ข้อเท็จจริงของ หนัง 6 ตุลา(‘facts regarding 6th Oct. films’)

The Thai Film Archive at Salaya will host a screening and discussion on 22nd October titled ข้อเท็จจริงของ หนัง 6 ตุลา (‘facts regarding 6th Oct. films’). Documentaries about the events of 6th October 1976 will be shown, followed by a discussion about their origins and the differences between them. Altogether there are more than eighty films and videos that refer to 6th October, though this screening will focus specifically on the three earliest documentaries made about the event.

ปณิธาน 6 ตุลา
(‘the 6th Oct. resolution’)

The first commercially available footage of 6th October was released on VHS to mark the 20th anniversary of the event. Almost an hour long, it begins with brief historical context, then replays raw footage of the massacre, and concludes with a caption calling for an end to state violence against civilians. The original footage was silent, though a soundtrack was added for the video release. The on-screen title is ชำระประวัติศาสตร์ ๖ ตุลา (‘revisiting the history of 6th Oct.’), but it was retitled ปณิธาน 6 ตุลา (‘the 6th Oct. resolution’) on the video cover.

ข้อเท็จจริงเกี่ยวกับเหตุการณ์เมื่อ 6 ตุลาคม 2519
(‘facts regarding the 6th October 1976 incident’)

Shortly after the 1976 coup, the National Administrative Reform Council junta began a propaganda campaign to transfer blame for the violence of 6th October onto the innocent student victims. The NARC published a booklet and made a half-hour documentary, both titled ข้อเท็จจริงเกี่ยวกับเหตุการณ์เมื่อ 6 ตุลาคม 2519 (‘facts regarding the 6th October 1976 incident’), falsely accusing the students of possessing weapons.

The NARC documentary was produced by Channel 7. It was broadcast on that network, and also shown as part of a travelling exhibition organised by the junta. There is also a nine-minute version titled ภาพเหตุการณ์ 6 ตุลาคม (‘footage of the 6th October event’).

Anniversaries of the Shooting /Shooting the Anniversaries

It’s fifty years since the shootings and lynchings that took place at Thammasat University on 6th October 1976, and the anniversary of that day is commemorated every year. There have been more than eighty films and videos about 6th October, and there are a handful of recent films that were shot at the anniversary events themselves.

A trilogy of new films by Warat Bureephakdee — With Love and Melody (ด้วยรักและทำนองเพลง), Lo (ด้วยรัก), and Ve (ด้วยรัก) — focuses on the 46th and 47th anniversaries. The three films, each an hour long, capture the atmosphere of the commemorations in real time.

With Love and Melody records a tense moment at a pop concert commemorating 6th October, when the band refused to play until an audience member put down a banner criticising the lèse-majesté law. The crowd was frustrated by the delay, though protesters outside the venue accused the organisers of ignoring political issues in favour of entertainment. Warat rectifies this by superimposing archive footage from 6th October over the band’s performance. (He previously included 6th October archive footage in his satirical short film Crazy Soft Power Love.)

There is a brief instance of self-censorship in With Love and Melody. A speech at Thammasat includes the lines “reform the...” and “reform of the...”, though the m-word is replaced by silence on the soundtrack. It’s a reminder that, when Warat was filming in 2021, the three-finger protest movement was in full swing.

With Love and Melody was shot hand-held, and features occasional split-screen sequences. In contrast, Lo and Ve are composed of long, static, ambient shots. (They also have no credits, unlike With Love and Melody.) In Lo, Warat films a band playing to passers by on a street near the Thammasat campus. For Ve, he filmed people burning effigies of 6th October victims at Thammasat.

Last week, there was a brief online trend of using generative AI to create speculative photographs of students at Thammasat on 6th October 1976. The resulting photos were sanitised and unrealistic, with none of the terror or violence seen in historical images from that day. A selection of these AI slop photos appear, without any context, at the end of Ve.

There are two other documentary shorts about 6th October anniversaries. Like Warat, Supong Jitmuang documented the growing attendance at recent commemorations in The Returning (วนเวียน). The title of a forthcoming film by Chatchawan Thongchan asks the provocative question ผ่านมาแล้ว 50 ปี รำลึก 6 ตุลายังจำเป็นอยู่มั้ย? (‘after 50 years have passed, is commemorating the 6th Oct. event still necessary?’)

There are also two other documentaries that include footage from 6th October commemorations at Thammasat. Weerapat Sakolvaree filmed at the 45th anniversary for Zombie Citizens, and Uruphong Raksasad shot at the 44th anniversary for Paradox Democracy.

