6ixtynin9

Pen-ek Ratanaruang’s thriller 6ixtynin9 (เรื่องตลก 69) will be shown at Banban Nannan Library in Nan on 22nd March. In the film, a young woman loses her job and finds ฿1 million in a box outside her door. Like the similar setup in Danny Boyle’s Shallow Grave (a personal favourite), this unexpected windfall soon leads to unwanted visitors and bodies piling up.

Pen-ek discussed the film in an interview for Thai Cinema Uncensored, explaining how the police department — which dominated the film censorship board when 6ixtynin9 was released — made him add a postscript reassuring viewers that the police were effective at combatting crime: “we were asked by the police to put the rolling credit saying that she was caught and went to jail.” Their justification wasn’t the usual crime-doesn’t-pay moral lesson; instead, it was a face-saving measure by the police: “if the girl could do this, the police look bad.”

6ixtynin9 was previously shown at Bangkok Screening Room in 2017, and on the rooftop of the Metropolitan Waterworks Authority building in 2023. As part of a Pen-ek retrospective in 2018, it was screened on DVD at the Jam Factory and in 35mm at House RCA, and it was also shown at Alliance Française as part of another Pen-ek retrospective that year.

Pen-ek remade 6ixtynin9 as a Netflix series in 2023. In the TV version, the central plotline stuck closely to the film, though there was a new subplot involving a police drugs raid. The film was made, and set, in the aftermath of Thailand’s 1997 economic collapse (known here as the ‘tom yum goong crisis’), and the TV series was filmed shortly after the coronavirus pandemic, which caused similar economic damage. The show also had a political message, and news reports of pro-reform student protests were seen on TV sets throughout the series.

Can’t We Recant?

Sina Wittayawiroj’s exhibition Can’t We Recant? (เราจะถอนคำพูดไม่ได้เลยหรือ?) opens at the MAIELIE gallery in Khon Kaen on 20th March, and runs until 7th June. The exhibition explores Sina’s personal and artistic background, and his connection to the major political events of his lifetime. It was first shown last year at Kinjai Contemporary in Bangkok.

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.

Your Ash and My Bone

Sina’s film Your Ash and My Bone (ธุลีดาว) is also screening throughout the exhibition. Your Ash and My Bone is a documentary collage film in which the artist narrates his life story from birth to the present, from his family background to the progress of his artistic career.

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 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).

Sala Saneha

Sala Saneha, a new boutique cinema in Bangkok’s Silom district, opened in December last year and has been holding a series of semi-private events since then. Today is Sala Saneha’s soft launch day, with screenings of Pen-ek Ratanaruang’s popular musical romance Monrak Transistor (มนต์รักทรานซิสเตอร์) and Thunska Pansittivorakul’s new documentary Isan Odyssey (อีสานอำพราง). Monrak Transistor will also be shown tomorrow, and on 14th, 19th, 20th, and 22nd March. Isan Odyssey will also be shown on 20th and 21st March.

Arcadia Rooftop CinemaA Clockwork Orange

The Rooftop Cinema programme of open-air movie screenings at Bangkok’s Arcadia bar comes to an end on 15th March, with a screening of Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. The first Rooftop Cinema screenings took place in 2022. A Clockwork Orange was previously shown at the Thai Film Archive in 2019, at Cinema Winehouse in 2018, and at Thammasat University in 2014.

Re-Wild

The Reading Room art library and screening space is relocating after fifteen years at Silom in Bangkok. On its last day at its original location, 31st March, it will host a valedictory Wildtype programme of short films titled Re-Wild.

The event will include Paisit Punpruksachart’s อัติภาวะนิยมสุขสันต์ (‘existential happiness’), a 2004 music video featuring documentary footage of pigs being killed in a slaughterhouse, and Manussak Dokmai’s นครพนมมือบ้าง ไม่พนมมือบ้าง (‘Nakhon Phanom: some pray, some don’t’) from 2010, which includes images from 6th October 1976 on a camera’s LCD screen. Both films were previously shown at You Say You Want a Revolution (เปลี่ยนเถิดชาวไทย) in 2011.

Surprisingly, อัติภาวะนิยมสุขสันต์ is one of three Thai films featuring pigs being killed: the others are Chaweng Chaiyawan’s Please... See Us (หว่างีมอละ) and Amrit Chusuwan’s Pig’s Story. อัติภาวะนิยมสุขสันต์ was previously shown at the Reading Room as part of Wildtype Masterclass no. 4 in 2018, and at Bioscope Theatre’s Off Record in 2008.

When My Father Was a Communist

Vichart Somkaew’s documentary When My Father Was a Communist (เมื่อพ่อผมเป็นคอมมิวนิสต์) will be shown at the Backyard Cinematic microcinema in Trang, on 14th March. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Vichart.

When My Father Was a Communist features interviews with the director’s 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 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.”

This link between past and present is also found in Chatchawan Thongchan’s short film From Forest to City (อรัญนคร) and Thanaphon Accawatanyu’s play Wilderness (รักดงดิบ), both of which also compare the persecution of communists after 1976 to the recent student protest movement. When My Father Was a Communist has been screened around the country, including at Phimailongweek (พิมายฬองวีค) in Korat. Its most recent screening was at the Thai Film Archive in Salaya.

The Manga Bible

Helen McCarthy, alongside Frederik L. Schodt and Jonathan Clements, is responsible for some of the very first English-language writing on Japanese manga (comics) and anime (animation). She wrote The Art of Osamu Tezuka, the first book in English on the most acclaimed mangaka (comic illustrator), and with Clements she co-wrote The Anime Encyclopedia, the definitive anime film and TV guide.

