One of the cleaner scenes I can use from Motel Mist.

Pimpaka Towira is on a victory lap of the festival circuit, following her Asian Future Award win at the Tokyo International Film Festival last year, with her latest feature The Island Funeral  (มหาสมุทรและสุสาน, Maha Samut Lae Susaan).

She’s joined the seasonal migration of Thai indie filmmakers, who each winter fly to such frigid northern cities as Rotterdam, Berlin and Goteborg, Sweden, where they are mated with funding, awards and critical acclaim. They then return to Thailand, where they further propagate the species.

In addition to the Bright Future section at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Pimpaka will show The Island Funeral in Goteborg, where it is in competition for the Ingmar Bergman International Debut Award. Like Tokyo’s Asian Future Award, the Bergman prize is for filmmakers making their first or second feature, and Island Funeral, which is Pimpaka’s second drama film and has been eight years in the making, definitely qualifies. The Goteborg fest runs until February 8.

Starring Actors’ Studio-trained Heen Sasithorn, The Island Funeral is a road movie, covering the journey of a young Bangkok woman and her friends into the heart of Thailand’s restive Deep South.

Pimpaka might also be on the road to the Berlin International Film Festival, where to prove she has enough love in her heart to spread around, she has Prelude to the General, a short that that is spun from one of her many spinning plates, a work-in-progress feature called The General’s Secret (Kam Lub Khong Nai Phol), which she offered at the Thai Pitch in Cannes in 2013.

Perhaps she’ll stop by the Berlinale Talents Campus, where she’s a 2005 alumnae, and run into a few young filmmakers who look up to her as a mentor, including Thai indie director Sorayos “Minimal” Prapapan and Korean-American director Josh Kim, who broke into the Thai film industry last year with his debut feature How to Win at Checkers (Every Time), which garnered much acclaim when it premiered in Berlin last year. The Berlin fest runs from February 11 to 21.

Back in Rotterdam, Thai producer-director Anocha Suwichakornpong has arrived after a flight delayed by a psychotic passenger and a dented aircraft door kept her on the ground overnight in Warsaw. She’s there to be part of the jury for the Hivos Tiger Awards, of which she’s a past winner, for “Mundane History” in 2010. Rotterdam has been most kind to Thai films in past years, with other winners being Aditya Assarat with Wonderful Town in 2008, Sivaroj Kongsakul with Eternity in 2011 and Jakrawal Nilthamrong's Vanishing Point last year.

Among the entries to gander at this year will be Motel Mist, the debut feature of Prabda Yoon. A SEA Write Award-winning novelist, Prabda is best known in the movie world as the screenwriter of Pen-ek Ratanruang’s trippy 2003 classic Last Life in the Universe. His Motel Mist appears to be another existential freak-out, luridly taking place in the rooms of the Motel Mistress, an alien-looking love motel in Bangkok.

“Motel Mist was a film born out of a mixture of inspiration and frustration, but it was completed with great trust and support from a group of talented and devoted lovers of the cinematic art,” Prabda says in a press release from Thai film distributor Mosquito Films. “The film is about ‘otherness’ and ‘dislocation’ but the experience of making it has ironically given me the sense of acceptance and belonging. It’s been a very delightful and meaningful exercise.”

And if that’s not enough wonderful Thai weirdness for Rotterdam festival-goers, they can feast eyes on Painting with History in a Room Filled with People with Funny Names 3, a short film by artist Korakrit Arunanondchai that blends denim, drones and body paint. A crocodile is in the mix as well.

There's another Thai film in Rotterdam as well, but I will refrain from naming it.

In other festival news, director Tom Waller is continuing to win awards with his 2014 feature The Last Executioner, a biopic of Thai prison guard and executioner Chavoret Jaruboon. At the Dhaka International Film Festival recently, Waller was awarded Best Director, while Executioner leading man Vithaya Pansringarm shared the Best Actor prize with Iraqi’s Mahmoud Abu Abbas, who won for Samt Al Rai (Silence of the Shepherd), a slow-burn thriller by Raad Moshatat.

The Last Executioner was notably snubbed for the Thai film industry’s Subhanahongsa Awards last year, but won screenplay and best picture in the Surasawadee Awards, the long-running movie honors that’s also known as the Tukata Tong or Golden Doll Awards.

There is much more to report on the festival scene. Please be patient while I slowly catch up.

(Cross-published in The Nation; print only)

Along with the return of beer gardens and the strains of festive-season music in the air, there’s another indicator of Bangkok’s most joyous time of year – the return of the German Open Air Cinema Season at the Goethe-Institut Thailand.

With screenings on Tuesday nights from December 1 to 15 and January 5 to February 16 at the Goethe-Institut off Sathorn Soi 1, the Open Air Cinema series opens next week with a German movie that was made in Thailand.

Directed by Susanna Salonen, Patong Girl is a family drama and romance about a German family on vacation in Phuket. There, amid the salacious nightlife of Patong Beach, the family's teenage son falls for a young Thai woman and runs off. The mother soon runs off too, going in search of the boy. She ends up finding herself. Salonen and members of the cast will be present for a talk after the screening. There's a trailer, and it's embedded way down below.


Meanwhile, the devoted Thai cinephile club Filmvirus has put together two one-off screenings of films by Filipino auteur Lav Diaz. With support from the Japan Foundation, Filmvirus will show two recent Diaz entries, the Locarno Golden Leopard-winner From What Is Before and Storm Children on December 6 and 7.

