Cinema: Stanley Kubrick

On Tuesday, an extensive collection of Stanley Kubrick memorabilia was auctioned in Torino, Italy, raising a total of €90,000. In its sale catalogue, the auction house describes the fifty-five lots as "the most important collection of material relating to the life and work of Stanley Kubrick ever offered at auction."

The auction included notes and other documents signed by Kubrick (such as an autographed Christmas card, similar to one I bought in 2006) and props from his later films. All items were given by Kubrick to Emilio D'Alessandro, his personal assistant, whose memoirs have been published in both Italian (Stanley Kubrick e me) and English (Stanley Kubrick and Me).

Bangkok Screening Room

Bangkok Screening Room’s outstanding programme of classics and Thai indie films continues in April and May, with Battleship Potemkin (Бронено́сец «Потёмкин»), Grand Hotel, His Girl Friday, and Insects in the Backyard (อินเซค อินเดอะ แบ็คยาร์ด). Bangkok’s repertory cinema scene is going from strength to strength, with Bangkok Screening Room, Cinema Winehouse, Jam Ciné Club, and the Friese-Greene Club joined by the new Cinema Oasis.

Sergei Eisenstein’s silent masterpiece Battleship Potemkin will be shown with a soundtrack composed by the Pet Shop Boys on 19th, 20th, 21st, 22nd, 24th, 25th, 26th, 29th April; and 1st, 3rd, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th, and 15th May. (It has previously been screened with a Thai score, at the Thai Film Archive.)

The previously banned Insects in the Backyard will be screened on 17th, 18th, 19th, 20th, 21st, 22nd, 25th, 27th, 28th, and 29th April; and 1st, 3rd, 5th, and 6th May. Director Tanwarin Sukkhapisit will take part in a Q&A on 28th April. When I interviewed her about the ban last year, she said that the censors “regarded this film as immoral, and hazardous to national security.” (It has also been shown at the World Film Festival of Bangkok, House Rama, the Eat Play Love Film Festival, Indie in Salaya, and Suan Sunandha Rajabhat University.)

Grand Hotel, in which the iconic Greta Garbo delivers her immortal line “I want to be alone”, is showing on 9th, 10th, 12th, 13th, 15th, 16th, 19th, 20th, 22nd, 23rd, 26th, and 27th May. Howard Hawks’ His Girl Friday, the definitive ‘screwball’ comedy, will be screened on 17th, 20th, 21st, 22nd, 24th, 26th, 28th, 29th April; and 2nd and 3rd May.

Cinema Winehouse

This week, Cinema Winehouse in Bangkok will be showing two of the greatest horror films ever made. Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece Psycho will be screened on 29th March, followed by George Romero’s zombie classic Night of the Living Dead on 31st March.

Jam Ciné Club

Jam Ciné Club will be showing two classics of world cinema in May: Carl Dreyer's silent masterpiece The Passion of Joan of Arc (La passion de Jeanne d'Arc) on 16th May, and Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries (Smultronstället) on 23rd May. The Passion of Joan of Arc will also be shown at the 5th Silent Film Festival in Thailand, which runs from 24th to 30th May.

I Am You

I Am You (ฉันคือเธอ), featuring artworks spanning Vasan Sitthiket's entire career, opened yesterday at BACC in Bangkok. The retrospective includes paintings, woodcut prints, large-scale installations, and a handful of videos (including There Must Be Something Happen). Some of his sketchbooks are also on show, and they include preparatory sketches for Blue October (ตุลาลัย) from 1978.

In Thailand, discussion of sensitive subjects is usually camouflaged by innuendo, and criticisms are made indirectly, to save face. Vasan, however, pulls no punches. Unusually for an established Thai artist, he is refreshingly blunt in his treatment of politics, sex, and religion. Hypocrisy and Ten Evil Scenes of Thai Politic [sic], for example, portray politicians as corrupt figures succumbing to the sins of lust and greed. In his frequent self-portraits (such as The Human Clay) he is not only nude but also tumescent. Vasan's depiction of monks has also caused controversy: Buddha Returns to Bangkok (พระพุทธเจ้าเสด็จกรุงเทพ 2535) depicted a monk raping a woman, and Obsessive Compulsive included paintings of monks having sex.

