26th Thai Short Film and Video Festival

The 26th Short Film and Video Festival (เทศกาลภาพยนตร์สั้นครั้งที่ 26) runs from 17th December until Christmas Day at the Thai Film Archive in Salaya. This year’s Short Film Marathon (หนังสั้นมาราธอน)—screenings of all films submitted, in alphabetical order—will take place online via Zoom from 8th November to 2nd December. There are more than 400 titles in the Short Film Marathon, only a fraction of which will be selected for the main event in Salaya.

4+2563 หลักฐานเล่าสมัย (‘4+2020: contemporary evidence’), by the Filmocracy group, was shown online on 8th November, and features an interview with the founder of the Museum of Popular History. He discusses some of the political ephemera from his collection, including a Thaksin and Yingluck Shinawatra calendar.

Natthapol Kitwarasai’s Coup d’état was shown online this evening. A soldier rummages through an old man’s meagre possessions in this dialogue-free, black-and-white film. The man watches impassively, apparently oblivious to the trespassing soldier, and spends his time sleeping and swimming, which symbolise freedom for the director. Although the drama is allegorical, the film opens with photographs of the military leaders who instigated Thailand’s many coups.

Weerapat Sakolvaree’s Nostalgia, first shown at Wildtype 2022 last month, will be screened online on 16th November. In a series of still images, a young man discovers that, whenever he fires a shooting-star toy into the sky, he becomes receptive to sounds that regress progressively further into Bangkok’s violent past. The toy is a conduit for these sonic echoes of historical violence, which form an audio collage in Weerapat’s film. (It will also be shown at the Film Archive on 17th December.)

On 22nd November there will be online screenings of two documentaries from the Resurgent Truth (คืนความจริง) series produced by Pheu Thai to mark the 11th anniversary of the 2010 massacre: เสธ.แดง ทหารของประชาชน (‘the people’s soldier’) on the death of Khattiya Sawasdipol, and เสื้อแดง ความจริงที่ถูกบิดเบือน (‘red-shirts: the distorted truth’) on the demonisation of red-shirt protesters as terrorists. Similarly, Sumeth Suwanneth’s documentary Lost, and Life Goes On (เลือนแต่ไม่ลืม), commemorating the 1992 ‘Black May’ massacre, will be shown online on 30th November. (It will also be screened at the Film Archive on 18th December.)

King Protection Group

A royalist pressure group has filed lèse-majesté charges against Move Forward MP Amarat Chokepamitkul. She spoke in parliament on 2nd November about the Criminal Court’s reluctance to issue summonses for royal travel and financial documents, thus preventing them from being admitted as exculpatory evidence in lèse-majesté trials. Her statement was cut short by Chuan Leekpai, Speaker of the House of Representatives.

Amarat shared an online video of her speech from Matichon, which the King Protection Group submitted to police the next day. (Their complaint seemingly disregards an MP’s right of parliamentary privilege.) Last month, the same pressure group filed charges against the rapper P9D, alleging that his song Kuay Rai A (ควยไรอะ) violated the lèse-majesté law.

อีกไม่นาน นานแค่ไหน(‘how long is ‘soon’?’)

Two Thai bands, Getsunova and Three Men Down, collaborated on the single อีกไม่นาน นานแค่ไหน (‘how long is ‘soon’?’), released this time last year. The title is a despairing reply to Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha’s lyric “ขอเวลาอีกไม่นาน” (‘give us a little more time’) from his propaganda song Returning Happiness to the Thai Kingdom (คืนความสุขให้ประเทศไทย). Prayut’s song promised that his junta would not outstay its welcome; the bands’ response is: after all these years, how much longer will it be?

