Wednesday Shine

Wednesday Shine, the Chiang Mai microcinema, will show a retrospective of films by Vichart Somkaew today and tomorrow, at an event titled เทศกาลหนังสารคดี... ต่อใจ ครั้งที่ 2 (‘documentary film festival... connecting hearts, 2nd edition). The event begins today with the anthology film Contemporary Thai Political Trilogy (ไตรภาคการเมืองร่วมสมัยไทย). Tomorrow, three of his more recent shorts will be screened in a programme titled Traces of Silence (ในรอยแผล ความเงียบงัน). Vichart’s feature-length documentary When My Father Was a Communist (เมื่อพ่อผมเป็นคอมมิวนิสต์) will be shown both today and tomorrow.

Contemporary Thai Political Trilogy

Contemporary Thai Political Trilogy is a portmanteau project combining three short films: Cremation Ceremony (ประวัติย่อของบางสิ่งที่หายไป), 112 News from Heaven, and The Letter from Silence (จดหมายจากความเงียบ). The three-part structure reflects what the director sees as the three eras of modern Thai politics: 1932–1957 (the abolition of absolute monarchy and the establishment of democratic institutions), 1957–1992 (Cold War military dictatorship), and 1992 to the present day (liberal reforms, followed by political polarisation).

It begins with Vichart’s most directly political film, Cremation Ceremony, in which the faces of three politicians stare impassively at the viewer. The three men — Anutin Charnvirakul, the Prime Minister; Abhisit Vejjajiva, a former PM; and former army chief Prayut Chan-o-cha — are associated with three tragic injustices. Anutin oversaw the Thai government’s initially sluggish response to the coronavirus pandemic. Abhisit authorised the shooting of red-shirt protesters in 2010. Prayut led the 2014 coup, and his military government revived lèse-majesté prosecutions.

Vichart sets fire to photographs of the three men, their faces distorting as the photographic paper burns. There is no sound except the crackling of the flame. This symbolic ritual is a reminder of the deaths of Covid-19 victims, red-shirt protesters, and political dissidents, though it’s also a metaphorical act of retribution, as the three politicians have faced no consequences for their actions. (Anutin is a billionaire, Abhisit was cleared of all charges, and Prayut acted with total impunity.)

While the three portraits burn slowly, captions mourn the forgotten victims: red-shirts shot while sheltering in Wat Pathum Wanaram, political prisoners charged under article 112, and victims of the coronavirus. (Cremation Ceremony originally ended on a hopeful note with a final caption explaining that pro-democracy parties had “emerged victorious” in the 2023 election. But after the film’s release, the progressive Move Forward Party was excluded from the governing coalition, and the optimistic caption has now been removed.)

Contemporary Thai Political Trilogy continues with 112 News from Heaven, which juxtaposes news that’s broadcast on all channels every day with news that goes unreported by mainstream outlets. On the soundtrack, an announcer reads a bulletin of royal news, a daily staple of Thai television and radio. This is contrasted with captions documenting news of “victims of the Thai state”.

Lèse-majesté is article 112 of the criminal code, hence the title 112 News from Heaven. The film’s captions feature 112 headlines from a 112-day period, detailing the custodial sentences given to those convicted of lèse-majesté and the bail denied to those awaiting trial. It ends with a quote from a royal walkabout: “We love them all the same.”

Contemporary Thai Political Trilogy’s final segment is The Letter from Silence, a series of extracts from letters by lawyer and pro-democracy campaigner Arnon Nampa to his family, written while he serves a prison sentence for lèse-majesté. Arnon’s letters are often heartbreaking, as he faces the prospect of many years in jail if convicted on further charges, separated from his wife and their two young children.

Contemporary Thai Political Trilogy was first shown in 2024 in Phayao, as part of ซิเนมากลางนา (‘cinema in the middle of a rice field’). It was also screened last year in Chiang Mai, at Resonance of Revolt, and it was part of the online Short Film Marathon (หนังสั้นมาราธอน).

Traces of Silence

Three short films will be shown in the Traces of Silence programme: Antipsychotics, Sleeping Together (ราตรีวิไล), and The Southern Echo. The event will also feature a Q&A with Vichart. Traces of Silence was also shown earlier this month in Hat Yai.

The Southern Echo

The Southern Echo focuses on a campaign against a proposed land bridge linking Chumphon and Ranong, a megaproject involving the construction of a new motorway, rail line, and two ports. The land bridge is part of the Southern Economic Corridor, and the head of the SEC Watch group opposing the scheme describes its potential effects on the area: “The environmental impact will be massive in scale and scope.”

