La bambola(‘the doll’)

Madonna has released a cover version of La bambola (‘the doll’), which was originally a hit for the Italian singer Patty Pravo. The digital single — Madonna’s first new solo track since 2019 — is part of a promotional campaign for a Dolce and Gabbana perfume.

This is the first time Madonna has recorded a song in Italian, though she has occasionally performed in other European languages. She sang a cover version of the French classic La vie en rose (‘life in pink’) on her Rebel Heart Tour, and she recorded a Spanish version of You’ll See titled Verás.

History Bureau Agent

Nanut Thanapornrapee’s short video History Bureau Agent is on show at Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, as part of the Layer by Layer exhibition. Layer by Layer opened on 2nd December last year, and closes today.

History Bureau Agent was first shown as part of Nanut’s This History Is Auto-Generated exhibition at WTF Gallery, from 13th August to 30th September 2022. It’s one of more than seventy films and videos that refer to the events at Thammasat University in 1976.

Nanut used ChatGPT to create an animated film narrating an alternative political history of Thailand. The generative AI software produced a satirical storyline featuring a secret military base run by “Thirayuth Chan-Ocha” (clearly a pun on coup leader Prayut Chan-o-cha). The film also features photographs from 14th October 1973, 6th October 1976, and 18th May 1992, and video from 19th May 2010.

Bob Vylan

The punk duo Bob Vylan are suing RTÉ for defamation, after the broadcaster described their Glastonbury Festival performance as antisemitic. Bob Vylan appeared at Glastonbury on 28th June alongside Irish band Kneecap, and both groups were under criminal investigation for their performances.

Bobby Vylan led the Glastonbury crowd in a chant of “death, death to the IDF”, a reference to the Israel Defense Forces. On the same day, Kneecap member Móglaí Bap urged the crowd to “start a riot”, though he retracted the comment a few minutes later.

On 30th June, RTÉ News reported: “The lead singer of British band Bob Vylan led antisemitic chants from the stage.” The band sued RTÉ for libel on 9th December, and announced the lawsuit in an Instagram post on 11th December: “We have decided to take legal action against RTÉ after they recklessly labelled us and our actions at Glastonbury antisemitic.”

The police investigation into Kneecap’s performance was dropped on 18th July, after less than a month. On 23rd December, Avon and Somerset Police announced that no charges would be brought against Bob Vylan, “on the basis there is insufficient evidence for there to be a realistic prospect of conviction.”

Your Ash and My Bone

Sina Wittayawiroj’s Your Ash and My Bone (ธุลีดาว) is a documentary collage film in which the artist narrates his life story from birth to the present. He describes his family, his childhood, and his career, and the film is part of his exhibition Can’t We Recant? (เราจะถอนคำพูดไม่ได้เลยหรือ?) at Kinjai Contemporary in Bangkok.

The autobiographical narration is juxtaposed with an account of Thailand’s political turmoil over the same period. There is archive footage of Black May, the 2006 coup (which Sina describes as “this poisonous tree attempting to root itself deepest into society”), the 2010 red-shirt crackdown, the whistle-blower protests, the 2014 coup, and the student protest movement of 2020–2021.

Coloured filters are used to add political commentary to some of the events: blue for 2006, red for 2010, and yellow for 2014. Music is also a key element: a montage of scenes showing the arrest of Arnon Nampa and water cannon being used in Siam Square is accompanied by Caravan’s song Jit Phumisak (จิตร ภูมิศักดิ์), linking today’s student protesters to the revolutionary young writer who was killed in 1966.

Your Ash and My Bone also highlights some of Thailand’s artistic controversies over the past two decades: the banning of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Syndromes and a Century (แสงศตวรรษ), protests against Anupong Chantorn’s painting Perceptless (ภิกษุสันดานกา), and the censorship of the Rupture (หมายเหตุ ๕/๒๕๕๓) exhibition. The film shows how political repression and artistic censorship are equally corrosive.

Some self-censorship was necessary, and Sina draws attention to this by periodically displaying a spoof computer error screen (“No Freedom”) and obscuring certain words in the English subtitles. Abhichon Rattanabhayon used a similar tactic in his short film The Six Principles (สัญญาของผู้มาก่อนกาล), as did Pen-ek Ratanaruang in Paradoxocracy (ประชาธิป'ไทย).

Pratudang Micro Cinema

Anocha Suwichakornpong’s film By the Time It Gets Dark (ดาวคะนอง) will be shown at Pratudang Micro Cinema from today until 29th December. The venue is part of Pratudang Space, a new arts centre in Khon Kaen, and one of a growing number of microcinemas around the country. (Others include Phatthalung Micro Cinema, and Backyard Cinematic in Trang.)

Dissolve to the Pastroad

Watcharachai Kalong’s short drama Dissolve to the Pastroad (ถนนอดีต) begins with a group of students in a guided meditation session, though they are lying face down, in the same position as the students arrested at Thammasat University on 6th October 1976. Anocha Suwichakornpong’s film By the Time It Gets Dark (ดาวคะนอง) begins with actors adopting the same pose. (Dissolve to the Pastroad and By the Time It Gets Dark are among more than seventy films that refer to the attack at Thammasat.)

