Gallery Movie Night: A Night of Cinematic Exploration

A retrospective of short films by Taiki Sakpisit took place this evening at SAC Gallery in Bangkok, followed by a Q&A with the artist. Gallery Movie Night: A Night of Cinematic Exploration featured four of Taiki’s previous films—Shadow and Act, A Ripe Volcano, Seeing in the Dark, and The Age of Anxiety—and one new production, The Spirit Level. Like Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s A Minor History (ประวัติศาสตร์กระจ้อยร่อย), The Spirit Level tackles the tragic discoveries of the bodies of murdered political dissidents in the Mekong river.

Shadow and Act

Shadow and Act—like Sorayos Prapapan’s Prelude of the Moving Zoo and Anocha Suwichakornpong’s Come Here (ใจจำลอง)—features sequences shot at Dusit Zoo, which was closed by royal decree in 2018. Shadow and Act also includes shots filmed at another prestigious institution from a bygone age, the Chaya Jitrakorn photography studio, panning slowly around the studio’s fixtures and fittings, settling upon dusty portraits of Cold War dictator Phibun Songkhram and other kharatchakan (‘civil servants’).

A Ripe Volcano

Similarly, in A Ripe Volcano (ภูเขาไฟพิโรธ), the camera prowls elegiacally through the empty corridors of the Royal Hotel, another example of Bangkok’s faded glory. The hotel became a makeshift field hospital in 1992 during ‘Black May’, and its lobby was stormed by the military. A Ripe Volcano evokes the violence of the event through indirect signifiers, such as a fire engine (several of which were set ablaze in 1992), creating an uncanny sense of foreboding. Weerapat Sakolvaree’s Zombie Citizens and Thunska Pansittivorakul’s Homogeneous, Empty Time (สุญกาล) also evoke Black May with shots of the hotel.

Seeing in the Dark

Seeing in the Dark opens with contemplative, static images of Khao Kho, a mountainous region in northern Thailand with a potent political legacy: Phibun hid the country’s gold reserve—and the Emerald Buddha statue—from the Japanese there during World War II, and the area was a base for Communist insurgents throughout the 1970s. There are shots of the Sacrificial Monument compound, which memorialises the ‘sacrifices’ of the soldiers who fought the Communists, rather than the thousands of insurgents who were killed.

Thailand’s Ministry of Tourism website notes that Khao Kho was once “a red area smoldering in the smoke of war from different political ideologies. Khao Kho was considered a forbidden land that ordinary people should not get too close to because it was considered extremely dangerous. But as time passed, the conflict ended and Khao Kho transformed into one of Phetchabun’s most striking and beautiful tourist areas.”

A similar reputational whitewashing took place at other sites of anti-Communist violence, such as Santikhiri and Nabua, a process examined in Thunska’s Santikhiri Sonata (สันติคีรี โซนาตา), Apichatpong’s A Letter to Uncle Boonmee (จดหมายถงลงบญม), and Pachara Piyasongsoot’s exhibition Anatomy of Silence (กายวิภาคของความเงียบ). Khao Kho, Santikhiri, and Nabua are, to use Dutch artist Armando’s term, ‘guilty landscapes’: tranquil spaces that bear silent witness to historical violence.

In Seeing in the Dark, an ominous rumble on the soundtrack hints at the continued presence of this past menace. The film ends with footage of anti-government protests from October 2020, a reminder—to quote the Ministry of Tourism again—that Thailand is still “smoldering in the smoke of war from different political ideologies.”

The Age of Anxiety

The retrospective concluded with The Age of Anxiety which, with its rapid-fire editing and screeching soundtrack, captured the anxious atmosphere during the twilight of King Rama IX’s reign. The film’s English title reflects the national mood while Rama IX was hospitalised, though its Thai title (รอ ๑๐) has an additional resonance, with a reference to his successor. The film is also streaming on the Kortfilm website, which links it to Thai politics: “Made in response to the government’s merciless obliteration of the Red Shirt protesters in the 2010s, the music and flashing images are a reflection of a traumatized and anxious mental state.”

