This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the violent and tragic
events that took place on 6th October 1976 at Thammasat University, when forty-six people, most of whom were students, were killed by right-wing militia groups and vigilantes. The incident remains one of the most shocking moments in Thailand’s modern history.
To commemorate this year’s anniversary, the Thai Film Archive at Salaya will host a discussion on 22nd September about the representation of 6th October in Thai films. (There are
more than seventy films and videos that refer to 6th October, all of which are discussed in detail in
Thai Cinema Uncensored.)
The archive will also be screening several films related to the incident, including Ing K.’s
Shakespeare Must Die (เชคสเปียร์ต้องตาย) on 7th October, Anocha Suwichakornpong’s
By the Time It Gets Dark (ดาวคะนอง) on 24th October, and Pundhevanop Dhewakul’s
Whatever, I Don’t Care (ช่างมันฉันไม่แคร์) on 28th October. The season’s title,
6 ตุลา ลืมไม่ได้ จำไม่ลง (‘6th Oct. unforgettable, yet impossible to remember’), is a phrase coined by historian Thongchai Winichakul, whose book
Moments of Silence is about the “Unforgetting” of the massacre.
Shakespeare Must Die
Shakespeare Must Die is a Thai adaptation of William Shakespeare’s
Macbeth. The film’s climax, a recreation of the Thammasat massacre, is its most controversial sequence, and one of the reasons why
it was banned in 2012.
A photograph by Neal Ulevich, taken during the massacre, shows a vigilante preparing to hit a corpse with a chair, and
Shakespeare Must Die restages the incident. A hanging body (symbolising Shakespeare himself) is repeatedly hit with a chair, though rather than dwelling on the violence, Ing cuts to reaction shots of the crowd, which (as in 1976) resembles a baying mob.
When I interviewed her for
Thai Cinema Uncensored, Ing didn’t mince her words, describing the censors as “a bunch of trembling morons with the power of life and death over our films.”
Thai Cinema Uncensored also includes an insider’s account from a member of the appeals committee, who said he was obliged by his department head to vote against releasing the film: “I had to vote no, because it was an instruction from my director. But if I could have voted freely, I would have voted yes.”
The ban on Shakespeare Must Die was finally lifted by the Supreme Court in 2024, and
its theatrical release came a few months later. It has since been shown at
Burapha University, at
Chiang Mai University, at
Phimailongweek (พิมายฬองวีค), and at
The 33rd Bangkok Critics Assembly Awards.
By the Time It Gets Dark
In
By the Time It Gets Dark, a young director (Ann, a surrogate for Anocha herself) is making a biopic about a 6th October survivor, who describes the attackers “dragging the dead bodies out to burn them.” Some scenes are replayed, to suggest history repeating itself: Ann’s first session with the massacre survivor is later restaged, with the two women played by different actresses.
Anocha self-reflexively questions the motivations of a director in tackling such a politically loaded event, as Ann confesses to her interviewee: “Your life is meaningful. A life worth living. Whereas me, I appropriate someone’s life and turn it into a film.” She also challenges the ethics of such appropriation, as another character advises Ann to let the film’s subject write the script herself: “You should give it to her. She’s a writer. And it’s about her life, so it’s her story.” The film therefore acknowledges the inherent limitations involved in representing historical events in works of fiction.
By the Time It Gets Dark begins by subverting the audience’s expectations. Students are shown lying on the ground, watched over by armed soldiers, though what initially appears to be a flashback to 6th October is, in fact, taking place on a movie soundstage. The sense of verisimilitude is further confounded when an off-screen voice (Ann, the director) instructs the soldiers to kick the students and point guns at them. The film also
recreates a news photograph (taken by Kraipit Phanvut) from 6th October, of police colonel Watcharin Niamvanichkul aiming his pistol while nonchalantly smoking a cigarette.
Whatever, I Don’t Care
Whatever, I Don’t Care includes a black-and-white flashback to 6th October, though it sanitises the horror of the event. Although non-diegetic gunshots are heard repeatedly on the soundtrack, the violence depicted is limited to hand-to-hand combat.
On 31st October, the Archive will show a programme of short films about 6th October. These include Patporn Phoothong and Teerawat Rujenatham’s The Two Brothers (สองพี่น้อง), Padcha Ithijarukul’s Mom Yong Benjawan, Ooka Ryuuchi’s They Will Never Forget, Chalida Uabumrungjit’s ฉันนั่งอยู่ริมสนามฟุตบอล (‘I was sitting beside the football pitch’), Suchart Sawadsri’s “Red” at Last (มนัส เศียรสิงห์), Manussak Dokmai’s Don’t Forget Me, Anocha Suwichakornpong’s 3–0, and Chulayarnnon Siriphol’s ชวนอ่านภาพ 6 ตุลา (‘invitation to read images of 6th Oct.’).