Like Paeng Surachet’s กล้ามาก เก่งมาก ขอบใจ (‘very brave, very good, thank you’), อีกไม่นาน นานแค่ไหน uses heartbreak as a political metaphor. Paeng’s song is about splitting up with an unfaithful partner, though it could also be read as a statement of the singer’s feelings about the monarchy. Similarly, อีกไม่นาน นานแค่ไหน describes the agony of waiting for a girlfriend to change her wayward behaviour, just as Thailand waits in vain for Prayut to improve the country:

“เธอขอเวลาปรับปรุงตัวเองข้อเสียทุกอย่าง
แค่ขอเวลาไม่นาน
เธอสัญญา เธอสัญญา จะทำตามอย่างว่ามา
ฉันก็รอ ฉันก็รอ อดทนอย่างไม่ท้อ
ยอมให้โอกาส ปล่อยเธอทำผิดซ้ำๆ
ให้ฉันต้องเจ็บและช้ำจนใจมันเริ่มหมดหวัง
เพราะผ่านมานานแสนนาน”

(‘she asked for time to improve herself
only asked for a short time
she promised she’d do as she said
I waited patiently without giving up
I let her make the same mistakes over and over
it hurts so much and my heart’s lost all hope
because a long time has passed’).

In the อีกไม่นาน นานแค่ไหน music video, three young children present their progressive ideas to improve Thai society, only to be dismissed by their conservative teachers. The three kids look remarkably like younger versions of anti-government protest leaders Panusaya Sithjirawattanakul, Parit Chirawak, and Arnon Nampa: could the video be an origin story for the protest movement? A schoolchild’s progressive policy ideas dismissed by an authoritarian teacher was also the central theme of Duangporn Pakavirojkul’s short film Demockrazy (ประชาทิปตาย).

TrumpNation:The Art of Being the Donald

Timothy L. O’Brien’s book TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald was first published in 2005, when Donald Trump’s self-cultivated public image was that of a billionaire real-estate developer. Citing three anonymous sources, O’Brien claimed that Trump was worth, at most, a quarter of a billion dollars, writing (on p. 154): “Three people with direct knowledge of Donald’s finances... told me that they thought his net worth was somewhere between $150 million and $250 million. By anyone’s standards this still qualified Donald as comfortably wealthy, but none of these people thought he was remotely close to being a billionaire.”

Trump sued O’Brien and the publisher, Warner Books, for defamation, seeking an astronomical and absurdly unrealistic $5 billion in damages. In his deposition, he made the audacious claim that his net worth “goes up and down with markets and with attitudes and with feelings, even my own feelings,” a remark that has since been widely quoted. The case was dismissed not because Trump proved his billionaire status—he didn’t—but because O’Brien proved that his estimate of Trump’s net worth had not been malicious. (The book is written in a tabloid style—with spoof trivia quizzes, for example—though it’s based on interviews with Trump and access to Trump Organization records.)

Trump later sued Michael Wolff to prevent the publication of Fire and Fury and his brother sued their niece, Mary Trump, to block the release of Too Much and Never Enough. In both cases, the lawsuits backfired, as the publication dates were brought forward. He withdrew a lawsuit against comedian Bill Maher, who had joked that he was the son of an orangutan, and his new $475 million lawsuit against CNN is equally unrealistic. On the other hand, Trump’s wife, Melania, has had more success as a libel litigant, winning $3 million from the Daily Mail and undisclosed “substantial damages” from The Daily Telegraph.

TrumpNation was reprinted with a new introduction in 2016, when Trump won the Republican presidential nomination. It’s the sixteenth Trump book reviewed on Dateline Bangkok, the others being Fire and Fury, Too Much and Never Enough, Fear, Rage, Peril, I Alone Can Fix It, A Very Stable Genius, Inside Trump’s White House, The United States of Trump, Trump’s Enemies, The Trump White House, The Room Where It Happened, Team of Five, American Carnage, and The Cost

Thai Film Archive

Two classics of world cinema will be shown at the Thai Film Archive in Salaya later this year. L’Atalante is playing on 2nd and 20th November. Ugetsu (雨月物語) will be screened in 16mm on 6th and 11th December. (Ugetsu was previously shown at the Japan Foundation in 2013 and 2014.)

Jean Vigo’s L’Atalante, his only feature-length film, was an influential early example of French poetic realism, and was originally released only a few weeks before the director died of tuberculosis. Ugetsu, directed by Kenji Mizoguchi, is a key example of the Japanese kaidan-eiga (‘ghost story’) genre. (Mizoguchi also made one of the first kaidan-eiga films, in 1926; like his contemporary, Yasujiro Ozu, his career spanned Japanese cinema’s two golden ages, the 1920s and 1950s.)