Dark Was the Night

Yesterday’s event was part of Taiki’s Dark Was the Night (ผีพุ่งไต้) exhibition, which opened on 9th May and runs until 6th July. The exhibition features a two-channel video installation, also titled Dark Was the Night, projected at opposite ends of the gallery. On one side are shots of the Thammasat University campus, which initially seem to contrast with the theme of the exhibition. But these images are metaphorically rather than literally dark, reminders of the 6th October 1976 massacre that took place at Thammasat, making the campus another ‘guilty landscape’. The exhibition also features three photographs from Taiki’s Thammasat University series, including an image of the notorious red lift in which sheltering students were shot during the massacre. The lift was also featured in the horror film Haunted Universities (มหาลัยสยองขวัญ).

Shakespeare Must Die

Ing K.’s Shakespeare Must Die (เชคสเปียร์ต้องตาย) will finally be released in Thai cinemas on 20th June, after more than a decade in legal limbo. The film was banned by the Ministry of Culture in 2012, and the ban was upheld by the Administrative Court in 2017. Ing’s battle with the censors, documented in her film Censor Must Die (เซ็นเซอร์ต้องตาย), went all the way to the Supreme Court, which lifted the ban in February following the liberalised censorship policy announced by the National Soft Power Strategy Committee (คณะกรรมการยุทธศาสตร์ซอฟต์พาวเวอร์แห่งชาติ) at the start of this year.

Shakespeare Must Die is a Thai adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, with Pisarn Pattanapeeradej in the lead role. The play is presented in two parallel versions: a production in period costume, and a contemporary political interpretation. The period version is faithful to Shakespeare’s original, though it also breaks the fourth wall, with cutaways to the audience and an interval outside the theatre (featuring a cameo by the director).

In the contemporary sequences, Macbeth is reimagined as Mekhdeth, a prime minister facing a crisis. Street protesters shout “ok pbai!” (‘get out!’), and the protests are infiltrated by assassins listed in the credits as ‘men in black’. Ing has downplayed any direct link to Thai politics, though “Thaksin ok pbai!” was the People’s Alliance for Democracy’s rallying cry against Thaksin Shinawatra, and ‘men in black’ were blamed for instigating violence in 2010. Another satirical line in the script—“Dear Leader brings happy-ocracy!”—predicts Prayut Chan-o-cha’s propaganda song Returning Happiness to the Thai Kingdom (คืนความสุขให้ประเทศไทย).

The parallels between Mekhdeth and Thaksin highlight the politically-motivated nature of the ban imposed on the film. Ironically, the project was initially funded by the Ministry of Culture, during Abhisit Vejjajiva’s premiership: it received a grant from the ไทยเข้มแข็ง (‘strong Thailand’) stimulus package. The Abhisit government was only too happy to greenlight a script criticising Thaksin, though by the time the film was finished, Thaksin’s sister Yingluck was in power, and her administration was somewhat less disposed to this anti-Thaksin satire, hence the ban.

Although the film was made twelve years ago, its message is arguably more timely than ever, as Thaksin’s influence over Thai politics continues. He returned to Thailand last year, and his Pheu Thai party is now leading a coalition with the political wing of the military junta.

The film’s climax, a recreation of the 6th October 1976 massacre, is its most controversial sequence. 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.

Ing was interviewed in Thai Cinema Uncensored, and the book details the full story behind the ban. Ing doesn’t mince her words in the interview, 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.”

Ing’s film My Teacher Eats Biscuits (คนกราบหมา) was also subject to a long-lasting ban, which was overturned last year. Shakespeare Must Die will be screened at Cinema Oasis, where My Teacher Eats Biscuits and Censor Must Die were both shown last month. There will also be an exhibition of costumes and props from Shakespeare Must Die and My Teacher Eats Biscuits—How to Make a Cheap Movie Look Good (ทำอย่างไรให้ / หนังทุนต่ำ / ดูดี?)—at Galerie Oasis from 20th June until 18th August.

My Favourite Movies

No, not my favourite movies. Veteran Australian film critic David Stratton’s book My Favourite Movies, published in 2021, lists his 111 favourites in chronological order.

Stratton’s “personal pantheon” is restricted to a single film per director. It’s an excellent list, with a few pleasant surprises (including The Awful Truth, Kind Hearts and Coronets, and The Incredible Shrinking Man).

