held an exhibition, ความหวังยังพริ้งพราย เก่าตายมีใหม่เสริม (‘hope still shines brightly: the old dies, and is replaced by the new’), which compared student activism in the 1970s to the student protest movement that began in 2020. The exhibition itself didn’t include the notorious Dao Siam (ดาวสยาม) newspaper front page that sparked the massacre, though a small reproduction of it was part of a display outside the entrance.

In 6 ตุลา x ราโชมอน (‘6 Oct. x Rashomon’), by Natthapat Mardech, a young man returns to Thammasat to learn the truth about the massacre, though everyone he speaks to gives a different account of what happened, in the same way that Rashomon (羅生門) also recounts a violent event from multiple perspectives. The play’s props include a folding chair and a reproduction of the Dao Siam front page, both of which are closely associated with the massacre.

It will be performed again on 15th and 16th November, at TK Park in Bangkok’s CentralWorld mall, as part of the Bangkok Theatre Festival 2025 (เทศกาลละครกรุงเทพ 2025). The festival runs from 8th to 23rd November.

The title of the other play, Ultramarine: Threat (by ShiVa Vitthaya), hints at a symbolic meaning of the colour blue, and the production featured forty-five extras playing the massacre victims. It also included a projected backdrop of images from the 1976 massacre. (Its next performance will be in Chiang Mai.) Both productions were photographed by the artist known as Khai Maew.

The first event marking the forty-ninth anniversary took place last month. ห้วงแห่งความเงียบงัน: ภาวะลืมไม่ได้จำไม่ลง หลัง 6 ตุลา 2519, a Thai translation of Thongchai Winichakul’s book Moments of Silence, featuring illustrations by Tawan Wattuya, has been published to coincide with the aniversary. A similar commemoration was held on the forty-eighth anniversary last year.