Poisoned

German artist Ottmar Horl is facing a police investigation following public complaints about his Nazi gnome, titled Poisoned. The golden gnome, which is performing a "Heil Hitler" salute, was on display in Nuremberg, though displaying Nazi iconography is illegal in Germany. Horl has previously shown similar gnomes in an exhibition titled Dance With The Devil, in Belgium and Italy.

Future Noir

Future Noir: The Making Of Blade Runner, by Paul M Sammon, has been updated to include details of The Final Cut, an additional version of the film Blade Runner released in 2007. The second edition of Sammon's book contains a 100-page chapter on the production of The Final Cut, listings of the various Blade Runner DVD releases, and an extensive interview with actor Harrison Ford.

Much of Sammon's primary research for the new edition was published by Empire magazine in August 2007. Sammon has been writing about Blade Runner ever since its production began: his on-set report was published by Omni in May 1982, his making-of article appeared in Cinefantastique in July 1982, and he compared the various versions of the film for Video Watchdog in November 1993.

A History Of Interior Design

A History Of Interior Design, by John Pile, is now in its third edition. Pile's historical survey spans more than 3,000 years, from Mayan temples and ancient Egypt to 21st century Europe. Interior design is "a field with unclear boundaries", as Pile acknowledges, though fortunately the book's scope is inclusive rather than exclusive, incorporating architecture, furniture, and enclosed exterior spaces in addition to conventional interiors.

There are almost 700 illustrations and nearly 500 pages, plus an Interactive Timeline CD-ROM, though the book concentrates primarily on Europe and America, with only a single chapter discussing non-Western design. The publisher, Laurence King, specialises in definitive surveys of various artistic fields, with other titles including A World History Of Architecture and Graphic Design: A New History.

Nymph (director's cut)

In Pen-ek Ratanaruang's Nymph, a young married couple take a camping trip to the forest. Nop communes with nature and photographs the surrounding trees, while his wife May is more interested in her cellphone signal, calling Korn, her lover back in Bangkok.

Nop and May's marriage is clearly going stale, as was the central relationship in Pen-ek's previous film, Ploy. Nymph, in its original version as premiered at Cannes, also share's Ploy's slow pace, sparse dialogue, and ambient soundtrack.

Nop becomes fascinated by one tree in particular, caressing its trunk as if it were a woman's body. He sees a nude woman in the distance, and follows her deeper into the forest. The woman he sees is perhaps the same woman who killed two rapists in the film's impressive prologue, with the camera swooping through trees and over a river. The woman may also be a spirit (the nymph of the film's English title) who personifies the unusually compelling tree.

Exactly what happens to Nop remains ambiguous. He seems to disappear, though later he apparently returns to the couple's house. As in Nang Nak, the returning spouse may not have returned at all; Nop may, in fact, have become a forest spirit himself, as does the missing boy in Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Tropical Malady.

The Spectator's 50 Essential Films

The Spectator, in its 20th June and 27th June issues, has published its list of 50 Essential Films, as follows:

1. The Night Of The Hunter
2. Apocalypse Now
3. Sunrise
4. Black Narcissus
5. L'Avventura
6. The Searchers
7. The Magnificent Ambersons
8. The Seventh Seal
9. L'Atalante
10. Rio Bravo
11. The Godfather I-II
12. The Passion Of Joan Of Arc
13. Grand Illusion
14. Citizen Kane
15. The Scarlet Empress
16. Tokyo Story
17. Blade Runner
18. Rear Window
19. Point Blank
20. The Red Shoes
21. Mme De...
22. Shadows
23. Pickpocket
24. Viridiana
25. Barry Lyndon
26. City Lights
27. Pierrot Le Fou
28. Sunset Boulevard
29. Notorious
30. M
31. The Roaring Twenties
32. Singin' In The Rain
33. The Long Day Closes
34. Killer Of Sheep
35. Gun Crazy
36. Andrei Rublev
37. Taxi Driver
38. The 400 Blows
39. Pulp Fiction
40. Kind Hearts & Coronets
41. In The Mood For Love
42. Sullivan's Travels
43. 8½
44. Pinocchio
45. Great Expectations
46. Rome: Open City
47. Duck Soup
48. Jaws
49. Manhattan
50. Out Of The Past

Most directors are represented by only a single film, though Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock have two each, and Francis Coppola has three (with The Godfather I and II making a total of fifty-one films on the list). One oversight: nothing by Akira Kurosawa. Foreign-language films are quite well represented, though there are only two silent films.

