What the Doc! 2

What the Doc! 2 — The International Documentary Film Festival Thailand (เทศกาลภาพยนตร์ สารคดีนานาชาติ แห่งประเทศไทย) — will take place in Bangkok from 3rd to 13th September, a year after the first What the Doc! festival. Screenings will be held at Century Sukhumvit, and at the new Doc Club and Friends cinema that’s due to open this month at Cloud 11. (After the closure of Doc Club and Pub in 2024, the venue has relocated to Cloud 11 under the new name Doc Club and Friends.) The festival will include Thunska Pansittivorakul’s new film Are We Monsters? (อสูร) at Century on 9th September, followed by a Q&A with Thunska.

What the Doc! 2 will also include the premiere of Buariyate Eamkamol’s Images of Fire (ร่องรอยไฟ), a self-reflexive short film in which he revisits the circumstances surrounding the killing of protesters by military snipers in April and May 2010. Buariyate’s film will be screened at Century on 7th September (followed by a Q&A with the director), and at Doc Club and Friends on 12th September.

The Dutch artist Armando coined the phrase ‘guilty landscapes’ to describe spaces that bore silent witness to past violence. Buariyate and other Thai directors have returned to these politically and emotionally charged locations as part of a reckoning with the unresolved trauma of 2010.

Images of Fire is Buariyate’s fourth film that touches on the 2010 violence, after A Fire 9 Kilometers Away, Isekai (อิเซไก), and Red Is the Orangest Colour. (Thai Cinema Uncensored discusses the representation of the April–May 2010 events by Thai filmmakers in more detail.)

What the Doc! 2’s poster also refers to the 2010 military crackdown: it features a portrait of one of those who died on 10th April 2010 (Maew), painted by Tawan Wattuya. The painting is from Tawan’s Red Faces series, shown at the Khon Kaen Manifesto (ขอนแก่น แมนิเฟสโต้) and Amnesia exhibitions in 2019.

Sala Saneha

Sala Saneha, a new boutique cinema in Bangkok’s Silom district, opened in December last year and has been holding a series of semi-private events since then. Today is Sala Saneha’s soft launch day, with screenings of Pen-ek Ratanaruang’s popular musical romance Monrak Transistor (มนต์รักทรานซิสเตอร์) and Thunska Pansittivorakul’s new documentary Isan Odyssey (อีสานอำพราง).

Isan Odyssey

Thunska Pansittivorakul’s documentary Isan Odyssey (อีสานอำพราง) will be shown in an outdoor screening today at Samaki Chumnum in Nakhon Phanom. The event is organised by Documentary Club.

It will also be shown on 13th February at Bansomdejchaopraya Rajabhat University in Bangkok, as part of the Fox Film Festival vol. 3 (เทศกาลหนังจิ้งจอก ครั้งที่ 3). That screening will be followed by a Q&A with Thunska and the film’s cinematographer, Phassarawin Kulsomboon. The festival will also take place on 6th February, and its theme is Mics Up and Guns Down (ร้องโค่นกำแพง).

Phassarawin previously directed Khon Boys (เด็กโขน), a documentary about a troupe of young khon dancers, and Isan Odyssey begins in a similar vein, following a troupe of young mor lam performers. Just as Khon Boys covers the historical restrictions imposed on khon performances, Isan Odyssey links the past suppression of mor lam to the political history of Thailand.

Isan Odyssey highlights the origins of mor lam as a form of political expression in the Isan region. Modern mor lam, in contrast, is primarily a commercial entertainment: “Gone are the days of ideology and fighting against state injustice.”

The veteran leader of the mor lam troupe recalls his youth in the 1960s, when he heard shots fired from helicopters, the sound of “Thai soldiers shooting communists”. This provides a segue to the film’s central theme: the state’s anti-communist campaign in various Isan provinces during the Cold War.

A voiceover describes how suspected communists were “brutally murdered” during Sarit Thanarat’s regime, and how this “ruthless suppression” continued during the Thanom Kittikachorn era. An elderly resident of the village of Nabua describes the situation at that time as “suffocatingly brutal.”

Similarly, Apichatpong Weerasethakul has made several films in and around Nabua, whose inhabitants were among the first victims of the anti-communist purge. In Apichatpong’s short film A Letter to Uncle Boonmee (จดหมายถงลงบญม), a narrator recalls the area’s past: “Soldiers once occupied this place. They killed and tortured the villagers and forced them to flee to the jungle.”

Isan Odyssey touches on three specific historical incidents, though only briefly. It includes 16mm newsreel footage from 14th October 1973, and a few photographs from 6th October 1976. A young photographer describes the military crackdown in May 2010, and a caption informs us that this resulted in 108 casualties. This grim statistic was a bone of contention in Nontawat Numbenchapol’s documentary Boundary (ฟ้าต่ำแผ่นดินสูง), which was briefly banned in part because it claimed that around 100 people had died.