Stratton’s 111 favourite movies are as follows:

• Metropolis
• The General
• Wings
• The Last Command
• City Lights
• Love Me Tonight
• Trouble in Paradise
• It’s a Gift
• A Night at the Opera
• The Awful Truth
• Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
• The Rules of the Game
• The Grapes of Wrath
• The Public Enemy
• Citizen Kane
• The Lady Eve
• Casablance
• Went the Day Well?
• Meet Me in St. Louis
• Les enfants du paradis
• The Best Years of Our Lives
• The Big Sleep
• Duel in the Sun
• Great Expectations
• It’s a Wonderful Life
• A Matter of Life and Death
• The Big Clock
• Letter from an Unknown Woman
• Kind Hearts and Coronets
• All About Eve
• In a Lonely Place
• The African Queen
• Bend of the River
• The Man in the White Suit
• High Noon
• Shane
• Singin’ in the Rain
• M. Hulot’s Holiday
• I vitelloni
• Bad Day at Black Rock
• Les diaboliques
• On the Waterfront
• Seven Samurai
• A Star Is Born
• The Night of the Hunter
• Attack
• Invasion of the Body Snatchers
• The Brothers Rico
• The Incredible Shrinking Man
• 3:10 to Yuma
• Twelve Angry Men
• Wild Strawberries
• Breathless
• The 400 Blows
• North by Northwest
• The Apartment
• Cléo from 5 to 7
• The Day the Earth Caught Fire
• Viridiana
• Advise and Consent
• A Kind of Loving
• The Manchurian Candidate
• Dr. Strangelove
• The Leopard
• Charulata
• The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
• Andrei Rublev
• Accident
• The Unfaithful Wife
• Z
• Alice’s Restaurant
• The Wild Bunch
• The Conformist
• The Last Picture Show
• Taking Off
• W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism
• Don’t Look Now
• Chinatown
• The Conversation
• Jaws
• Nashville
• Picnic at Hanging Rock
• Cría cuervos
• Kings of the Road
• Annie Hall
• The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith
• Coming Home
• Newsfront
• Farewell My Concubine
• Alien
• Breaker Morant
• Manhunter
• High Tide
• Where Is the Friend’s House?
• Distant Voices, Still Lives
• Do the Right Thing
• Sweetie
• Lorenzo’s Oil
• The Age of Innocence
• Fargo
• Drifting Clouds
• Love Serenade
• Jackie Brown
• All About My Mother
• Lantana
• Million Dollar Baby
• Brokeback Mountain
• The Host
• Animal Kingdom
• Samson and Delilah
• Nebraska
• I, Daniel Blake
• Roma

Dateline Bangkok has covered every ‘greatest film’ list published in the last two decades. But the book that My Favourite Movies most resembles is Barry Norman’s 100 Best Films of the Century from 1993.

Red Poetry

Supamok Silarak’s film Red Poetry (ความกวีสีแดง) will be shown at Doc Club and Pub in Bangkok, Lorem Ipsum in Hat Yai, and Alien Artspace in Khon Kaen on 26th May, as part of the Wildtype Middle Class 2024 season. It will also be screened at Chiang Mai University on 4th June, at dot.b in Songkhla on 6th June, at Vongchavalitkul University in Korat on 7th June, at the University of Phayao on 13th June, and at Bookhemian in Phuket on 23rd June. The documentary is a profile of performance artist Vitthaya Klangnil, who co-founded the group Artn’t. A shorter version of the film—Red Poetry: Verse 1 (เราไป ไหน ได้)—had its premiere at Wildtype 2022.

Red Poetry shows the intense endurance and commitment Vitthaya invests in his protest art. A durational performance—sitting near Chiang Mai’s Tha Pae Gate for nine full days—led to his collapse from exhaustion. In another action, he climbed onto Chiang Mai University’s main entrance, repeatedly slapped himself in the face, and jumped into a pond. Before reporting to the police to answer charges of sedition, he vomited blue paint outside the police station.

The film ends with Vitthaya’s most extreme action: he carved “112” into his chest, in protest at the lèse-majesté (article 112) charges he faced after exhibiting a modified version of the Thai flag in 2021. He was convicted of lèse-majesté last year, and received a suspended sentence.

Supamok’s film was screened three times as part of the 27th Short Film and Video Festival (เทศกาลภาพยนตร์สั้นครั้งที่ 27): in the online Short Film Marathon (หนังสั้นมาราธอน), at the main festival itself, and in the Short 27 Awarded Film Screening programme. It has previously been shown in Chiang Mai (most recently in February), Salaya, and Phatthalung.