Rediscovering Spiritual Value

Rediscovering Spiritual Value: Alternative To Consumerism From A Siamese Buddhist Perspective is a collection of recent articles and speeches by Sulak Sivaraksa, publisher of Seeds Of Peace. One of Sulak's previous books, ค่อนศตวรรษ ประชาธิปไตยไทย, was banned in Thailand in 2007.

Significantly, Rediscovering Spiritual Value includes an English translation of an interview in which Sulak discusses the Thai monarchy, originally published in a banned edition of the Thai journal Same Sky. In the translated version, Sulak adds a footnote at the end of the interview: "The Thai editor stopped the interview here, yet both the editor... and the interviewee were charged with lese-majesty."

Happy Wonju

A cartoonist in South Korea is facing a fine equivalent to $100,000 after his local council filed a complaint with the police. The cartoonist, Choi, inserted insulting comments about South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak into a cartoon in the Happy Wonju newsletter, distributed last month.

Putin: "It's a bit too much..."

A Russian artist, Alexander Shednov, also known as Shurik, has been arrested after he projected an image of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's face and a woman's body onto the side of a building in Voronezh on 12th June. In the collage, the PM says: "A third Presidential term? It's a bit too much. On the other hand, three's a charm".

Thai Rath

On 6th June, the sensationalist Thai Rath (ไทยรัฐ) newspaper published, on its front page, a photograph allegedly showing David Carradine’s body at the scene of his death. (His body had been discovered in his hotel wardrobe two days earlier.)

The image was partially censored, with a black moire pattern added to cover the body. (Incredibly, this pattern has led some international news sources, who have clearly not seen the photo, to claim that Carradine died wearing fishnet stockings.) The same image was also printed on an inside page with only slight pixelation.

Since the photograph was published, Carradine’s family has threatened legal action against any subsequent reproduction. Consequently, no other publication has printed the image, and it has been removed from Thai Rath’s website.

There is some speculation that the image is a fake, as it appears to show a relatively young man with black hair. But the position of the corpse is consistent with police reports that Carradine was discovered hanged and tied up in an apparent act of auto-erotic asphyxiation. Several unquestionably genuine photographs taken after Carradine’s autopsy have appeared online, though they have not appeared in any print publications.

Thai Rath is notorious for its crime-scene photographs. Perhaps the first was in 1961, when it published a photo of the body of a female student who had been raped and murdered. That image has rarely been reproduced, though it does appear in ๔ ทศวรรษภาพข่าวไทย (‘40 years of Thai photojournalism’).

World Comedy Film Festival 2009

Bangkok will host the inaugural World Comedy Film Festival later this month (10th to 16th June) at Paragon Cineplex and SF CentralWorld. The event has been postponed twice, and an ambitious early announcement, that Stephen Chow and Rowan Atkinson would be attending, has been quietly dropped.

The most interesting film in the programme is With Gilbert & George (screening on 12th and 16th June), a comprehensive portrait of the artists filmed by Julian Cole over a seventeen-year period. But it's an art documentary, not a comedy. (The artists were the inspiration for several murals at Bangkok's Siam Center mall.)

2nd Bangkok Triennale

Anupong Chantorn, famous for his painting representing monks as crows, is currently exhibiting a similar drawing at the 2nd Bangkok Triennale International Print & Drawing Exhibition. Anupong's earlier painting won first prize at the 53rd National Exhibition and inspired a butoh dance performance, San-Dan-Ka. His new drawing, Hope In The Dark, has won the Triennale Prize, and is showing at Bangkok Art & Cultural Centre from 14th May until 14th June.

The 67 Most Influential Films Ever Made

The current issue of Total Film magazine features an unordered list titled The 67 Most Influential Films Ever Made, as follows:

• Jaws
  
• 2001: A Space Odyssey
  
• Night Of The Living Dead
  
• The Man With The Golden Arm
  
• All Quiet On The Western Front
  
• Nanook Of The North
  
• The Abyss
  
• Enter The Dragon
  
• Blood Feast
  
• Heaven's Gate
  
• Easy Rider
  
• Star Wars IV: A New Hope
  
• The Graduate
  
• Tron
  
• Becky Sharp
  
• Carrie
  
• Reservoir Dogs
  
• Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs
  
• Gertie The Dinosaur
  
• The Adventures Of Prince Achmed
  
• Metropolis
  
• Battleship Potemkin
  
• Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song
  
• The Evil Dead
  
• Flashdance
  
• Blade Runner
  
• Workers Leaving The Factory
  
• A Streetcar Named Desire
  
• Breathless
  
• Meet Me In St Louis
  
• Blazing Saddles
  
• Stagecoach
  
• Nashville
  
• The Last Laugh
  
• Deep Throat
  
• Room At The Top
  
• The Battle Of Algiers
  
• Sex Lies & Videotape
  
• The Cable Guy
  
• The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari
  
• Shadows
  
• Rashomon
  
• Do The Right Thing
  
• Blackboard Jungle
  
• Psycho
  
• The Birth Of A Nation
  
• The Wild Bunch
  
• Mean Streets
  
• Batman
  
• Halloween
  
• The Jazz Singer
  
• Toy Story
  
• Terminator II: Judgment Day
  
• Pink Flamingos
  
• Twister
  
• Citizen Kane
  
• The Thief Of Bagdad
  
• The Matrix
  
• The Robe
  
• It Happened One Night
  
• Bwana Devil
  
• L'Assassinat Du Duc de Guise
  
• Cabiria
  
• Le Roman d'Un Tricheur
  
• Un Chien Andalou
  
• Victim
  
• The Blair Witch Project

It's great to see so many silent films included, though there's no film noir, no Neorealism, and (most surprisingly) nothing by Francis Ford Coppola. Twister, the only entry I take exception to, was included simply because it was the first film released on DVD in the UK. Note that Carrie is the 1976 Brian de Palma horror film, not the 1952 William Wyler romantic drama. Total Film previously published lists of 100 films in 2005 and 2006.

Choc

A French judge yesterday ordered that the current issue of Choc magazine must be withdrawn from sale. The magazine's cover features a photograph of kidnap victim Ilan Halimi taken by his kidnappers.

Bangkok Bananas

The Bangkok Bananas arts festival ended today (having started on 30th April). It featured Cine-Bananas, a series of outdoor film screenings including the silent documentary Chang (accompanied by a live orchestra), filmed in Thailand by the directors of King Kong (Merian C Cooper and Ernest B Schoedsack).

The festival's finale this evening, Spooky Night, featured a collection of horror films, including Vampire, a short film by Apichatpong Weerasethakul commissioned for the Travelling series by Louis Vuitton. Vampire is a cryptozoological faux-documentary about a vampire bird, filmed in the same style as The Blair Witch Project.

Quote of the day...

“Another core leader, Phipob Thongchai, said earlier that under “new politics” there would be land reform so that every Thai citizen would own a piece of land and be able to make a living. He cited the case of North Korea, saying that although the country is poor and its people are starving, the North Koreans can pride themselves in owning a small piece of land.”
— Bangkok Post

Phipob Thongchai, one of the leaders of the People’s Alliance for Democracy, gave a glimpse of the movement’s social policies, citing the dictatorship of North Korea as a model to aspire towards (quoted by Veera Prateepchaikul in today’s Bangkok Post). Previous quotes of the day: the Information and Communication Technology Minister openly admits to violating the Computer Crime Act, and a Ministry of Culture official dismisses Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s entire œvre at a single stroke.

Stories On Human Rights

Stories On Human Rights, an evening of film screenings, will take place at the FCCT in Bangkok on 4th May. The films were commissioned by the United Nations, and the programme includes Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Mobile Men. Apichatpong will be present for a Q&A session after the screenings.

Our Body

Our Body: A Corps Ouvert, an exhibition of seventeen plastinated human corpses, has been closed down on the orders of a French court. It opened in Paris on 12th February, and was due to run until 10th May, though a judge ruled that it was a disrespectful use of human cadavers. The exhibition features real bodies with exposed muscles, and is one of several imitators of the original Bodyworlds exhibition, which opened more than a decade ago.

15 Most Influential Classic Movies

TCM's 15 Most Influential Classic Movies:

• The Birth Of A Nation
  
• Battleship Potemkin
  
• Metropolis
  
• 42nd Street
  
• It Happened One Night
  
• Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs
  
• Gone With The Wind
  
• Stagecoach
  
• Citizen Kane
  
• Bicycle Thieves
  
• Rashomon
  
• The Searchers
  
• Breathless
  
• Psycho
  
• Star Wars IV: A New Hope

This chronological list was compiled by Turner Classic Movies last week. I would only quibble with a couple of their choices: is It Happened One Night really necessary on such a short list, and surely Stagecoach could be removed if The Searchers is included? Also, nothing from Stanley Kubrick, Ingmar Bergman, Francis Coppola, or Jean Renoir.