Vichart uses drone shots and underwater photography to highlight the natural beauty of the region, which is under threat from the development project. Similarly, The Poem of the River (บทกวีแห่งสายน้ำ) highlighted the consequences of dredging the Lai Phan canal in Phatthalung. The Southern Echo also recalls the classic film Tongpan (ทองปาน), a dramatisation of a seminar debating the construction of the Pa Mong dam on the Mekong river.

Sleeping Together

Sleeping Together begins in the same way as Sompot Chidgasornpongse’s Railway Sleepers (หมอนรถไฟ), as an observational study of train passengers, though it soon develops into a moving portrait of marginalised people exploited or neglected by society and the state. It was voted best documentary at the Chiang Mai Film Festival 2026 (เทศกาลหนังแห่งเมืองเชียงใหม่ 2569), and it was also shown at The 1st Lung Film Festival (ลุงฟิล์มเฟสติวัลครั้งที่ 1).

Antipsychotics

In Antipsychotics, Vichart turns the camera on himself and reveals that he suffers from depression. In a voiceover, he describes his symptoms, which include hallucinations and feelings of paranoia. On screen, we see profiles of various antidepressant and antipsychotic drugs, and their possible side effects, accompanied by stock footage.

The director also recounts the traumatic experience that he feels led to his condition: the humiliating hazing rituals and violent punishments he endured during his conscription. “I drew a red card and was drafted into the military service”, he says, before describing the physical and mental harm he was subjected to.

In Thailand, twenty-one-year-old men must take part in a draft lottery. Vichart picked a red ticket, which means two years of compulsory military service.

There have been occasional news reports of cadets being injured — and worse — during military training sessions, though there is less coverage of the potential psychological toll that Vichart describes. At the end of his powerful and ultimately optimistic film, he argues that conscription should be replaced by voluntary service.

Like Sleeping Together, Antipsychotics was previously screened at The 1st Lung Film Festival. It has also been shown at the Thailand International LGBTQ+ Film and TV Festival 2026, the Chard Festival (ฉาด เฟสติวัล), Open Screen, and in last year’s Short Film Marathon (หนังสั้นมาราธอน).

When My Father Was a Communist

For When My Father Was a Communist, Vichart interviewed his father, Sawang, and other former members of the Communist Party of Thailand. The film is a valuable social history, as the veterans explain their decisions to join the CPT, 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 has been screened around the country. Its most recent screenings were in Trang earlier this year, at this year’s Lung Film Festival, at last year’s Short Film and Video Festival (เทศกาลภาพยนตร์สั้น ครั้งที่), and at Hope Space in Bangkok.

Alfred Hitchcock: Master of Suspense

Bangkok’s House Samyan cinema will show two masterpieces by Alfred Hitchcock this month: Vertigo and Psycho. The Alfred Hitchcock: Master of Suspense screenings are part of this year’s House Classics season, and the theme this time is The Edge.

Psycho will be shown on 21st, 22nd, and 23rd August. It was previously shown at Scala in 2016, at Cinema Winehouse in 2018, and at Bangkok Screening Room in 2019. (Psycho will be shown at House in its uncut version, following its restoration in 2019.)

Vertigo will be screened on 20th and 22nd August. It was voted the greatest film of all time in the 2012 Sight and Sound critics’ poll. It was screened at the Thai Film Archive in 2021, at Cinema Winehouse in 2018, and at Bangkok Screening Room in 2016.

Spider-Man:Brand New Day (ScreenX)

ScreenX was developed in South Korea in 2013, as a new type of immersive cinema format. The ScreenX system uses multiple projectors to fill the viewer’s peripheral vision by projecting images onto the walls on the left and right sides of the screen during some scenes. The technology was first demonstrated in Kim Jee-woon’s short film The X (더 엑스).

Since then, numerous South Korean and Hollywood films have been shown in the ScreenX format, though the ScreenX versions have all been created in-house by ScreenX themselves, using B-roll or CGI outpainting to produce the extra footage required for the peripheral images. The film directors have not been involved in this retrofitting process.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day, the new film by Destin Daniel Cretton, marks the first time that ScreenX footage has been shot by a director during a regular film shoot, integrating ScreenX into the production process from the start in an attempt to relaunch the format. (The closest equivalent is perhaps Christopher Nolan’s use of an IMAX 70mm camera for selected scenes in The Dark Knight, and Cretton has similarly used ScreenX cameras for only selected sequences.)

The Odyssey

Christopher Nolan’s epic The Odyssey is the first film to be shot entirely on IMAX 70mm film. With The Dark Knight in 2008, Nolan became the first Hollywood director to shoot selected action scenes in the format, and he has done so ever since, with The Dark Knight Rises, Interstellar, Dunkirk, Tenet, and Oppenheimer.