Another one of Diaz' freeform black-and-white dramas, From What Is Before (Mula sa kung ano ang noon) tracks social decay in a small town as it comes under martial law during the Marcos regime in the 1970s. In addition to the Golden Leopard – the first for the Philippines – From What Is Before won prizes at the Gawad Urian Awards (the Philippines' top film honors) and the World Premieres Film Fest. Running around 5.5 hours, it screens at 3pm on December 6 at House cinema on RCA.

The other Bangkok screening will be Storm Children (Mga Anak ng Unos, Unang Akla), which has Diaz training his firmly affixed camera on a typhoon-wrecked town. A documentary, The Storm Children, looks at the devastation of Typhoon Yolanda, which is probably the worst storm to hit the Philippines. Running 143 minutes, it will be at Cloud, an art space and gallery in Bangkok's Chinatown. The show is at 2pm on December 7. A talk with Diaz himself is planned afterwards.

Filmvirus has previously organized other screenings of Diaz films in Thailand, including the "In Lav We Trust" event in 2013 and a major retrospective in 2009, which served to make Lav Diaz a patron saint of sorts for Thai cinephiles and their farang hangers-on. The Filmvirus folks do a good job, and I highly recommend their events.

Finally, there's another chance to catch Jakrawal Nilthamrong's award-winning Vanishing Point in Bangkok cinemas. Following its premiere at the Laem Thong Theatre, a limited run in SF cinemas and an appearance in the World Film Festival of Bangkok, Vanishing Point is now screening at House on RCA. Go see it.

Sorayos Prapapan at the premiere of Vanishing Point at the Laem Thong Theatre in Klong Toey, Bangkok. Photo via Vanishing Point.

Sorayos Prapapan, an indie filmmaker who has made short films and has served on the crews of many indie features, has received a boost from the Rotterdam festival's Hubert Bals Fund for what could be his directorial feature debut, Arnold Is a Model Student.

Announced yesterday by the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Sorayos' Arnold is among winners in the Hubert Bals Fund's Fall 2015 selection round for the Script and Project Development Grant.

Produced by Donsaron Kovitvanitcha, Arnold Is a Model Student was earlier pitched at the Ties That Bind workshop and last year's Produire au Sud Bangkok.

Sorayos, a graduate in film and photography from Thammasat University, has made critically acclaimed short films, among them the domestic-worker drama Boonrerm and the satiric Auntie Maam Has Never Had a Passport. Along with his short films, he has been a fixture on the festival and workshop circuit in recent years, attending Generation Campus 2013 in Moscow and the Asian Film Academy 2013 in Busan, among others.

He was a production assistant on Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Cannes Palme d'Or winner Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives and has been a sound department hand on other films, including Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit's 36. He also worked on Jakrawal Nilthamrong's Rotterdam prize-winner Vanishing Point, for which he did foley work.

The 13th World Film Festival of Bangkok is upon us, opening to the public on Saturday and running until November 22 at SF World Cinema at CentralWorld.

The schedule is available for downloading.

The opener is Snap, the latest feature from Kongdej Jaturanrasmee. Set during a time of martial law in Thailand, it's about a high-ranking military officer's daughter who is set to marry a junior military man. But before her own wedding, she heads back to her hometown for a friend's nuptials, and reconnects with her former sweetheart, who is the wedding photographer. Snap premiered in competition at the Tokyo International Film Festival. According to a story in The Nation, Snap is set for a general theatrical release in Thailand on December 31.

The opening night will also see the presentation of the festival's annual Lotus Award for lifetime achievement. This year it will go to Dome Sukvong, founder of the Thai Film Archive. A filmmaker, scholar and historian, Dome has worked tirelessly over the decades to build up the Thai Film Archive from nothing, and he's done much to raise awareness for the need for film preservation. Without his efforts, much of Thailand's film legacy would be lost.

Other Thai highlights of the WFFBKK include the award-winning Vanishing Point, the art-house psychological drama by Jakrawal Nilthramrong, which got a limited release in Bangkok a couple of weeks ago and has also been playing in Chiang Mai. The World Film Fest brings it back to Bangkok for a spin with the festival crowd.

There are at least a couple of Thai live-action shorts, among them The Young Man Who Came From Chee River (Jer Gun Muer Rao Jer Gun) by Wichanon Somumjarn, which earlier screened in Venice. It follows an upcountry debt collector as he sees to his duties. It's in the Shortwave 1 program alongside Free Falling by artist-filmmaker Namfon Udomlertlak. Described as "docu-fiction", Free Falling "traces the journey of a young women who uses the making of the film to investigate the relationship between herself and her family and to understand the complexities involved before telling her parents about her life’s 'free falling'".

Thai animation is featured in the second edition of the Franco-Thai Animation Rendezvous, which packages Thai animated shorts with French ones. The Thai entries include award winners from the 19th Thai Short Film and Video Festival. Among them are the very weird, dark and delightful Prince Johnny by Patradol Kutcharoen, the funny CG animated Breaking Zoo by Prakasit Nuansri, the football-themed Kickoff by Twatpong Tangsajjapoj, Lamp by Nareporn Winiyakul, and the heist tale The Sneaker by Chattida Ajjimakul. Others are the darkly comic Gokicha’s Love Story by Chidchanok Saengkawin, A Knight on Horse and Backward by Panupun Jungtrakarn, Fragile by Jan Bhromsuthi, LUNAe by Nuntinee Tosetharat and Trapped by Phet Thaveesak.



