Contemporary Thai Political Trilogy

Vichart Somkaew’s new documentary Contemporary Thai Political Trilogy (ไตรภาคการเมืองร่วมสมัยไทย) is an hour-long portmanteau project combining three of his recent short films: Cremation Ceremony (ประวัติย่อของบางสิ่งที่หายไป), 112 News from Heaven, and The Letter from Silence (จดหมายจากความเงียบ). The anthology’s structure, divided into three segments, reflects what the director sees as the three eras of modern Thai politics: 1932–1957 (the abolition of absolute monarchy and the establishment of democratic institutions), 1957–1992 (prolonged military dictatorship, culminating in the ‘Black May’ crackdown), and 1992 to the present day (liberal reforms, followed by political polarisation).

Contemporary Thai Political Trilogy begins with Vichart’s most directly political film, Cremation Ceremony, in which the faces of three politicians stare impassively at the viewer. The three men—Anutin Charnvirakul, former health minister; Abhisit Vejjajiva, former prime minister; and former army chief Prayut Chan-o-cha—are responsible for three tragic injustices. Anutin oversaw the Thai government’s initially sluggish response to the coronavirus pandemic. Abhisit authorised the shooting of red-shirt protesters in 2010. Prayut led the 2014 coup, and his military government revived lèse-majesté prosecutions.

Vichart sets fire to photographs of the three men, their faces distorting as the photographic paper burns. There is no sound except the crackling of the flame. This symbolic ritual is a reminder of the deaths of Covid victims, red-shirt protesters, and political dissidents, though it’s also a metaphorical act of retribution, as the three politicians have faced no consequences for their actions. (Anutin is a billionaire, Abhisit was cleared of all charges, and Prayut acted with total impunity.)

While the three portraits burn slowly, captions mourn the forgotten victims: red-shirts shot while sheltering in Wat Pathum Wanaram, political prisoners charged under article 112, and victims of the coronavirus. (Cremation Ceremony originally ended on a hopeful note with a final caption explaining that pro-democracy parties had “emerged victorious” in last year’s election. But after the film’s release, the progressive Move Forward Party was excluded from the governing coalition, and the optimistic caption has now been removed.)

Contemporary Thai Political Trilogy continues with 112 News from Heaven, which juxtaposes news that’s broadcast on all channels every day with news that goes unreported by mainstream outlets. On the soundtrack, an announcer reads a bulletin of royal news, a daily staple of Thai television and radio. This is contrasted with captions documenting news of “victims of the Thai state”.

The Thai monarchy is often associated with the sky, symbolising the high reverence in which it is traditionally held, and lèse-majesté is article 112 of the criminal code, hence the title 112 News from Heaven. The film’s captions feature 112 headlines from a 112-day period, detailing the custodial sentences given to those convicted of lèse-majesté and the bail denied to those awaiting trial.

After its litany of legal persecution, 112 News from Heaven ends with a clip from an impromptu TV interview Rama X gave during a walkabout. Asked for his message to pro-democracy protesters, the King offers words of reassurance: “We love them all the same.” Viewers are left to interpret this in the context of the film they have just seen.

Contemporary Thai Political Trilogy’s final segment is The Letter from Silence, a series of extracts from letters by lawyer and pro-democracy campaigner Arnon Nampa to his family, written while he serves a prison sentence for lèse-majesté. Arnon’s letters are often heartbreaking, as he faces the prospect of many years in jail if convicted on further charges, separated from his wife and their two young children.

In fact, Arnon is one of the common threads linking each Contemporary Thai Political Trilogy episode. Cremation Ceremony summarises his 3rd August 2020 speech calling for reform of the monarchy, 112 News from Heaven documents the legal process following his arrest, and The Letter from Silence quotes from his prison letters.

The Letter from Silence

Vichart Somkaew’s latest short film The Letter from Silence (จดหมายจากความเงียบ) features extracts from letters by lawyer and pro-democracy campaigner Arnon Nampa to his family, written while he serves a prison sentence for lèse-majesté. Arnon’s letters are often heartbreaking, as he faces the prospect of many years in jail if convicted on further charges, separated from his wife and their two young children.

The film is silent, except for ambient sounds recorded at night in a quiet neighbourhood. It avoids the explanatory captions of Vichart’s previous films 112 News from Heaven and Cremation Ceremony (ประวัติย่อของบางสิ่งที่หายไป), instead letting Arnon’s words stand alone. This makes the film all the more powerful, and emphasises the hopelessness of Arnon’s situation.

The Letter from Silence’s focus on Arnon’s letters themselves has echoes of another short film with a similar title, Prap Boonpan’s Letter from the Silence (จดหมายจากความเงียบ). Prap’s film documented the suicide note left by Nuamthong Praiwan, who had protested against the 2006 coup by crashing his taxi into a tank.

The Letter from Silence, which is dedicated to Arnon and other political prisoners, was shown as part of this year’s online Short Film Marathon (หนังสั้นมาราธอน) on 5th November. Vichart has announced plans to combine it with 112 News from Heaven and Cremation Ceremony into an hour-long portmanteau film, Contemporary Thai Political Trilogy. Arnon’s letters have been translated into English by the Article 112 Project website.