Other filmmakers have also used IMAX 70mm cameras for selected sequences, following Nolan’s lead, but the technology was always considered too noisy for dialogue scenes. IMAX created a large sound-proof blimp for The Odyssey, making it possible to use the large-format camera for the entire film.

IMAX in Thailand

Thailand’s first IMAX 70mm cinema, at Major Cineplex Ratchayothin in Bangkok, opened in 1998. The slightly larger Krungsri IMAX screen at Bangkok’s Siam Paragon opened in 2006, and both venues showed The Dark Knight in IMAX 70mm. (Ratchayothin and Paragon are the only Thai cinemas with true IMAX-format 1.43:1 screens.)

Ratchayothin converted to digital laser projection in 2010, though the Paragon cinema screened The Dark Knight Rises, Interstellar, and Dunkirk in IMAX 70mm. But Paragon’s 70mm projector repeatedly broke down during screenings of Tenet in 2020, and it has now been replaced with a digital laser projector.

The Ratchayothin and Paragon laser systems each use a single projector — the IMAX CoLa format — meaning that they are only capable of projecting a 1.9:1 aspect ratio image (almost identical to the 1.85:1 ratio of regular cinema screens). To fill the entire 1.43:1 IMAX screen, 70mm or dual-laser GT projectors are required.

Also, CoLa produces a 4k image, which is now the same resolution as many conventional cinemas. Dual-laser IMAX GT also has a 4k resolution, significantly less than the unsurpassed image quality of IMAX 70mm.

Thailand’s other IMAX venues use either the CoLa system or the similar XT single-laser format (which is also 4k), and have smaller 1.9:1 screens. This IMAX-lite setup is known informally as ‘LieMAX’, as it differs so much from the original 1.43:1 IMAX format.

8: The Silence of the Goats

Pattanapong Khongsak’s new short film 8: The Silence of the Goats combines historical material with modern technology, using generative AI to visualise the past. This hybrid documentary has no narration, so key events are explained using written captions.

Photos of major political milestones — 6th October 1976, the yellow-shirt and red-shirt protests, the ‘Shutdown Bangkok’ campaign, and the 2006 and 2014 coup announcements — are solarised and rendered as 3D images. Pattanapong also uses bright red and blue tinting, as he did in Bad Taste (โอรส).

The AI manipulation makes the familiar images even more impactful, and dramatic reconstructions help to clarify the details. One sequence strays into deepfake territory: a newsreel-style scene of Democracy Monument engulfed by a tsunami, like a silent disaster movie.

The main focus is on the unexplained death or assassination of Rama VIII, the subsequent smear campaign against Pridi Banomyong, and the wrongful conviction of three men for conspiracy to murder. A caption tells us that the men were executed “8 years, 8 months, 8 days since the King’s death” — hence the 8 (๘) in the film’s title.

Traces of Silence: Body, Being, and the Bounded Land

Three short documentaries by Vichart Somkaew — Antipsychotics, Sleeping Together (ราตรีวิไล), and his latest film The Southern Echo — will be shown in Hat Yai tomorrow. The event, Traces of Silence: Body, Being, and the Bounded Land (ในรอยแผล ความเงียบงัน มนุษย์ ร่างกาย และผืนดิน), will be held at Lorem Ipsum.

The Southern Echo

The Southern Echo focuses on a campaign against a proposed land bridge linking Chumphon and Ranong, a megaproject involving the construction of a new motorway, rail line, and two ports. The land bridge is part of the Southern Economic Corridor, and the head of the SEC Watch group opposing the scheme describes its potential effects on the area: “The environmental impact will be massive in scale and scope.”

Vichart uses drone shots and underwater photography to highlight the natural beauty of the region, which is under threat from the development project. Similarly, The Poem of the River (บทกวีแห่งสายน้ำ) highlighted the consequences of dredging the Lai Phan canal in Phatthalung. The Southern Echo also recalls the classic film Tongpan (ทองปาน), a dramatisation of a seminar debating the construction of the Pa Mong dam on the Mekong river.

Sleeping Together

Sleeping Together begins in the same way as Sompot Chidgasornpongse’s Railway Sleepers (หมอนรถไฟ), as an observational study of train passengers, though it soon develops into a moving portrait of marginalised people exploited or neglected by society and the state. It was voted best documentary at the Chiang Mai Film Festival 2026 (เทศกาลหนังแห่งเมืองเชียงใหม่ 2569), and it was also shown at The 1st Lung Film Festival (ลุงฟิล์มเฟสติวัลครั้งที่ 1) last month.