Finally, Sassawat Kanayat has directed two new short films in which actors play the organisers of 6th October commemorations: The Empty Page (บันทึกหน้าสุดท้าย) and The Echo Remembered of Souls [sic] (เสียงสะท้อนจากความทรงจำ). The organisers disagree on how graphic the exhibition at their event should be, and their scripted debate echoes the dilemma faced by the real-life organisers of 6th October commemorations.

Skyline FilmSingin’ in the Rain

The classic Hollywood musical Singin’ in the Rain will be shown on 21st November, on the rooftop of River City Bangkok, as part of a regular programme of monthly outdoor screenings organised by Skyline Film. Singin’ in the Rain was previously screened at River City in 2024. It has also been shown at Thammasat University in 2015, at the Scala cinema in 2018, and at Bangkok Screening Room in 2020.

Ignorance

Several generations of Thai students have experienced a sense of political awakening or ta sawang after military interventions. But some people react to injustice with indifference, and so the cycle continues. In Sutham Jeerasilp’s short film Ignorance (อยู่เย็นเป็นตาย), a student makes his choice and faces the consequences.

The drama is told in a series of flashbacks to recent milestones in Thai politics. In 2006, high school student Poom watches the announcment of a coup on television. He asks why the junta seized power, but his father tells him: “It’s a long story.”

Poom watches a TV news report about Nuamthong Praiwan, who crashed his taxi into a tank in an anti-coup protest. He asks his mother about democracy, but her answer is as dismissive as his father’s: “I think we should stop discussing this matter.”

In 2010, his girlfriend Pla asks him to join a red-shirt protest, but he follows his parents’ advice and stays out of politics. In 2014, another coup is announced on TV, but this time Poom doesn’t ask any questions.

Ignorance gradually develops into a horror film. Over the years, Poom is disturbed by visions of a zombie-like man, though his mother and father simply ignore this foreboding presence. Eventually, Poom’s parents start coughing up blood. Then, in the present day, he develops the same symptoms, and the zombie stares back at him from the mirror.

Who is the figure haunting Poom? He could represent the red-shirt victims that Poom seems indifferent to. He could even be Pla’s father, a protester who was killed in the 2010 crackdown. But he feels more like a premonition of what Poom and his family will become: physically destroyed by their apathy towards the suffering of others.

Sutham’s film is equally pessimistic about the fate of those with a social conscience, as it’s implied that Pla faces a similar danger to that of her father. In fact, the character was inspired by Kamonket Akkahad, a young nurse treating the injured at Wat Pathum Wanaram who was killed by snipers in 2010.

(Ignorance was shown in the FirstLight short film programme in Bangkok earlier this year. Screenings took place at Me Goody on 8th April, at Living Room on 18th April, at G-U Café on 21st April, and at Cou Cou Social Game Bar on 26th April.)

Old Path in the Deep Dark ForestPlows and Seams

MAIIAM in Chiang Mai continues its Old Path in the Deep Dark Forest (รอยทางเก่าในป่าลึก) season on 10th October, with a new programme screening every weekend until 1st November that includes the classic film Tongpan (ทองปาน).

The new programme is titled Plows and Seams (รอยไถและจักร). The first part of Old Path in the Deep Dark Forest, Blinding Flash and Echo Fire (แสงวาบและเสียงก้อง), was shown last month. The screenings are part of MAIIAM’s exhibition A Reconfigured Archive (จดหมายเหตุนอกบรรทัด), commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the events that took place on 6th October 1976 at Thammasat University.

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. (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 a product of the brief period of political freedom following the end of military rule in 1973, though by the time filming had been completed in 1977, another junta had seized power, and the film was banned. Its prologue captures the optimism of 1973 (“A military junta fled into exile”), 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 and earlier this year in Chiang Mai.

Wildtype 2026Politix

Wildtype, the annual season of short films programmed by Chayanin Tiangpitayagorn, Wiwat Lertwiwatwongsa, and Sasawat Boonsri, returns for its seventeenth year. After being held largely online in 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic, the event has been expanding during the past few years, with screenings around the country in 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025.

2026 is no exception, with screenings at a dozen locations around Thailand in October and November. More than fifty films will be shown, though the highlight is the Politix strand, which includes Long Live the Sin, Letter from Congo (จดหมายจากคองโก), A Pigeon’s Journey on the Birth of a Nation (ย้ายรัง), Self-Portrait (อัตภาพ), 8 (๘), and Soundtrack to a Coup d’État 2.