One of Thunska’s films, This Area Is Under Quarantine (บริเวณนี้อยู่ภายใต้การกักกัน), was also banned. As a result, he told me in an interview for Thai Cinema Uncensored: “I decided not to show any of my films in Thailand.” Working with German producer Jürgen Brüning, he made nine films — The Terrorists (ผู้ก่อการร้าย), Supernatural (เหนือธรรมชาติ), sPACEtIME (กาล-อวกาศ), Reincarnate (จุติ), Homogeneous, Empty Time (สุญกาล), Santikhiri Sonata (สันติคีรี โซนาตา), Avalon (แดนศักดิ์สิทธิ์), Danse Macabre (มรณสติ), and Damnatio Memoriae (ไม่พึงปรารถนา) — all of which featured sexually explicit and politically sensitive content, and none of which had theatrical releases in Thailand.

Isan Odyssey is an exception: it was produced by Documentary Club in Thailand, rather than by Brüning in Germany, and it was the opening film of the What the Doc! (เทศกาลภาพยนตร์ สารคดีนานาชาติ แห่งประเทศไทย) film festival. As in Thunska’s other work, Isan Odyssey directly criticises the Thai state, though it avoids the graphic imagery of his earlier films, hence its ‘15’ rating from the Thai film censorship board. The film’s most recent screening was in Kanchanaburi last month.

Isan Odyssey

Thunska Pansittivorakul’s documentary Isan Odyssey (อีสานอำพราง) will be shown on 20th December at Book Bird in Kanchanaburi. The screening is part of Isan / Sound Residency (อีสาน / ซาวด์ เรสซิเดนซี่), the third Analog Live event, and will be followed by a discussion with Thunska titled สัญญะของการเดินทางแห่งเสียง (‘the symbolism of the sound journey’).

Phassarawin Kulsomboon, Isan Odyssey’s cinematographer, previously directed Khon Boys (เด็กโขน), a documentary about a troupe of young khon dancers, and Isan Odyssey begins in a similar vein, following a troupe of young mor lam performers. Just as Khon Boys covers the historical restrictions imposed on khon performances, Isan Odyssey links the past suppression of mor lam to the political history of Thailand.

Isan Odyssey highlights the origins of mor lam as a form of political expression in the Isan region. Modern mor lam, in contrast, is primarily a commercial entertainment: “Gone are the days of ideology and fighting against state injustice.”

The veteran leader of the mor lam troupe recalls his youth in the 1960s, when he heard shots fired from helicopters, the sound of “Thai soldiers shooting communists”. This provides a segue to the film’s central theme: the state’s anti-communist campaign in various Isan provinces during the Cold War.

A voiceover describes how suspected communists were “brutally murdered” during Sarit Thanarat’s regime, and how this “ruthless suppression” continued during the Thanom Kittikachorn era. An elderly resident of the village of Nabua describes the situation at that time as “suffocatingly brutal.”

Similarly, Apichatpong Weerasethakul has made several films in and around Nabua, whose inhabitants were among the first victims of the anti-communist purge. In Apichatpong’s short film A Letter to Uncle Boonmee (จดหมายถงลงบญม), a narrator recalls the area’s past: “Soldiers once occupied this place. They killed and tortured the villagers and forced them to flee to the jungle.”

Isan Odyssey touches on three specific historical incidents, though only briefly. It includes 16mm newsreel footage from 14th October 1973, and a few photographs from 6th October 1976. A young photographer describes the military crackdown in May 2010, and a caption informs us that this resulted in 108 casualties. This grim statistic was a bone of contention in Nontawat Numbenchapol’s documentary Boundary (ฟ้าต่ำแผ่นดินสูง), which was briefly banned in part because it claimed that around 100 people had died.

One of Thunska’s films, This Area Is Under Quarantine (บริเวณนี้อยู่ภายใต้การกักกัน), was also banned. As a result, he told me in an interview for Thai Cinema Uncensored: “I decided not to show any of my films in Thailand.” Working with German producer Jürgen Brüning, he made nine films — The Terrorists (ผู้ก่อการร้าย), Supernatural (เหนือธรรมชาติ), sPACEtIME (กาล-อวกาศ), Reincarnate (จุติ), Homogeneous, Empty Time (สุญกาล), Santikhiri Sonata (สันติคีรี โซนาตา), Avalon (แดนศักดิ์สิทธิ์), Danse Macabre (มรณสติ), and Damnatio Memoriae (ไม่พึงปรารถนา) — all of which featured sexually explicit and politically sensitive content, and none of which had theatrical releases in Thailand.

Isan Odyssey is an exception: it was produced by Documentary Club in Thailand, rather than by Brüning in Germany, and it was the opening film of the What the Doc! (เทศกาลภาพยนตร์ สารคดีนานาชาติ แห่งประเทศไทย) film festival. As in Thunska’s other work, Isan Odyssey directly criticises the Thai state, though it avoids the graphic imagery of his earlier films, hence its ‘15’ rating from the Thai film censorship board.

Isan Odyssey

Thunska Pansittivorakul’s new documentary Isan Odyssey (อีสานอำพราง) had its premiere yesterday, as the opening film of the What the Doc! (เทศกาลภาพยนตร์ สารคดีนานาชาติ แห่งประเทศไทย) film festival. Thunska took part in a Q&A after the film, at House Samyan in Bangkok, and there will be another screening and Q&A at Century Sukhumvit in Bangkok on 3rd September.