Antipsychotics

In Antipsychotics, Vichart turns the camera on himself and reveals that he suffers from depression. In a voiceover, he describes his symptoms, which include hallucinations and feelings of paranoia. On screen, we see profiles of various antidepressant and antipsychotic drugs, and their possible side effects, accompanied by stock footage.

The director also recounts the traumatic experience that he feels led to his condition: the humiliating hazing rituals and violent punishments he endured during his conscription. “I drew a red card and was drafted into the military service”, he says, before describing the physical and mental harm he was subjected to.

In Thailand, twenty-one-year-old men must take part in a draft lottery. Vichart picked a red ticket, which means two years of compulsory military service.

There have been occasional news reports of cadets being injured — and worse — during military training sessions, though there is less coverage of the potential psychological toll that Vichart describes. At the end of his powerful and ultimately optimistic film, he argues that conscription should be replaced by voluntary service.

Like Sleeping Together, Antipsychotics was previously screened at The 1st Lung Film Festival. It has also been shown at the Thailand International LGBTQ+ Film and TV Festival 2026, the Chard Festival (ฉาด เฟสติวัล), Open Screen, and in last year’s Short Film Marathon (หนังสั้นมาราธอน).

On the Mark:A History of Punctuation from Ancient Egypt to the Emoticon

If you only read one book on punctuation, it should be On the Mark: A History of Punctuation from Ancient Egypt to the Emoticon by Florence Hazrat, which was published last week. Previous books have covered the history of punctuation in Western literature (Pause and Effect by M.B. Parkes), and the history of English punctuation (Making a Point by David Crystal), though On the Mark is the history of the subject with the widest scope. (“The first global history of punctuation”, according to its publisher.)

Hazrat discusses the ancient origins of punctuation and its development not only in English but also in other European languages and even in Arabic. She cites some fascinating examples, including an early use of emoticons in the Polish newspaper Kurjer Warszawski (‘Warsaw courier’) that slightly predates a more famous example from Punch magazine. (The Polish emoticons were published on 5th March 1881, and those in Punch appeared twenty-five days later.) The book also includes an excellent bibliographic essay.

What the Doc! 2

What the Doc! 2 — The International Documentary Film Festival Thailand (เทศกาลภาพยนตร์ สารคดีนานาชาติ แห่งประเทศไทย) — will take place in Bangkok from 3rd to 13th September, a year after the first What the Doc! festival. Screenings will be held at Century Sukhumvit, and at the new Doc Club and Friends cinema that’s due to open this month at Cloud 11. (After the closure of Doc Club and Pub in 2024, the venue has relocated to Cloud 11 under the new name Doc Club and Friends.) The festival will include Thunska Pansittivorakul’s new film Are We Monsters? (อสูร) at Century on 9th September.

What the Doc! 2 will also include the premiere of Buariyate Eamkamol’s Images of Fire (ร่องรอยไฟ), a self-reflexive short film in which he revisits the circumstances surrounding the killing of protesters by military snipers in April and May 2010. Buariyate’s film will be screened at Century on 7th September, and at Doc Club and Friends on 12th September.

The Dutch artist Armando coined the phrase ‘guilty landscapes’ to describe spaces that bore silent witness to past violence. Buariyate and other Thai directors have returned to these politically and emotionally charged locations as part of a reckoning with the unresolved trauma of 2010.

Images of Fire is Buariyate’s fourth film that touches on the 2010 violence, after A Fire 9 Kilometers Away, Isekai (อิเซไก), and Red Is the Orangest Colour. (Thai Cinema Uncensored discusses the representation of the April–May 2010 events by Thai filmmakers in more detail.)

What the Doc! 2’s poster also refers to the 2010 military crackdown: it features a portrait of one of those who died on 10th April 2010 (Maew), painted by Tawan Wattuya. The painting is from Tawan’s Red Faces series, shown at the Khon Kaen Manifesto (ขอนแก่น แมนิเฟสโต้) and Amnesia exhibitions in 2019.

The Godfather

The Godfather will be rereleased at both branches of Century Movie Plaza in Bangkok (Victory Monument and Sukhumvit) on 19th August. It was previously shown in Thai cinemas for its fiftieth anniversary in 2022. It was also shown in 2018, twice: at Cinema Winehouse, and at Scala.

Pirab

Pasit Promnampol’s short film Pirab (พิราบ) will be shown at Hope Space in Bangkok on 9th August, as part of a series of events titled Before October Come [sic] (ก่อนจะถึงเดือนตุลา). Pirab has previously been screened at Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, Thammasat University, Future Fest 2023, and the Thai Film Archive.

Auey Kaab

Patthakarn Sadubtham will launch a large-format photozine, Auey Kaab (เอื้อยค้าบบบ˜), on 16th August at The Independent Print Club at One Bangkok. The zine features photographs shot during the filming of his short film of the same name, which was screened at the Thailand International LGBTQ+ Film and TV Festival 2026 in June.