I Am You is a major retrospective, with more than 100 artworks, including Death for Democracy 1992 (ตายเพื่อประชาธิปไตย 2535), though Vasan's more controversial pieces are notable by their absence. The bilingual exhibition catalogue, which includes an essay by Iola Lenzi, is accompanied by The Literature Collection of Vasan Sitthiket (รวมวรรณกรรมคัดสรร), a book of Vasan's writings. The exhibition closes on 27th May.

Thai Film Archive

The Thai Film Archive in Salaya will show a double bill of 1950s French masterpieces on 25th March. François Truffaut’s New Wave classic The 400 Blows (Les quatre cents coups) will be followed by Henri-Georges Clouzot’s suspense thriller The Wages of Fear (Le salaire de la peur).

Cinema Winehouse

Cinema Winehouse in Bangkok (now under new management) will show three classic films this week. Metropolis and Casablanca will be screened on 22nd March, followed the next day by City of God (Cidade de Deus).

Fariña

Sales of Fariña have been suspended throughout Spain after a judge in Madrid granted an injunction on behalf of José Alfredo Bea Gondar, a former town mayor. Fariña was published in 2015, and had been the country's best-selling book before the ban was announced last month. The book, by Nacho Carretero, includes evidence that the mayor was involved in the importation of cocaine, a crime he was charged with in 1991. (He was later convicted of drug smuggling, though the verdict was overturned on a technicality.)

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."

Insects in the Backyard

Tanwarin Sukkhapisit's Insects in the Backyard (อินเซค อินเดอะ แบ็คยาร์ด) will be shown on 16th March at Suan Sunandha Rajabhat University in Bangkok. The film premiered at the World Film Festival of Bangkok in 2010, and was promptly banned. It was eventually released, with a single cut, late last year, and was shown last month at two events: the Eat Play Love Film Festival and Indie in Salaya.

ภาพยนตรานุกรมแห่งชาติ ฉบับที่ ๑

The Thai Film Archive published the first volume of its national filmography in 2014, in an edition of 1,000 copies. (The second volume was completed this year.) ภาพยนตรานุกรมแห่งชาติ ฉบับที่ ๑ พ.ศ. ๒๔๗๐-๒๔๙๙ features credits and plot synopses for every Thai film produced between 1927 and 1956, beginning with the country's first feature film, Double Luck (โชคสองชั้น). More than 500 movies are included, though only 2% of those films - including The King of the White Elephant (พระเจ้าช้างเผือก), restored by the Archive - survive today. One of the lost films, Criminal Without Sin (สุภาพบุรุษเสือไทย), revived the Thai film industry after World War II and led to twenty years of predominantly silent, 16mm film production.

Ghostly Desires

In Ghostly Desires: Queer Sexuality and Vernacular Buddhism in Contemporary Thai Cinema, published in 2016, Arnika Fuhrmann provides detailed analysis of selected Thai films in terms of "Buddhist sexual contemporaneity, a conception in which sexuality is not solely a matter of citizenship and rights, freedom and prohibition, or nationally defined social convention, but is vitally informed also by Buddhist-inflected forms of representation, practice, and affect." (This extract gives some indication of the book's academic writing style.) There are chapters on Nonzee Nimibutr's Nang Nak (นางนาก), Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Tropical Malady (สัตว์ประหลาด), and the video art of Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook. An epilogue discusses Thunska Pansittivorakul's This Area Is Under Quarantine (บริเวณนี้อยู่ภายใต้การกักกัน).

Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Apichatpong Weerasethakul, edited by James Quandt, is the first English-language book on Apichatpong. Published in 2009, it includes a comprehensive analysis of Apichatpong's feature films, interviews with the director, and an annotated filmography of his short films and features. The Thai Film Archive has published a pocketbook on Apichatpong, and Unknown Forces (สัตว์วิกาล) also includes a detailed filmography.

Beyond Phad Thai

Cinema Oasis, a new independent arthouse cinema, will open in Bangkok this month. The cinema was established by director Ing K. and her partner, photographer Manit Sriwanichpoom. (They also run the Kathmandu photography gallery.)

Ing directed the banned film Shakespeare Must Die (เชคสเปียร์ต้องตาย) and the documentary Censor Must Die (เซ็นเซอร์ต้องตาย). Interviewed in 2016 for the forthcoming book Thai Cinema Uncensored, she said: “We have to keep on pointing out this ridiculous fact: that filmmakers are the only people without a legal right to freedom of expression. The only people who must submit their work to government inspection before being allowed out into the world.”

The first event at Cinema Oasis will be Beyond Phad Thai (เผ็ดกว่าผัดไทย), a season of independent films, beginning with the docudrama Tongpan (ทองปาน). Tongpan will be screened on 17th, 21st, 23rd, 25th, 28th, and 31st March; and 4th, 7th, and 11th April. The Beyond Phad Thai season finishes on 12th April.

Crushing Dissent in Egypt

A woman who accused Egyptian security forces of kidnapping her daughter has been arrested and detained for fifteen days. Mona Mohamed has been charged with spreading false information, after she gave an interview to the BBC about her daughter’s disappearance. The programme, Crushing Dissent in Egypt, was broadcast on BBC World News on 24th February as part of the Our World series. A shorter version was shown on BBC2’s Newsnight on 21st February.

Freedumb

The Jim Jefferies stand-up show Freedumb was released on Netflix on 1st July 2016, and on CD and LP in 2017. The album's highlight comes when Jefferies explains how his extensive use of the c-word led to a loosening of the taboo against it on the American stand-up comedy circuit: "I say 'cunt' more than anyone else. I'm sort of known for saying 'cunt'. Seven years ago, when I did my first comedy special in America, the word 'cunt' was banned in every comedy club in America. And then I said 'cunt' loads on television and now people can say 'cunt' in comedy clubs. Basically, I'm the Rosa Parks of 'cunt'!"

Lahon W Bass

Lebanese comedian Hicham Haddad has been charged with defamation of a foreign leader after he joked about Mohammed bin Salman, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. On his television show Lahon W Bass, broadcast by LBCI on 2nd January, Haddad mocked the Crown Prince’s human rights record. The editor of ad-Diyar newspaper (الديار) is facing a similar charge: defamation of King Salman of Saudi Arabia, following an article he wrote last November.

After being charged with defamation on 26th January, Haddad appeared on his show four days later wearing a prison uniform. This led to further charges of mocking the judiciary. Marcel Ghanem, the presenter of another show on the same channel, is also facing criminal charges. An episode of Ghanem’s Kalam Ennas (كلام الناس) programme, broadcast on 16th November last year, featured a guest who criticised Lebanese President Michel Aoun, amongst other government figures.

Hard Mode

Comedian Louise Reay is being sued for defamation by her former husband after she joked about him in her Edinburgh Festival Fringe show last year. She performed her stand-up show, Hard Mode, at the Stand Comedy Club from 3rd to 27th August 2017.

La grande illusion

La grande illusion opens next week at Bangkok Screening Room. Jean Renoir's masterpiece will be shown on 27th and 28th February; and 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 7th, 10th, 11th, 13th, 16th, 20th, 23rd, and 24th March.

Indie in Salaya

The Thai Film Archive will be showing Tanwarin Sukkhapisit's film Insects in the Backyard (อินเซค อินเดอะ แบ็คยาร์ด) on 24th February, at an event called Indie in Salaya. The free screening will be followed by a Q&A with Tanwarin. The film was first shown at the World Film Festival of Bangkok in 2010, before being banned. It was finally given a theatrical release, albeit cut by three seconds, at House Rama last year. It was also shown last week at the Eat Play Love Film Festival.