สมุดระบายสีเสรีภาพ(‘freedom colouring book’)

สมุดระบายสีเสรีภาพ (‘freedom colouring book’), written by Suwicha and illustrated by PHAR (both of which are pen names), isn’t a regular children’s colouring book. It was released this month by the band The Commoner, and it introduces young children to Thai politics, with illustrations of anthropomorphised animals representing anti-government protesters.

The concept is presumably modelled on the set of children’s picture books released last year by Family Club (and the additional new titles from the Mirror Foundation), which also present progressive political issues in a child-friendly way. สมุดระบายสีเสรีภาพ is especially similar to The Adventures of Little Duck (เป็ดน้อย) from that series, and both books show water cannon being deployed against the protesters.

As สมุดระบายสีเสรีภาพ is a colouring book, its illustrations are all black-and-white line drawings. The exception is the cover, with its symbolic colour scheme: an elephant character (seen elsewhere in the book driving a tank and squirting water at the protesters) is painted blue, and numerous prostrate onlookers are all yellow. (Both colours have political significance in Thailand.)

“ประเทศเรากำลังจะพัง...”(‘our country is about to collapse...’)

Charges against five musicians were filed with Thai police on the same day, 27th September. Sonthiya Sawasdee, a former MP from the pro-military Palang Pracharath Party, accused four singers of violating the Computer Crime Act after videos of their concert were uploaded online. And the royalist King Protection Group filed a lèse-majesté charge against rapper P9D in relation to one of his songs.

Pramote Prathan (known as Oat), Pongkool Suebsung (Pop), Pongsak Rattanaphong (Aof), and Thanakrit Panitchwit (Wan) performed together at the I Will Survive (4 แยกปากหวาน ตอน) concert on 17th September at Royal Paragon Hall in Bangkok. Coincidentally, this was the same venue at which comedian Udom Taephanich held his Deaw 13 (เดี่ยว 13) show, which was also the subject of a recent police complaint.

Sonthiya accused the four singers of publishing inaccurate or misleading information online, which would be a violation of the Computer Crime Act. He cited lyrics such as “ประเทศเรากำลังจะพัง” (‘our country is about to collapse’), “แปดปี ไม่มีความหมาย” (‘eight pointless years’, describing Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha’s time in office), and “นาฬิกายังไม่คืน” (‘the watches have not been returned’, a reference to deputy PM Prawit Wongsuwan’s claim that his luxury watches were merely borrowed from a friend).

On the same day, the King Protection Group filed a police complaint against P9D, alleging that his song Kuay Rai A (ควยไรอะ) violated the lèse-majesté law. The pressure group intentionally avoided naming the track, hoping to prevent the ‘Streisand effect’ whereby censorship paradoxically draws more attention to the forbidden material. This was unnecessary, though, as the rapper—mindful of the severity of lèse-majesté sentences—has since deleted it from all social media and online music sites.

Deaw 13

Udom Taephanich, the popular stand-up comedian, is under investigation today after a pro-government campaigner filed criminal charges against him. Udom ended his Netflix comedy special Deaw 13 (เดี่ยว 13), released on 11th October, with a mildly satirical routine about PM Prayut Chan-o-cha.

Srisuwan Janya, head of the ultra-conservative Constitution Protection Association pressure group, accused Udom of endangering national security by encouraging his audience to join the recent anti-government protests. When he filed the charges at the Central Investigation Bureau in Bangkok today, he was kicked and punched by a red-shirt supporter.

Srisuwan has been called “Thailand’s complainer-in-chief”, and Udom began his show with a comment on the campaigner’s love of the media spotlight. The live show was filmed while some coronavirus restrictions were still in place, and Udom joked that he was happy to be back on stage: “I’ve been craving this. Now I understand how Srisuwan Janya feels.”

After comparing Prayut and his deputy, Prawit Wongsuwan, to unqualified pilots, Udom suggested that they should resign: “both of you, the pilot and copilot, please eject yourselves from the plane.” Noticing that one man in the audience was not clapping, Udom asked him if he was a soldier, and—ironically, given today’s events—told him: “Don’t report me, okay?”