Strangers on a Train

The House Samyan cinema in Bangkok will show Alfred Hitchcock’s classic thriller Strangers on a Train next month, with screenings on 14th, 15th, 16th, 22nd, and 23rd June. The film begins with two men, Bruno and Guy, meeting by chance in a train carriage. Guy (played by Farley Granger) is a famous tennis player, and Bruno (Robert Walker) recognises him and starts a seemingly innocent conversation.

Very quickly, Bruno’s questions exposes Guy’s private insecurities, and Bruno makes a theoretical proposal: that he will kill Guy’s unfaithful wife if Guy kills his father. Guy laughs dismissively at the idea, and leaves the train. But after Bruno carries out his end of the arrangement, he pressures Guy to do likewise. Guy is trapped: he can’t go to the police, because Bruno would claim that they had plotted the scheme together.

The plot is from Patricia Highsmith’s novel of the same name, which Hitchcock adapted with Czenzi Ormonde and Barbara Keon. Novelist Raymond Chandler had been originally contracted to write the script, though Chandler disliked collaborating with Hitchcock. He regarded Hitchcock’s contributions as interferences whereas, for Hitchcock, collaborating on a script was the most enjoyable part of the creative process.

The novel’s central premise remains unchanged in the film, as it’s such a perfect Hitchcockian scenario. But there was a major structural alteration: in the book, Guy does indeed kill Bruno’s father, whereas in the film he doesn’t. Highsmith’s book is about the corruption of innocence: Bruno’s pervasive persistence ultimately drives Guy to murder, much as Iago poisons the mind of Shakespeare’s Othello.

Hitchcock’s film, on the other hand, explores the persecution of innocence, with a framed man under constant suspicion, a theme he dealt with equally directly in The 39 Steps, North by Northwest, and The Wrong Man. Other Hitchcock preoccupations are present too: the idea of the perfect murder is a conversation topic in both this film and Shadow of a Doubt, and there are Oedipal overtones to the mother-son relationships in Strangers on a Train, Psycho, and Notorious.

Walker’s performance is outstanding, and he perfectly captures the character’s decadence and obsession. In fact, Bruno is the most engaging character in the film, and the audience is manipulated into sympathising with him. Hitchcock’s villains were often more charming than his heroes: Uncle Charlie, for instance, in Shadow of a Doubt, Norman in Psycho, and Tony in Dial M for Murder. Bruno is also another in a line of Hitchcock’s implicitly gay characters, like Brandon and Phillip in Rope, Leonard in North by Northwest, and Mrs Danvers in Rebecca.

The theme of doubling is a significant aspect of the film, recalling the doppelgänger in The Case of Mr. Pelham and the two Charlies of Shadow of a Doubt: two leading men (gay/straight; guilty/innocent), two archetypal love interests (Madonna/whore), and two detectives (good cop/bad cop). The standout sequence comes before Guy’s tennis match, when the spectators’ heads turn like metronomes, following each volley of the ball, while Bruno stares conspicuously ahead. Despite a melodramatic ending, this is one of Hitchcock’s greatest films.

The Politics of Nordsploitation: History, Industry, Audiences

The Politics of Nordsploitation: History, Industry, Audiences, published in 2021, is the fourth volume in the Global Exploitation Cinemas series. Pietari Kääpä and Tommy Gustafsson coined ‘Nordsploitation’ as an umbrella term referring to the exploitation cinema of the Nordic region (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden). The book offers an alternative history of Nordic cinema, focussing on marginalised and censored films: “The Politics of Nordsploitation is primarily interested in ‘forgotten’ films that are typically categorized as cheap and irrelevant by cultural authorities”.

The authors discuss the excesses of 1970s exploitation movies, and the moral panic over VHS horror films in Sweden, which predated the UK ‘video nasties’ controversy. Gustafsson even consulted a doctor to verify a notorious moment of eyeball violence in Thriller (En Grym Film) that was rumoured to utilise a real human body. (The GP “leaned towards it being fake”.) But, surprisingly, it’s the austere Let the Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in) that they cite as “in many ways the quintessential Nordic exploitation film”.

The Magic Eye: The Cinema of Stanley Kubrick

Banned by Stanley Kubrick! Finally released after more than fifty years! In this case, the hyperbole is true: Kubrick blocked the publication of Neil Hornick’s The Magic Eye: The Cinema of Stanley Kubrick in 1969, and it was published for the first time last month.