Arnon led a protest at Democracy Monument on 3rd August 2020, one of the first rallies calling for reform of the monarchy. The speech he delivered at that event was published as The Monarchy and Thai Society (สถาบันพระมหากษัตริย์กับสังคมไทย). He has also written a book of poetry, เหมือนบอดใบ้ไพร่ฟ้ามาสุดทาง (‘we subjects, as if mute and blind, have found ourselves at the end of the line’). A documentary about him, We Need to Talk About อานนท์ (‘we need to talk about Arnon’), was screened at Phatthalung Micro Cinema earlier this year.

Short Film Day

The Thai Film Archive at Salaya will celebrate Short Film Day on 28th December with screenings of Lumière! and Hugo. Short Film Day marks the date in 1895 when the Lumière brothers showed a programme of short films to customers at a café in Paris.

Lumière! is a compilation of 114 meticulously restored short films by the Lumière brothers. Narrated by Thierry Frémaux, it’s similar to the earlier documentary The Lumière Brothers’ First Films, a compilation of eighty-five Lumière films narrated by Bertrand Tavernier. (In both compilations, the short films are arranged thematically rather than chronologically.) Lumière! was previously shown at the Alliance Française in Bangkok in 2018.

Hugo was Martin Scorsese’s first film in 3D, and also his first film aimed specifically at a family audience. It’s nominally the story of Hugo Cabret, a Parisian orphan, but its real focus is filmmaker Georges Méliès, played by Ben Kingsley. Méliès sells toys at a small booth, though Hugo discovers his past as a cinema pioneer.

Hugo also has parallels with Scorsese’s own life. Like the title character, Scorsese was captivated by the cinema as a child, and he rehabilitated the reputation of director Michael Powell, just as Hugo brings Méliès back into the limelight.

The Film Archive will also show Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard, on 6th December. This classic Hollywood-on-Hollywood satire has been shown previously at Bangkok Screening Room, and at Smalls in Bangkok.

House Samyan

House Samyan in Bangkok will show two classic French films at the end of this month, with further screenings continuing into December. François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (Les quatre cents coups) and Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless (À bout de souffle) are both among the greatest films ever made, and cornerstones of the French New Wave (la nouvelle vague)

The 400 Blows opens on 28th November, followed by Breathless on the following day. Both films are being screened in a double bill on 30th November; and on 1st, 5th, and 7th December.

The 400 Blows was screened at the Thai Film Archive in Salaya earlier this year and in 2018. It has also been shown several times previously in Bangkok: at the Prince Theatre, at Bangkok Screening Room (to launch their BKKSR Cinémathèque programme), and at the Alliance Française (introduced by its leading actor, Jean-Pierre Léaud).

Breathless, one of the most influential films ever made, was shown in Chiang Mai and Bangkok last year. It was also shown in Bangkok in 16mm in 2010, and at an open-air screening in 2011.

2475Dawn of Revolution

When the animation 2475 Dawn of Revolution (๒๔๗๕ รุ่งอรุณแห่งการปฏิวัติ) was released earlier this year, Prachatai reported that the film’s production company, Nakraphiwat, was paid almost ฿4 million by the army for other projects between 2020 and 2022. Yesterday, Prachatai revealed that it had received a defamation lawsuit from Nakraphiwat, alleging that Prachatai’s online article falsely implied that 2475 had been funded by the military.

The film’s credits include a long list of individual donors, some of whom gave as little as ฿100 each, though the bulk of the budget was provided anonymously. 2475 (directed by Wivat Jirotgul) tells the story of the 1932 coup from a royalist-nationalist perspective, though its makers are clearly sensitive to the suggestion that the film is an example of military propaganda.

The lawsuit was filed on 11th October, and there will be a preliminary hearing at the Criminal Court in Bangkok on 9th December. Prachatai’s report—headlined “พบเจ้าของแอนิเมชัน ‘2475 Dawn of Revolution’ รับโครงการทำสื่อแบบวิธีเฉพาะเจาะจง ‘กองทัพบก’ 11 สัญญา” (‘the maker of 2475 Dawn of Revolution took on 11 media contracts from the army’)—which was published on 15th March, is still online.

16th World Film Festival of Bangkok

The 16th World Film Festival of Bangkok (เทศกาลภาพยนตร์โลกแห่งกรุงเทพฯ ครั้งที่ 16) begins on 7th November with the Thai premiere of Sivaroj Kongsakul’s new film Regretfully at Dawn (อรุณกาล). The festival will run until 17th November.

Kriengsak Silakong, the festival’s founder, sadly died in 2022, and the Lotus award for lifetime achievement was renamed in his honour. Like the 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th, and 15th festivals, this year’s event will take place at CentralWorld’s SF World cinema. (The 6th, 7th, and 8th festivals were held at Paragon Cineplex; the 5th, 9th, and 10th took place at Esplanade Cineplex.)