Udom is not especially known for political satire, and Thai comedy generally tends to be more slapstick than satirical, perhaps to avoid charges of defamation, which is a criminal offence under Thai law. But a Prayut lookalike did appear in Udom’s spoof music video Sud-Swing Ringo Eto Bump (สุดสวิงริงโก้อีโต้บั๊มพ์).

Ad Carabao

Yuenyong Opakul, better known as Ad Carabao, is facing a defamation charge after insulting the governor of Suphan Buri. Yuenyong, a veteran singer/songwriter and founder member of the iconic ‘songs for life’ band Carabao, is Thailand’s most famous rock star.

While playing a concert at a birthday party in the Song Phi Nong district of Suphan Buri on 12th October, Yuengyong criticised governor Natthapat Suwanprateep, who was in the audience as a guest at the party. Calling the governor “ai sat” (a strong insult), the singer complained that he had been denied permission to perform at the annual Don Chedi Royal Monument fair earlier this year.

The governor has since issued a video statement, saying that Suphan Buri had been subject to coronavirus restrictions at the time of the fair, which prevented large public performances. Yuengyong apologised via a written statement on Carabao’s Facebook page two days ago: “จึงขอกราบขออภัยท่านผู้ว่าฯ... ส่วนเรื่องคดีความผมพร้อมอ้าแขนรับความ” (‘I apologise to the governor... regarding a lawsuit, I am ready to face the charges’). Natthapat yesterday filed a criminal defamation charge against the singer, and police are currently investigating.

ตุลาประชาชน(‘October people’)

Last year, the Ministry of Education investigated a series of eight children’s picture books on the specious grounds that they contained “distortion that incites youths to be led astray.” One of the books was seized by police from a public library. Now, the series has been expanded, with a new set of eight titles under the theme of ตุลาประชาชน (‘October people’) published by the Mirror Foundation.

As before, the books introduce young children to progressive political and social issues. A Life (ชีวิตเล็กๆ เด็กชายวาฤทธิ์ สมน้อย), illustrated by Phetladda Kaeochin, describes the childhood of Warit Somnoi, a fifteen-year-old who tragically died after being hit by a live bullet at an anti-government protest. The Folding Chair Stars (ดาว เก้าอี้), illustrated by Ting Chu and We Are All Human (เราล้วนคือคน), illustrated by Summer Panadd both tell the story of the 6th October 1976 massacre, albeit in a child-friendly way. The latter, co-written by Jinglebell, also features the new generation of student protesters such as Panusaya Sithjirawattanakul. (All three books were written by the same author, under the pseudonym สองขา, meaning ‘two legs’.) Another—Where Have You Gone? (พี่หนูอยู่ที่ไหน), written by สาริน (‘Sarin’) and illustrated by Koobta—is about a young son whose brother was killed in the massacre.

The other books in the new series are: H Is for Hope: The ABC of Democracy (a milder version of PrachathipaType’s แบบเรียนพยัญชนะไทย/‘Thai consonant textbook’), Arkong’s Tale (อ อากง; a biography of Ampon Tangnoppakul, who died in jail while serving a twenty-year sentence for lèse-majesté), A Day with Grandma (ยายลี มีหมา แมว มด ลิง และขุนทอง), and See You Later (แล้วเราจะพบกันใหม่). They are similar to the Sheep Village (羊村) books released in Hong Kong last year, though ominously the publishers of those titles were jailed last month.

6 Oct:Facing Demons

Last year, Thammasat University cancelled the annual exhibition commemorating the 6th October 1976 massacre, so the organisers created a ‘museum in a box’. This year, Thammasat’s football pitch was mysteriously fenced off on the anniversary of the massacre, and the commemoration is taking place at the Kinjai Contemporary gallery in Bangkok instead.

Kinjai’s photography exhibition 6 Oct: Facing Demons (6 ตุลา เผชิญหน้าปิศาจ) is comprised almost entirely of previously unpublished news photographs of the massacre. This is refreshing, as it expands the historical record beyond the limited set of images that usually represent the event. Thus, Neal Ulevich’s famous photograph of a hanging man—which has arguably become a cliché—is not included in 6 Oct. In its place is another powerful, award-winning image, though one that’s much less known: a Village Scout hammering a wooden stake into a dead student’s body, photographed by Preecha Karnsompot.