Hornick was commissioned by Peter Cowie’s Tantivy Press to write the first book on Kubrick’s films, and Kubrick agreed to cooperate, though he drew up a prohibitive contract giving him the right to veto anything in the manuscript that he disliked. Famously, Kubrick was a control freak, and he was demanding final cut on Hornick’s book.

Cowie had planned to release a series of books on major filmmakers, modelled on A Ribbon of Dreams, his own monograph on Orson Welles. He would eventually commission and publish works on a handful of (mostly European) directors, though Kubrick would not be among them.

Once Hornick had finished his manuscript and submitted it to Kubrick, he received a lawyer’s letter informing him that the director “does not approve” of its contents. Months went by, with Kubrick declining to clarify his objections, and refusing to return the manuscript. As Cowie was bound by the contract, Hornick was forced to abandon the project.

At the same time that Kubrick was stalling over Hornick’s manuscript, film critic Alexander Walker was also writing a book about the director. Unlike Hornick’s, Walker’s work—Stanley Kubrick Directs—was just the puff piece Kubrick was looking for, and he cooperated extensively with Walker. Stanley Kubrick Directs was published with Kubrick’s endorsement, while The Magic Eye was shelved until this year.

Kubrick’s decision to abruptly turn his back on one author (Hornick) and switch his attention to a rival (Walker) would be repeated years later during the preproduction for AI. Kubrick worked with several collaborators on the AI script, one after the other, cutting off contact with each in turn. Ian Watson, Brian Aldiss, and Sara Maitland have all subsequently revealed how Kubrick summarily dispensed with their services once he had found a replacement writer.

The Magic Eye now includes a timeline of the protracted legal case, and a foreword by Filippo Ulivieri, author of 2001 Between Kubrick and Clarke (2001 tra Kubrick e Clarke) and Stanley Kubrick and Me (Stanley Kubrick e me). Ulivieri notes that Kubrick’s delaying tactics were similar to his treatment of Arthur C. Clarke: he refused to approve the manuscript for Clarke’s novel 2001 until after the film was released, keeping Clarke and his publisher in limbo.

Fiction/Nonfiction

Next month, the Thai Film Archive at Salaya will show a season of films that blur the lines between documentary and fiction. The Fiction/Nonfiction season begins on 1st June with Robert Flaherty’s classic Nanook of the North, regarded as the first documentary feature despite its staged sequences and anachronisms.

Later screenings include the docudrama Tongpan (ทองปาน) also on 1st June, Anocha Suwichakornpong’s Come Here (ใจจำลอง) on 5th and 18th June, Sompot Chidgasornpongse’s Railway Sleepers (หมอนรถไฟ) on 6th and 18th June, and the compilation film Lumiére! on 9th and 19th June. (Lumiére! will also be screened at Doc Club and Pub in Bangkok on 10th June. Tongpan has previously been shown at Noir Row Art Space, Cinema Oasis, and Bangkok Art and Culture Centre.)

Nang Nak

Nonzee Nimibutr’s classic horror movie Nang Nak (นางนาก) will be shown at the Thai Film Archive in Salaya this month (on 4th and 24th May), as part of a season paying tribute to actor Winai Kraibutr, who died earlier this year. Winai played the male lead in Nang Nak, which was his breakthrough role.

Nang Nak was most recently shown at the Archive in 2021, to celebrate Halloween. It was also screened during Halloween in 2020, at Lido Connect. Bangkok Screening Room included it in their Halloween season in 2019. It had an outdoor screening in 2018. It was shown at the Archive in 2013, and at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand in 2010.

Censor Must Die

It’s fair to say that Ing K. has had her battles with the film censors. In an interview for Thai Cinema Uncensored, she described the state censorship board as “a bunch of trembling morons with the power of life and death over our films.” Two of her films were banned in Thailand—My Teacher Eats Biscuits (คนกราบหมา) in 1998, and Shakespeare Must Die (เชคสเปียร์ต้องตาย) in 2012—though both bans have recently been lifted, and the films will be screened later this year.