Regretfully at Dawn is one of several recent Thai films whose protagonists are retired soldiers nearing the end of their lives. Sivaroj’s film includes flashbacks in which the main character, an elderly man called Yong (played by Caravan band-member Surachai Jantimathawn), is haunted by his time in the military. The time frame is not specified, though judging by Yong’s age, he likely fought against the Communist insurgency in the 1970s.

Taiki Sakpisit’s The Edge of Daybreak (พญาโศกพิโยคค่ำ) and Jakrawal Nilthamrong’s Anatomy of Time (เวลา) also feature protagonists who cannot escape the memories of their anti-Communist past, though Yong is a more sympathetic figure than the dying men in Taiki and Jakrawal’s films. Similarly, the title character in Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (ลุงบุญมีระลึกชาติ) confesses that he “killed too many communists”, though the film doesn’t include flashbacks to that period of Boonmee’s life.

The 100 Best Movies of All Time

The 100 Best Movies of All Time, a magazine published by A360 Media earlier this year, lists 100 classic films, though only six are foreign-language titles. The list is very mainstream, which is hardly surprising as A360 is a rebranding of American Media, the publisher of the National Enquirer and other supermarket tabloids. The Godfather is at the top of the list.

Bangkok Art Biennale 2024

After Beyond Bliss (สุขสะพรั่ง พลังอาร์ต) in 2018, Escape Routes (ศิลป์สร้าง ทางสุข) in 2020, and Chaos:Calm (โกลาหล:สงบสุข) in 2022, the fourth Bangkok Art Biennale’s theme is Nurture Gaia (รักษา กายา). As in previous years, the Biennale (บางกอก อาร์ต เบียนนาเล่) is being held at multiple venues around the city, from galleries to temples. The event opened on 24th October, and runs until 25th February next year.

Taiki Sakpisit’s video installation Dream Sequence (ฝันทิพย์), showing at Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, consists of static shots filmed at the house in Paris where Pridi Banomyong lived during his years in exile from Thailand until his death in 1983. The house was purchased this year by Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, founder of the Future Forward party, cementing the property as a symbol of progressive politics thwarted by the establishment, and the Biennale catalogue describes Tiaki’s video as “a kaleidoscopic feast of delusion, desperation, oppression, and perpetual nightmares rooted in Thailand’s flawed democracy.”

Dispatch

Dispatch, an exhibition of photographs by R. Scott Davis, opened at Bangkok Art and Culture Centre on 1st November, and runs until 1st December. Davis photographed EMS workers as they attended emergency calls and accidents, and human specimens at Bangkok’s Central Institute of Forensic Science.

Tsurisaki Kiyotaka also photographed fatal accidents and crime scenes in Bangkok, though his images focus on the victims rather than the EMS staff. The Netflix series Bangkok Breaking (มหานครเมืองลวง) dramatised the competition between the city’s various EMS teams.

War

Bob Woodward’s most recent books on presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden all have one-word titles: Fear, Rage, Peril, and now War. Woodward covered the first few months of the Biden administration in Peril, and War—released earlier this month—is his account of Biden’s responses to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Isreal’s war with Gaza. (He previously wrote a similar book on Barack Obama’s foreign policy, Obama’s Wars.)

Woodward’s reporting is always extraordinary—his and Carl Bernstein’s investigation into the Watergate scandal ultimately led to Richard Nixon’s resignation—but War is a remarkable book. Almost every chapter features direct quotes from secure telephone calls and private meetings between Biden, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and others.

The US intelligence services were aware of Putin’s plan to attack Ukraine, and tried several times to convince Zelensky that it would happen. Woodward reports that Secretary of State Anthony Blinken told a skeptical Zelensky: “we believe there is a very high risk that the Russians will re-invade your country.” Zelensky was equally dismissive when CIA director Bill Burns reiterated: “There is going to be a significant invasion of your country”. Even a week before the war began, Zelensky remained unconvinced when Vice President Kamala Harris warned him: “You face a potentially imminent invasion.”

After the 7th October 2023 attack on Isreal by Hamas, Woodward shows how Biden and his most senior diplomats were focused on seeking assurances from Netanyahu that his retaliation would be proportionate. Netanyahu insisted that “not an ounce of anything will go into Gaza to help people,” though Blinken and Biden convinced him to reconsider. As the war dragged on, Biden sought to minimise any potential escalations, and Woodward quotes at length from a wide-ranging 4th April call between Biden and Netanyahu debating an invasion of Rafah, humanitarian aid, and the hostage crisis.

Biden’s private opinion of Netanyahu is clear from War. Woodward reports that Biden called the Israeli PM “a fucking liar,” and added for good measure: “That son of a bitch Bibi Netanyahu, he’s a bad guy. He’s a bad fucking guy!” But it was the book’s reporting about former president Donald Trump that made more headlines: Woodward quotes Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during Trump’s presidency, describing Trump as “fascist to the core.” (Trump’s former chief of staff John Kelly agreed with Milley in a recent New York Times interview.)