The Two Brothers
The Two Brothers features interviews with relatives of two young men who were hanged by police for campaigning against the return of former dictator Thanom Kittikachorn from exile. It has previously been screened at Thammasat University in
2025,
2020, and
2017. It was shown at Hope Space in
2024 and
2025.
Mom Yong Benjawan
Mom Yong Benjawan is a documentary about the director’s mother, Benjawan, who was a student at Thammasat in 1976 and survived the massacre. It was previously shown at the
24th Short Film and Video Festival (เทศกาลภาพยนตร์สั้นครั้งที่ 24), and at
Wildtype Middleclass 2023.
They Will Never Forget
They Will Never Forget documents a strike by female workers at the Hara factory in Bangkok. Following the 1976 coup, state censorship increased dramatically, though post-production of
They Will Never Forget was completed in Japan, giving the filmmakers more freedom in their political commentary. It was previously
shown at the Archive in 2017.
The film condemns military dictator Thanom Kittikachorn, “whose hands were stained with the blood of at least seventy-six patriots,” and its assessment of the coup is equally honest and unrestrained: “The reign of violence and injustice was back.” It also includes a surprisingly direct reference to student actors whose mock hanging led to the 6th October massacre. The film mentions media reports that an actor playing a hanging corpse “resembled the Crown Prince,” an issue that remains unspoken in Thailand even today.
ฉันนั่งอยู่ริมสนามฟุตบอล
(‘I was sitting beside the football pitch’)
ฉันนั่งอยู่ริมสนามฟุตบอล is a static, out-of-focus shot of Thammasat’s football field, one of the sites associated with the 1976 massacre. It was filmed at 5:30am on 6th October 2006, exactly thirty years after the campus was invaded. The film was first shown at the Pridi Banomyong Institute’s Nothing to Say, a programme of silent short films with political themes organised by ThaiIndie in 2008.
“Red” at Last
The documentary “Red” at Last is told from the first-person perspective of one 6th October victim, Manus Siansing. The film begins and ends with a fictitious voiceover from the dead man, and a survivor of the attack narrates flickering archive footage of the events of that day.
Don’t Forget Me
Don’t Forget Me is a multilayered documentary featuring archive footage of 6th October and scathing political captions, accompanied by the plaintive title song and a narration appropriated from an ethnographic documentary on the nomadic Mlabri tribe. The voiceover describes the tribe’s elaborate ceremonies and rituals, its tone and content providing an intentionally ironic counterpoint to the massacre footage.
The voiceover comes from the 1962 documentary ผีตองเหลือง (‘yellow-leaf ghost’).
Don’t Forget Me was
shown at Thammasat in 2024. It was part of the
Histoire(s) du thai cinéma [
sic] (‘histories of Thai cinema’) programme of short films at Dam’n Cineclub in 2018, and the
Chiang Mai Now! (เชียงใหม่นาว
!) exhibition at Bangkok Art and Culture Centre in 2011. It can currently be seen at MAIIAM in Chiang Mai, as part of that museum’s
Old Path in the Deep Dark Forest (รอยทางเก่าในป่าลึก) screening programme.
3–0
3–0 contains several political allusions, though they are somewhat oblique. The film intercuts between a woman trying to cross the road, another woman exercising, and a boy’s physiotherapy session, and ends with a peaceful demonstration against
the 2006 coup.
The film was made shortly after the coup, and was first shown in the
Spoken Silence programme at the
11th Thai Short Film and Video Festival (เทศกาลภาพยนตร์สั้น ครั้งที่ 11). The festival provided a timely opportunity for filmmakers to comment on the coup, less than a year after it had taken place.
The boy’s physical disability is a metaphor for political paralysis. The film’s title refers to Anocha’s age at the time — she was 30 in 2006 — and to the thirtieth anniversary of the 1976 massacre.
ชวนอ่านภาพ 6 ตุลา
(‘invitation to read images of 6th Oct.’)
In ชวนอ่านภาพ
6 ตุลา (‘invitation to read images of 6th Oct.’), viewers from different generations interpret a series of photographs of the events at Thammasat. The images, many of which were previously unpublished, were shown at the
Facing Demons (เผชิญหน้าปิศาจ) exhibition at Kinjai Contemporary in 2022.
The documentary was originally commissioned for
Facing Demons. It has since been shown at the
Doc Club Festival and
Doc Club Festival Selections in 2024, and at Chulayarnnon’s
I a Pixel, We the People (ข้าพเจ้าคือพิกเซล, พวกเราคือประชาชน) exhibition at Bangkok CityCity last year. It is also currently on show as part of
Old Path in the Deep Dark Forest.