Ing’s documentary Censor Must Die (เซ็นเซอร์ต้องตาย) shows producer Manit Sriwanichpoom receiving the censor’s initial verdict on Shakespeare Must Die, and follows him as he appeals against the ban at the Ministry of Culture and files a case with the Office of the National Human Rights Commission. (The documentary was made in 2013, though it was another decade before the ban was finally revoked, following a judgement by the Supreme Court.)

Censor Must Die’s most revealing scene takes place at the headquarters of the Ministry of Culture: in the lobby, a TV plays a video demonstrating the traditional Thai method of sitting in a polite and respectful manner. The video encapsulates the Ministry’s didactic and outdated interpretation of Thai culture, and it was parodied by the mock instructional video “How to Behave Elegantly Like a Thai” in Sorayos Prapapan’s film Arnold Is a Model Student (อานนเป็นนักเรียนตัวอย่าง).

The documentary premiered at the Freedom on Film (สิทธิหนังไทย) seminar in 2013, was shown a few months later at the Thai Film Archive, and had private screenings at Silpakorn University and the Friese-Greene Club. It was last shown at Cinema Oasis, the cinema Ing and Manit founded in Bangkok, on 20th March 2020. Censor Must Die returns to Cinema Oasis this week, screening on 3rd, 4th, 5th, 10th, and 11th May.

Alfred Hitchcock Storyboards

Alfred Hitchcock Storyboards, published earlier this year, contains storyboards and production illustrations from some of Hitchcock’s most famous films, including classics such as Vertigo. But the main attraction of Tony Lee Moral’s book is its chapter on Psycho, with a four-page spread of storyboards by Saul Bass. Although some of the Bass drawings have been reproduced elsewhere, Alfred Hitchcock Storyboards includes more than 100 of them, some of which are previously unpublished.

The Bass storyboards for the Psycho shower scene are “undoubtedly the most widely discussed sequence in the history of storyboarding,” according to Chris Pallant and Steven Price in their book Storyboarding, which includes a chapter on Hitchcock’s storyboards. Cinefantastique magazine (vol. 16, no. 4–5) printed a set of shower scene storyboards, and the same sketches appeared on the cover of Fionnuala Halligan’s book The Art of Movie Storyboards.

Alfred Hitchcock Storyboards doesn’t address the authorship controversy surrounding the shower scene. Bass claimed that he not only storyboarded the sequence, but also directed it, though this was refuted by Psycho’s cast and crew. Cinefantastique challenged the Bass claim (in an article by Stephen Rebello), though Jennifer Bass and Pat Kirkham endorsed it in their book Saul Bass.

“ข่าวสารเรา control ไม่ได้ แต่หนังเรา control ได้” (‘we can’t control the news, but we can control movies’)

Ing K.’s film My Teacher Eats Biscuits will finally be shown in Thailand, more than twenty-five years after it was banned. Ing re-edited the film in 2020, and this director’s cut—ten minutes shorter than the original version—was approved by the film censorship board last October. It will go on general release on 16th May. Although its Thai title (คนกราบหมา) remains the same, its English title has been changed to the more prosaic Dog God.

My Teacher Eats Biscuits was banned on the eve of the inaugural Bangkok Film Festival in 1998, along with the Singaporean drama Bugis Street (妖街皇后). On the opening night of the Alternative Love Film Festival later that year, Ing showed a video of her meeting with a parliamentary committee discussing My Teacher Eats Biscuits, and screened Bugis Street in defiance of the ban. Police raided the Saeng-Arun Arts Centre during the screening of Bugis Street, though they left the auditorium shortly afterwards.

The film was banned on the grounds that it satirised religion. As the director explained in an interview for Thai Cinema Uncensored: “This is like banning John Waters’ Pink Flamingos for bad taste!” In other words, the religious satire was the whole point of the film. (In that interview, Ing alleged that one member of the censorship board, a Chulalongkorn University professor, dominated the board and led the decision to ban the film. Another reason for the ban was that the censors misinterpreted a character, Princess Serena, as an impersonation of Princess Galyani.)

Like Pink Flamingos, My Teacher Eats Biscuits is a low-budget, independent movie shot on 16mm. (Coincidentally, Pink Flamingos was also passed by the Thai censors last year.) A plot synopsis—a monk catches another monk in the act of necrophilia, and a woman establishes a cult of dog worshippers—gives the false impression that My Teacher Eats Biscuits is offensive or blasphemous. In fact, the film has a camp sensibility (which it shares with Pink Flamingos), and its tone is clearly parodic.