The zine and film show young Isan men in Songkran costumes celebrating the water festival. (Of course, their costumes soon come off.) In his introduction to the zine, Patthakarn admits that he has a thing for Isan men, who ‘make his heart flutter like a broken flute’.

The film was shot on Super 8mm. It has a comical narration about the stereotype of Isan men who elicit money from people who fall for them by pretending that their buffalo is sick. Readers of the zine can view an online video of behind-the-scenes footage from the making of the film.

Patthakarn uses the pseudonym Shotbyly, and has also produced a series of four Shotbyly Vintage magazines over the past two years, each limited to fifty copies. After the softcore first issue, he switched to a different printer (the one that printed Vichai Imsuksom Eros Reinterpretation catalogue), and later issues have been more explicit.

Shotbyly Vintage Magazine vol. 2, Tum, was a portfolio of photos of model Theeraphat Khajornsuwan. The theme of vol. 3 was Paradiso, and vol. 4’s was The Secret Room (ห้องหฤหรรษ์).

Shotbyly often collaborates with Oat Montien, who has also made Super 8mm short films and a photozine, The Exquisite Fall (อัสดง). Oat curated Patthakarn’s Boy x Therapy exhibition in 2023, and produced the new Auey Kaab zine, which is limited to 100 copies.

Hearing the Voice of the Absence

Hearing the Voice of the Absence (สดับเสียงที่ขาดหาย), a three-day programme of open-air film screenings, will take place in Chiang Mai next month. Highlights include the classic Tongpan (ทองปาน) and two recent short films, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Night Colonies and Anocha Suwichakornpong’s Narrative.

Tongpan and Night Colonies will be shown in the first session, titled Landscape and the Order of Seeing, on 7th August. Narrative will be shown during the third session, Rehearsing the Chronicle, on 9th August.

Hearing the Voice of the Absence is the second in a series of events, An Open Draft — Asian Film Programmers Lab, set up by the Japan Foundation. The screenings will be held at Suan Anya in Chiang Mai from 7th to 9th August, and are organised by Dude, Movie.

Night Colonies

Night Colonies, originally shown as part of the anthology film The Year of the Everlasting Storm, combines two of Apichatpong’s consistent themes — light and the natural world — as it features insects buzzing around neon lights. The film begins with a poem paying tribute to “distant friends, and those who had disappeared”, a reference to pro-democracy campaigners self-exiled or abducted following lèse-majesté charges.

The poem continues: “The young leaves unfold, flushed with memories in the year of the everlasting storm.” In addition to giving the portmanteau film its title, these lines are also a metaphor for the student protesters campaigning for political reform. In fact, the film’s soundtrack includes audio recorded at protests in Bangkok on 27th July and 20th August 2020.

Narrative

Narrative is a prelude to Anocha’s forthcoming film Fiction, in which she will stage a fictional trial of those accused of sanctioning the military crackdown on red-shirt protesters in 2010. Witnesses and relatives of the victims take part in a workshop about their memories of the event, in three guided discussion sessions.

As in Anocha’s By the Time It Gets Dark, the process of making a film about a traumatic episode of state violence self-reflexively becomes part of the film itself. Anocha and her crew are shown filming the workshop, and this acts as a distancing device, to the extent that the speakers’ words are sometimes drowned out.

Tongpan

Tongpan is a realistic dramatisation of a seminar that took place in 1975, which was organised to debate the construction of the Pa Mong dam on the Mekong river. The eponymous central character is a farmer who lost his land due to a previous dam.

In the film, Sulak Sivaraksa makes an impassioned speech against the proposed dam: “Development only serves a few people in Bangkok... And what about the destruction of our country? The whole province of Loei will be flooded by this Pa Mong Dam.” Ultimately, the Pa Mong project was abandoned, though this was a Pyrrhic victory for environmental campaigners, as dozens of hydroelectric dams are currently under construction.

Tongpan was made during the brief period of political freedom after the collapse of a military dictatorship in 1973, though by the time filming had been completed in 1977, the military had seized power again, and the film was banned. Its prologue captures the optimism of 1973 (“A military junta fled into exile, and the students from the city went into the countryside to tell the farmers”), though this is contrasted by an epilogue that describes the return of military rule (“shortly after the shooting of this film, a violent coup d’etat of a magnitude never before seen in Thailand brought an end to Thailand’s three-year experiment with democracy”).

Tongpan has previously been shown at Noir Row Art Space, Cinema Oasis, Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, and the Thai Film Archive (most recently in 2024). It was also screened last year in Khon Kaen.