Phassarawin Kulsomboon, Isan Odyssey’s cinematographer, previously directed Khon Boys (เด็กโขน), a documentary about a troupe of young khon dancers, and Isan Odyssey begins in a similar vein, following a troupe of young mor lam performers. Just as Khon Boys covers the historical restrictions imposed on khon performances, Isan Odyssey links the past suppression of mor lam to the political history of Thailand.

Isan Odyssey highlights the origins of mor lam as a form of political expression in the Isan region. Modern mor lam, in contrast, is primarily a commercial entertainment: “Gone are the days of ideology and fighting against state injustice.”

The veteran leader of the mor lam troupe recalls his youth in the 1960s, when he heard shots fired from helicopters, the sound of “Thai soldiers shooting communists”. This provides a segue to the film’s central theme: the state’s anti-communist campaign in various Isan provinces during the Cold War.

A voiceover describes how suspected communists were “brutally murdered” during Sarit Thanarat’s regime, and how this “ruthless suppression” continued during the Thanom Kittikachorn era. An elderly resident of the village of Nabua describes the situation at that time as “suffocatingly brutal.”

Similarly, Apichatpong Weerasethakul has made several films in and around Nabua, whose inhabitants were among the first victims of the anti-communist purge. In Apichatpong’s short film A Letter to Uncle Boonmee (จดหมายถงลงบญม), a narrator recalls the area’s past: “Soldiers once occupied this place. They killed and tortured the villagers and forced them to flee to the jungle.”

Isan Odyssey touches on three specific historical incidents, though only briefly. It includes 16mm newsreel footage from 14th October 1973, and a few photographs from 6th October 1976. A young photographer describes the military crackdown in May 2010, and a caption informs us that this resulted in 108 casualties. This grim statistic was a bone of contention in Nontawat Numbenchapol’s documentary Boundary (ฟ้าต่ำแผ่นดินสูง), which was banned in part because it claimed that around 100 people had died.

One of Thunska’s films, This Area Is Under Quarantine (บริเวณนี้อยู่ภายใต้การกักกัน), was also banned. As a result, he told me in an interview for Thai Cinema Uncensored: “I decided not to show any of my films in Thailand.” Working with German producer Jürgen Brüning, he made nine films — The Terrorists (ผู้ก่อการร้าย), Supernatural (เหนือธรรมชาติ), sPACEtIME (กาล-อวกาศ), Reincarnate (จุติ), Homogeneous, Empty Time (สุญกาล), Santikhiri Sonata (สันติคีรี โซนาตา), Avalon (แดนศักดิ์สิทธิ์), Danse Macabre (มรณสติ), and Damnatio Memoriae (ไม่พึงปรารถนา) — all of which featured sexually explicit and politically sensitive content, and none of which had theatrical releases in Thailand.

Isan Odyssey is an exception: it was produced by Documentary Club in Thailand, rather than by Brüning in Germany, and it will go on theatrical release here on 25th September. As in Thunska’s other work, Isan Odyssey directly criticises the Thai state, though it avoids the graphic imagery of his earlier films, hence its ‘15’ rating from the Thai film censorship board.

What the Doc!

What the Doc! — The International Documentary Film Festival Thailand (เทศกาลภาพยนตร์ สารคดีนานาชาติ แห่งประเทศไทย) — will take place in Bangkok from 22nd to 31st August. Organised by Documentary Club, the festival includes screenings at House Samyan, Century Sukhumvit (just around the corner from Dateline Bangkok HQ), and Bangkok Art and Culture Centre.

The opening film, Thunska Pansittivorakul’s new documentary Isan Odyssey (อีสานอำพราง), will be shown at House on 22nd August. It has been classified ‘15’, marking the first time in almost twenty years that Thunska has submitted one of his films to the Thai ratings board.

One of the festival’s highlights is an Apichatpong Weerasethakul retrospective, a rare chance to see eight short films by Thailand’s leading director and video artist. 0116643225059, Thirdworld (เกาะกายสิทธิ์), Malee and the Boy (มาลีและเด็กชาย), and Luminous People (คนเรืองแสง) will be shown at House on 23rd August, and at Century on 31st August. A Letter to Uncle Boonmee (จดหมายถึงลุงบุญมี), Cactus River (โขงแล้งน้ำ), Vapour, and Ashes will be screened at Century on 23rd August, and at House on 24th August.

A programme of short films by Chulayarnnon Siriphol will be shown at BACC on 24th August, followed by a Q&A with Chulayarnnon, as part of WTD’s Doc Talk Day! event. The five films are: Vanishing Horizon of the Sea, Birth of Golden Snail (กำเนิดหอยทากทอง), Myth of Modernity, The Internationale (แองเตอร์นาซิอองนาล), and ANG48 (เอเอ็นจี48).

There have been three previous retrospectives of Apichatpong’s short films in Thailand: Apichatpong on Video Works in 2008, Indy Spirit Project in 2010, and Apichatpong Weekend in 2017. Thunska, Apichatpong, and Chulayarnnon were all interviewed in Thai Cinema Uncensored.

Imago

Harit Srikhao’s exhibition Imago opened at Bangkok CityCity Gallery on 12th October, and runs until 30th November. Its title describes the final stage of an insect’s metamorphosis into an adult, reflecting the artist’s own maturity. Harit has also undergone a process of art therapy, and the resulting sense of empowerment — like an insect’s emergence from its pupal case — made Imago possible.