Woodward’s own assessment of Trump (who is suing him after the release of The Trump Tapes) is also unequivocal. He ended Rage by describing Trump as “the wrong man for the job” though he goes much further in War: “Donald Trump is not only the wrong man for the presidency, he is unfit to lead the country. Trump was far worse than Richard Nixon, the provably criminal president... Trump was the most reckless and impulsive president in American history and is demonstrating the very same character as a presidential candidate in 2024.”

Chris Whipple (The Fight of His Life) and Franklin Foer (The Last Politician) have also written books on the Biden White House. Simon Shuster’s The Showman is an account of Zelensky’s presidency and the war in Ukraine.

Lazada

Today the Criminal Court in Bangkok dismissed lèse-majesté charges in relation to online videos promoting the shopping website Lazada and Nara skincare. Lazada had posted a video on 5th May 2022 featuring Thidaporn Chaokhuvieng in a wheelchair, which led to allegations that it was mocking Princess Chulabhorn and disabled people in general. Another TikTok campaign showed images of Thidaporn alongside Kittikoon Thammakitirad, who was dressed similarly to Queen Sirikit.

The video campaign was surprisingly audacious for a mainstream, market-leading company like Lazada, as lèse-majesté is rigorously enforced and the references to Chulabhorn and Sirikit were unambiguous. Two days later, Srisuwan Janya (dubbed “Thailand’s complainer-in-chief” and mocked by comedian Udom Taephanich) filed lèse-majesté charges against Thidaporn and Kittikoon, amongst others, and they were arrested on 16th June 2022.

The Criminal Court’s decision today was as surprising as the initial Lazada campaign. Previously, lèse-majesté has been broadly interpreted, though today’s judgement followed the precise letter of the law (article 112 of the criminal code). Article 112 specifies that only defamation or insults directed at the King, Queen, heir to the throne, or regent are illegal, and the court today made clear that it would only prosecute lèse-majesté cases related to those named individuals.

Therefore, as Chulabhorn is not the heir to the throne, the case against Thidaporn was dismissed, perhaps setting a precedent that criticism of some royals is not a crime. The court also ruled that the imitation of Queen Sirikit was not disrespectful, and therefore dismissed the charges against Kittikoon. Again, this was unexpected, as it seems to permit the impersonation of a senior royal, even for commercial purposes.

ปฏิทินพระราชทาน(‘royal calendar’)

The Appeals Court yesterday upheld a two-year jail sentence for a man charged with lèse-majesté for distributing a calendar featuring a cartoon duck. The 2021 desk calendar, published by the Khana Ratsadon pro-democracy protest group, was titled ปฏิทินพระราชทาน (‘royal calendar’), in what the police claimed was an attempt to imitate an official royal publication.

The lèse-majesté charge related to five of the calendar’s cartoons, illustrating the months of January, March, April, May, and October. (The images cannot be reproduced or described, as this would constitute a repetition of the offence.) The man was arrested on New Year’s Eve 2020, and sentenced on 7th March 2023, though he was granted bail pending an appeal. He did not attend court yesterday, and was sentenced in absentia.

This is the third calendar to be confiscated by the Thai authorities in recent years. Wall calendars featuring photographs of former prime ministers Thaksin and Yingluck Shinawawtra were seized in 2018 and 2016.

Amazing Stoner Movie Fest 4

The fourth Amazing Stoner Movie Fest (มหัศจรรย์หนังผี ครั้งที่ 4) will take place at Cinema Oasis in Bangkok from 7th to 10th November, with simultaneous screenings both inside and outside the cinema. The festival’s Holy War Zone strand, part of its Shorts Programme (โปรแกรมหนังสั้น), includes two Thai films that feature archive footage of political unrest: Patipat Oakkharhaphunrat’s Black Hole and Warat Bureephakdee’s Crazy Soft Power Love. Both films are also included in this year’s Short Film Marathon (หนังสั้นมาราธอน).

Crazy Soft Power Love is a satire on the government’s soft power strategy, culminating in a Songkran water fight that escalates into a brawl, intercut with footage from the 6th October 1976 massacre. It was previously shown at Wildtype 2024.

Black Hole is a surreal black-and-white film in which a young son discovers that his father, a corrupt military officer, has sold citizens’ digital data for personal gain. The film links this family conflict with anti-military demonstrations in modern Thai history, with footage from 14th October 1973, 6th October 1976, and the student protests that began in 2020. It was also screened in the Tech Tales Youth programme at the 27th Thai Short Film and Video Festival (เทศกาลภาพยนตร์สั้น ครั้งที่ 27).

If the Air Has Memories

Walai Buppha’s new documentary If the Air Has Memories (หากอากาศมีความทรงจำ) will be screened today at TK Park in Narathiwat, as part of the Indelible Memory (ลบไม่เลือน) exhibition commemorating the Tak Bai incident, when seventy-eight protesters suffocated to death on 25th October 2004 while being transported to a military camp. Today is the twentieth anniversary of the tragedy.

After many years, seven former police and military officers were eventually charged with the murder of the Tak Bai protesters. However, no attempt has been made to enforce the arrest warrants issued for them, and at midnight tonight, the twenty-year statute of limitations will expire, meaning that they cannot be prosecuted.