McCarthy’s latest book, The Manga Bible, is a comprehensive introduction to manga, not only profiling the key mangaka but also examining the manga industry and the field of manga studies. The book is broadly chronological, and there are also sections on the most popular manga genres. Each chapter is fairly concise, though The Manga Bible lives up to its title and covers manga from every conceivable angle.

Schodt’s book Manga! Manga! first introduced Japanese comics to Western readers, and he translated Toshio Ban’s The Osamu Tezuka Story. Manga Design (revised as 100 Manga Artists), by Amano Masanao and Julius Wiedemann, reprints extracts from significant manga. Recently, manga scholar Eike Exner has written two revisionist histories of the subject, Manga and Comics and the Origins of Manga.

The Atlas of World Embroidery:A Global Exploration of Heritage and Styles

Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood is probably the world’s leading authority on the history of embroidery. She edited the multi-volume Encyclopedia of Embroidery, which is the definitive reference work on the subject. Her new book The Atlas of World Embroidery: A Global Exploration of Heritage and Styles features “a selection of the main forms of embroidery from around the world,” and it’s an international survey of embroidery traditions rather than a comprehensive history.

The Atlas of World Embroidery is beautifully illustrated with historical and contemporary examples. It also has a classified bibliography. In her introduction, Vogelsang-Eastwood writes: “as well as providing a global story of embroidery, I hope this book helps to illustrate the long and diverse history of this craft.” The book certainly achieves this, though as she acknowledges, a single volume can’t cover every type of embroidery worldwide.

The only previous books with global coverage of embroidery history were both written by Mary Gostelow around fifty years ago. Gostelow’s A World of Embroidery was a country-by-country history, followed by the similar Embroidery: Traditional Designs, Techniques and Patterns from All Over the World, which had more colour illustrations. (Embroidery was reprinted in the US as The Complete International Book of Embroidery.)

Needlework Through the Ages, by Mary Symonds and Louisa Preece, was the first comprehensive history of needlework (of which embroidery is one type), published almost a century ago. It was followed fifty years later by Needlework: An Illustrated History, edited by Harriet Bridgeman and Elizabeth Drury.

Outdoor Cinema

Two classic Stanley Kubrick films will be shown in open-air screenings at Cloud 11 in Bangkok next week, as part of the Outdoor Cinema programme. The event is part of MEK Music and Market, which runs from 13th to 15th March, and the screenings are organised by Doc Club and Pub, which will relocate to Cloud 11 later this year. The Shining will be shown on 13th March, followed by 2001 on 15th March.

Previous screenings of The Shining in Thailand:

• general rerelease in 2025
• Scala in 2020
• Siri House in 2019
• Cinema Winehouse in 2018
• Cinema Winehouse in 2015

Previous Thai screenings of 2001:

• Doc Club and Pub in 2024
• Arcadia in 2022
• Scala in 2017
• Thai Film Archive in 2013

Doc Club was previously located at the Woof Pack building in Bangkok, though it was closed after failing to obtain a cinema licence. In 2024, when Doc Club first screened Sarawut Intaraprom’s Pup (สุนัข และ เจ้านาย), rated ‘20’, three staff from the Ministry of Culture were on site to ensure that audience IDs were being checked. They discovered that the venue had never applied for a licence, and a subsequent application was ultimately rejected, as the location did not have sufficient access. (The cinema could only be reached via narrow staircases.)

Dib Bangkok

Dib Bangkok opened on 21st December last year, and its inaugural exhibition, Invisible Presence (ล่องไม่หน), runs until 3rd August. The museum was founded by a Thai businessman with an arts background, though he died in 2023 before construction was completed.

One of the highlights of Invisible Presence is the video installation Emerald (มรกต), in which Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s camera glides elegiacally through a deserted hotel. Emerald was previously shown at Tomyam Pladib (ต้มยำปลาดิบ), Save the Film, Indy Spirit Project, the International Buddhist Film Festival, and the Thailand Biennale.

Dib is billed as Thailand’s first contemporary art museum, though that’s not really accurate, as the Museum of Contemporary Art opened in Bangkok in 2012, and the MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum opened in Chiang Mai in 2016. Like MoCA and MAIIAM, Dib has its strengths and weaknesses.

On the positive side:

• All three museums have stunning architecture. Dib has an impressive courtyard, a conical ‘chapel’ gallery, and a cylindrical tower (James Turrell’s Straight Up). Similarly, MAIIAM has a dazzling mirrored façade, and the MoCA building is a vast granite structure.
• Dib has a genuinely contemporary collection, with an emphasis on installation art from the past thirty years. This is also true of MAIIAM, though MoCA (despite its name) focuses on traditional figurative and religious paintings.
• Dib’s permanent collection is a combination of Thai and international artworks. On the other hand, MAIIAM and MoCA both exhibit work exclusively by Thai artists.

But on the negative side:

• Dib is overstaffed: each of its galleries has several attendants keeping a close watch on visitors. This is similar to MoCA, though MAIIAM allows people to explore its galleries relatively unsupervised.
• Dib is expensive to visit: its admission price is as much as MoCA and MAIIAM’s combined. Also, Dib has a dual-pricing policy, charging foreign visitors extra, whereas MoCA and MAIIAM charge all nationalities equally.
• All three museums depend on the tastes of their founders. Dib was founded by Petch Osathanugrah, and its permanent collection consists of works purchased by him. Similarly, MoCA is based on the private collection of Boonchai Bencharongkul, and MAIIAM’s holdings were collected by its founders Jean Michel Beurdeley and Patrsi Bunnag.