Piers Morgan: “It’s all bullshit…”

Piers Morgan has announced that he will file a defamation lawsuit against Charles Spencer and Penguin Books after Spencer wrongly blamed Morgan for the Sunday Mirror’s publication of intrusive photographs of Princess Diana in 1993. Spencer makes the claim in his new book Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, which is published today.

In the book, Spencer recalls the time in 1997 when he telephoned various newspaper editors to disinvite them from Diana’s funeral. He writes (p. 74) that Morgan “snarled with annoyance” when told that he was no longer invited, and he speculates as to why Morgan reacted this way: “I assumed Morgan must be feeling particular guilt because, four years earlier, he and his Sunday Mirror counterpart had published photographs taken with hidden cameras by a gym owner. They were of Diana working out in a leotard.”

The Sunday Mirror did print the Diana gym photos (on 7th November 1993), and she sued the newspaper for invasion of privacy. (The gym owner also sold the images to various American and European magazines, including Paris Match.) But at that time, Morgan was not yet working for the Mirror: he joined the newspaper as editor in 1995, thus he had no connection to the Diana photo controversy.

Morgan explained this on his Uncensored YouTube show yesterday, saying: “It’s all bullshit.” He also addressed Spencer directly: “I would like the complete lie that you’ve published about me and those photographs to be removed from your book”. (Morgan’s outrage does, of course, have a performative element, as it makes a good story for his show.)

Coincidentally, Morgan wrote about his call with Spencer in his diary, The Insider. In that book (p. 174), published in 2005, Morgan says that it was Spencer, not himself, who had “rage simmering in his voice.” The Insider gives a very different account of Morgan’s reaction to being disinvited: he quotes himself telling Spencer courteously, “It goes without saying that we will respect your wishes. Could you please pass my personal condolences to your mother, as we have always got on well?”

Spencer issued a statement retracting his comments about Morgan and the gym photos, though Morgan is calling for the book to be pulped and reprinted with the passage about the phone call removed. The Insider had numerous inaccuracies of its own, as Private Eye magazine reported when it was released, so this is a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

Impression of Arnon

On 26th September, to mark the third year of lawyer and activist Arnon Nampa’s jail sentence, the Pridi Banomyong Institute in Bangkok will hold a live painting session during which six artists will produce artworks inspired by Arnon. Participating artists at the event, Impression of Arnon, will include Charinthorn Rachurutchata, Wittawat Tongkeaw, and Tanis Werasakwong.

The Shining

The Shining will be shown today at Baan Who in Bangkok. The venue is an abandoned film studio, a suitably atmospheric location for a screening of Stanley Kubrick’s horror classic. The event is organised by Baan Film.

(There are two books about the making of The Shining. Danel Olson edited an anthology about the film in 2015, and J.W. Rinzler and Lee Unkrich collaborated on a lavish two-volume making-of book in 2023.)

Previous screenings of The Shining in Thailand:

• The 1st Lung Film Festival (ลุงฟิล์มเฟสติวัลครั้งที่ 1) in 2026
• Outdoor Cinema at Cloud 11 in 2026
• forty-fifth anniversary rerelease in 2025
• World Class Cinema (ทึ่ง! หนังโลก) at Scala in 2020
• Halloween at Siri House in 2019
• Cinema Winehouse in 2018
• Cinema Scarehouse at Cinema Winehouse in 2015

อ่านบท 6 ตุลา (‘read chapters on 6th Oct.’)

This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the 6th October 1976 coup, and various commemorations are being held around the country. On 3rd and 4th October, six plays that touch on the events of 1976 — including Wilderness (รักดงดิบ) and วันที่สหายพายุกลับบ้าน (‘the day comrade Payu returned home’) — will be performed at Angoon’s Garden in Bangkok.

วันที่สหายพายุกลับบ้าน will also be performed on 10th October at Weak-end in Phuket, alongside a video of Fundamental. Both events are organised by Thai Collective Scripts.