Politix screenings:

• 4th October at Buffalo Bridge in Bangkok
• 4th October at PYE Space in Phayao
• 4th October at Fair Boy in Lopburi
• 4th October at Loftster in Korat
• 10th October at Noir Row Art Space in Udon Thani
• 11th October at Bliss Project in Chanthaburi
• 17th October at Alien Artspace in Khon Kaen
• 18th October at Lorem Ipsum in Hat Yai
• 18th October at Us in Phatthalung
• 23rd October in Ranong
• 23rd October at 23 December (!) in Phitsanulok
• 25th October at Chiang Mai University Art Center
• 8th November at Dirty Cups in Kanchanaburi

Some of the venue names are potentially confusing. The Ranong screenings will be held at a cafe that has no name, though it has a drawing of a drunken cat as its logo. 23 December is the name of a coffee bar in Phitsanulok, it’s not the date of the screening.

Long Live the Sin

Beam Wong’s music video Long Live the Sin, a short burst of rage, features imagery associated with the three-finger protest movement. It was shown earlier this year at the Goethe-Institut.

8

Pattanapong Khongsak’s short film 8 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. (Its subtitle, The Silence of the Goats, is a pun on The Silence of the Lambs.)

Soundtrack to a Coup d’État 2

The director of Soundtrack to a Coup d’État 2 is anonymous, and I’m sworn to secrecy. The film is credited to a pseudonym, Johan Liebert. (It’s an unofficial sequel to the 2024 Cold War documentary of the same title.)

This satirical (and hilarious) film features a collage of clips from TV news reports about the 2006 coup, set to a jazz soundtrack. (The film links the musician to the events it depicts.) It also highlights the kerfuffle in 2008 when Thaksin Shinawatra accused an unnamed octogenarian of being behind the coup, and finally revealed that he was referring to Prem Tinsulanonda.

Letter from Congo

In Buariyate Eamkamol’s Letter from Congo, a narrator reads a letter from a woman in colonial-era Belgium describing a cruel monarch. The film also features solarised footage of red-shirt protesters travelling from Chiang Mai to Bangkok.

The final image is a statue of King Kawila, a former ruler of Chiang Mai, and the effect is similar to the ending of the short film Re-presentation (ผีมะขาม ไพร่ฟ้า ประชาธิปไตย ในคืนที่ลมพัดหวน) by Chai Chaiyachit and Chisanucha Kongwailap. Letter from Congo was previously shown at The New Narrative: Moving Image Showcase, from 1st to 29th July, at TCDC Commons in Srinakarin.

A Pigeon’s Journey on the Birth of a Nation

A Pigeon’s Journey on the Birth of a Nation is part of Weerapat Sakolvaree’s Oblivion (เลือน) series, the first of which was The Original Texts (บทประพันธ์ดั้งเดิม). A voiceover narrates the circumstances of three key milestones in Thai political history — the 1932 revolution, 14th October 1973, and 6th October 1976 — though they are told as a fable involving wild animals.

A pigeon flies between various Bangkok buildings, as if witnessing the historic events described in the narration. The effect is similar to Panya Zhu’s short film White Bird (นกตัวนั้นยังสบายดีไหม), in which an origami bird is also seen at historically significant locations around Bangkok.

When the pigeon lands on Democracy Monument, the voiceover describes “one October morning” (14th October 1973) when “Mad Dogs” attacked thousands of student protesters. The pigeon then flies to Thammasat University, where “the Wild Tigers came out to hunt.”

A Pigeon’s Journey on the Birth of a Nation was previously shown at The Wayward Travelers, a Weerapat retrospective. It was also shown at the group exhibition Spacing the Inherent (การเว้นระยะห่างโดยธรรมชาติ) from 6th to 29th May at Art4C in Bangkok.

Self-Portrait

For the black-and-white Self-Portrait, Nawapol Peachpolshep scanned his body with a photocopier, posing with a bullet in his mouth, to express his anger at the suppression of student demonstrators in 2020 and 2021. His film includes footage of riot police with shields, water cannon being fired, and protesters washing tear gas out of their eyes.

Your Ash and My Bone

Sina Wittayawiroj’s Your Ash and My Bone (ธุลีดาว) will be shown at the Us coffee shop in Phatthalung on 11th October. The venue is the new permanent home of Phatthalung Micro Cinema.