Walai’s one-hour documentary is the first film to give a voice to the families of the Tak Bai victims. One relative, for example, says that “we kept quiet, memory never goes away. We’d just get used to it.” He also asks why the protesters were “loaded on the truck and stacked up” like animals.

If the Air Has Memories includes a photograph of Tak Bai protesters being transported, as does the new horror movie The Cursed Land (แดนสาป), directed by Panu Aree. A character in Panu’s film has newspaper clippings and printouts about Tak Bai on a wall in his house.

If the Air Has Memories is not yet complete, and is screening today under its working title. It was first shown on 20th October at Hope Space in Bangkok, under its eventual subtitle, 20 Years Later, as part of the 20 ปีตากใบ เราไม่ลืม (‘20 years of Tak Bai, we will never forget’) exhibition.

Its final release title, Along the Road, refers both to the route along which the victims were transported twenty years ago, and the ongoing journey of the relatives in coming to terms with what happened. This title is also a reference to the long-running legal campaign for justice and accountability, which is still, two decades later, a journey without an ending.

Short Film Marathon 28

The 28th Thai Short Film and Video Festival (เทศกาลภาพยนตร์สั้น ครั้งที่ 28) will take place from 14th to 22nd December at the Thai Film Archive in Salaya. As a prelude, all of the films submitted will be screened in alphabetical order in this year’s online Short Film Marathon (หนังสั้นมาราธอน), between 29th October and 4th December.

There were more than 600 submissions this year. A few of the highlights include Vichart Somkaew’s documentary 112 News from Heaven on 29th October (previously screened at Phatthalung Micro Cinema 0.5, the Doc Club Festival, and Vichart Movie Collection), Patipat Oakkharhaphunrat’s Black Hole on 31st October (previously shown at Tech Tales Youth), Pattanapong Khongsak’s Bad Taste (โอรส) also on 31st October, Warat Bureephakdee’s Crazy Soft Power Love on 1st November (previously screened at this year’s Wildtype), Teeraphan Ngowjeenanan’s Comedy Against Dictatorship also on 1st November, Vichart’s The Letter from Silence (จดหมายจากความเงียบ) on 5th November, Komtouch Napattaloong’s No Exorcism Film on 7th November (also previously screened at Wildtype), Vichart’s The Poem of the River (บทกวีแห่งสายน้ำ) on 8th November, and Jarut Wisawong’s Twas Partly Love, and Partly Fear (another Wildtype film) on 12th November.

Comedy Against Dictatorship features an interview with comedian Setthawut Chanpensuk, who was inspired by Rap Against Dictatorship to start a satirical stand-up comedy routine. (In one of his live sets, he takes a swig of an energy drink: “Let me have a sip of Red Bull. Ahhh, the taste of inequality.”) Bad Taste, tinted blue and set to the song Blue by Eiffel 65, features a judge who eats blue food from a dogfood bowl on the floor. The colour blue has a symbolic meaning in Thai politics, and the film implies the judge’s dog-like obedience.

Tak Bai Can’t Breathe

This week marks the 20th anniversary of the tragedy that took place at Tak Bai on 25th October 2004. More than 1,000 people protested outside Tak Bai’s Provincial Police Station, and police responded with water cannon, tear gas, and ultimately live ammunition, killing seven people. The surviving demonstrators were crammed into trucks and taken to Ingkhayuttha Borihan Fort military camp, though seventy-eight died of suffocation during the five-hour journey.

For almost two decades, successive governments have failed to bring the security forces to justice for the unlawful deaths at Tak Bai. Finally, earlier this year, just months before the twenty-year statute of limitations expires, seven former police and military officers were charged with the murder of the Tak Bai victims. However, there has been no attempt to enforce the arrest warrants issued for them. The court has announced that it will simply wait until midnight on 25th October for the seven men to present themselves voluntarily and, if they choose not to hand themselves in, the cases against them will be dropped.

The injustice of Tak Bai is heartbreaking, though sadly not unusual in Thailand. At the time of the Tak Bai incident, the government even prohibited footage of the event from being broadcast on television, though the journal Same Sky (ฟ้าเดียวกัน) distributed a Tak Bai VCD, ความจริงที่ตากใบ (‘the truth at Tak Bai’), in defiance of the ban. Tak Bai footage also appears in Teerawat Rujenatham’s short film Tak Bai, and in two documentaries: This Area Is Under Quarantine (บริเวณนี้อยู่ภายใต้การกักกัน) by Thunska Pansittivorakul, and 18 Years by Prempapat Plittapolkranpim. Walai Buppha’s documentary 20 Years Later features interviews with the families of the victims. (Thai Cinema Uncensored discusses the representation of Tak Bai by Thai filmmakers.)

Yesterday evening, performance artist Jakkrapan Sriwichai lay in seventy-eight different positions, his hands bound behind his back, at Tha Pae Gate in Chiang Mai (photographed by Prachatai). His performance, Tak Bai Can’t Breathe (ตากใบหายใจไม่ออก), memorialised the seventy-eight protesters who died of suffocation, and highlighted the urgent need to enforce the arrest warrants of the men accused of their murder.

