Nostalgia
In
Nostalgia, a young man discovers that, whenever he fires a shooting-star toy into the sky, he becomes receptive to sounds that regress progressively further into Bangkok’s violent past. Like Chris Marker’s
La jetée (‘the jetty’), the ironically-titled
Nostalgia is comprised of a series of still photographs, though it also includes archive newsreel footage of
the 6th October 1976 massacre at Thammasat University.
Standing at the roadside in Din Daeng, the protagonist hears “fireworks and a lot of motorcycles.” These are sounds of the clashes between anti-government protesters and riot police that took place there throughout August 2021. (Police fired rubber bullets at protesters on
10th,
11th,
13th, and
15th August 2021.) At Siam Square, he hears the sound of
riot police deploying water cannon against protesters on 16th October 2020. At Lumpini Park, the sound of
the 19th May 2010 military crackdown fills his ears, followed by the
‘Black May’ 1992 massacre at Democracy Monument, and the 1976 Thammasat massacre.
These locations are, to use the Dutch artist Armando’s term,
‘guilty landscapes’: silent witnesses to past traumas. Like the origami bird in Panya Zhu’s
White Bird (นกตัวนั้นยังสบายดีไหม), the toy in
Nostalgia is a conduit for sonic echoes of historical violence, which form an audio collage in Weerapat’s film.
Nostalgia is also similar to Chai Chaiyachit and Chisanucha Kongwailap’s
Re-presentation (ผีมะขาม ไพร่ฟ้า ประชาธิปไตย ในคืนที่ลมพัดหวน), which likewise revisits Bangkok’s ‘guilty landscapes’.
Nostalgia and
Re-presentation both end with shots of the Ananta Samakhom Throne Hall, hinting at the established hierarchies underlying Thai politics. In
Nostalgia, the Throne Hall is seen from behind iron railings, a reminder that the building is now closed to the public.
Nostalgia has previously been shown at
Nitade Experimental Shorts, at
the Chiang Mai Film Festival (เทศกาลหนังแห่งเมืองเชียงใหม่) —
twice — and at
Future Fest 2023,
Wildtype 2022, and
The 26th Thai Short Film and Video Festival (เทศกาลภาพยนตร์สั้น ครั้งที่ 26). Its most recent screening was at
The 7th Bangkok Experimental Film Festival (เทศกาลหนังทดลองกรุงเทพฯ ครั้งที่ 7) last year.
The Original Texts
The Original Texts, a collage of found footage woven into a magical realist allegory, begins with the sound of gunshots, stills from Chookiat Sakveerakul’s film
Taklee Genesis (ตาคลี เจเนซิส), and a voiceover in which a student, Burindh, describes the 1976 massacre: “A gunshot has been fired. Sending its vibrating wave upon my chest.”
As the poetic voiceover continues, the narrator recalls how he fled not only from the Thammasat campus but from Bangkok itself, which “is not the city of the people. It is not the city of ordinary people”. (These lines are juxtaposed with vintage newsreel footage of the Ananta Samakhom Throne Hall and the Grand Palace, symbolic buildings that also appear in
Nostalgia and
Zombie Citizens.)
As he escapes from his attackers, Burindh asks: “if I don’t possess this ideology that’s different than them, would they still aim their bullets at me?” The question is as relevant now as it was in 1976, as
riot police fired rubber bullets at student protesters in 2021 and 2022. The film uses footage of a protest against Ampon Tangnoppakul’s conviction for
lèse-majesté, taken from Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s short film
Ashes, to hint at the ideology of Burindh and the recent protesters.
In 1976, a prominent monk, Kittivuddho Bhikku, pronounced that killing communists was equivalent to merely catching fish, in a signal to the royalist vigilante groups who stormed the Thammasat campus a few months later. Images of fish in Thunska Pansittivorakul’s documentary
The Terrorists (ผู้ก่อการร้าย) were metaphors for the monk’s comments, though
The Original Texts goes a stage further: Burindh transforms into a goby fish and swims away from Bangkok.
Burindh’s metamorphosis is similar to that of Boonsong, the monkey spirit in Apichatpong’s
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (ลุงบุญมีระลึกชาติ), another student who fled from persecution and transformed into an animal. Burindh meets Boonsong, his (literal) kindred spirit, who reassures him that his memories (and, by implication, Thailand’s political traumas) will not be forgotten as long as they are retold.
The Original Texts was directed under the pseudonym Burindh the Golden Goby. It was shown at
Wildtype last year.
A Pigeon’s Journey on the Birth of a Nation
A Pigeon’s Journey on the Birth of a Nation is the second part of the
Oblivion series, and a sequel to
The Original Texts. It features a voiceover narrating 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. As in
Nostalgia, the effect is similar to Panya’s
White Bird, 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 group exhibition
Spacing the Inherent (การเว้นระยะห่างโดยธรรมชาติ) at Art4C in Bangkok, and at
Wildtype 2026. It will be screened online as part of this year’s
Short Film Marathon (หนังสั้นมาราธอน) on 28th November.