The film begins with a voice-over by Ing, describing her character’s previous incarnation as a devout monk. He reports the necrophile monk to his abbot, who seems completely unconcerned. Disillusioned by Buddhism, he burns his saffron robe, and is reincarnated as a woman, Satri, played by the director. At the end of the film, Satri explains her rejection of organised religion in an extended monologue: “I had to free myself from the pollution of the yellow robe, which, in my eyes, became a symbol of corruption.”

Satri’s cult is exposed as a fraud by two undercover investigators, though the film presents Buddhism as equally hypocritical. When an investigator tells a senior monk (who drinks whiskey) about the cult, his response is: “A dog in a monk’s robe is not so bad.” Reflecting on this, the investigator concludes: “With monks like him, no wonder the image of Buddhism gets worse and worse.” We are later informed that he has left to investigate “a drunken orgy with seven senior monks.”

After the ban, My Teacher Eats Biscuits was rarely seen, either in Thailand or elsewhere. As critic Graiwoot Chulpongsathorn wrote in 2009, it is “a film so controversial that it has been ‘disappeared’ from history.” It was shown at the Goethe-Institut in Bangkok in 1998, and at Chulalongkorn University’s Faculty of Political Science on 17th December 2009. At the Chulalongkorn screening, Ing explained that the necrophile monk character was based on a news story about a real monk, and that when she told this to the censors, their candid answer was: “ข่าวสารเรา control ไม่ได้ แต่หนังเรา control ได้” (‘we can’t control the news, but we can control movies’).

The film had three European screenings in 2017. It was shown at the Close-Up Film Centre in London; at the Deutsches Filminstitut in Frankfurt, Germany; and at the Cinéma du réel (‘cinema of the real’) festival in Paris. To celebrate the film’s return to Thai cinemas, Ing has designed t-shirts with the slogan “กราบหมาเถิดลูก” (‘bow down to the dog’). There is also a Shakespeare Must Die (เชคสเปียร์ต้องตาย) t-shirt, with the slogan “From the Cursed Play, a Forbidden Horror Movie” (“หนังผีต้องห้าม จากละครต้องสาป”).

When Shakespeare Must Die was banned in 2012, Ing had the dubious distinction of being the only Thai director with two films banned simultaneously. Now both films have been passed by the censors—the Shakespeare Must Die ban was lifted in February—and they will both return to Thai cinemas this year. My Teacher Eats Biscuits and Shakespeare Must Die appear to be early beneficiaries of a liberalised censorship policy announced by the National Soft Power Strategy Committee (คณะกรรมการยุทธศาสตร์ซอฟต์พาวเวอร์แห่งชาติ) in January.

1974:The Best Year of the Movies

Next month, Bangkok’s Doc Club and Pub will begin a season of classics from 1974, which it describes as the best year of the movies. Of course, it’s debatable whether 1974 (now fifty years ago) was the greatest year in cinema history, but there’s no denying that the season includes some outstanding films. The Godfather II, Chinatown, and Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (Angst essen Seele auf) will all be shown as part of 1974: The Best Year of the Movies.

The season begins with Ali, showing on 12th, 15th, 18th, 21st, and 24th May. Chinatown will be shown on 18th and 23rd May; and 2nd, 9th, 15th, and 19th June. The Godfather II is showing on 22nd May, and 2nd and 8th June. Ali was previously screened at Doc Club and Pub in 2022, and at the Thai Film Archive earlier that year. The Godfather II was shown at the Scala cinema in 2018. Chinatown was shown at Smalls in 2018.

Nitade Movie ClubSalò

Even almost fifty years after it was released, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma) remains one of the most controversial films ever made. (When it was screened at London’s Compton Cinema Club in 1977, the venue was raided by the police, and even a censored print was seized by the vice squad two years later.) Salò will be shown at Chulalongkorn University’s Faculty of Communication Arts on 17th April, as part of the Nitade Movie Club weekly screening programme.