Also, the 6 Oct archive photographs have all been enlarged and restored. Again, this is a significant development, as images of the massacre are usually poorly-reproduced prints. (When Preecha’s photograph was published in a book by the Thai Journalists Association—๔ทศวรรษภาพข่าว/‘four decades of Thai photojournalism’—the editors lamented that the images had to be sourced from reproductions.) The enlargements reveal previously hidden elements, which become new focal points (or what Roland Barthes called ‘punctums’), hence the exhibition’s strapline: ‘the devil is in the details’.

This is also an unusually provocative exhibition. A photograph of Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn (who is now King Rama X) at a Village Scout meeting is captioned “the King of Thai Politics”, implying a royal intervention. On an adjacent wall, an image of the massacre is juxtaposed with a photograph of the 2010 military crackdown, indicating that the cycle of Thai state violence continues. Also, the taboo against showing the front page of Dao Siam (ดาวสยาม) is now a thing of the past, as a reproduction of the newspaper is displayed on the street outside the gallery.

Continuing the themes of media and propaganda explored by Thasnai Sethaseree in Cold War, the exhibition brochure is designed to resemble a broadsheet newspaper. Chulayarnnon Siriphol has directed six short videos on different aspects of the exhibition, and a longer documentary titled ชวนอ่านภาพ 6 ตุลา (‘invitation to read images of 6th Oct.’) in which Octobrists and current students interpret the photographs in the exhibition. 6 Oct opened on 1st October, and runs until 20th November (a week after the original closing date).

Cold War:The Mysterious

Thasnai Sethaseree’s stunning exhibition Cold War: The Mysterious examines Thai politics and media in the Cold War era, focusing particularly on state suppression of the Communist insurgency in the 1970s. Thasnai has created a series of untitled paper collages, based on press photographs of the period, densely overlaid and partially obscured by brightly coloured paint.

For his Remembrance, 6 October 1976 series, he painted individual portraits of Manas Siansing, Watchari Petchsun, and other victims of the Thammasat University massacre. A painting of red droplets, symbolising blood, also commemorates the massacre.

For the Dismantle (ปลด) group exhibition last year, Thasnai created collages of newspaper front pages dated 5th October 1976, the day before the Thammasat massacre. One of those works is included in Cold War, alongside seven collages of newspaper front pages dated 6th October 1976 (in a series titled Propaganda Through Media).

Most of the papers published on that day—เสียง ปวงชน (‘people’s voice’), ชาวไทย (‘people of Thailand’), Daily News (เดลินิวส์), Bangkok Daily Time (บางกอกเดลิไทม์), and Bangkok Post—were printed before the massacre began, though one title—Siam Rath (สยามรัฐ) managed to print a late edition that included coverage of the event. Infamously, it was the headline in that morning’s edition of Dao Siam (ดาวสยาม) that lit the touchpaper and provoked the massacre.

Cold War opened at MAIIAM in Chiang Mai on 12th March, and runs until 3rd April next year (extended from the original closing date, Valentine’s Day 2023). This year, the Jim Thompson Art Center in Bangkok has held a series of exhibitions on the Cold War, beginning with Future Tense.

Nostalgia

In Weerapat Sakolvaree’s new short film Nostalgia, a young man discovers that, whenever he fires a shooting-star toy into the sky, he becomes receptive to sounds that regress progressively further into Bangkok’s violent past. Like Chris Marker’s La jetée (‘the jetty’), the ironically-titled Nostalgia is comprised of a series of still photographs, though it also includes archive newsreel footage of the 6th October 1976 massacre.

Standing at the roadside in Din Daeng, the protagonist hears “fireworks and a lot of motorcycles.” These are sounds of the clashes between anti-government protesters and riot police that took place there last August. (Police fired rubber bullets at protesters on 10th, 11th, 13th, and 15th August 2021.) At Siam Square, he hears the sound of riot police deploying water cannon against protesters on 16th October 2020. At Lumpini Park, the sound of the 19th May 2010 military crackdown fills his ears, followed by the ‘Black May’ 1992 massacre at Democracy Monument, and the 6th October 1976 massacre at Thammasat University.