Sarit Thanarat

Sarit Thanarat, military prime minister during the Cold War, died in December 1963. After his death, the floodgates opened, and exposés of his love life were rushed into print. His lovenest was a private residence nicknamed the ‘pink palace’ (วิมานสีชมพู; also the title of an unauthorised posthumous Sarit biography), and เมียน้อย 108 (‘108 mistresses’) printed a list of the concubines he entertained there.

Several other books — including อัลบั้มภาพชุดสีชมพู (‘pink album’), วิมานสวาท หลังกองพล ๑ (‘the palace of love behind the 1st infantry regiment’) and the similarly titled รังสวาทหลังพล 1, จอมพลของคุณหนูๆ (‘young ladies of the general’), แม่ม่ายผ้าขะม้าแดง (‘the widow in the red sarong’), and สาวม่ายในวิมานสีชมพู (‘widows in the pink palace’) — featured dossiers of photographs of his alleged lovers. The Daily News (เดลินิวส์) cartoon booklet การ์ตูนชุดแม่ม่ายผ้าขาวม้าแดง (‘the widows in the red sarong cartoon series’) also featured thinly-veiled portrayals of Sarit’s mistresses.

Almost fifty years later, the phrase ‘pink palace’ was censored by Channel 3 when it broadcast the lakorn คุณชายพุฒิภัทร (‘khun Chai Puttipat’) on 5th May 2013. In the third episode, a former military general played by Montree Jenuksorn (who slightly resembles Sarit) discussed his ‘pink palace’, though the sound was muted, presumably to avoid any possibility of a libel suit from Sarit’s descendents. (The novel on which the drama was based refers to Sarit more obliquely.)

Potential defamation also prevented director Banjong Kosallawat from making a semi-fictionalised Sarit biopic in 2002, which was to have been titled จอมพล (‘marshal’). Sarit did feature briefly in the horror movie Zee Oui (ซี-อุย), ordering the swift execution of the murderous title character for political expediency. And Sarit’s statue looms ominously over the characters in Song of the City, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s segment of the portmanteau film Ten Years Thailand.

The newsreel การปฏิบัติหน้าที่เพื่อประเทศชาติในตำแหน่งหัวหน้ารัฐบาลและผู้นำทางทหาร จนถึงล้มป่วยและอสัญกรรมของ ฯพณฯ จอมพลสฤษดิ์ ธนะรัชต์ (‘Field Marshal Sarit Thanarat performing duties for the country as the head of government and military leader until his illness and death’) is a fascinating example of Cold War state propaganda. Screened shortly after Sarit’s death, it provided a counter-narrative to the books that exposed his decadence and corruption. The film depicts Sarit as a tireless and selfless leader, to the extent that he became ill through overwork. Thunska Pansittivorakul’s recent documentary Isan Odyssey (อีสานอำพราง) gives the other side of the story, in a voiceover describing how suspected communists were “brutally murdered” during Sarit’s regime.

After Sarit led a coup in 1957, he was portrayed as a hero by pliant newspaper cartoonists. One example of such propaganda showed Sarit cradling a rescued child in his arms, returning the boy (who represents the Thai people) to his grateful mother. In contrast, a July 1958 cartoon in the liberal ประชาชน (‘people’) newspaper depicted Sarit as a monkey wrapping his tail possessively around Democracy Monument.

In the wake of the 2014 coup, Sarit satire was too sensitive, and the Guerrilla Boys self-censored their mural Junta Connection (วิ่งผลัดเผด็จการ), which originally depicted Sarit passing his (literal) baton of dictatorship to Prayut Chan-o-cha. Junta Connection was shown in 2018 as part of Khon Kaen Manifesto (ขอนแก่น แมนิเฟสโต้), a group exhibition that directly addressed Sarit’s contested legacy.

Art and Culture (ศิลปวัฒนธรรม) magazine analysed cartoonists’ caricatures of Sarit (vol. 43, no. 1), and the journal Same Sky (ฟ้าเดียวกัน) examined the lurid books published shortly after his death (vol. 20, no. 2). Thai Cinema Uncensored discusses the portrayal of Sarit in Thai films.

October 6th: A Reconfigured Archive

This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the violent and tragic events that took place on 6th October 1976 at Thammasat University, when forty-six people, most of whom were students, were killed by right-wing militia groups and vigilantes. The bodies of the victims were desecrated by baying mobs, and the incident remains one of the most shocking moments in Thailand’s modern history.

MAIIAM in Chiang Mai is commemorating the anniversary with a group exhibition devoted to the incident, October 6th: A Reconfigured Archive (จดหมายเหตุนอกบรรทัด 6 ตุลาคม 2519), which opened on 10th July and runs until 30th November. The exhibition features artworks commenting on the Thammasat massacre alongside books and other archival materials documenting the event.

