There will be a screening of Tongpan (ทองปาน) on 3rd June at the Thai Film Archive in Salaya, near Bangkok. Tongpan is a dramatisation of a seminar that took place in 1975, which was organised in order to debate the construction of the Pa Mong dam on the Mekong river. The film’s eponymous central character is a farmer who had been displaced due to a previous dam.
Sulak Sivaraksa also appears, and makes a passionate speech against the proposed dam: “Development only serves a few people in Bangkok. Do we see the disadvantages of electricity? Electricity brings radios and TVs that tell people to buy things. The Japanese and the farang industries just get richer. And what about the destruction of our country? The whole province of Loei will be flooded by this Pa Mong Dam.”
Tongpan was banned in Thailand during the anti-communist purge of the 1970s, and the film’s epilogue explains the repressive political conditions of the period: “In October 1976, shortly after the shooting of this film, a violent coup d’etat of a magnitude never before seen in Thailand brought to an end Thailand’s three-year experiment with parliamentary democracy.”
Sulak Sivaraksa also appears, and makes a passionate speech against the proposed dam: “Development only serves a few people in Bangkok. Do we see the disadvantages of electricity? Electricity brings radios and TVs that tell people to buy things. The Japanese and the farang industries just get richer. And what about the destruction of our country? The whole province of Loei will be flooded by this Pa Mong Dam.”
Tongpan was banned in Thailand during the anti-communist purge of the 1970s, and the film’s epilogue explains the repressive political conditions of the period: “In October 1976, shortly after the shooting of this film, a violent coup d’etat of a magnitude never before seen in Thailand brought to an end Thailand’s three-year experiment with parliamentary democracy.”