The Hacienda Must Be Built

Chulalonghorn University's Art Centre will host an exhibition by Australian artist Arlo Mountford later this month. The show, titled The Hacienda Must Be Built, opens on 21st April and closes on 30th May. It features Mountford's video installation Return To Point, which consists of animations based on canonical artworks, including a Richard Hamilton collage (Just What Is It That Makes Today's Homes So Different, So Appealing?).

United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship

Two residents of Bangkok’s Nang Loeng district have been shot dead by United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship protesters. Residents in several districts, especially tenants in Din Daeng apartments, have clashed with the UDD in Bangkok today.

The red-shirted UDD movement originally prided itself on protesting peacefully and legally, in contrast to the yellow-shirted People’s Alliance for Democracy. The UDD’s demands (for the army and Privy Council to stay out of politics, for the violent PAD protesters to be prosecuted, for the reinstatement of the 1997 ‘people’s constitution’, and for a new general election) are reasonable, though of course they are likely to lose any public sympathy after the violence of yesterday and today.

Early this morning, the army began advancing on a group of demonstrators at the Din Daeng intersection near Victory Monument, firing shots into the air from M16 rifles. After several hours, and dozens of injuries, the protesters dispersed. UDD leaders claimed that six protesters were killed, a rumour that former PM Thaksin Shinawatra repeated in live CNN and BBC interviews this evening. Also on CNN, Thaksin pleaded for royal intervention: “I humbly urge His Majesty the King to intervene, please”.

Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva declared a state of emergency in Bangkok yesterday, and the UDD reacted by raiding several government ministries and attacking the PM’s car. Several buses and gas tankers have also been hijacked by UDD demonstrators.

Sunday Times

Jacob Zuma, President of South Africa's ruling ANC party, is suing cartoonist Jonathan Shapiro (known as Zapiro) for libel. Shapiro's cartoon was published in the Sunday Times newspaper on 7th September 2008, and on the front page of its sister paper The Times two days later; it was also broadcast on CNN last month (African Voices, 22nd March).

‘Finland Plot’

Former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra sued political columnist Pramote Nakornthap for libel after Pramote alleged that Thaksin was involved in a republican scheme known as 'the Finland Plot'. The allegations were made in a series of five articles written by Pramote, published in the Manager Daily (ผู้จัดการรายวัน) newspaper on 17th–25th May 2006.

Manager is one of the publications owned by People’s Alliance for Democracy leader Sondhi Limthongkul, and Pramote’s articles were part of a campaign to discredit Thaksin by questioning his loyalty to the monarchy. Today, the Criminal Court gave Pramote a one-year prison sentence, suspended for two years, after finding him guilty of libel.

Six Degrees Of Separation

Kiosk at Bangkok's TCDC presents a festival of short Thai films called Six Degrees Of Separation, every Saturday until 11th April. Each week, a different director introduces a retrospective of their most notable films.

Sompot Chidgasornpongse appeared tonight, and showed four films: To Infinity & Beyond (people watching the sky, played twice: first with data about space missions, then repeated as a parable about prioritisation), Physical Therapy (a very short, almost abstract study of a desert landscape, in 16mm), Yesterday (a hand-held semi-documentary following a group of Thai students in California, influenced by Dogme), and Diseases & A Hundred Year Period.

The latter film features censored scenes from Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Syndromes & A Century. It premiered with Physical Therapy and Yesterday at the 12th Thai Short Film & Video Festival last year; it was also shown recently at the Filmvirus thirteenth anniversary exhibition.

Mondo Cane

Mondo Cane, directed by Gualtiero Jacopetti, features sensationalist documentary footage set to an inappropriately thunderous musical score. The clips compiled by Jacopetti present African and Asian societies as 'primitive' and 'savage'; the narrator even refers to a tribe from New Guinea as "barbarians".

Jacopetti uses juxtapositions for shock effect, such as cutting from a close-up of a model's cleavage to a tribeswoman suckling a pig, and a shot of pet dogs in America followed by footage of an Asian dog-meat restaurant. The film is exploitative, with its National Geographic-style nudity and animal-slaughter, and it's also misleading. For example, a beached turtle is seen flapping its flippers in obvious distress, though apparently, according to the narrator, the 'delusional' creature believes it is swimming in the ocean.

Clearly unable to source sufficient shocking material, Jacopetti pads the film out with long, dull sequences showing mildly intoxicated Germans and retired American tourists. The film was, however, an inexplicable success, and it instigated the long-lasting mondo documentary sub-genre (as discussed in the books Sweet & Savage and Killing For Culture).