The students in Dissolve to the Pastroad are set an unusual assignment: to go to the forest and reenact the communist insurgency that took place there following the events of 1976. On the way to the forest, they drive past Democracy Monument, and Vaivit’s song Space and Time (พื้นที่และเวลา) plays on the soundtrack:

“ฉันควรรอเสียบ้าง
บางอย่างจะได้มา
บางอย่างคงจะดี
บางอย่างคงจะฟรี.”

The lyrics — ‘I should wait a little / Something will come / Something will be good / Something will be free’ — comment on the long history of Thailand’s nascent democracy. They also foreshadow a later sequence in which footage of students protesting in the buildup to 14th October 1973 is superimposed over shots of the forest.

The plot synopsis explains that the students are “sent into the forest to explore sites of past violence.” This places Dissolve to the Pastroad within a group of Thai films that explore what the Dutch artist Armando called ‘guilty landscapes’: tranquil spaces that bore silent witness to historical violence. (Thai Cinema Uncensored includes an analysis of guilty landscapes in Thai films.)

Dissolve to the Pastroad was co-written by Koraphat Cheeradit, director of Yesterday Is Another Day and ...Tomorrow I Fuck with Yesterday Now!, who also stars in the film. It was first shown at Bangkok University’s School of Digital Media and Cinematic Arts on 21st August. It was screened at PYE Space in Phayao on 9th November, and it was included in the second Open Screen programme in Khon Kaen. Its most recent screening was in the online Short Film Marathon (หนังสั้นมาราธอน), on 23rd November.

Can’t We Recant?An Exhibition of Life, Art, Politics, and Death

Sina Wittayawiroj’s exhibition Can’t We Recant? An Exhibition of Life, Art, Politics, and Death (เราจะถอนคำพูดไม่ได้เลยหรือ? นิทรรศการ ชีวิต ศิลปะ การเมือง และความตาย) opened at Kinjai Contemporary in Bangkok on 13th December, and runs until 25th January. The exhibition explores Sina’s personal and artistic background, and his connection to the major political events of his lifetime. Sina’s essay film Your Ash and My Bone (ธุลีดาว) is also screening throughout the exhibition.

One section, which deals with the 2010 red-shirt crackdown, is titled The Awakening, situating Sina within the “Post-Ratchaprasong art” movement, a label coined by the journal Read (อ่าน; vol. 3, no. 2) describing artists whose work took on a political dimension in response to the crackdown. Sina is one of a generation of artists, writers, and filmmakers who experienced a political awakening in 2010, including Prakit Kobkijwattana, Veeraporn Nitiprapha, Uthis Haemamool, and Chulayarnnon Siriphol. Political awakening is known in Thai as ta sawang, and Chulayarnnon — along with five other directors — discussed his ta sawang experience in an interview for Thai Cinema Uncensored.

The Awakening features two installations. One is a life-sized recreation of a famous photograph from 15th May 2010, showing a soldier next to a sign warning that live ammunition was used against the red-shirts. (Red splotches have been added to the soldier’s uniform, as a reminder that the sign was accurate.) The other is a pile of red-shirt memorabilia (such as handclappers and clothing), under a neon pyramid.

Thailand 4th Annual Conference on Anthropology and Sociology

The Thailand 4th Annual Conference on Anthropology and Sociology (การประชุมวิชาการระดับชาติด้านมานุษยวิทยาและสังคมวิทยา ครั้งที่ 4) opens tomorrow at Chulalongkorn University’s Faculty of Political Science in Bangkok, and runs until 19th December. THACAS includes a screening of Buariyate Eamkamol’s short film A Fire 9 Kilometers Away on the closing day.

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.

It was previously shown at Wildtype 2025 and the Media Arts and Design Festival 2025 (บึงเบ๊ง). Its most recent screening was at the 29th Thai Short Film and Video Festival (เทศกาลภาพยนตร์สั้น ครั้งที่ 29).

Donald Trump:“The BBC intentionally and maliciously sought to fully mislead its viewers...”

President Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit against the BBC, seeking $10 billion in damages. In a submission to the US District Court in the Southern District of Florida filed yesterday, Trump’s legal team argue that “the BBC intentionally and maliciously sought to fully mislead its viewers around the world”.

Trump had previously threatened to sue the BBC for $1 billion, after it broadcast an episode of its long-running documentary series Panorama that edited one of his speeches in a misleading way. Last month, a letter from Trump’s lawyer accused the BBC of making “false, defamatory, disparaging, and inflammatory statements” in the programme.

The Panorama episode, Trump: A Second Chance?, featured an extract from a speech Trump gave on the morning of 6th January 2021, the day of the attempted insurrection by Trump supporters at the US Capitol building in Washington. At an early point in the speech, Trump said: “we’re gonna walk down, and I’ll be there with you... We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol, and we’re gonna cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.” The speech continued for almost an hour, and in the final passages Trump’s tone became more combative: “And we fight. We fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not gonna have a country anymore.”