The exhibition includes a video installation, also titled Imago, which combines photography with stop-motion animation. The exhibition leaflet refers to “surrendering the autonomy of one’s own image and the struggle in reclaiming it,” a reference to intimate video footage of Harit and his former partner, director Thunska Pansittivorakul. After their relationship ended, Thunska used this deeply personal material in his documentary Avalon (แดนศักดิ์สิทธิ์).

Harit has now taken back control of this representation of his past, by inserting one of the sexually explicit video clips — which appeared at the beginning of Avalon — into Imago. The installation also includes screenshots of intimidating emails that Harit received about the graphic footage, which he printed out and cut into paper butterflies, turning toxic memories into art that symbolises his independence.

These paper butterflies also feature on the cover of Window, a CD single (limited to 300 copies) featuring music from the Imago soundtrack. One of Harit’s previous exhibitions, Whitewash, was censored by the military in 2017, inspiring Aditya Assarat’s Sunset, a segment of the portmanteau film Ten Years Thailand. Harit has co-directed the documentaries Homogeneous, Empty Time (สุญกาล) and sPACEtIME (กาลอวกาศ).

Damnatio Memoriae

Thunska Pansittivorakul’s latest documentary, Damnatio Memoriae (ไม่พึงปรารถนา), had its world premiere at this year’s DMZ International Documentary Film Festival in South Korea. Thunska’s films often contain found footage, though with Damnatio Memoriae he has taken this a step further, producing a collage film comprised almost entirely of repurposed news and propaganda clips. (It begins with a montage of violent episodes from modern world history: the Holocaust, the Zapruder film, 9/11.)

Structurally, the film is a series of stark juxtapositions between fantasy and reality: propaganda videos (either directly or indirectly state-sanctioned), followed by atrocities committed by those states. Thus, the jolly Duck and Cover public information film is intercut with footage of Japanese A-bomb victims. Most of the examples are drawn from Asia during the Cold War era: Chinese communist propaganda films, followed by the Tiananmen Square massacre; the Seoul Olympics opening ceremony intercut with autopsy photographs of Gwangju Uprising victims.

Thai political history is central to Thunska’s filmography, and Damnatio Memoriae is no exception. Here, clips from the historical romance Sunset at Chaophraya (คู่กรรม) are juxtaposed with footage of the 6th October 1976 massacre, with the love song Angsumalin (อังศุมาลิน), performed by heartthrob Nadech Kugimiya, on the soundtrack. (Sunset at Chaophraya is based on a novel by Thommayanti, who denounced students as communists in the buildup to 1976. Video artist Chulayarnnon Siriphol has also appropriated footage from Sunset at Chaophraya.)

Explicit sexual content is another key component of the director’s work, used most provocatively in The Terrorists (ผู้ก่อการร้าย), when a man is shown masturbating while captions describe the victims of the 1976 massacre. As Thunska explained in Thai Cinema Uncensored, this scene was a condemnation of what he views as the military’s quasi-sexual impulse to destroy its opponents: “That massacre is like masturbation... They need to feel good and happy, but it’s really cruel.”

Damnatio Memoriae features a similar sequence: a young man masturbates in the shower, while captions describe “the Red Drum killings of more than 200 civilians (unofficial accounts speak of up to 3,000) who were accused of supporting communists in Phatthalung, southern Thailand.” The graphic metaphor for military violence is an echo of The Terrorists, though there is an added layer of significance: the actor in the shower comes from Phatthalung, where the killings took place decades before he was born.

Nudity is also used for comic effect, in an irreverent comment on royally-appointed Thai prime minister and statesman Prem Tinsulanonda. Prem is shown preparing to deliver a speech at the White House, in recognition of Thai-US military cooperation during the Cold War, and just as he is about to speak, the film cuts to a close-up of an erection.

The shower sequence is an out-take from Supernatural (เหนือธรรมชาติ), and Damnatio Memoriae also features brief clips from Avalon (แดนศักดิ์สิทธิ์). Thunska’s previous films include Danse Macabre (มรณสติ), Santikhiri Sonata (สันติคีรี โซนาตา), Homogeneous, Empty Time (สุญกาล), Reincarnate (จุติ), and This Area is Under Quarantine (บริเวณนี้อยู่ภายใต้การกักกัน).

DMZ International Documentary Film Festival

Two feature-length Thai documentaries — Uruphong Raksasad’s documentary Songs of Angry People and Thunska Pansittivorakul’s Damnatio Memoriae (ไม่พึงปรารถนา) — will have their world premieres at the DMZ International Documentary Film Festival in South Korea next month. The festival runs from 14th to 21st September, with screenings taking place near the demilitarised zone on the border with North Korea.

Songs of Angry People, premiering on 15th September, is a record of the protest movement that began in 2020, when students campaigned for reform of the monarchy and a return to democracy. Songs of Angry People is only the second feature-length documentary covering the protests, after Supong Jitmuang’s Mob 2020–2021. Uruphong’s previous films include Agrarian Utopia (สวรรค์บ้านนา) and Worship (บูชา).