Your Ash and My Bone (ธุลีดาว) is a documentary collage film that’s personal and politicla in equal measure. The artist narrates his life story from birth to the present, describing his family, his childhood, and his career.

The film was originally part of Sina’s exhibition Can’t We Recant? (เราจะถอนคำพูดไม่ได้เลยหรือ?) at Kinjai Contemporary in Bangkok and at MAIELIE in Khon Kaen. It has also been shown at Doc Club and Friends, and as part of Wildtype Middleclass 2026.

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).

Happy Boy

Yesterday was the fiftieth anniversary of the bloodbath at Thammasat University on 6th October 1976. An iconic photograph, taken by Neal Ulevich, has come to represent the entire event, and this single image has been analysed and reproduced so much that even its background details have inspired dozens of artists.

Amongst the goulish onlookers captured by Ulevich, a young boy with a broad smile stands out from the crowd. This child, who would now be a middle-aged man, has never been identified, though he has been portrayed in paintings, graphics, films, and even as a mini sculpture. Krit Chantranet’s recent painting Smile is an etereal portrait of the boy. A colourised version of the boy appears on a bookmark sold with a new book marking the fiftieth anniversary, edited by Kasidit Ananthanathorn.

Khai Maew created a miniature plastic model of the child, called Happy Boy, in 2016. A drawing of the boy appears on the cover of เด็กดีของประเทศที่ไร้อนาคต (‘good children in a country with no future’), vol. 7 of the journal ชายคาเรื่องสั้น (‘roof short stories’), published in 2016. Matichon Weekly (มติชนสุดสัปดาห์) created a graphic of the boy wearing 3D glasses to illustrate an article by its columnist Kam Phaka. (The column appeared in the 7th October 2016 issue, though the graphic only appeared on the magazine’s website.) The boy also appears in The Forest of Recurrence, a 2015 painting by Kampanart Sangsorn. Ing K. painted the boy in watercolour for her series Where Are They Now? (ไทยมุง) in 2008, and the portrait appeared on the cover of the Flashback ’76 (อดีตหลอน) exhibition catalogue.

Ukrit Sa-nguanhai’s short film The Pob’s House (บ้านผีปอบ) is a powerful reminder of the persistence of mob violence, and features a little boy turning to the camera and grinning, in a reference to the smiling boy in Ulevich’s photo. Chookiat Sakveerakul’s science-fiction epic Taklee Genesis (ตาคลี เจเนซิส) dramatised the events of 6th October, and in one shot, a young boy stands alone on a balcony laughing at the carnage.

Thammasat University

Today marks the fiftieth anniversary of the massacre at Thammasat University on 6th October 1976, and a commemorative event was held on campus throughout the day. In the evening, students from the Faculty of Social Administration performed a satirical opera (photographed by Khai Maew) about the events of 1976 and the amnesty ultimately granted to the students who were wrongfully arrested.

There is no 6th October exhibition at the university this year, though photographs of the events were on display, including an image from the Dao Siam (ดาวสยาม) newspaper hanging from a mobile along with other iconic photos from that day. (A photocopy of the Dao Siam front page is on display at a concurrent exhibition at Chulalongkorn University’s Faculty of Political Science.)

Thammasat has published a book to mark the anniversary — 50 ปี 6 ตุลา: มรดกของ 6 ตุลา (‘50 years of 6th Oct.: the legacy of 6th Oct.’) — edited by Kasidit Ananthanathorn. Its cover features a colourised version of a famous Neal Ulevich photograph taken on the day of the massacre, and it comes with a bookmark featuring an image of a smiling boy from that photo.

Three Films by Warat Bureephakdee

A trilogy of new films by Warat Bureephakdee will be shown at Doc Club and Friends in Bangkok on 10th October. With Love and Melody (ด้วยรักและทำนองเพลง), Lo (ด้วยรัก), and Ve (ด้วยรัก) were filmed at commemorations marking the 46th and 47th anniversaries of the 6th October 1976 coup. (With Love and Melody includes documentary footage shot by Tanapong Thepparak, Koraphat Cheeradit, and Weerapat Sakolvaree, amongst others.)

Warat noticed that these commemorations had higher attendance figures than in previous years, as more young people had become politically engaged following the student protests of 2020 and 2021. (In Thai, this political awakening is known as ta sawang.) His films focus on the songs performed at the commemorations, and how music had a unifying and participatory effect on the attendees. Similarly, Supong Jitmuang’s short film The Returning (วนเวียน) documented the growing attendance at commemorative events since 2020.