Visual Vinyl

In 1977, the exhibition The Record as Artwork: From Futurism to Conceptual Art featured Germano Celant's collection of vinyl records produced by artists. (Celant is more famous for coining the term Arte Povera.) The exhibition catalogue includes black-and-white photos of 100 artists' records, and notes that this is "a whole area of artistic exploration that has not yet been sufficiently documented."

The subject was finally "sufficiently documented" by Visual Vinyl, a 2015 exhibition of records from the collection of Jan van Toorn. The catalogue of that exhibition, published last year, explores the intersection of records and visual art: album covers designed by artists, and artists' records. It features examples from the 1950s onwards, including early Dada and Fluxus records.

The book claims that "Visual Vinyl provides the first comprehensive overview of so-called "artists' covers" - record jackets with ground-breaking designs by contemporary artists." That's not strictly true, because the more comprehensive Art Record Covers was published first, but Visual Vinyl is unique because it also includes images of the records themselves (pictures discs and illustrated labels), box sets, and inserts.

The first illustrated album covers were designed by Alex Steinweiss in the 1940s. Richard Evans' book The Art of the Album Cover covers sleeve design from Steinweiss onwards. Nick de Ville's Album: Classic Sleeve Designs is the most comprehensive guide to the history of album covers.

One Stand-up Filmmaker

The Thai Film Archive launched a series of pocketbooks about contemporary Thai directors in 2013. The first in this ชั้นครู series was a book about Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and the third focussed on Pen-ek Ratanaruang. เป็นเอก รัตนเรือง: One Stand-up Filmmaker, published in 2014, includes a filmography of Pen-ek's feature-length and short films.

ตัวตนโดยตัวงาน

In 2013, the Thai Film Archive launched a series of pocketbooks about contemporary Thai directors. The first in this ชั้นครู series was a book about Apichatpong Weerasethakul (ตัวตนโดยตัวงาน: อภิชาติพงศ์ วีระเศรษฐกุล), which includes an interview partially translated into English.

เนื้อกับหนัง

This month, Thong Lor Art Space in Bangkok is screening a behind-the-scenes documentary about the making of Pen-ek Ratanaruang's new film, Samui Song (ไม่มีสมุยสำหรับเธอ), which is still on general release. เนื้อกับหนัง, directed by Santi Taepanich, opened on Sunday, and will be shown again on 17th, 18th, 24th, and 25th February.

Eat Play Love Film Festival

Tanwarin Sukkhapisit's Insects in the Backyard (อินเซค อินเดอะ แบ็คยาร์ด) will be shown tomorrow as the opening film of the Eat Play Love Film Festival. The event, organised by Bioscope magazine, will close a week later.

Appropriately, the screenings will be at ChangChui in Bangkok, where a restaurant also called Insects in the Backyard opened last year. (It's more than just a name, as the restaurant specialises in fried insects. They also have a take-away service: giant water beetles preserved in jars of olive oil.)

Insects in the Backyard premiered at the World Film Festival of Bangkok in 2010, and was promptly banned. It was eventually released, with a single cut, late last year, and will be shown at the Thai Film Archive on 24th February.

My Story

The Leica camera store at Gaysorn, a shopping mall in Bangkok, has opened a new photography gallery, and its inaugural exhibition is My Story. The exhibition features twenty-five Vietnam War images by photojournalist Nick Út, including his most famous work, The Terror of War, a photo of Kim Phúc, naked and screaming in pain after a napalm attack.

When The Terror of War was first published, on 9th June 1972, Phú personified the Vietnam War's thousands of civilian victims. Kevin Carter's photograph of a starving Sudanese child, and Nilufer Demir's picture of the Syrian refugee Alan Kurdi, are among the very few images with a similar impact. (Famously, Carter did not provide any assistance to the child he photographed, whereas Út took Phúc to hospital immediately after taking her picture.)