Damnatio Memoriae, a collage film about Asian state propaganda in the Cold War era, will premiere on 17th September. Thunska’s previous films include Danse Macabre (มรณสติ), Avalon (แดนศักดิ์สิทธิ์), Santikhiri Sonata (สันติคีรี โซนาตา), Homogeneous, Empty Time (สุญกาล), Supernatural (เหนือธรรมชาติ), The Terrorists (ผู้ก่อการร้าย), Reincarnate (จุติ), and This Area is Under Quarantine (บริเวณนี้อยู่ภายใต้การกักกัน).

25th Thai Short Film and Video Festival

The finalists in the 25th Thai Short Film and Video Festival (เทศกาลภาพยนตร์สั้น ครั้งที่ 25) will be screened at the Thai Film Archive in Salaya from 18th to 26th December. The programme on 19th December includes three excellent short films, all of which address life-and-death social issues in Thailand: New Abnormal (ผิดปกติใหม่), Please... See Us (หว่างีมอละ), and Dance of Death (แดนซ์ ออฟ เดธ).

The satirical New Abnormal, by Sorayos Prapapan, takes aim at Prayut Chan-o-cha and his mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic. Phayao Nimma plays an irritable Prayut, annoyed by a civil servant asking about bailouts for businesses affected by the lockdown. Other sequences address the inadequate supply of vaccines earlier in the year.

Chaweng Chaiyawan’s Please... See Us highlights the displacement of ethnic minorities. The film ends with an extended sequence in which a pig is killed and dismembered, the helpless animal being a tragic metaphor for the plight of ethnic minorities in Thailand. It was previously shown this year at Wildtype and Signes de Nuit (‘signs of the night’).

Dance of Death is a condensed version of Thunska Pansittivorakul and Phassarawin Kulsomboon’s feature-length documentary Danse Macabre (มรณสติ), which juxtaposes accounts of violent deaths with interpretive dance routines. In Thailand’s unequal society, not even death can rupture the social hierarchy, and Dance of Death explores the disparity between the deaths of royals and commoners.

Please... See Us and Dance of Death will be shown again as part of the Short 25 Awarded Film Screening programme on 1st January 2022. Last year’s event featured equally political entries, such as Sorayos’ Prelude of the Moving Zoo.

Danse Macabre

“Thunska who makes everything sexy.”
“But I’m talking about death in this one.”

From Eros to Thanatos: Danse Macabre (มรณสติ) begins with director Thunska Pansittivorakul explaining to a dance choreographer that his new documentary explores darker territory. Unlike his last film, the sexually frank Avalon (แดนศักดิ์สิทธิ์), Danse Macabre juxtaposes accounts of violent deaths with interpretive dance routines.

The film was codirected by Phassarawin Kulsomboon, and will have its world premiere at the Doclisboa film festival in Lisbon on 27th October. Thunska’s Santikhiri Sonata (สันติคีรี โซนาตา) was named best film at Doclisboa in 2019.

As the proverb says, death is the great leveller. But in Thailand, one of the world’s most unequal societies, not even death can rupture the social hierarchy. Danse Macabre highlights the disparity between the deaths of royals and commoners: kings receive lavish state funerals followed by prolonged periods of national mourning, whereas murder victims become objects of public spectacle as undignified crowds of gawping onlookers gather freely at crime scenes.

The starkest contrast is that between King Rama VIII (who died from a bullet wound in 1946) and Porlajee Rakchongcharoen (a human rights activist who was murdered in 2014). The King’s corpse was placed in a golden urn atop a gilded chariot. Porlajee’s body, however, was stuffed unceremoniously into an oil drum. (Pin Sasao’s installation ถังแดง​ — ‘red barrel’ — also addresses Porlajee’s murder.)

In Thunska’s documentary Homogeneous, Empty Time (สุญกาล), one interviewee mentions “soldiers getting beaten to death during training” and shortly after that film was completed, army cadet Phakhapong Tanyakan died during a training exercise. Danse Macabre has an equally tragic topicality: on 20th July, just a few days after the rough cut was finished, three people dropped dead on the streets of Bangkok, and their bodies were left in situ for hours. (Thunska added an epilogue highlighting these recent cases.)

Danse Macabre also deals with Thai state violence, from the massacres of October 1976 — also covered in The Terrorists (ผู้ก่อการร้าย) — May 1992, and May 2010, to the recent student protests. Footage of riot police firing water cannon last year is cut to the beat of the Subtitle Project’s song Remember. The track’s Thai title, วน, literally translates as ‘loop’, indicating the cyclical nature of violent state oppression. (Thunska directed the music video for Remember when it was released as a single.)

Like Thunska’s Reincarnate (จุติ), Danse Macabre begins with a written prologue explaining the Thai law under which “a film may be banned as unsuitable for public exhibition” and then proceeds to deliberately flout those rules. I interviewed Thunska about this law for Thai Cinema Uncensored, and one of his early features, This Area is Under Quarantine (บริเวณนี้อยู่ภายใต้การกักกัน), was the first film to fall foul of it. Thunska uses explicit sexual content as a political commentary in many films, and Danse Macabre is no exception: it includes photos from vintage porn magazines to show how Thailand has since become more culturally — and, by implication, politically — conservative.