The World Film Fest also has many Southeast Asian films, including Teddy Soeriaatmadja's About a Woman from Indonesia. There's a tribute to past projects of Produire au Sud, the funding workshop hosted by the WFFBKK. The entries are the Filipino comedy-drama Anita's Last Cha Cha by Sigrid Andrea P. Bernardo, which was supported by the Produire au Sud Nantes in 2010, and Liew Seng Tat's Malaysian social satire Men Who Save the World, which was backed by Produire au Sud Bangkok 2008. And most intriguing is Filipino indie stalwart Khavn de la Cruz's Ruined Heart: Another Love Story Between a Criminal and a Whore. Just like Pen-ek Ratanaruang with Last Life in the Universe and Invisible Waves, Khavn got cult-favorite Japanese leading man Tadanobu Asano to be in his film, and he got Hong Kong lensman Christopher Doyle to bath it all in a bluish light.



In addition to the film festival, there are new Thai films in general release, including two gay films, Love Next Door 2 and Father and Son (Phor Lae Lukchai, พ่อและลูกชาย).

Love Next Door 2 is a sequel to a hit 2013 indie gay romantic comedy. It's about a virginal young man (Angkoon Jeenukul) who becomes the object of lust for customers at the restaurant where he works. Ratthapol Pholthabtim, Tanwarin Sukkhapisit and Jenny Panan are among the stars. Rated 18+




Father and Son, meanwhile, has a more serious tone, with its story of a gay dad who has raised his surrogate son alone after the death of his partner. The kid, weary of being bullied, seeks to break out on his own. He takes up with a guy who it turns out has a crush on the kid's dad. In limited release at CentralWorld and Esplanade Ratchada, Father and Son is rated 20-.



Another new Thai film is Tiger Women (Phromajan Suay Phan Sayong, พรหมจรรย์ สวยพันธุ์สยอง). An erotic jungle thriller, it's about a young woman who is possessed by a tiger spirit. Released by Thana Entertainment, it's directed by Atsajun Sattakovit. He previously directed a movie called Soul's Code.



And as if all that isn't enough, there's also ountry comedy. In the same cornpone vein as Yam Yasothon, Mon Love Sib Muen and Poo Bao Tai Baan E-San Indy, Sang Sudthai Khong E-Hien (แสงสุดท้ายของอีเหี่ยน) involves a country girl who comes to the city to search for her mother but ends up losing all her money and cannot return home.

Other new movies in Thai cinemas include The Gift, American Ultra and Life. They are covered at the other blog.

• Directed by Jakrawal Nilthamrong
• Starring Ongart Cheamcharoenpornkul, Drunphob Suriyawong, Chalee Choueyai, Suweeraya Thongmee
• Reviewed at premiere screening on October 16, 2015 at the Laem Thong Theatre, Bangkok; rated 15+
• Wise Kwai's rating: 4/5

What is the point of Vanishing Point (วานิชชิ่ง พอยท์)? That’s a question that has vexed me since I saw the film in a rundown porn cinema in Bangkok.

Directed by Jakrawal nilthamrong, Vanishing Point is the culmination of everything the artist-filmmaker has done up to now. It won the Hivos Tiger Award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam and has been selected for many other fests. Like another prominent Thai artist-filmmaker, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Jakrawal is a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and he’s much-respected in the art and indie filmmaking community. In his art installations and short films, Jakrawal explores strict Buddhist themes, reflecting on the dangers of greed and materialism.

An unapologetic art-house film, Vanishing Point is a cavalcade of experimental techniques and abstractions. The story, as nearly as I can make out, has two central characters, a journalist and a family man, whose lives run in parallel trajectories until they converge at that “vanishing point” on the horizon.

The film is also autobiographical in nature, since it opens with an image of a car twisted horrifically in half. The picture is from a 1983 newspaper report on a car being struck by a train, which left Jakrawal’s own parents with severe physical and emotional scars.

The wrecked car is something this Vanishing Point shares with the 1971 Hollywood counterculture film of the same title. Both movies are about existential crises, with the earlier film’s Kowalski at first having a purpose for driving his Dodge Challenger at flat-out speeds across the desert, but as that story goes on, he just drives for the sake of driving.


In Jakrawal’s Vanishing Point, the two central characters’ reasons for living are murkier. They are headed for the same destination as Kowalski – just far more slowly.

There’s also a sleazy 1970s vibe about the new Vanishing Point, an aesthetic that Jakrawal highlighted in choosing a cinema from that era as the venue for its debut in Bangkok. This business of life can be a dirty thing, and amid the mould and grime of Klong Toey’s Laem Thong Theatre, he wanted his audience to revel in it.

In the Thai universe of Vanishing Point, the fractured timeline shifts to the forest, where a reporter (played by Drunphob Suriyawong) is covering a police crime re-enactment. They have a suspected rapist acting out his deeds with a giant teddy bear. It’s a scene that will probably seem routine to Thais who see such things in the newspapers every day, but to foreigners it’s a bizarre situation. I too wonder just what these re-enactments really prove.