These locations are, to use the Dutch artist Armando’s term, ‘guilty landscapes’: silent witnesses to past traumas. Like the origami bird in Panya Zhu’s White Bird (นกตัวนั้นยังสบายดีไหม), the toy in Nostalgia is a conduit for sonic echoes of historical violence, which form an audio collage in Weerapat’s film. Nostalgia is also similar to Chai Chaiyachit and Chisanucha Kongwailap’s Re-presentation (ผีมะขาม ไพร่ฟ้า ประชาธิปไตย ในคืนที่ลมพัดหวน), which likewise revisits Bangkok’s ‘guilty landscapes’. Nostalgia and Re-presentation both end with shots of the Ananta Samakhom Throne Hall, hinting at the established hierarchies underlying Thai politics. In Nostalgia, the Throne Hall is seen from behind iron railings, a reminder that the building was closed to the public by royal decree.

Nostalgia was one of the standout films from this month’s Wildtype 2022 screening programme, shown as part of the Angry Young Citizen strand. Another short film in the same programme, Warat Bureephakdee’s Secret Among Wings (ความลับในฝูงนก), also features the sounds of red-shirt protesters from 2010. Protesters calling for democracy, and military gunfire, are heard over present-day shots of Ratchaprasong and nearby Wat Pathum Wanaram, an echo of the area’s dark past. Nostalgia and Secret Among Wings were screened at four venues on 1st October: Doc Club and Pub in Bangkok, Chiang Mai University’s Faculty of Political Science and Public Administration, Lorem Ipsum in Hat Yai, and the Khon Kaen branch of Thailand Creative and Design Center. They were also shown at Bookhemian in Phuket on 8th October.

Movie Night at One Nimman

A season of outdoor film screenings is being held at One Nimman in Chiang Mai, with classic Thai films projected in 35mm every Wednesday evening. Movie Night at One Nimman (เชียงใหม่ กลางแปลง) began on 21st September with Pen-ek Ratanaruang’s Monrak Transistor (มนต์รักทรานซิสเตอร์). Of the films already scheduled, the highlight is Wisit Sasanatieng’s Tears of the Black Tiger (ฟ้าทะลายโจร), screening on 26th October.

Wisit’s Citizen Dog (หมานคร) and Nonzee Nimibutr’s Dang Bireley’s and Young Gangsters [sic] (2499 อันธพาลครองเมือง) will also be shown, when the season continues next month. Monrak Transistor and Dang Bireley’s and Young Gangsters were both also included in the recent กรุงเทพ กลางแปลง (‘Bangkok open air’) season.

“A serious breach of journalistic ethics in crime reporting...”

Two CNN journalists were deported from Thailand today, after being accused of trespassing, unethical reporting, and working without permission. They had entered a nursery in Nong Bua Lamphu and filmed the aftermath of a killing spree that had taken place there two days earlier.

On Thursday, a former police officer, Panya Khamrab, stabbed twenty-four toddlers to death at the nursery. CNN reporter Anna Coren and cameraman Daniel Hodge entered the building on Saturday, filming unsupervised at a crime scene that had been cordoned off by police. In her report, Coren described, and Hodge filmed, “the bloodstains splattered across the floor.” (CNN has since deleted the video from its website.)

The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand took the unusual step of issuing a statement strongly criticising the CNN journalists, describing their actions as “unprofessional and a serious breach of journalistic ethics in crime reporting.” In its initial response to this and other criticism, CNN attempted to justify the filming, stating that “three public health officials exiting the building spoke to the team and told them they could film inside.”

Clearly, insofar as permission was given, it was cursory and informal. A later, more conciliatory CNN statement clarified that “these officials were not authorized to grant this permission.” The two journalists were arrested on trespassing charges, and were also found to be working without visas. They were given a nominal fine of ฿5,000, on the condition that they filmed an apology. (Coren offered her “deepest apologies to the people of Thailand, especially the families of the victims of this tragedy.”)

Dyson v. Channel 4:“What’s being alleged is that Dyson is guilty of wrongdoing...”

James Dyson is suing Channel 4 and ITN for libel over their coverage of labour abuses at a Malaysian factory. In a report broadcast on 10th February, Channel 4 News claimed that “behind the professional image Dyson likes to portray, there’s a dark side to its supply chain, with claims of exploitation, intimidation, and even torture.”