The exhibition includes Nutdanai Jitbunjong’s installation A Massacre: a folding chair suspended from the ceiling. The chair is an iconic signifier of the massacre, thanks to Neal Ulevich’s photograph of a man preparing to hit a corpse with a folding chair. Nutdanai’s chair is made from tamarind wood, as the dead man in Ulevich’s photo was hanged from a tamarind tree. A Massacre was previously shown in the Status in Statu (รัฐพิลึก) and Khon Kaen Manifesto (ขอนแก่น แมนิเฟสโต้) exhibitions.

Several works from Taiki Sakpisit’s exhibition Dark Was the Night (ผีพุ่งไต้) are included, notably his video installation of the same title and his photograph Half Day Closing, an image of the notorious ‘red elevator’, which — according to legend — is haunted by victims of the 1976 attack. The lift was discussed in the documentary Ghosts, and it inspired the horror film Haunted Universities (มหาลัยสยองขวัญ).

Thasnai Sethaseree has produced numerous paintings that refer to 1976. The exhibition features three of his untitled collages: news photos of the incident heavily obscured by colourful overpainting. They were also shown in a previous MAIIAM exhibition, Errata.

Other paintings in the exhbition include Patcharapa Inchang’s Father, Lawan Upa-In’s ก่อน ๖ ตุลา ๒๕๑๙ (‘before 6th Oct. 1976’), and Ronagorn Kerdchot’s 16 19 35 (๑๖ ๑๙ ๓๕). The title of Ronagorn’s work refers to the years 1973, 1976, and 1992 according to the Buddhist Era calendar, and all three periods are associated with episodes of state violence.

Thanavi Chotpradit and Kornkrit Jianpinidnan’s book Prism of Photography is on display, alongside a photograph from Kornkrit’s Damage series. The book is a visual archive of the massacre, featuring dozens of Thai newspaper front pages and news photographs. ฟ้าใหม่ ใกล้มา (‘dawn of victory’), a ‘museum in a box’ featuring meticulously reproduced artefacts from 1976, is also on show.

To contextualise the events of 1976, the exhibition also features Arin Rungjang’s And Then There Were None, a series of paintings based on news photographs from 14th October 1973, a date almost as infamous as 6th October 1976, when a mass protest led to the (temporary) collapse of a military dictatorship. Her video of the same title, an interview with singer Boonchuang Denduang that begins with archive footage from 1973, is also included. Arin’s paintings were shown alongside Thasnai’s in Errata.

A Romance… I Guess

Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher (La Pianiste) will be shown in Korat at the A Romance... I Guess (หนังรัก... ก็รักแหละ) film festival on 23rd August at the Korat Cineplex. (The festival runs from 14th to 23rd August.) The film has been rated ‘20’ by the censor board, and it’s the latest of several non-Thai films featuring explicit sex to be passed here uncut. Similarly, Dogtooth (Κυνόδοντας) and Pink Flamingos have also been rated ‘20’ uncensored.

A draft law to replace the Film and Video Act 2008, scrapping the state censorship board in favour of a system of industry self-regulation, was approved by the Pheu Thai cabinet in April last year, though the draft has yet to be approved by parliament, and remains in limbo. But in the meantime, the current members of the censor board have been intentionally selected for their progressive views, in keeping with recommendations for increasing soft power issued in 2024, hence the liberal approach to films like The Piano Teacher.

Songs of Angry People

Uruphong Raksasad has directed a trilogy of documentaries about the recent student protest movement: Songs of Angry People, Paradox Democracy, and Cut of Speech. All have been shown at the Thai Film Archive in Salaya, though Songs of Angry People was deemed so sensitive that its screening — as part of To Commune, the 69th Flaherty Film Seminar programme in 2024 — wasn’t advertised in advance. Songs of Angry People was also shown in the Wildtype Middleclass programme this year, though the screenings were equally surreptitious, and it was listed as a ‘surprise film’ in the schedule.

In Paradox Democracy, speeches by protest leaders are intercut with extracts from The Revolutionist (คือผู้อภิวัฒน์), a play about Pridi Banomyong staged by the Crescent Moon theatre group in 2020. The film also includes footage shot at the 6th October 1976 commemorative exhibition at Thammasat University in 2020.

Cut of Speech concentrates almost exclusively on the protesters’ speeches. It features clips of forty-four speakers, in reference to article 44 of the interim constitution drafted after the 2014 coup.