Nitade Experimental Shorts: The Other Cinema

Weerapat Sakolvaree’s short film Nostalgia will be shown at Chulalongkorn University on 10th April at a screening organised by Nitade Movie Club. The event, Nitade Experimental Shorts: The Other Cinema, features two sessions—Deconstructing Emotions and Decolonized by Time—each lasting exactly 100 minutes. Nostalgia will open the second session. It has previously been shown at the Chiang Mai Film Festival (twice), Bangkok University, Future Fest 2023, Wildtype 2022, and the 26th Thai Short Film and Video Festival (เทศกาลภาพยนตร์สั้นครั้งที่ 26).

Movie Night at Prince Theatre

Bangkok’s Prince Theatre continues its daily film screenings, Movie Night at Prince Theatre. Highlights this month include The Celebration (Festen), the first Dogme 95 production, on 19th April; and the Orson Welles masterpiece Citizen Kane on 25th April.

The Prince Theatre was established as a cinema in 1917, and was converted into a film-themed hotel a year after its centenary. Citizen Kane was previously shown at Bangkok Screening Room in 2017 and at Cinema Winehouse in 2018.

FIAF Congress 2024

Apiachtpong Weerasethakul’s Syndromes and a Century (แสงศตวรรษ) will be screened in 35mm at the Thai Film Archive in Salaya on 21st April, as part of the FIAF Congress 2024. The event is organised by the International Federation of Film Archives, and the screening is in recognition of the director’s status as the first Thai recipient of an FIAF Award.

Syndromes and a Century was shown most recently at the Archive during the 23rd Short Film and Video Festival (เทศกาลภาพยนตร์สั้นครั้งที่ 23), and it was also screened there earlier in 2019. The film’s censorship in Thailand sparked a campaign to reform Thai film regulation, as discussed in Thai Cinema Uncensored.

Show Me the Movies!Recommended by Martin Scorsese

Doc Club and Pub will show a short season of Martin Scorsese’s favourite films (as part of their Show Me the Movies! strand), including Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, starting later this month. 2001 will be shown on 25th and 28th April, and 4th May. It has previously been shown at Arcadia in 2022, at the Scala in 2017, and at the Thai Film Archive in 2013.

Doc Club Festival Selections 04

Doc Club and Pub will show further highlights from this year’s Doc Club Festival, as part of the Selections series. Selections 04, on 31st March, includes Napasin Samkaewcham’s short film A Love Letter to My Sister, a deeply moving documentary about the volatile relationship between his parents. A Love Letter to My Sister was previously shown in the Short Film Marathon 27 (หนังสั้นมาราธอน 27), and at the 27th Short Film and Video Festival (เทศกาลภาพยนตร์สั้นครั้งที่ 27).

Kubrick:An Odyssey

Two rival biographies of Stanley Kubrick were published almost simultaneously in 1997. John Baxter and Vincent LoBrutto’s books were both unauthorised accounts, though LoBrutto’s was considerably more accurate than Baxter’s. They are now joined by a third major Kubrick biography, Nathan Abrams and Robert P. Kolker’s Kubrick: An Odyssey, which was released earlier this year.

The previous biographies were published before the release of Eyes Wide Shut—the subject of another Abrams and Kolker book—making Kubrick the first biography to cover the director’s entire career. Kubrick has the same strengths and weaknesses as their Eyes Wide Shut book: impressive research, some questionable opinions, and imprecise referencing. (The authors previously dismissed that film’s state of incompletion at the time of Kubrick’s death as “ultimately irrelevant”, though in their biography they take it more seriously, calling it “the most serious controversy of Kubrick’s career”.)

Kubrick is particularly significant as the first biography based on material from the Kubrick Archive, making it more reliable than its predecessors. When Kolker and Abrams occasionally veer into speculation, though (“perhaps...”), they are on shakier ground, and their regular references to the significance of Kubrick’s Jewish identity (a thesis developed by Abrams) feel forced.

Kolker and Abrams are also the first Kubrick biographers to receive cooperation from the director’s family. The book benefits substantially from this level of access, but it’s also a double-edged sword: Kubrick’s brother-in-law, Jan Harlan, who acted as a liason, sometimes attempted to steer the authors in directions that contradicted their own research. (All the writers can do is to ask rhetorically, “as with so much in Kubrick’s life, which version is true?”)

The biography has a bibliography and a comprehensive index, but there are no footnotes, and quotes often appear in the text without attribution. This makes it needlessly difficult to identify the sources of quotations, beyond those that are familiar from other publications. (Kubrick joins more than sixty other Kubrick books on the Dateline Bangkok bookshelves.)