Wilderness

Thanaphon Accawatanyu’s Wilderness was first staged in 2024. The play is divided into two parts, and in part one, a group of students join the communist insurgency after the Thammasat massacre and escape into the jungle.

Part two — which will not be performed at Angoon’s Garden — features a group of contemporary students. The second part is much more ambiguous than the first, with numerous scenes that appear to be dreams caused by hallucenogenic sweets eaten by the characters.

วันที่สหายพายุกลับบ้าน
(‘the day comrade Payu returned home’)

Ratapong Pinyosophon’s play วันที่สหายพายุกลับบ้าน is the story of Payu, a student who joined the Communist Party of Thailand and fed into the jungle following the violence of 6th October. His father was a soldier who fought against the communist insurgency, putting the two generations into literal conflict with each other. Payu returns home disillusioned, and vows to stay with his mother, though his fellow comrades implore him not to give up the fight.

The play was first staged in 2010 by the Crescent Moon theatre company, and the performance on 10th October will be directed by Nualpanod Khianpukdee. Ratapong has also published the play’s script alongside an account of his writing process.

Fundamental

Teerawat Mulvilai’s dance performance Fundamental was staged by B-Floor Theatre in 2016, to mark the the fortieth anniversary of 6th October. It was specifically inspired by an infamous Neal Ulevich photograph showing a vigilante preparing the hit a massacre victim with a folding chair. The photo shows a large group of bystanders, who did not intervene to stop the desecration of the victim’s body, and Fundamental explores this apathy within society that tolerates mob violence and state crackdowns.

Wildtype 2026

Wildtype, the annual season of short films programmed by Chayanin Tiangpitayagorn, Wiwat Lertwiwatwongsa, and Sasawat Boonsri, returns next month 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, and there will be screenings at Buffalo Bridge Gallery in Bangkok on 3rd and 4th October and at a dozen other locations around Thailand throughout October. More than fifty films will be shown, and the highlights include Long Live the Sin, A Little Bird Finds Its Way Home (นกเล็ก), 8 (๘), and Soundtrack to a Coup d’État 2.

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

In Napasin Samkaewcham’s A Little Bird Finds Its Way Home, a family shares their memories of their grandmother at her funeral. (Napasin’s previous short films include A Love Letter to My Sister.)

Pattanapong Khongsak’s 8 combines historical material with modern technology, using generative AI to visualise the past. Its subtitle, The Silence of the Goats, is a pun on The Silence of the Lambs.

Soundtrack to a Coup d’État 2 is the most intriguing film in this year’s programme. Its director is anonymous, and the film is credited to a pseudonym, Johan Liebert. (It’s an unofficial sequel to the 2024 Cold War documentary of the same title.) The film is described — sarcastically? — as a documentary paying tribute to Prem Tinsulanonda and the brave military leaders who staged a coup to protect the country and prevent Thaksin Shinawatra’s attempts to exploit the monarchy.

Long Live the Sin, 8, and Soundtrack to a Coup d’État 2 are all part of the Politix programme, screening at Buffalo Bridge on 3rd October. A Little Bird Finds Its Way Home will be shown there on 4th October as part of the Doc programme.

Bangkok International Film Festival 2026

The Bangkok International Film Festival 2026 (เทศกาลภาพยนตร์นานาชาติกรุงเทพมหานคร ปี 2569) begins tomorrow. The festival runs until 27th September.

BKKIFF’s Thai Classics programme includes two blockbusters directed by Nonzee Nimibutr: Nang Nak (นางนาก) on 15th September and Dang Bireley’s and Young Gangsters [sic] (2499 อันธพาลครองเมือง) on 26th September. Both screenings will take place at Doc Club and Friends. (The two films were also both shown at last year’s Microwave Film Festival in Sisaket.)

Dateline Bangkok first wrote about BKKIFF back in 2005, and over the next four years — 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009 — until the festival’s temporary closure. And the event is still being covered here more than twenty years later.

BKKIFF was originally known as the Bangkok Film Festival when it was launched in 1998 as a commercial event organised by Nation Multimedia. It continued annually for the next four years, until it was renamed the Bangkok International Film Festival in 2003, under the joint sponsorship of Nation Multimedia and the Tourism Authority of Thailand.

