Thai Short Film And Video Festival In Bangkok

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FILM FESTIVAL

Flickers in the realm of conflict

By Wise Kwai

The Nation

The 14th Thai Short Film and Video Festival probes unrest and unreal fantasy

The 14th Thai Short Film and Video Festival, organised by the Thai Film Foundation with support from Office of Contemporary Art and Culture, Ministry of Culture, starts this Thursday, with a cavalcade of student films, animation, documentaries and experimental flicks from all over the world.

Apart from the local and international competitions, culled from around 600 entries, the festival is further enlivened by several special programmes.

Back this year will be selections from France's Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival, the biggest short film festival in the world. There's also the Queer Programme and the S-Express collections of shorts from Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, China and Taiwan.

There will be a tribute to Payut Ngaokrachang, the pioneering animator who was dubbed the "Walt Disney of Thailand" and who died on May 27 this year. The programme will have animation from all over the world that best exemplifies the "Sudsakorn" animator's fantastic vision. Among the works will be his 1957 short, "The New Adventure of Hanuman", which he made as a piece of anti-communist propaganda for the US Information Service.

A selection of new short documentaries will commemorate this year's 110th birth anniversary of statesman Pridi Banomyong.

In observance of Thailand's political turmoil, there will be "In the Realm of Conflict", shorts from various restive regions that focus on lives and relationships after the hostilities are over.

And there's "Beyond Rangoon", a collection of shorts by Burmese filmmakers - a unique opportunity, because Burmese films are rarely seen outside that country's borders.

And it's not just about short films. Longer works in the Digital Forum include the world premiere of "Baby Arabia", a musical documentary on Baby Arabia, a Thai-Malay band that plays its electrifying hybrid of traditional Arabic music at weddings and festivals. It's by the makers of "The Convert", Panu Aree, Kaweenipon Ketprasit and Kong Rithdee. The film then will be screened at Vancouver International Film Festival next month.

Another memorial tribute will be to Filipino film critic Alexis Tioseco and his girlfriend, Slovenian festival programmer Nika Bohinc, who were killed on September 1 of last year in a robbery at their home in the Philippines. Filmmaker Kidlat Tahimik offers his unfinished feature, "Each Film An Island?" as a tribute to Alexis and Nika.

Video artist and filmmaker Jakrawal Nilthamrong's "Unreal Forest" will make its Thailand premiere. The movie was shot in Zambia as part of the International Film Festival Rotterdam's "Forget Africa" project, which commissioned Asian filmmakers to make movies in Africa. Jakrawal put Zambian filmmakers to work at stretching their meagre resources and abilities to make a movie from a script he'd written, and what emerges is a blend of experimental documentary and art-film magical realism.

The fest opens at 6 on Thursday with a selection that includes Aditya Assarat's "Phuket", the Georgian conflict film "Aprilis Suskhi" by Tornike Bziava and the Oscar-winning short "Logorama" from France.

REEL WORLD

The 14th Thai Short Film and Video Festival is at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre from Thursday until September 5 except Monday.

Admission is free.

Not all films have English subtitles, particularly some of the Thai competition entries.

Visit http://bit.ly/14thaishort for links to the schedule.

-- The Nation 2010-08-24