Dyson’s defamation lawsuit does not dispute the allegations made by the factory workers. Instead, the case concerns the programme’s focus on Dyson’s company rather than the factory owner, ATA. At a court hearing in London yesterday, Dyson’s lawyer highlighted the news report’s conflation of ATA and Dyson: “Nobody disputes that this was taking place at ATA... What’s being alleged is that Dyson is guilty of wrongdoing.”

6th October 1976 Filmography

Today is the 46th anniversary of the 6th October 1976 Thammasat University massacre. Coincidentally, the tragedy has since been referenced in forty-six films, documentaries, and music videos, which are all listed in this filmography. Many of these titles are discussed in Thai Cinema Uncensored, which features a comprehensive survey of Thai political cinema.

Donald Trump v. CNN:“The big lie...”

Donald Trump has launched a defamation lawsuit against CNN, accusing them of maliciously comparing him to Hitler. CNN has used the phrase ‘the big lie’ as an umbrella term to describe Trump’s false statements about the 2020 presidential election result, to distinguish these immensely consequential falsehoods from the 30,000 other misleading claims he made during his presidency (as catalogued by The Washington Post). Trump’s lawsuit alleges, however, that ‘the big lie’ “is a direct reference to a tactic employed by Adolf Hitler and appearing in Hitler’s Mein Kampf.”

Hitler did indeed use the term ‘the big lie’ in his autobiography Mein Kampf (‘my struggle’), though he regarded it as a Jewish propaganda tactic, not as a strategy that he himself endorsed. (Specifically, he argued that General Erich Ludendorff was made a scapegoat for Germany’s defeat in World War I, and that this ‘big lie’ was paradoxically more believable.) Thus, ‘the big lie’ has no fascistic implications, as the term was used only pejoratively by Hitler. On the other hand, Trump has repeatedly described the mainstream media as “the enemy of the people”, a phrase associated with Communist dictators such as Stalin.

Trump’s lawsuit, issued yesterday, cites several CNN blog posts by Chris Cillizza, and also singles out an episode of State of the Union as defamatory. In the episode, broadcast on 16th Janaury, host Jake Tapper referred to Trump’s “deranged election lies.” Trump is seeking $475 million in damages, though the ubiquity of the phrase ‘the big lie’—it has been used by many writers and news organisations, not only CNN—makes it highly likely that the case will be dismissed.

Wildtype 2022

Wildtype, a two-day programme of new short films, began yesterday. Like last year’s event, Wildtype 2022 includes a strand dedicated to political documentaries, which is this year titled Politicx. Wildtype, curated by Wiwat Lertwiwatwongsa and Sasawat Boonsri, is an offshoot of Sonthaya Subyen’s Filmvirus group.

Politicx begins with Kanyarat Theerakrittayakorn’s Develop Viriyaporn Who Dared in Three Worlds (เจริญวิริญาพรมาหาทำใน 3 โลก), a quest to reveal the true identity of the mysterious Viriyaporn Boonprasert, the pseudonymous director whose satirical films have perplexed Thailand’s close-knit cinephile community. There’s no Scooby Doo-style unmasking moment, though plausible suspicions are raised, followed by bemused denials.

The most directly political films in Politicx are both named after the pro-democracy red-shirt movement. Supamok Silarak’s Red Poetry: Verse 1 (เราไป ไหน ได้) documents the activities of Vitthaya Klangnil, who formed the group Artn’t with Yotsunthon Ruttapradit. The film shows the Thai flag they exhibited, with transparent material in place of the central blue stripe. Vitthaya is also shown carving “112” into his chest, in protest at the lèse-majesté (article 112) charges they faced. In the heartbreaking Red’s Scar (บาดแผลสีแดง), Nutcha Tantivitayapitak interviews a protester falsely accused of arson following the 2010 massacre. Tragically, his mother and son both died while he was in jail.

Wildtype 2022 runs until 9th October. Politicx was shown yesterday at Doc Club and Pub in Bangkok and Chiang Mai University’s Faculty of Political Science and Public Administration. It will be shown again on 8th October at Mueang Thong Rama in Phayao and Bookhemian in Phuket.