That partnership was very short-lived, as Nation Multimedia established a rival event, the World Film Festival of Bangkok, later in 2003. Meanwhile, the Bangkok International Film Festival, organised by TAT alone, continued annually until 2009.

Being run by the tourism department rather than a cultural organisation, the festival often prioritised glitz and glamour over cinematic quality. More shockingly, Juthamas Siriwan, a former TAT governor, was convicted of receiving almost $2 million in bribes linked to the festival, and was jailed for fifty years.

After a long hiatus, the festival was relaunched last year, under completely new management. The relaunch, organised by the Thailand Creative Culture Agency, had a few teething problems, though they seem to have been resolved this year, with an improved website and a confirmed schedule.

Nang Nak has had numerous screenings over the years, including at the Thai Film Archive in 2024, 2021, and 2013. It was also screened at Doc Club and Pub in 2024, at Lido Connect in 2020, at Bangkok Screening Room in 2019, at an outdoor screening in 2018, and at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand in 2010.

Dang Bireley’s and Young Gangsters 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 Film Archive in 2020. Its most recent screening was at Sala Chaloem Thani earlier this year.

Benjamin Netanyahu:“This is an absolute lie…”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has filed a defamation lawsuit against Haaretz (הָאָרֶץ), one of the country’s leading newspapers, after it claimed that he had received and ignored an advance warning about the 7th October 2023 Hamas terrorist attacks. Haaretz reported that United Arab Emirates President Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan had informed Netanyahu of an impending Hamas operation in a telephone call at the end of September 2023, and that Netanyahu told none of his security or military officials about the conversation.

The severely damaging allegation appeared in the newspaper’s Hebrew edition on 8th September, and in its English edition today, in a report written by Shlomi Eldar and Ruth Yuval adapted from their forthcoming book חטופים — 843 ימים של הפקרה (‘hostages — 843 days of abandonment’). The article included a categorical denial by Netanyahu (“This is an absolute lie”), though it was based on multiple sources and its central allegation has not been refuted by the UAE.

There have been previous claims that Netanyahu ignored intelligence reports about potential unspecified Hamas operations, though the allegation in Haaretz is more damning, as it accuses him of disregarding and concealing a specific warning less than two weeks before the attack took place. Netanyahu is also on trial for corruption, with his next court appearance scheduled for April 2027.

Barry Lyndon

Stanley Kubrick’s classic Barry Lyndon will be shown at Doc Club and Friends in Bangkok on 16th September, and at Mecani in Chiang Mai on 20th September. It was previously shown at Sala Saneha in August, at GDXperience in May, and at Chulalongkorn University in 2023.

There has been a revival of critical interest in Barry Lyndon over the last decade, with three documentaries on the making of the film: the radio programme Castles, Candles, and Kubrick, an episode of the TV programme Hollywood in Éirinn, and Making Barry Lyndon on the Criterion blu-ray. There is also a book on the film, The Making of a Masterpiece, by Alison Castle.

Utopia of the Mind

Vichart Somkaew’s new documentary Utopia of the Mind (แดนสวรรค์) was filmed at an abandoned prison in Phatthalung. As Vichart’s camera lingers on the crumbling brickwork and rusting bars, a voiceover by a former inmate recalls the prison’s rules and routines.

We see photographs of political prisoners from different generations. Khrong Chandawong, a pro-democracy politician, was executed on the orders of Sarit Thanarat. The ‘four tigers’ of Isan were MPs killed by the police for their opposition to Plaek Phibunsongkhram. Recent protesters such as Arnon Nampa and Netiporn Sanesangkhom were convicted of lèse-majesté.

What they have in common, aside from their jail sentences, is their commitment to political change. As the film’s title suggests, even when deprived of their freedom, their spirits weren’t broken.

This sense of light in the darkness is reflected by a surreal moment in Vichart’s film: an elderly man who has wrapped a strip of multicoloured lights around himself. Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Power Boy photographs have a similar concept, as does a sequence in Phuttiphong Aroonpheng’s film Manta Ray (กระเบนราหู).