Other events commemorating the twentieth anniversary include 20 ปีตากใบ เราไม่ลืม (‘20 years of Tak Bai, we will never forget’), #ตากใบต้องไม่เงียบ (‘Tak Bai must not be silenced’), Indelible Memory (ลบไม่เลือน), Takbai 20th Year Memorization (จดจำ 20 ปี ตากใบ), and Sol Bar Talk Special (คืนนี้ ไม่มีความยุติธรรม ให้ตากใบ). Previous exhibitions commemorating Tak Bai include Heard the Unheard (สดับเสียงเงียบ), รำลึก 19 ปี ตากใบ (‘remembering 19 years of Tak Bai’), Deep South (ลึกลงไป ใต้ชายแดน), Living Memories (ความทรงจำที่ยังเหลืออยู่), and Landscape of Unity the Indivisible (ทิวทัศน์แห่งความเป็นหนึ่งอันมิอาจแบ่งแยก).

Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Photophobia series incorporates photographs of the incident, as does the interactive installation Black Air by Pimpaka Towira, Akritchalerm Kalayanamitr, Koichi Shimizu, and Jakrawal Nilthamrong. Jehabdulloh Jehsorhoh’s Violence in Tak Bai (ความรุนแรงที่ตากใบ) installation features white tombstones marking the graves of each victim. The victims’ names are listed in two installations: Jakkhai Siributr’s 78 and Zakariya Amataya’s Report from a Partitioned Village (รายงานจากหมู่บ้านที่ถูกปิดล้อม).

20 Years Later

“Memory never goes away.”

This week marks the 20th anniversary of the tragedy that took place at Tak Bai on 25th October 2004. More than 1,000 people protested outside Tak Bai’s Provincial Police Station, and police responded with water cannon, tear gas, and ultimately live ammunition, killing seven people. The surviving demonstrators were crammed into trucks and taken to Ingkhayuttha Borihan Fort military camp, though seventy-eight died of suffocation during the five-hour journey.

For almost two decades, successive governments have failed to bring the security forces to justice for the unlawful deaths at Tak Bai. Finally, earlier this year, just months before the twenty-year statute of limitations expires, seven former police and military officers were charged with the murder of the Tak Bai victims. However, there has been no attempt to enforce the arrest warrants issued for them. The court has announced that it will simply wait until midnight on 25th October for the seven men to present themselves voluntarily and, if they choose not to hand themselves in, the cases against them will be dropped.

The injustice of Tak Bai is heartbreaking, though sadly not unusual in Thailand. At the time of the Tak Bai incident, the government even prohibited footage of the event from being broadcast on television, though the journal Same Sky (ฟ้าเดียวกัน) distributed a Tak Bai VCD, ความจริงที่ตากใบ (‘the truth at Tak Bai’), in defiance of the ban. Tak Bai footage also appears in Teerawat Rujenatham’s short film Tak Bai, and in two documentaries: This Area Is Under Quarantine (บริเวณนี้อยู่ภายใต้การกักกัน) by Thunska Pansittivorakul, and 18 Years by Prempapat Plittapolkranpim. (Thai Cinema Uncensored discusses the representation of Tak Bai by Thai filmmakers.)

Walai Buppha’s one-hour documentary 20 Years Later was originally scheduled to premiere on 19th October at TK Park in Narathiwat, as part of the Indelible Memory (ลบไม่เลือน) exhibition, but Teerawat’s short film was shown instead. 20 Years Later therefore had its first screening on 20th October at Hope Space in Bangkok, to an audience of around a dozen people, as part of the 20 ปีตากใบ เราไม่ลืม (‘20 years of Tak Bai, we will never forget’) exhibition.

Just as Teerawat’s film is the first to dramatise the events of Tak Bai, Walai’s is the first documentary to give a voice to the families of the victims. One relative, for example, says that “we kept quiet, memory never goes away. We’d just get used to it.” He also asks why the protesters were “loaded on the truck and stacked up” like animals.

The film is not yet complete—the version shown at Hope Space had no opening titles or end credits—and 20 Years Later will ultimately be its subtitle. Its final release title, Along the Road, refers both to the route along which the victims were transported twenty years ago, and the ongoing journey of the relatives in coming to terms with what happened. This title is also a reference to the long-running legal campaign for justice and accountability, which is still, two decades later, a journey without an ending. The film will also be shown on 4th November at TK Park in Narathiwat, under its working title, If the Air Has Memories (หากอากาศมีความทรงจำ).

A five-minute extract from 20 Years Later will be screened today at the Takbai 20th Year Memorization (จดจำ 20 ปี ตากใบ) event, hosted by the embassy of the Netherlands in Bangkok. Previous exhibitions commemorating Tak Bai include Heard the Unheard (สดับเสียงเงียบ), รำลึก 19 ปี ตากใบ (‘remembering 19 years of Tak Bai’), Deep South (ลึกลงไป ใต้ชายแดน), Living Memories (ความทรงจำที่ยังเหลืออยู่), and Landscape of Unity the Indivisible (ทิวทัศน์แห่งความเป็นหนึ่งอันมิอาจแบ่งแยก).

Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Photophobia series incorporates photographs of the incident, as does the interactive installation Black Air by Pimpaka Towira, Akritchalerm Kalayanamitr, Koichi Shimizu, and Jakrawal Nilthamrong. Jehabdulloh Jehsorhoh’s Violence in Tak Bai (ความรุนแรงที่ตากใบ) installation features white tombstones marking the graves of each victim. The victims’ names are listed in two installations: Jakkhai Siributr’s 78 and Zakariya Amataya’s Report from a Partitioned Village (รายงานจากหมู่บ้านที่ถูกปิดล้อม).

Central Park Five

Donald Trump is being sued for libel by the men known as the Central Park Five, whose convictions for rape and attempted murder were overturned in 2002. Their joint defamation lawsuit, filed yesterday, seeks at least $75,000 in damages.

The five men, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, Antron Brown, and Korey Wise, were accused of attacking Trisha Meili in New York’s Central Park on 19th April 1989. They made videotaped confessions, though they later pleaded not guilty. Their confessions were later deemed to have been coerced by the NYPD.

Speaking during a debate with fellow presidential candidate Kamala Harris on 10th September, in a live broadcast on ABC News, Trump incorrectly stated that the five men “pled guilty.” He also falsely claimed that they “killed a person ultimately”.

Trump was successfully sued for libel last year by E. Jean Carroll. However, Trump’s own libel suits—filed against Bill Maher, Timothy L. O’Brien, Michael Wolff, Bob Woodward, The New York Times, ABC, and CNN—have all been unsuccessful.

Cartooning the ASEAN Way of Non-Interference and Consensus

An exhibition of cartoons and comics, Cartooning the ASEAN Way of Non-Interference and Consensus (การ์ตูนภาพ วิถีอาเซียน หลักการการไม่แทรกแซงกิจการภายใน และหลักฉันทามติของประชาคมอาเซียน), opens today at SAE Junction in Bangkok and runs until 3rd November. The exhibition (and its spiral-bound catalogue) features Pornnipa Baoniaw’s comic Everything in the World Is Beautiful (ทุกอย่างในโลกล้วนสวยงาม), in which she compares countries in Southeast Asia to delicate flowers that need nurturing, though her story ends with a montage of fuzzy, black-and-white photographs showing military dominance in the region. The image representing Thailand is a photo of a tank on the streets of Bangkok when the 2006 coup took place.

Tak Bai

This week marks the 20th anniversary of the tragedy that took place at Tak Bai on 25th October 2004. More than 1,000 people protested outside Tak Bai’s Provincial Police Station, and police responded with water cannon, tear gas, and ultimately live ammunition, killing seven people. The surviving demonstrators were crammed into trucks and taken to Ingkhayuttha Borihan Fort military camp, though seventy-eight died of suffocation during the five-hour journey.

For almost two decades, successive governments have failed to bring the security forces to justice for the unlawful deaths at Tak Bai. Finally, earlier this year, just months before the twenty-year statute of limitations expires, seven former police and military officers were charged with the murder of the Tak Bai victims. However, there has been no attempt to enforce the arrest warrants issued for them. The court has announced that it will simply wait until midnight on 25th October for the seven men to present themselves voluntarily and, if they choose not to hand themselves in, the cases against them will be dropped.

The injustice of Tak Bai is heartbreaking, though sadly not unusual in Thailand. At the time of the Tak Bai incident, the government even prohibited footage of the event from being broadcast on television, though the journal Same Sky (ฟ้าเดียวกัน) distributed a Tak Bai VCD, ความจริงที่ตากใบ (‘the truth at Tak Bai’), in defiance of the ban. Tak Bai footage also appears in two documentaries: This Area Is Under Quarantine (บริเวณนี้อยู่ภายใต้การกักกัน) by Thunska Pansittivorakul, and 18 Years by Prempapat Plittapolkranpim. (Thai Cinema Uncensored discusses the representation of Tak Bai by Thai filmmakers.)

Teerawat Rujenatham’s powerful short film Tak Bai also includes Tak Bai footage, which is played during the end credits, and the final images are shots of the shrouded bodies of the victims. But what makes Teerawat’s film unique is that, for the first time, he dramatises the brutal events of that day. Actors playing Tak Bai protesters are shown being stacked on top of each other in the back of a truck, and we see one man in closeup as he struggles to breathe, emphasising the suffocating claustrophobia endured by all those held captive.