Subsequent mondo films repeated Jacopetti's formula of exotic tribal rituals, incongruous music, exploitative nudity and violence, and condescending narration. Of course, each film was more explicit than the last, with the sub-genre eventually specialising in (both genuine and simulated) footage of human death. Jacopetti himself directed several further mondo films, including the graphic Africa Addio, the filming of which was critiqued in the horror film Cannibal Holocaust.

Making Waves

Making Waves: New Cinemas Of The 1960s is Geoffrey Nowell-Smith's account of cinema's various New Wave movements, including those of Britain, France, Germany, Brazil, and Czechoslovakia. The book's focus is almost exclusively European, thus there is no discussion of New Hollywood or the new cinemas of Japan, Yugoslavia, or Hungary. Nowell-Smith is the editor of the excellent The Oxford History Of World Cinema.

A chapter on censorship includes Dusan Makavejev and Vilgot Sjoman - yet not Andy Warhol's Flesh, which was confiscated by British police. This chapter ends with Salo and Empire Of The Senses, which, though fascinating, really belong to a later era.

There are also concise surveys of film criticism (principally Cahiers Du Cinema) and technology (colour, widescreen, and the zoom lens). Due to the lack of American coverage, critics Jonas Mekas and Andrew Sarris are excluded. A footnote in the latter essay makes the odd assertion that black-and-white productions of the 1960s were "retarded films".

The highlight is the historical section, titled Movements, with chapters on British, French, Czech, and Latin American cinemas which succinctly cover all the bases. This section also includes a less comprehensive chapter on Italian cinema, which omits Mario Bava and Sergio Leone.

Deep Storage Art Project

Kristian von Hornsleth launched his Deep Storage Art Project in Bangkok this evening, at Gallery Soulflower. The Project involves collecting blood samples from volunteers and storing the samples inside a large sculpture which will be lowered onto the sea bed in the Mariana Trench (the deepest location on the planet's surface). Blood donors receive a certificate marked with blood and signed by the artist, and there will be a further opportunity for donation next Saturday evening.

Saboteur

Saboteur is archetypal Alfred Hitchcock: an innocent man caught up in counter-espionage and on the run from the authorities. Hitchcock had used almost exactly the same plot in his earlier (and better) British thriller The 39 Steps, and he would return to it again for North By Northwest.

Saboteur's leading man, Robert Cummings, doesn't quite have the charm of Robert Donat (The 39 Steps) or Cary Grant (North By Northwest). The supporting cast, however, includes a plethora of fascinating characters, such as a truck driver who looks like (but isn't) James Cagney, a kindly blind hermit (perhaps influenced by a sequence from The Bride Of Frankenstein), and even a group of circus freaks. As usual with Hitchcock, the villains are the most interesting figures, and Saboteur's spymaster, played by Otto Kruger, is as suave as those of The 39 Steps, North By Northwest, and Notorious.

The film is bookended by two impressive action sequences: a factory fire, with black smoke ominously filling the screen (the eponymous saboteur is an arsonist); and a climactic scene set at the top of the Statue of Liberty (a precursor of the Mount Rushmore chase scene in North By Northwest). But in between those two sequences, there are too many unexplained plot holes (methods of escape and reunion are conveniently omitted) and too much overtly patriotic speechifying (as Saboteur was made during World War II).

The Trouble With Harry

Alfred Hitchcock's black comedy The Trouble With Harry begins right away with the discovery of Harry's corpse in a wood. The body is found by a poacher, who assumes that he shot Harry by mistake and buries him to conceal the crime. But Harry is soon disinterred, and the poacher is vindicated. Then, a spinster reveals that she knocked Harry unconscious when he attacked her, and he is buried again to protect her modesty. The characters, including Harry's estranged widow, take all this in their stride, treating Harry's corpse merely as an inconvenience, with no sense of guilt, abjection, or even shock. They are all assisted by a local artist, Sam Marlowe, whose name is a cross between film noir detectives Sam Spade (The Maltese Falcon) and Philip Marlowe (The Big Sleep).

The film is full of bright, verdant autumn landscapes, a counterpoint to the macabre subject-matter. It's not a murder mystery, and has no suspense, making it a rather atypical Hitchcock film (though it's notable as his first collaboration with composer Bernard Herrmann). The setting, a village in Vermont, is almost equivalent to Royston Vasey (the fictional location of The League Of Gentlemen), with an insular population who seem to exist outside of conventional moral codes. The villagers discuss sex (the poacher crossing the spinster's "threshold"; whispered references to a "double bed") and death (Harry's repeated interments and exhumations) with a surprising frankness, and, in common with many Hitchcock characters, they seem to distrust the law.