The reporter, who thinks the same, departs the scene to follow the police. He eventually turns up at a short-time motel, where he spends time with a senior hooker (Suweeraya Thongmee).

His visit is recorded on video by the movie’s other major character, a businessman (Ongart Cheamcharoenpornkul) who is in the midst of an existential crisis. He’s got a large stack of videotapes of hotel guests having sex, but appears to get no joy from watching them. At home he shares a meal in total silence with his wife and daughter. It seems there is no joy there either.


The guy, who runs a condom factory in addition to his sideline as the maker of amateur porn films, eventually turns up at a Buddhist temple, where a monk is meditatively sweeping the grounds. Played by the charmingly impish Chalee Choueyai, the saffron-wrapped clergyman launches into a long monologue that’s right up there with Robert Shaw’s USS Indianapolis story in Jaws.

In short, the monk’s lesson – and the movie’s – is that there are no easy answers. Not for the journalist, nor the businessman, nor me.

The ones who seem to fare best in Vanishing Point are the sketchiest characters – that monologuing monk and the senior hooker. They are at least honest about who they are and what they do, while the journalist and the factory owner seem only to be seeking merit or approval.

And perhaps that monk might not be a monk after all. Or perhaps Jakrawal is musing on what makes a monk. Is a monk still a monk once out of his robes? In this way, Vanishing Point offers more potent commentary on the state of contemporary Thai Buddhism that is potentially more controversial than the briefly banned Arbat, with its scenes of a misbehaving novice monk. That picture had to be toned down to get unbanned and was released as Arpat, but it didn’t really have much to say about Buddhism at all.

Dazzling cinematography by up-and-coming filmmaker Phuttiphong Aroonpheng is a highlight of Vanishing Point, and his work includes a bravura tracking shot that follows the businessman’s teenage daughter roller-skating through her small town, with the cameraman seemingly towed from behind and the girl’s knees framing the shot.

More technical prowess is displayed by score composer Pakorn Musikboonlert and sound designer Chalermrat Kaweewattana, who come up with an ominously hypnotic series of pulsating burbles and bloops to give the film a sickening heartbeat.


See also:

• Official website

Related posts:

• In Thai cinemas: Vanishing Point, Hor Taew Taek 5, Water Boyys the Movie
• Festival festival! Young Man in Venice, Vanishing Point in Sao Paulo
• Vanishing Point takes top prize at Rotterdam
• Vanishing Point – no, not that Vanishing Point – appears in Rotterdam's Tiger competition

(Cross-published in The Nation)

Winner of the Hivos Tiger Award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Vanishing Point (วานิชชิ่ง พอยท์) is artist-filmmaker Jakrawal Nilthamrong's feature-length debut. It deals with the themes he explores in his short films and video-art installations, which reflect on strict Buddhist teachings and the dangers of materialism and greed.

Part of the inspiration for Vanishing Point stems from a horrific car crash Jakrawal's parents were involved in long ago, and newspaper clippings of the wreck, featuring a car bent in half, opens the film. With that as a jumping-off point, the highly abstract art-house film becomes a psychological drama, about a family man and a reporter whose lives are two parallel lines, and eventually intersect at that "vanishing point" on their existential plains.

This new Vanishing Point is not directly related to the cult-classic 1971 car-chase movie, but both films deal with philosophical themes and arrive at more or less the same destinations.

Vanishing Point, which has been shown at many film festivals, had its local premiere last Friday, with the film's crew taking over a derelict former porn cinema in Bangkok and having attendees be part of a giant art installation.

It has received much praise from Jakrawal's fellow indie filmmakers, as well as from more-learned critics and academics. I'm still not sure what to make of it, but I liked it. It's at SF World Cinema at CentralWorld, and comes to SFX Maya Chiang Mai on November 5.

Check out the local trailer.



In exaggerated Gothic style, Hor Taew Taek ... Hak na Ka (หอแต๋วแตก แหกนะคะ) is seemingly timed as a counter-programming to the terrific Crimson Peak.

The fifth entry in Poj Anon’s crossdressing horror-comedy franchise, the story has former students returning to their boarding-school alma mater as teachers. They deal with a problem ghost while fending off a takeover attempt by a rival.

Jaturong Phonboon, Ekachai Srivichai, Charoenporn Ornlamai, Weeradit Srimalai and Sudarat Butprom are among the stars.





And in a third Thai film being released this week, teenage lads discover they have feelings for one other in Water Boyys the Movie. The story is about gifted swimmer Num (Anuphat Laungsodsai), whose father (Nopphon Komarachun) is the coach for the national swim team. He brings Muek (Papangkorn Rerkchalermpon) to train with his son. There is a trailer.

Also on the scene, the Friese-Greene Club has one more screening tonight of So Very Very (จริงๆ มากๆ, Jing Jing Mak Mak), Jack Park's romantic comedy about a struggling young South Korean filmmaker who marries Thai woman.

Among upcoming events is the World Film Festival of Bangkok, which runs from November 13 to 22 at SF World Cinema at CentralWorld, opening with the Thai film Snap, a brand-new feature from Kongdej Jaturanrasamee.

More new movies, including Straight Outta Compton and Bridge of Spies, are covered at the other blog.

[Note: Festival festival! is a reboot of a recurring feature on this blog, in which I will attempt to offer periodic updates about Thai films at festivals around the world. It was something I did quite often in the past, but not so much in recent years due to time constraints and other issues. Thai filmmakers, please feel free to let me know if you have an entry in an upcoming festival, and when I collect two or three items I will make a posting.]