Út's photograph has been painted in blood by Kosit Juntaratip for his Allergic Realities exhibition, and photographer Manit Sriwanichpoom created a consumerist parody of it, This Bloodless War. My Story opened at the Leica Gallery on 8th February, and will close on 30th April. The exhibition is also being shown simultaneously in Singapore.

นโยบาย by ประชาชน(‘policy by the people’)

Internal Security Operations Command, a division of the Thai army, has filed a defamation lawsuit against Isma-ae Tae, a human rights activist. The charge relates to an episode of the Thai PBS television programme นโยบาย by ประชาชน (‘policy by the people’), broadcast on 5th February. In the programme, Isma-ae alleged that he had suffered physical abuse while held in detention by the army.

Isma-ae was detained in 2008, along with five other students, and was released without charge after nine days (two days beyond the maximum legal limit). He filed a civil claim for compensation, and was awarded ฿255,000 in damages for unlawful detention in 2011. (This was increased on appeal by a further ฿50,000 in 2016.)

Defamation is a criminal offence in Thailand, and libel charges are sometimes used to silence whistle-blowers and investigative journalists. In another case involving Thai PBS, a mining company sued a high school student who claimed that a river had been polluted. (The case was later dismissed.) The Nation newspaper was sued for a similar reason. (That case was settled out of court.) Also, a BBC correspondent faced a lawsuit after accusing a lawyer of fraud. (The plaintiff later dropped the case.)

Jan Dara: The Beginning (DVD)

Jan Dara: The Beginning (จัน ดารา ปฐมบท), directed by Pundhevanop Dhewakul, is a prequel to Nonzee Nimibutr's original Jan Dara (จัน ดารา). It stars Mario Maurer, who later starred in Pundhevanop's At the Gate of the Ghost (อุโมงค์ผาเมือง). (Both films demonstrate why Mario, a former model, is more famous for his looks than his acting skills.)

For its theatrical release in 2012, Jan Dara: The Beginning was cut to obtain an '18' rating, though a Thai senator started a brief moral panic by complaining that it was still too sexually explicit. (The film has plenty of topless nudity, which is rare in mainstream Thai cinema.) The Ministry of Culture responded by requiring cinemas to check audience-members' ID cards at the box office.

According to the Film and Video Act, age verification is only required for films rated '20', while the lower ratings ('13,' '15', and '18') are purely advisory. The exceptional (and illegal) ID-check was not widely enforced by cinemas, and the film had already been playing for a fortnight before the policy was confirmed. The DVD is uncut (almost half an hour longer), and rated '20'.

Doc Club Theater

Pen-ek Ratanaruang's documentary Paradoxocracy (ประชาธิป'ไทย) will be screened by Doc Club Theater at Warehouse 30 in Bangkok on 15th and 23rd February. It was last shown there a month ago, in the Cinema Journey 20 ปี ภาพยนตร์เป็นเอก season. It was also screened at Alliance Française last month as part of their Pen-Ek Retrospective.

When I interviewed Pen-ek in 2014, he emphasised how politically sensitive Paradoxocracy was: "half of the footage that we have, you can't show to people. You'll just have to bury it in the ground somewhere." His new film, Samui Song (ไม่มีสมุยสำหรับเธอ), is still on general release.

Peace TV

Peace TV, a television station operated by the red-shirt UDD movement, has had its broadcasting licence suspended yet again. The National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission announced that Peace TV must cease broadcasting for fifteen days, from midnight tonight.

The NBTC's ruling relates to three episodes of Democracy (ทิศทางประชาธิปไตย), broadcast on 4th, 10th, and 11th October 2017. The channel's licence was suspended for thirty days last year and in 2016. Its licence was revoked in 2015, though that ruling was overturned by the Administrative Court.