Teerawat’s film was shown on 19th October at TK Park in Narathiwat, as part of the Indelible Memory (ลบไม่เลือน) exhibition. According to one of the organisers of the event, the Tak Bai victims’ relatives in the audience found Teerawat’s film hard to watch. It was screened unexpectedly, instead of the advertised film, Walai Buppha’s documentary 20 Years Later. Tak Bai will be shown today at the Sukosol Hotel in Bangkok as part of the one-day #ตากใบต้องไม่เงียบ (‘Tak Bai must not be silenced’) event. It will also be shown at the embassy of the Netherlands in Bangkok tomorrow at the Takbai 20th Year Memorization: Fighting Against Impunity and Upholding the Rule of Law (จดจำ 20 ปี ตากใบ การต่อสู้กับการลอยนวลพ้นผิดและการธำรงไว้ซึ่งหลักนิติธรรม) event, at the Sol Bar Talk Special: Movie Night (คืนนี้ ไม่มีความยุติธรรม ให้ตากใบ) in Bangkok on 25th October, and at Patani Artspace on 25th October at the Genab 20 Tahun Peristiwa Tak Bai (‘20 years since Tak Bai’) event.

Tak Bai was previously screened at the Heard the Unheard (สดับเสียงเงียบ) exhibition last year. Other exhibitions commemorating Tak Bai include รำลึก 19 ปี ตากใบ (‘remembering 19 years of Tak Bai’), Deep South (ลึกลงไป ใต้ชายแดน), Living Memories (ความทรงจำที่ยังเหลืออยู่), Landscape of Unity the Indivisible (ทิวทัศน์แห่งความเป็นหนึ่งอันมิอาจแบ่งแยก), and 20 ปีตากใบ เราไม่ลืม (‘20 years of Tak Bai, we will never forget’).

Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Photophobia series incorporates photographs of the incident, as does the interactive installation Black Air by Pimpaka Towira, Akritchalerm Kalayanamitr, Koichi Shimizu, and Jakrawal Nilthamrong. Jehabdulloh Jehsorhoh’s Violence in Tak Bai (ความรุนแรงที่ตากใบ) installation features white tombstones marking the graves of each victim. The victims’ names are listed in Teerawat’s film, and in two installations: Jakkhai Siributr’s 78 and Zakariya Amataya’s Report from a Partitioned Village (รายงานจากหมู่บ้านที่ถูกปิดล้อม).

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 codirected the documentaries Homogeneous, Empty Time (สุญกาล) and sPACEtIME (กาลอวกาศ).

Resistant with Style

Resistant with Style [sic], an exhibition of t-shirts with political slogans from the Museum of Popular History’s collection, opens today at The Fort in Bangkok and runs until 23rd October. A similar collection of t-shirts was included in the Never Again exhibition in 2019.

Infringes

Chulayarnnon Siriphol’s Birth of Golden Snail (กำเนิดหอยทากทอง) will be shown at Bangkok Kunsthalle as part of Infringes, a programme of short films curated by Komtouch Napattaloong. Infringes begins on 23rd October, and runs until 22nd December.

Birth of Golden Snail was banned from the Thailand Biennale in 2018, and had its first public screening at the following year’s 30th Singapore International Film Festival. Its Thai premiere was at the 23rd Thai Short Film and Video Festival (เทศกาลภาพยนตร์สั้น ครั้งที่ 23). Chulayarnnon discussed the film in an interview for Thai Cinema Uncensored.

Bangsaen Film Festival 2024

The Bangsaen Film Festival will take place at Burapha University from 17th to 19th October. Aekaphong Saransate and Thanakrit Duangmaneeporn’s recent documentary Breaking the Cycle (อำนาจ ศรัทธา อนาคต) is the event’s opening film. The closing film is Ing K.’s Shakespeare Must Die (เชคสเปียร์ต้องตาย). Ing’s Dog God (คนกราบหมา) will be screened as part of the Lan Film strand on 18th October, and at the Thai Film Archive in Salaya on 25th January next year.

Breaking the Cycle is a groundbreaking fly-on-the-wall account of the rise and fall of the progressive Future Forward party. It has previously been shown at A.E.Y. Space in Songkla, and will be screened at the Thai Film Archive in Salaya later this month.

Banned in 2012, Shakespeare Must Die was released in Thailand only after Ing appealed to the Supreme Court. Dog God (the director’s cut of My Teacher Eats Biscuits) was also released earlier this year after a long ban, and Ing discussed both films in an interview for Thai Cinema Uncensored.

Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language

Amanda Montell’s aim in Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language is to encourage and empower women “to reclaim a language that for so long has been used against us.” Wordslut, published in 2019, is not the first book to show how gender-neutral terms have been transformed into sexist insults: Jane Mills did so in Womanwords thirty years previously. And the notion of reappropriating those pejoratives is older still: Germaine Greer attempted to reclaim the c-word, for example, in the early 1970s. Mills and Greer are not cited in Wordslut (and the book has no bibliography), though Montell did interview Deborah Cameron, author of Feminism and Linguistic Theory.

Montell begins her book by calling for “a language revolution”, though her ultimate conclusion is more measured. She argues that reappropriation is a gradual process: “A word doesn’t have to lose its negative meanings completely to be considered reclaimed. The path to reclamation is almost never that smooth... As long as the positive varieties of a word steadily become more common, more mainstream, by the time the next generation starts learning the language, they will pick up those meanings first.” The book’s title is itself a reappropriation of ‘slut’, though Montell doesn’t mention Katharine Whitehorn’s pioneering self-identification with that word sixty years ago.