In an unexpected 'happily ever after' ending, a passing millionaire grants wishes to all of the principal characters. It makes no sense at all, though it's surely deliberately unrealistic, perhaps even a Hitchcockian fairy-tale. As such, it's similar in tone to some of the Alfred Hitchcock Presents television dramas and Roald Dahl's Tales Of The Unexpected short stories.

Phantoms Of Nabua

Phantoms Of Nabua is a new short film by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, for Animate Projects (as is Jane and Louise Wilson's Unfolding The Aryan Papers). Apichatpong's film is part of an art installation titled Primitive, which also includes another short film, A Letter To Uncle Boonmee. Phantoms Of Nabua was filmed at night in the Thai town of Nabua, illuminated by a series of ethereal light sources including flashes of lightning, a burning football, and a film projector.

Recently, another new film by Apichatpong, Mobile Men, was also distributed online, and his Prosperity For 2008 was given an online release last year. He is best known as the director of Syndromes & A Century.

Mobile Men

Mobile Men is a new short film by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, his contribution to a series titled Stories On Human Rights. The film features a group of Burmese migrant labourers in a pickup truck, and shows them asserting their masculinity by flexing their muscles and displaying their tattoos. Mobile Men is available online; Apichatpong has also distributed other works online, including Prosperity For 2008 and several forthcoming Animate Projects films.

Art Of Animation

Disneyland in Hong Kong includes a permanent exhibition of Disney concept art, including sketches and maquettes from films such as Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs, Bambi, Toy Story II, and Cars. The exhibition, titled Art Of Animation, opened last year.

Hemat

The editor of Hemat, a weekly Iranian satirical magazine, has been arrested. The magazine had published a spoof film poster featuring images of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his potential electoral rivals.

โปรแกรมหนังสั้นไทยคัดสรร

โปรแกรมหนังสั้นไทยคัดสรร, a show at Bangkok's Jamjuree Art Gallery to celebrate the thirteenth anniversary of DK Filmhouse, includes short films selected by two Thai bloggers, Jit Phokaew (Madeleine de Scudery) and Wiwat Lertwiwatwongsa (Filmsick). Sompot Chidgasornpongse's film Diseases & A Hundred Year Period (inspired by Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Syndromes & A Century, and first shown at the 12th Thai Short Film & Video Festival last year) will be screened on 6th February.

Unfolding The Aryan Papers

In the early 1990s, Stanley Kubrick was planning to make a film about the Holocaust, titled Aryan Papers. Kubrick wrote the screenplay, adapted from Louis Begley's novel Wartime Lies, and cast Johanna Ter Steege in the lead role. However, when Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List went into production, Aryan Papers was abandoned, as Kubrick and/or the studio feared that audiences would have Holocaust-fatigue after Spielberg's film. (The same situation occurred in the early 1970s, when Kubrick could not secure funding for his Napoleon biopic after the release of Waterloo, and he suffered at the box-office in 1987 when Platoon was released before his own Vietnam war film, Full Metal Jacket.)

A new short film, Unfolding The Aryan Papers by Jane and Louise Wilson, features pre-production photographs of Johanna Ter Steege (costume tests, photographed by Kubrick, from the Stanley Kubrick Archive) and new film footage of the actress shot by the Wilsons. The exhibition will be showing at the British Film Institute (in London) and online (Animate Projects), from 13th February to 19th April.

Quote of the day...

Q: “So, does that mean the more than 2,300 websites that were banned were all done so by court order, and that the ICT has not preemptively or illegally banned any websites?”
A: “Yes. But it takes time to get court orders, so we may delete certain content deemed inappropriate before we go through the process.”
— Bangkok Post

The Computer Crime Act allows the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology to block websites only after successfully applying for a court order. Interviewed by Voranai Vanijaka in today’s Bangkok Post, ICT Minister Ranongrak Suwanchawee initially denied preemptively blocking websites, though she then immediately contradicted herself, and admitted to violating the Computer Crime Act. (In a previous quote of the day, a Ministry of Culture official patronised Thai filmgoers.)

San-Dan-Ka

A new butoh dance performance titled San-Dan-Ka, directed by Teerawat Mulvilai, will begin today at the Democrazy Theatre Studio in Bangkok. The performance was inspired by Anupong Chantorn's painting representing monks as crows. The final performance will be on 8th February.