Sina Wittayawiroj’s Your Ash and My Bone (ธุลีดาว) will be shown at the Us coffee shop in Phatthalung on 11th October. The venue is the new permanent home of Phatthalung Micro Cinema.
Your Ash and My Bone (ธุลีดาว) is a documentary collage film that’s personal and politicla in equal measure. The artist narrates his life story from birth to the present, describing his family, his childhood, and his career.
Your Ash and My Bone (ธุลีดาว) is a documentary collage film that’s personal and politicla in equal measure. The artist narrates his life story from birth to the present, describing his family, his childhood, and his career.
The film was originally part of Sina’s exhibition Can’t We Recant? (เราจะถอนคำพูดไม่ได้เลยหรือ?) at Kinjai Contemporary in Bangkok and at MAIELIE in Khon Kaen. It has also been shown at Doc Club and Friends, and as part of Wildtype Middleclass 2026.
The autobiographical narration is juxtaposed with an account of Thailand’s political turmoil over the same period. There is archive footage of ‘Black May’, the 2006 coup (which Sina describes as “this poisonous tree attempting to root itself deepest into society”), the 2010 red-shirt crackdown, the whistle-blower protests, the 2014 coup, and the student protest movement of 2020–2021.
The autobiographical narration is juxtaposed with an account of Thailand’s political turmoil over the same period. There is archive footage of ‘Black May’, the 2006 coup (which Sina describes as “this poisonous tree attempting to root itself deepest into society”), the 2010 red-shirt crackdown, the whistle-blower protests, the 2014 coup, and the student protest movement of 2020–2021.
Coloured filters are used to add political commentary to some of the events: blue for 2006, red for 2010, and yellow for 2014. Music is also a key element: a montage of scenes showing the arrest of Arnon Nampa and water cannon being used in Siam Square is accompanied by Caravan’s song Jit Phumisak (จิตร ภูมิศักดิ์), linking today’s student protesters to the revolutionary young writer who was killed in 1966.
Your Ash and My Bone also highlights some of Thailand’s artistic controversies over the past two decades: the banning of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Syndromes and a Century (แสงศตวรรษ), protests against Anupong Chantorn’s painting Perceptless (ภิกษุสันดานกา), and the censorship of the Rupture (หมายเหตุ ๕/๒๕๕๓) exhibition. The film shows how political repression and artistic censorship are equally corrosive.
Some self-censorship was necessary, and Sina draws attention to this by periodically displaying a spoof computer error screen (“No Freedom”) and obscuring certain words in the English subtitles. Abhichon Rattanabhayon used a similar tactic in his short film The Six Principles (สัญญาของผู้มาก่อนกาล), as did Pen-ek Ratanaruang in Paradoxocracy (ประชาธิป'ไทย).