Martin Scorsese's The Audition is out of the picture at the Venice International Film Festival, but there's still a cool short screening.

Wichanon Sumumjarn (Four Boys, White Whiskey and Grilled Mouse) will be in Venice's Orizzonti competition with The Young Man Who Came from the Chee River (Jer Gun Muer Rao Jer Gun), a 16-minute drama. Here's the description from the festival website:

Golf works as a debt collector in Khon Kaen. One day he wakes up early to go to work as usual. He meets many people, including a desperate man in debt who falls critically ill. The situation forces Golf to weigh his professional duty and his moral sense against each other.

Hear the roar of the motorbike in the trailer (embedded below) from Isan New Wave Production.



Meanwhile, a major Thai fixture on the festival circuit this year, Jakrawal Nilthamrong's debut feature Vanishing Point (วานิชชิ่ง พอยท์), has been making more appearances since winning the Tiger Award at Rotterdam. It has screened in Taipei, Hong Kong, Wroclaw, Poland and Moscow. Currently, Vanishing Point can be seen in São Paulo, Brazil, at the  Indie Festival.

São Paulo also has another Thai film that's been a hit at festivals this year, a little indie movie called Cemitério do Esplendor. I'll aim to have more on that soon.

Back to Vanishing Point, it got a positive review from The Hollywood Reporter in Taipei. Here's a snip:

Apart from the Richard C. Sarafian countercultural cult hit with which Jakrawal's film shares its name – a borrowing most probably down to the prominence of cars and crashes in the story here – Vanishing Point also contains a smattering of references from a few other classics from the "New Hollywood" era, ranging from the odd nods to the paranoia-drenched thrillers of Klute and The Conversation to the grand visual gestures of Michelangelo Antonioni's American forays of Zabriskie Point and The Passenger.

Another plus, Vanishing Point will actually come to Thai cinemas this year, with a release set for Bangkok's SF World Cinema on October 22, and other cities to follow. Keep track of those developments at the film's Facebook page.

Vanishing Point (วานิชชิ่ง พอยท์), the new award-winning drama by indie Thai filmmaker Jakrawal Nilthamrong, is among the International New Talent Competition at the Taipei Film Festival.

A winner of the Tiger Award at this year's International Film Festival Rotterdam, Vanishing Point is making its way around the circuit, having also recently screened at the Singapore Art Museum's annual Southeast Asian film fest and in the Young Cinema Competition at the 39th Hong Kong International Film Festival.

The Hong Kong fest also featured two other locally anticipated Thai entries from the circuit, Josh Kim's How to Win at Checkers (Every Time), which also recently screened at the Los Angeles Asian-Pacific Film Festival, and Anucha Boonyawatana's The Blue Hour (อนธการ, Onthakan), which both made their bow in Berlin earlier this year.

Jakrawal's Vanishing Point stems from a tragic car crash that involved the director's own parents and affected their lives forever, and then follows two very different men – a disillusioned crime-scene reporter and a voyeuristic motel owner – whose lives take various fateful directions.

In Taipei, Vanishing Point is among 12 entries in the International New Talent Competition, with other titles hailing from Taiwan, Vietnam, South Korea, Mexico, Russia, Palestine, Brazil, the U.K. and the U.S. They include Chiang Hsiu-chiung's Japan-set drama The Furthest End Awaits and The Inseminator, an experimental surreal fantasy by Vietnam's Bui Kim Quy that hasn't been cleared by censors at home.

Film Business Asia has more. The Taipei Film Festival runs from June 26 to July 18.

If you don't mind trying to watch films in the not-always-ideal setting of an art gallery, then perhaps you'll want to check out documentaries by noted Thai filmmakers and visual artists in the exhibition Open Secrets from tomorrow night until April 10 at Chulalongkorn University's Art Center in Bangkok.

Among the directors is Jakrawal Nilthamrong, a visual artist and experimental filmmaker. He just premiered his debut feature Vanishing Point to award-winning acclaim at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. While we patiently wait for that show up in local cinemas, the Chula show will feature three of his other works from the past few years, including the mid-length effort Unreal Forest, which he made in Zambia as part of an African initiative by the Rotterdam film fest. Others are Hangman and Orchestra.

Other directors are the trio of Kaweenipon Ketprasit, Kong Rithdee and Panu Aree, who make documentaries that focus on their Islamic faith and the unsung lives of moderate Muslims. Among their works will be the electrifying Baby Arabia, a feature about a Bangkok-based Muslim rock band that performs songs in Arabic and Malay. They will also screen Gadhafi, about a Thai dude with an unusual name.

In all, the exhibition will screen 11 films. Others taking part are Pisut Srimhok, Santiphap Inkong-ngam and Sutthirat Supaparinya.

Friday night's opening will feature a talk by the filmmakers, “Documentary Films: Mirrors of Society”, at 5pm. The venue is The Art Center on the seventh floor of the Center for Academic Resources (the library) at Chulalongkorn University's campus off Phayathai Road.

Jakrawal Nilthramrong, left, with fellow Tiger Award winners Carlos M. Quintela and Juan Daniel F. Molero and International Film Festival Rotterdam director Rutger Wolfson.