Even more provocatively, the indirect allusions to the monarchy in his sci-fi dystopia Supernatural (เหนือธรรมชาติ) are replaced by a direct account of modern Thai royal history, including a subliminal image hinting at an explanation for the death of Rama VIII. Three men were executed for the King’s murder on 17th February 1955, and coded references to that date appear in Danse Macabre, Supernatural, and the Remember music video.

Avalon

Thunska Pansittivorakul’s new autobiographical documentary Avalon (แดนศักดิ์สิทธิ์) begins with a full-frontal sex scene between Thunska and his then-boyfriend Harit Srikhao. (Harit’s exhibition Whitewash was censored by the military in 2017.) Around half of Avalon’s one-hour running time consists of sex tapes recorded at different stages of Thunska and Harit’s relationship. The film received its world premiere on 28th October at the DOK Leipzig film festival in Germany.

Avalon also includes scenes filmed at a disused swimming pool in a housing project abandoned after Thailand’s 2011 floods. The film charts the disintegration of Thunska and Harit’s relationship, and the empty pool evokes Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Les diaboliques (‘the devils’). (The title sequences of Avalon and Les diaboliques both feature lingering shots of murky, stagnant water.)

Santikhiri Sonata

Thunska Pansittivorakul’s Santikhiri Sonata (สันติคีรี โซนาตา) was filmed in Thailand’s northernmost province, Chiang Rai, in the villages of Mae Salong and Hin Taek, whose names were changed by the government to draw a line under their sinister legacies. Mae Salong was renamed Santikhiri (‘hill of peace’), and Hin Taek became Thoet Thai (‘honour Thailand’), though they were sites of anti-communist violence during the Cold War. Santikhiri Sonata examines this violent heritage, demonstrating that despite their new names they remain silent witnesses to their traumatic past. They are, to use Dutch artist Armando’s term, ‘guilty landscapes’.

Similarly, Apichatpong Weerasethakul made several films in and around the village of Nabua, a location with an equally loaded history to that of Santikhiri, as its inhabitants were among the first victims of the anti-communist purge. In his short film A Letter to Uncle Boonmee (จดหมายถงลงบญม), a narrator recalls the area’s past: “Soldiers once occupied this place. They killed and tortured the villagers and forced them to flee to the jungle.”

Thailand’s suppression of communist insurgents was a guerrilla war lasting almost two decades. Anocha Suwichakornpong’s film By the Time It Gets Dark (ดาวคะนอง) describes how suspected communists were “thrown out of helicopters or set on fire in oil barrels.” Thunska alludes to these ‘red barrel killings’ in Santikhiri Sonata with a caption describing the elimination of subversives by “pushing them into a ‘CXII Red Suitcase’”. The Roman numerals refer to Thailand’s notorious lèse-majesté law, article 112 of the criminal code, which Thunska addressed in Homogeneous, Empty Time (สุญกาล).

Santikhiri Sonata also comments on more recent cases of state violence. Military cadet Phakhapong Tanyakan died during a training exercise in 2017, and his internal organs were removed to prevent an autopsy determining his cause of death. The central characters in Santikhiri Sonata discuss a cadet “whose insides, heart, and brain were all taken out of his body”. Similarly, a young human-rights activist, Chaiyaphum Pasae, was killed at a military checkpoint in 2017, and the film describes the circumstances of his death: “eyewitnesses say he was unarmed, and was beaten before being shot.” More provocatively, a song composed by King Rama IX, Echo (แว่ว), is repurposed as an ode to Chaiyaphum’s memory.

The director’s trademark sexual content is also present. In fact, Santikhiri Sonata is his most explicit film since Reincarnate (จุติ). It includes a montage of clips from gay porn videos, progressing from solo scenes to hardcore material, accompanied by Jaran Manopet’s folk song บ้านบนดอย (‘home on the hillside’). (The song ends with the words “overflowing kindness” as a porn star reaches his climax.) This combination of homoerotic imagery and political critique is a consistent feature of Thunska’s films, including This Area Is Under Quarantine (บริเวณนี้อยู่ภายใต้การกักกัน), The Terrorists (ผู้ก่อการร้าย), and Supernatural (เหนือธรรมชาติ).

Another trait in Thunska’s work is the blurring of boundaries between documentary, drama, and autobiography. His films are densely layered, their fictional narratives juxtaposed with archive footage, historical captions, and on-camera interventions by the director. Santikhiri Sonata, with its metatextual behind-the-scenes sequences, is his most structurally sophisticated film to date.

Queer Film Festival

This month, Bangkok's Museum Siam is hosting a Queer Film Festival. There will be free outdoor screenings of contemporary gay films on 12th, 18th, and 25th August. The event begins with Queer DigiThaized, five short films shot on digital video, including Thunska Pansittivorakul's Vous vous souviens de moi? (ในนฝนตกลงมาเนสส). The five films were selected by Nontawat Numbenchapol, director of Boundary (ฟ้าต่ำแผ่นดินสูง), who will take part in a post-screening discussion with Tanwarin Sukkhapisit, director of Insects in the Backyard (อินเซค อินเดอะ แบ็คยาร์ด).

लिंगम् Project 2018

लिंगम् Project 2018 is a collaboration between three Thai artists - Kornkrit Jianpinidnan, Santiphap Inkong-ngam, and Thunska Pansittivorakul - who have each made a short video and produced a book of photographs. The artists took part in a Q&A at Asian Culture Station in Chiang Mai on 18th May.

