26th Thai Short Film and Video Festival

The 26th Short Film and Video Festival (เทศกาลภาพยนตร์สั้น ครั้งที่ 26) runs from 17th December until Christmas Day at the Thai Film Archive in Salaya. (The festival’s title has acquired a definite article this year.) This year’s Short Film Marathon (หนังสั้นมาราธอน)—screenings of all films submitted, in alphabetical order—will take place online via Zoom from 8th November to 2nd December. There are more than 400 titles in the Short Film Marathon, only a fraction of which will be selected for the main event in Salaya.

4+2563 หลักฐานเล่าสมัย (‘4+2020: contemporary evidence’), by the Filmocracy group, was shown online on 8th November, and features an interview with the founder of the Museum of Popular History. He discusses some of the political ephemera from his collection, including a Thaksin and Yingluck Shinawatra calendar.

Natthapol Kitwarasai’s Coup d’état was shown online this evening. A soldier rummages through an old man’s meagre possessions in this dialogue-free, black-and-white film. The man watches impassively, apparently oblivious to the trespassing soldier, and spends his time sleeping and swimming, which symbolise freedom for the director. Although the drama is allegorical, the film opens with photographs of the military leaders who instigated Thailand’s many coups.

Weerapat Sakolvaree’s Nostalgia, first shown at Wildtype 2022 last month, will be screened online on 16th November. In a series of still images, 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. The toy is a conduit for these sonic echoes of historical violence, which form an audio collage in Weerapat’s film. (It will also be shown at the Film Archive on 17th December.)

On 22nd November there will be online screenings of two documentaries from the Resurgent Truth (คืนความจริง) series produced by Pheu Thai to mark the 11th anniversary of the 2010 massacre: เสธ.แดง ทหารของประชาชน (‘the people’s soldier’) on the death of Khattiya Sawasdipol, and เสื้อแดง ความจริงที่ถูกบิดเบือน (‘red-shirts: the distorted truth’) on the demonisation of red-shirt protesters as terrorists. Similarly, Sumeth Suwanneth’s documentary Lost, and Life Goes On (เลือนแต่ไม่ลืม), commemorating the 1992 ‘Black May’ massacre, will be shown online on 30th November. (It will also be screened at the Film Archive on 18th December.)