To mark Thai Father’s Day on 5th December, Untitled for Film showed a programme of short films on the rooftop of Chiang Mai University’s Department of Media Arts and Design. The event was a rare opportunity to see some of the films from the หนังน่าจะแบน (‘movies that should be banned’) competition held at Bangkok Art and Culture Centre back in 2013.
Sorayos Prapapan’s Long Live the Kim (คิม) and Akkara Patchakkhapati’s Pain (เจ็บปวด) were submitted to the BACC competition, and Pain won first prize, but ironically both films were considered too sensitive to be shown there. Long Live the Kim features news footage from 2011, and its soundtrack is the song King in Fairy Tales (พระราชาในนิทาน). Pain ends with a collage of photographs of Thai political events and memes.
Sorayos Prapapan’s Long Live the Kim (คิม) and Akkara Patchakkhapati’s Pain (เจ็บปวด) were submitted to the BACC competition, and Pain won first prize, but ironically both films were considered too sensitive to be shown there. Long Live the Kim features news footage from 2011, and its soundtrack is the song King in Fairy Tales (พระราชาในนิทาน). Pain ends with a collage of photographs of Thai political events and memes.
Warat Bureephakdee’s deeply moving film Secret Among Wings (ความลับในฝูงนก) was also shown last night. Sounds from May 2010 of red-shirt protesters calling for democracy, and the military responding with gunfire, are heard over present-day shots of Ratchaprasong and nearby Wat Pathum Wanaram. (Thai Cinema Uncensored discusses these locations as examples of ‘guilty landscapes’, public spaces that bore silent witness to past violence.)
The title of yesterday’s event — If Dad Were Looking Up, He Would Be Happy — recalls an exhibition held at Cartel Artspace, Our Daddy Always Looks Down on Us (คิดถึงคนบนฟ้า), which opened on Father’s Day in 2021. (Note especially the prepositions in their titles.) Their sentimental Thai titles are also very similar: If Dad Were Looking Up’s Thai title is คิดถึงคนบน(ดาด)ฟ้า. (The additional word in brackets refers to the rooftop location of the screening.)
The title of yesterday’s event — If Dad Were Looking Up, He Would Be Happy — recalls an exhibition held at Cartel Artspace, Our Daddy Always Looks Down on Us (คิดถึงคนบนฟ้า), which opened on Father’s Day in 2021. (Note especially the prepositions in their titles.) Their sentimental Thai titles are also very similar: If Dad Were Looking Up’s Thai title is คิดถึงคนบน(ดาด)ฟ้า. (The additional word in brackets refers to the rooftop location of the screening.)