Vanishing Point (วานิชชิ่ง พอยท์), the debut full-length feature from director Jakrawal Nilthamrong, was among the winners of the Hivos Tiger Award at the 44th International Film Festival Rotterdam, which wrapped up on Sunday.

The film, which is in no way related to the cult-classic 1971 car-chase movie of the same name, is a partly autobiographical experimental drama, which touches on a horrific car crash Jakrawal's parents were involved in. It then branches out with a pair of stories, one about a young reporter who attends crime-scene reconstructions, and the other about the owner of a sleazy hotel who watches guests on hidden-camera monitors.

Here is the statement from the IFFR press release:

The Hivos Tiger Awards Competition jury was comprised of writer, director and producer Rolf de Heer, producer Ichiyama Shozo, director Maja Miloš, art photographer and director of Spanish Film Archive Jose Maria Prado Garcia and actress Johanna ter Steege. On making their decision they commented "In dealing with both living and broken dreams, La Obra Del Siglo (Carlos M. Quintela) confronts themes both intimate and epic. With its wonderful performances, with its humour and poignancy and boldness of execution, the film resonates with history. Vanishing Point (Jakrawal Nilthamrong) combines and juxtaposes image and sound to create a powerful style. It grapples with ideas and story-telling in a provoking and different way, making it a visceral cinematic experience. Juan Daniel F. Molero’s Videophilia and other Viral Syndromes) explores the relationship between the young and the rapidly changing world with unflinching truth. Its anarchy and visual flair reflect its subject matter. The film dives deep into disturbing, necessary waters."

This is the fourth Thai film to be honored with Rotterdam's top prize, which usually goes to debut features. Others have been Aditya Assarat's Wonderful Town in 2008, Anocha Suwichakornpong's Mundane History in 2010 and Sivaroj Kongsakul with Eternity (Tee Rak) in 2011.

Jakrawal has been a long-time attendee at Rotterdam, where his graduation project from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Patterns of Transcendence was screened. He was later selected to take part the IFFR's Forget Africa project, which paired Asian film talents with African directors. That resulted in the mid-length experimental effort Unreal Forest.

There's more about Jakrawal's big win in The Nation today.

Stone Cloud

Experimental filmmaker Jakrawal Nilthamrong is taking part in this year's Berlin International Film Festival, with three entries in the Forum Expanded program, Stone Cloud, Hangman and INTRANSIT.

Here's the synopsis for Stone Cloud, a 30-minute short:

A monk asks villagers to move a big stone up to the hill. He wishes to smooth the rock so he can sit on it and meditate. While the monk is sculpting the stone a state of deep contemplation occurs. He sees past, present and future.

“The story in Stone Cloud derives from a monk friend who was ordained and lived in a jungle temple. He was a gifted film director and cinematographer, winning numerous awards before left the worldly life to become an isolated monk. I always try to visit him as much as I can … And every time I saw him and spent the nights at the jungle temple a marvelous peacefulness occurred.” (Jakrawal Nilthamrong)

His other two projects, Hangman and INTRANSIT, are in the group exhibition What Do We Know When We Know Where Something Is?

Hangman is an execution scene based on the memory of the son of the late Mr. Chavoret Jaruboon, Thailand's last executioner who passed away recently of cancer. Coincidentally, he's the subject of an upcoming biographical film The Last Executioner by director Tom Waller and starring Only God Forgives crimefighter Vithaya Pansringarm.

INTRANSIT is a multimedia installation that was the centerpiece of a group exhibition last year at Chulalongkorn Art Center in Bangkok. An ode to a medium that's fast disappearing in this digital age, it featured a loop of film running through a specially-equipped classroom projector. "Through spectacular images of a planet in creation, made using 1960s sci-fi special effects incorporating organic materials, scale models and shooting on 35mm film, INTRANSIT presents a spectacular testament to a medium in transition," says the program description.

According to Jakrawal, he's sending his loop of film to Berlin, with the festival organizers taking care of rigging up a projector to run it.

Another interesting entry in Berlin is Singaporean filmmaker Tan Pin Pin's documentary To Singapore, With Love, which features interviews with Singaporeans living in political exile, including one who lived in Thailand. Controversially, it was dropped from last year's World Film Festival of Bangkok, with the official reason being that the filmmaker hadn't obtained permission to shoot in Thailand from the Thailand Film Office.

Also in Berlin, four young Thai indie filmmakers – Pathompong "Big" Manakitsomboon, Wanlop Rungkumjad, Rasiguet Sookkarn and Sompot "Boat" Chidgasornpongse – are taking part in the Talent Campus.

The 64th Berlin International Film Festival runs from February 6 to 16.

Update: This post has been altered from an earlier version to restate facts about To Singapore, With Love being dropped from the World Film Festival of Bangkok.

The Songs of Rice, the new documentary by Uruphong Raksasad, won the Fipresci Award at the 43rd International Film Festival Rotterdam.

Making its world premiere in the Bright Future program, The Songs of Rice (Pleng Khong Kao) is about such rites as rocket festivals, buffalo races and other traditions that are connected to rice cultivation in Thailand. It is Uruphong's third feature, following his collection of short rural tales Stories from the North and his farm-family portrait Agrarian Utopia.

The Jury of the Fédération Internationale de la Presse Cinématographique selected it as the winner of all the 22 world premieres in Bright Future 2014. “Fully relying on its strong cinematography, it creates an immersive sensory experience that makes us part of a vivid community revolving around the cultivation of a tiny grain,” Fipresci said.