Kornkrit's monochrome, square images, titled join #dark and resembling Robert Mapplethorpe's Polaroids, are printed on a series of unbound white cards. Santiphap directed a music video, Mountain Wind; Whispering to a Wall (ลมภูเขา; กระซิบกับผนังปูน), with stills by Apichat Yimyong. Thunska's video, A Season in Hell (ฤดูกาลในนรก), includes footage from his upcoming feature film Santikhiri Sonata (สันติคีรี โซนาตา).

लिंगम्, or 'linga', is the Sanskrit term for a phallic symbol (representing the Hindu god Shiva), and Thunska takes this literally in his book Quasi una fantasia (อัศจรรย์), which includes some hardcore imagery. There are also stills from his films Supernatural (เหนือธรรมชาติ), The Terrorists (ผู้ก่อการร้าย), and The Altar (หมู่บูชา).

The three artists' books - join #dark, Mountain Wind, and Quasi una fantasia - are available in a signed and numbered set. (My copy is number 10.) The package costs ฿800, which is remarkable given that the edition is limited to only thirty copies.

The DocumentaryFilm Makers Handbook

The Documentary Film Makers Handbook, by Genevieve Jolliffe and Andrew Zinnes, was first published in 2006. It includes interviews with more than a hundred documentary directors, including Thunska Pansittivorakul. Thunska discusses film censorship in Thailand: "We operate everything under a moral frame. This means anything that doesn't fit within our culture, would not be accepted by society."

This Area Is Under Quarantine

Thunska Pansittivorakul's latest short film is a new version of his feature-length documentary This Area Is Under Quarantine (บริเวณนี้อยู่ภายใต้การกักกัน), released on the Vimeo website today. (This is one of several films Thunska has uploaded to Vimeo, including Liquid and a revised version of Reincarnate.)

After the title sequence, the new version of This Area Is Under Quarantine consists of the original version played at high speed (even faster than the sex scene in A Clockwork Orange), with a "CENSORED" card obscuring most of the frame. Ironically, the only 'uncensored' segment is the most controversial part: footage of the Tak Bai incident, in which seventy-eight protesters died of suffocation after they were detained by the army.

The Tak Bai footage came from a VCD issued by the journal Same Sky (ฟ้าเดียวกน), as Thunska told me in an interview earlier this year: "I got footage from the VCD, and I interviewed some guys in the movie. But because at that time I never knew anything about politics, I asked them. The southern politics is different, so I shot them because one of them is Isaan and one of them is southern."

The new version, like the original, is dedicated to the Tak Bai victims and - more contentiously - to Mahmoud Asgari and Ayaz Marhoni, who were hanged in Iran in 2005. The two teenagers have been regarded as gay martyrs, executed for their sexuality, though the truth may be more complex: human rights organisations have since reported that they were convicted of raping a thirteen-year-old boy.

Thunska's new film Homogeneous, Empty Time (สุญกาล) deals with the conflict in southern Thailand in more depth. His other feature films are Voodoo Girls (หัวใจต้องสาป), Happy Berry (สวรรค์สุดเอื้อม), Reincarnate (จุติ), The Terrorists (ผู้ก่อการร้าย), Supernatural (เหนือธรรมชาติ), and sPACEtIME (กาลอวกาศ).

Homogeneous, Empty Time

Thunska Pansittivorakul’s latest film is the feature-length documentary Homogeneous, Empty Time (สุญกาล), co-directed with Harit Srikhao. The title is a phrase from Walter Benjamin’s essay On the Concept of History (Über den Begriff der Geschichte), though it was later used by Benedict Anderson in Imagined Communities, his analysis of the construction of national identity and nationalism. The film, which is dedicated to Anderson, explores the roots of the nationalistic fervour that has taken hold in Thailand.

In his earlier films, Thunska has criticised individual politicians and generals, though Homogeneous, Empty Time questions the country's entire national ideology (the tripartite motto ‘nation, religion, monarchy’) and the institutions that reinforce it. The film shows how nationalism and social order are sustained by pro-military and royalist media, with clips from Prime Minister and junta leader Prayut Chan-o-cha’s propaganda song Returning Happiness to the Thai Kingdom (คืนความสุขให้ประเทศไทย), and a ‘Bike for Dad’ promotional video.

This is an ambitious film, examining the spread and impact of nationalism across Thai society and throughout the country. Thunska and Harit interview school pupils, Buddhist and Muslim worshippers, Village Scouts, and military cadets, revealing how nationalistic values are inculcated, absorbed, and passed from generation to generation. A Village Scout member expresses his love for the King, and a tear trickles down his cheek. Cadets say they’re keen to fight against Thailand’s enemies, but they’re speechless when asked who the enemies are. (It’s been thirty years since Thailand’s military has been involved in significant combat, yet its budget continues to rise.)

The interviews are juxtaposed with news footage revealing the ultimate consequences of unquestioning nationalism. Village Scouts vow to defend the monarchy. Cut to: scenes from the 6th October 1976 massacre, when the Village Scouts militia groups joined the army in attacking students at Thammasat University. Later, cadets pledge their loyalty to the country. Cut to: photographs of hazing rituals in which cadets are beaten and abused. (One interviewee says: “There is often news of soldiers getting beaten to death during training.” This is particularly topical, as army cadet Phakhapong Tanyakan died last month, and his internal organs were secretly removed before his body was returned to his family.)