Utopia of the Mind also reminds me of a quote from Yuthlert Sippapak. When I interviewed him for Thai Cinema Uncensored, he spoke about the contrast between mental and physical freedom: “We are in a jail of imagination. We are like painting in prison. Yes, we can paint, but painting in prison.”

Vichart’s previous short films include Cremation Ceremony (ประวัติย่อของบางสิ่งที่หายไป), 112 News from Heaven, The Letter from Silence (จดหมายจากความเงียบ), Antipsychotics, The Poem of the River, Sleeping Together (ราตรีวิไล), and The Southern Echo. He has also directed the portmanteau film Contemporary Thai Political Trilogy (ไตรภาคการเมืองร่วมสมัยไทย) and the feature-length documentary When My Father Was a Communist (เมื่อพ่อผมเป็นคอมมิวนิสต์).

Images of Fire

Buariyate Eamkamol’s short film Images of Fire (ร่องรอยไฟ) premiered yesterday at the What the Doc! 2 film festival. It will also be shown at Doc Club and Friends on 12th September.

The documentary, which examines the military crackdown on red-shirt protesters in April and May 2010, is both personal and political, forensic and philosophical. It begins self-reflexively, with Buariyate describing his research for the project: “I traveled to different locations in Bangkok. I searched for the spots where protesters were shot and the origin of the bullets.”

Many of the demonstrators were shot by snipers at long range, and Buariyate revisits the locations where several victims died, to determine where the armed soldiers were positioned. He locates the spot on Ratchaprarop Road where Samaphan Srithep was killed on 15th May 2010, and the entrance to Soi Sala Daeng where Chatchai Chalau died two days earlier.

Other recent short films have also returned to locations associated with the red-shirt crackdown: Weerapat Sakolvaree’s Nostalgia includes a sequence filmed at Lumpini Park, and Warat Bureephakdee’s Secret Among Wings (ความลับในฝูงนก) features shots of Ratchaprasong and Wat Pathum Wanaram. The Dutch artist Armando coined the phrase ‘guilty landscapes’ to describe spaces such as these, that bore silent witness to past violence. In both films, as in Images of Fire, the sounds of gunfire are heard on the soundtrack, a reminder of the events that took place at these guilty landscapes.

As a child, Buariyate was taken to the protests by his father. Sixteen years later, as a filmmaker, he became especially interested in the case of Chatchai, who was recording a video when he was killed. Images of Fire considers the parallels between gunsights and camera viewfinders, and the link between proximity and empathy. As Buariyate says in the film: “Distance became a shield.” (Famously, in The Third Man, Harry Lime says that when seen from a distance, other people are just dots: “Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever?”)

A viewfinder is a distancing device, just as a sniper operates at a literal distance from his target, and both guns and cameras can ‘shoot’ people. Thunska Pansittivorakul made that point in an interview for Thai Cinema Uncensored, discussing his experience of filming the crackdown on Soi Rangnam in May 2010: “they were shooting guns at the people... But at that time, I needed to keep shooting, I must keep shooting.”

Images of Fire also analyses audio clips of the gunfire, using the soundwaves to determine the types of bullets and their trajectories. One example is from 15th May 2010, when a man was shot in his car and his head slumped on the steering wheel, setting off the car horn. (The same recording is heard on Pisitakun Kuantalaeng’s album Kongkraphan, and Pisitakun also documented the locations at which other victims died for his Ten Year art project.)

With this investigative research — tracking down precise locations and sound clips — Buariyate questions the dominant narratives about 2010 told by the state, the media, and the red-shirts themselves. He includes TV news reports repeating government propaganda about “terrorists in the crowd”, showing how the protesters were demonised. In a voiceover, he notes that armed agitators (so-called ‘men in black’) were present at the demonstrations, despite the protesters’ insistence that they were peaceful. He even encourages skepticism about his own reliability as a narrator, by making a claim about his family that he later admits was false.

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.)