The Songs of Rice, produced by Pimpaka Towira and handled by the new company Mosquito Films Distribution, was among a large selection of Thai indie films at Rotterdam this year.

The main competition, the Tiger Awards for first or second-time features, included the European premiere of Concrete Clouds, the feature directorial debut of long-time film editor Lee Chatametikool.

The Tiger Awards went to filmmakers from Japan, Sweden and South Korea: Anatomy of a Paper Clip (Yamamori clip koujo no atari) by Ikeda Akira, Something Must Break (Nånting måste gå sönder) by Ester Martin Bergsmark and Han Gong-Ju by Lee Su-Jin.

Rotterdam also has a jury from the Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema, and the NETPAC Award when to 28 by Prasanna Jayakody from Sri Lanka.

There's a trailer for The Songs of Rice posted by IFFR. It's embedded below.

There's a couple recently announced project markets.

First up from January 29 to February 1 is CineMart, the project market of the International Film Festival Rotterdam. It has two Thai-related projects.

Le Vent des ombres is by Christelle Lheureux and co-produced by Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Kick the Machine and France's Independencia Productions. Apichatpong previously collaborated with the French filmmaker Lheureux on the 2005 tsunami short film Ghost of Asia.

And there's The White Buffalo, the next feature project by Wonderful Town and Hi-So director Aditya Assarat and his Pop Pictures shingle. He told me recently that his next film was going to be about me. I guess he wasn't kidding.

Next, from March 19 to 21 is HAF, the Hong Kong Asia Film Financing Forum, which has two more projects.

There's another Thai co-production: Hangman by Jakrawal Nilthamrong and Romania's Ionut Piturescu. It's being pitched in partnership with Copenhagen's CPH:DOX festival and Thailand's Extra Virgin Company. It's a result of the 2012 selection for the DOX:LAB project, which pairs European filmmakers with filmmakers from Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa. A previous project from this initiative is last year's Vanishing Woman by Uruphong Raksasad and Danish director Jesper Just.

Also at HAF is Kongdej Jaturanrasamee with Tang Wong, which has Kongdej teaming back up with his P-047 producer Soros Sukhum.

The Saint Petersburg International Film Forum is underway in Russia, where they have a Winds from the East program that includes Jakrawal Nilthamrong's Unreal Forest and Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, the pan-Asian compilation of shorts by three female directors, including Thailand's Anocha Suwichakornpong.

Unreal Forest, which Jakrawal made in Zambia under the International Film Festival Rotterdam's Forget Africa program, screened in Bangkok last year as an art installation. It's been featured in several other festivals, including Göteborg, the African, Asian and Latin American Film Festival in Milan, Singapore and in competition at the Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival in the Czech Republic.

Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, which also features segments by China's Wang Jing and Singapore's Kaz Cai, is also playing in Bangkok as part of Bioscope magazine's Indie Spirit Project. It's screening nightly until July 20 alongside Chira Wichaisuthikul's Muay Thai documentary Lumpinee.

St. Peterburg's program also includes The Tiger Factory by Malaysia's Woo Ming Jin.

The fest runs until July 15.

First of all, apologies to the couple of readers who've been asking me when I'm going to get around to posting this. Not sure I can explain why it's taken until the middle of February to complete it, but here it is.

The year in Thai cinema of 2010 started out triumphantly, with Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives winning the Palme d'Or, the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Powered by its Cannes win, Uncle Boonmee quickly secured a limited release in Thai cinemas, heralding a growing acceptance in Thailand for Thai independent cinema.

A pair of festival favorites from my 2009 Top 10 list, the indie films Agrarian Utopia and Mundane History, also had limited runs in Bangkok in 2010 and along with Uncle Boonmee are nominated for many awards here in Thailand. Meanwhile, the film industry experienced lucrative success with teen romantic dramas like Guan Muen Ho and First Love, which means that there will be more commercial films along those lines.

Thailand's film-ratings system looked to show some daring with the release of the 20- movie Sin Sisters 2 – probably the worst movie of the year. It showed lots of skin and some sex. There was also the release of the rated-18+ Brown Sugar "erotic" movies from Sahamongkol Film International.

But then toward the end of the year, the censors showed they were just as stubborn and intolerant as ever with the banning of Insects in the Backyard, a sexually explicit gay-themed social drama by independent director Tanwarin Sukkhapisit.

Well, without further ado, let's get to my favorite Thai films of 2010.

10. Tai Hong (Still, a.k.a. Die a Violent Death)

Horror from the Thai film industry was on the wane in 2010, giving way to romances and slapstick comedies, but there were still a few decent examples, including Tai Hong, a quartet of short thrillers produced by Poj Arnon for Phranakorn. Joining Poj in his fun were indie directors Chartchai Ketknust, Manus Worrasingha and Tanwarin Sukkhapisit. Among the tales was a topical drama about the agonized spirits of a New Year's Eve nightclub fire, echoing 2009's Santika tragedy. The foursome of loosely interlinked stories had decent performances from top stars like "Golf" Akara Amarttayakul, "Kratae" Supaksorn Chaimongkol and Mai Charoenpura.