However, Panorama edited three soundbites from the speech together seemlessly, making Trump appear to say: “We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol, / and I’ll be there with you / And we fight. We fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not gonna have a country anymore.” This went beyond the usual editing for brevity and clarity, as it changed the sequence of his words and spliced together lines that were delivered almost an hour apart. But it did not fundamentally alter the meaning of Trump’s speech, as he was impeached for inciting violence at the Capitol.

The episode was broadcast in the UK twice last year: on BBC1 on 28th October, and repeated on BBC2 on 2nd November. But it was not broadcast or streamed by any of the BBC’s American TV services. It was available via the BBC iPlayer for a year after its first broadcast, though that service is geoblocked outside the UK.

To prove to a Flordia court that he was defamed by Panorama, Trump must first establish that the programme was viewed by Floridians. His lawsuit makes the rather weak argument that, due to the increased usage of VPN software, there is an “immense likelihood that citizens of Florida accessed the Documentary”, though there is no evidence that any VPN users in the state actually watched it. Regardless, the BBC could certainly argue that it takes all reasonable precautions to ensure that the iPlayer is not accessible outside the UK.

Trump’s lawsuit also cites the Canadian media company Blue Ant, which had a licence to distribute Panorama internationally. But Blue Ant did not sell the episode in question to any American broadcasters, and in any case, the international version of the episode was edited to allow time for commercial breaks, and the Trump speech was one of the sections cut from this shorter version.

The lawsuit describes Panorama’s editing of Trump’s speech as “an intentional and malicious effort to falsely and deceptively portray President Trump as having called for violent action”. The BBC has already issued a public apology, saying on 13th November that the edit “gave the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action”. The key distinction here is between “intentional” and “mistaken”, as US defamation law requires evidence of deliberate intent to mislead. But the Panorama episode featured extensive interviews with Trump supporters, and was by no means the hatchet job that the lawsuit describes.

Trump is seeking $5 billion in damages for defamation, and an additional $5 billion for alleged violation of the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act. (The FDUTPA is a consumer protection law, and seems to have no relevance to the Panorama episode.) The lawsuit ends by requesting a jury trial, which may be the most significant aspect of the filing: a jury in Florida — a Republican state — would likely be dominated by Trump voters, which might therefore influence the verdict.

This is the third time that Trump has personally taken legal action against a news organisation during his second term. The first occasion was earlier this year, when he sued The Wall Street Journal, claiming that a letter he wrote to Jeffrey Epstein didn’t exist. (Since the WSJ lawsuit was filed, the letter has been published, and Trump continues to deny that he wrote it, even though it’s clearly signed by him.) He also filed a lawsuit against The New York Times and the authors of Lucky Loser.

Trump has sued numerous other media figures and news organisations over the years, including Bill Maher and CNN. He sued Bob Woodward for copyright infringement, though that case was dismissed. His lawsuit against E. Jean Carroll was also dismissed. His unsuccessful lawsuit against Timothy L. O’Brien’s book TrumpNation sought $5 billion in damages.

Trump has never won a libel case in court, though he has received settlements in two cases. ABC settled after he sued them last year. CBS also agreed to an out-of-court settlement earlier this year after he sued them in 2024.

Occasionally, Trump has filed defamation suits indirectly via his organisations or relatives. His brother sued their niece, Mary Trump, in 2020, though the case was dismissed. A suit filed against the NYT by his presidential campaign also failed. His wife won undisclosed damages from The Daily Telegraph in 2019, and she was awarded $3 million in damages from the Daily Mail in 2017.

Two of the BBC’s most senior executives, Director-General Tim Davie and head of BBC News Deborah Turness, both resigned over the fallout from Panorama’s Trump episode, making Davie the third BBC director-general to resign over a controversial programme. Greg Dyke quit alongside BBC chairman Gavin Davies in 2004, following the suicide of David Kelly, who had been the source for a Radio 4 report about the government allegedly ‘sexing up’ a dossier on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. George Entwistle resigned in 2012 after Newsnight falsely accused Alistair McAlpine of child abuse.

Birth of Golden Snail

Chulayarnnon Siriphol’s Birth of Golden Snail (กำเนิดหอยทากทอง) was shown on 13th December at the Thai Paper Mill in Kanchanaburi, as part of the Big River Asia Lab Meeting organised by Rolling Wild. The event ran from 10th to 15th December.

Birth of Golden Snail was banned from the Thailand Biennale in 2018, and had its first public screening at the following year’s 30th Singapore International Film Festival. Its Thai premiere was at the 23rd Thai Short Film and Video Festival (เทศกาลภาพยนตร์สั้น ครั้งที่ 23), and it was shown last year at Infringes.

It has also been shown as part of The Golden Snail Series (วัฒนธรรม​หอยทากทอง), a programme of Chulayarnnon’s short films, at Bangkok University, ภาพสุดท้ายบนผืนผ้า (‘the final images on cloth’), and in Hat Yai and Songkla. Chulayarnnon discussed Birth of Golden Snail in an interview for Thai Cinema Uncensored.