Songs of Angry People does include short extracts from speeches by protest leaders — it begins with a fiery speech by Parit Chirawak outside the Crown Property Bureau offices — though it focuses more on the atmosphere of the protests. These include demonstrations at Democracy Monument, Din Daeng, and Nang Loeng in Bangkok, and at the smaller Democracy Monument in Khon Kaen.

Songs of Angry People’s title comes from a comment by a protester to a phalanx of riot police: “Don’t make the people angry.” It also refers to the numerous protest songs performed at the demonstrations: Uruphong films Chaiamorn Kaewwiboonpan and the Bottom Blues performing 12345 I Love You, and The Commoner singing You Know Who (คนที่คุณก็รู้ว่าใคร) at Democracy Monument.

During the chorus of 12345 I Love You, demonstrators shout “ai hia Tu” instead of the original lyrics. (Ai hia is a strong insult, and Tu is Prayut Chan-o-cha’s nickname.) While Uruphong was filming Chaiamorn perform the song, his camera also caught sight of another director, Yuthlert Sippapak, who was coincidentally also filming the same performance. (Yuthlert was filming 1410, a project he announced with Chaiamorn in 2021.)

You Know Who was released as a single in 2021. Its lyrics refer to “He Who Must Not Be Named”, which is a description of Voldemort from the Harry Potter franchise. (The link between Harry Potter and the protest movement goes back to one of the first demonstrations in 2020, organised by Arnon Nampa at Democracy Monument.) The music video ends with brief footage of the student protests, though its main theme is the discovery of the bodies of dissidents in the Mekong river.

Gentle Ghosts with Eyes as Fair

Sirawit Chatu’s exhbition Gentle Ghosts with Eyes as Fair opens on 25th July at Fazal Unlimited in Bangkok, and runs until 6th September. The exhibition includes photographs from 6th October 1976 and the 2004 Tak Bai tragedy, converted to negatives and overlaid with small details from classical Thai artworks.

A Sudden Flicker of Light: A Revisionist History of the Movies

David Thomson has been described as the world’s greatest writer on film history, and his Biographical Dictionary of Film has been acclaimed as the greatest film reference book. Whether or not you agree with those opinions (I don’t), Thomson’s reputation means that any new book he writes deserves to be read.

A Sudden Flicker of Light: A Revisionist History of the Movies covers Hollywood, European silent cinema, and various national new wave movements. As anyone familiar with Thomson’s writing will be aware, the book is both authoritative and idiosyncratic. There are digressions of speculative fiction, asides to the reader, and unexpected references (to Tracey Emin, for example).

Thomson has previously written several similar books on the sweep of film history, most notably The Big Screen, a more conventional and satisfying account of the subject. His other books include Television, Have You Seen...?, Moments That Made the Movies, and The Moment of Psycho.

Cinematic Nangloeng

Sala Chaloem Thani, Bangkok’s oldest cinema, reopened last year for a series of film screenings organised by the Thai Film Archive. More classics will be shown at the historic wooden cinema this year, in a Cinematic Nangloeng season that runs from 28th July to 1st August. Highlights include Somboonsuk Niyomsiri’s A Man Called Tone (โทน) on 29th July and Nonzee Nimibutr’s Dang Bireley’s and Young Gangsters [sic] (2499 อันธพาลครองเมือง) on 1st August.

A Man Called Tone

The release of A Man Called Tone in 1970 was a turning point in Thai cinema history. Filmed in widescreen 35mm, it marked the end of the 16mm era, a formulaic mode of production that had dominated the industry for the previous twenty years. Stylistically, its modern approach to characterisation, acting, narrative, music, and cinematography was equally groundbreaking. It was previously shown at the Archive in 2025 and — to mark Somboonsuk’s ninetieth birthday — in 2023. It was also screened in 2022 at Doc Club and Pub in Bangkok, though a gala screening at the Scala cinema in 2020 was cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Dang Bireley’s and Young Gangsters

Dang Bireley’s and Young Gangsters, the film that launched the Thai New Wave in 1997, was shown last year at the Microwave Film Festival in Sisaket. It had two outdoor screenings in 2022: in Chiang Mai (in 35mm) and Bangkok. It was shown at Scala in 2018, and at Ramada Plaza in 2010. It was shown twice at the Archive in 2020.

Like 1970, 1997 was a pivotal year for Thai cinema, as Dang Bireley’s and Young Gangsters broke domestic box-office records and Pen-ek Ratanaruang’s debut Fun Bar Karaoke (ฝันบ้าคาราโอเกะ) premiered at the Berlinale. The Bangkok Experimental Film Festival (เทศกาลหนังทดลองกรุงเทพฯ ครั้งที่) and Thai Short Film and Video Festival (เทศกาลภาพยนตร์สั้น) were also founded in that year.