Homogeneous, Empty Time is a brave and important film, directed while the country is being ruled by a military junta following the 2014 coup. Criticism of the government is prohibited, and the lèse-majesté law criminalises dissent. Also, according to Truth on Trial in Thailand, lèse-majesté is interpreted so broadly that it has included “cases which, increasingly abstract, referred to the broad power structures of Thai society.” It’s these power structures that the film examines.

Aside from the social and political content, the cinematography is also impressive. There are stunning drone shots of Bangkok’s Democracy Monument that open and close the film. (A photograph of Democracy Monument also appears at the end of Thunska’s short film KI SS.) Thunska’s trademark sexual content is present in one sequence, in which an ejaculation is filmed in extreme close-up, rendered semi-abstract by the macro photography.

There are also moments that border on absurdity. At a Christian high school, a plastic baby Jesus sits on a stack of monoblok chairs, and pupils line up to kiss its foot. A Village Scout leader, wearing the world’s brightest yellow shirt, boasts of his meeting with the King: “I peeled a coconut for the King... And the King ate my coconut! A round of applause for me, please!”

The film has not been released in Thailand, and an invitation-only screening was cancelled following the censorship of Harit’s Whitewash exhibition. As Thunska told me in an interview this year: “In 2009, my film This Area Is Under Quarantine [บริเวณนี้อยู่ภายใต้การกักกัน] was banned from the World Film Festival. Since then, I decided not to show any of my films in Thailand.” Nevertheless, the filmmakers have exercised a degree of caution, by self-censoring one line: an actor from The Wolf Bride (เจ้าสาวหมาป่า) says “in the story there are XXXXXXXXXXX and XXXXXXXXXXXX”, and the sound is muted, as it was in Paradoxocracy (ประชาธิป′ไทย).

King Bhumibol passed away in 2016, though Homogeneous, Empty Time was made before he died, and his image appears throughout the film, on billboards and public buildings. Thunska explained this to me earlier in the year: “because it’s a documentary, if someone questions me, I can tell them, ‘You can see something like that everywhere.’ But when I make fiction, if I put that picture in the film, I thought I could get some problems.” The King’s portraits are indeed ubiquitous in Thailand, though royal iconography has previously been cut from Soi Cowboy (ซอยคาวบอย) and Boundary (ฟ้าต่ำแผ่นดินสูง).

Thunska and Harit also co-directed the documentary sPACEtIME (กาลอวกาศ). Thunska’s previous feature films are Voodoo Girls (หัวใจต้องสาป), Happy Berry (สวรรค์สุดเอื้อม), This Area Is Under Quarantine, Reincarnate (จุติ), The Terrorists (ผู้ก่อการร้าย), and Supernatural (เหนือธรรมชาติ).

Liquid

Liquid, a new short film by Thunska Pansittivorakul, is a condensed version of the first chapter of his feature film Supernatural (เหนือธรรมชาติ), in which two young men caress each other in a bathtub. The scene is filmed impressionistically, with their bodies shown in close-up. Liquid is one of several films (including a revised version of Reincarnate) that Thunska has released on the Vimeo website.

The rhythm is faster than the original sequence in Supernatural, with jump cuts and rapid editing, and the music is more romantic (whereas, in Supernatural, there were monks chanting on the soundtrack). It's also less explicit: the flash of nudity in the Supernatural version has been removed.

Thunska's short film 2060 is also an extract from Supernatural. His other feature films are Voodoo Girls (หัวใจต้องสาป); Happy Berry (สวรรค์สุดเอื้อม); This Area Is Under Quarantine (บริเวณนี้อยู่ภายใต้การกักกัน); Reincarnate (จุติ); The Terrorists (ผู้ก่อการร้าย); sPACEtIME (กาลอวกาศ); and Homogeneous, Empty Time (สุญกาล).

Reincarnate

Thunska Pansittivorakul has produced a new version of his 2010 semi-documentary film, Reincarnate (จุติ). The 2017 version, which has brighter and more vivid colour grading, was released on the Vimeo website yesterday.

For the new version, Thunska has added a haze effect in some of the point-of-view shots of the leading actor, Panuwat Wisessiri. At times, this effect represents the director’s voyeuristic gaze, though later it suggests the presence of the daughter that Panuwat describes giving birth to, as if her shadow were following him.

One shot in the new version is shorter than in the original: when Panuwat says “I think I am pregnant”, the film now cuts immediately to the montage sequence symbolising his labour pains. There is also a minor change to the soundtrack: the sound of crickets chirping has been added to one sequence.

The most substantial addition is a new sequence — actually an out-take from Thunska’s more recent film, sPACEtIME (กาล-อวกาศ) — of Nathapong Kaewprom naked in a swimming pool, filmed underwater. This scene repeats a motif from elsewhere in Reincarnate and Thunska’s earlier short film, Unseen Bangkok (มหัศจรรย์กรุงเทพ): the director grabbing a particular part of his actor’s anatomy.