9. Unreal Forest

Like Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Singaporean director Sherman Ong and a few other indie filmmakers, Jakrawal Nilthamrong makes movies that aren't necessarily designed to be shown in cinemas. While Unreal Forest has been shown in film festivals, in Bangkok its major release was as an art installation at the Bangkok Art and Culture Center. That's just a smidgen of what made Unreal Forest unique. The film was the result of an interesting experiment by the International Film Festival Rotterdam, which commissioned Asian filmmakers to travel to Africa and make movies. With a low budget, Jakrawal's approach was to make a documentary of his process of recruiting Zambian filmmakers, watching them work and then showing the story they came up with, which is about a shaman coming to a village to try and heal a sick boy. There's also an ironic message of Dutch colonialism and colonialism in general and how it relates to Thailand. As a bonus the film makes stunning use of Zambia's landmark Victoria Falls.

8. Eternity (Chua Fah Din Salai)

This Eternity is a breathtakingly lavish and steamy romantic melodrama, set in the 1930s, with sumptuous costuming and a fantastic cast, led by Ananda Everingham and "Ploy" Chermarn Boonyasak as cheating lovers chained together "until eternity". Breaking at 13-year hiatus from filmmaking, veteran drama teacher ML Bhandevanop Devakula directs this adaptation of Malai Choopanit's 1943 novel. The initial theatrical release was a sleeper summer hit that became one of the year's top 10 movies at the box office and it looks set to rule this year's movie-awards season. The original was rated 15+ while the three-hour director's cut was rated 18+ and showed more skin and sex.

7. Eternity (Tee Rak)

The other Eternity, the indie Eternity (ที่รัก, Tee Rak), by director Sivaroj Kongsakul – making his feature debut – is an existential romance that's an autobiographical ode to Sivaroj's late father. It traces the man's thoughts and memories in his afterlife, from a tearful ghost, riding a motorcycle around his old haunts, to memories of his youthful courtship and finally to a time when recollections about him have faded. Full of nostalgia, tears and longing, it's slow and quiet with that far-away camera work that's a trademark of indie arthouse cinema. Eternity is an lingering emotional musing. Following its recent Tiger Award win at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Eternity will be making its way around the film-festival circuit in the year to come and making sure Sivaroj is another Thai name to be reckoned with.

6. Shadow of the Naga (Nak Prok)

One of the reasons I began feel hopeful about the future of Thai cinema under the ratings system was this film – a film-noir thriller that took a serious look at Thai Buddhism and tackled taboo subjects with a story about three bank robbers who hide their loot in a temple and then pose as monks in order to retrieve it. In this place of contemplation, greed and rage boil to the surface. There's strong, showy performances all around by the cast of Somchai Kemklad, Ray MacDonald, Pitisak Yaowanan, Inthira Charoenpura and Sa-ad Piampongsan. Director Phawat Panangkasiri's drama languished in Sahamongkol's vaults for three years before producers decided the time was right to release it. The ratings board passed it with an 18+ rating though there were pop-up warning messages for scenes that go against Buddhist practices.

5. Baby Arabia

A soulful, spiritual triumph, the lively Arab-Malay music of the band Baby Arabia propels this documentary by Panu Aree, Kaweenipon Ketprasit and Kong Rithdee. Unusually for a Thai film, it's not about Buddhism but about Islam, a faith that isn't ordinarily heard about in Thailand unless it's connected to the extremists, violence and deaths in southern part of the country. And aside from showcasing the infectious music and telling the story of the band, that's the point of the movie. It's an effort to show a side of Islam that isn't ordinarily heard from – presenting the moderate viewpoint that by its very nature doesn't make itself heard.

4. Reincarnate

Thunska Pansittivorakul's 2008 documentary This Area Is Under Quarantine was an explosive combination of political commentary – banned video footage of Thai army brutality against Muslim men – and young men having sex. It was prevented from being screened at the 2009 World Film Festival of Bangkok on a technicality by censors who said they weren't authorized to permit it. Whatever that meant. Essentially, they banned it, though not officially. Anyway, Thunska became unrepentant, and he ups the ante in Reincarnate, which screened at the Rotterdam fest, in Berlin and Buenos Aires last year. Featuring an on-screen masturbation and ejaculation with risky metaphorical social commentary, Thunska didn't even try show Reincarnate in Thailand. He looks to be continuing on that track with The Terrorists, produced by Germany's Jürgen Brüning, and screening at the Berlin International Film Festival.

3. Insects in the Backyard

Tanwarin Sukkapisit's soul is poured into Insects in the Backyard, a magnum opus from the gay cross-dressing director. It's by turns hilarious and heartbreaking. Tanwarin stars as the flamboyant, Audrey Hepburn-inspired transvestite father of a troubled teenage son and daughter. The kids, confused about their own sexuality, rebel against their eccentric father by entering the sex trade. There's fetish sex, with the teenage characters in school uniform. The explicit film, with a damning social message, screened in Vancouver and at the World Film Festival of Bangkok, but efforts by Tanwarin to secure a limited release for Insects have been thwarted by censors, who deemed the film to be against public morals. It's Thailand's first officially banned film under the ratings system. They were disturbed by fantasy images of the son killing his father. Another scene that had the culture watchdogs barking was when Tanwarin is watching porn and her dress is pulled back to reveal her man parts.

2. The Red Eagle

At first look, Wisit Sasanatieng's Insee Dang (The Red Eagle) is a dark, brooding, ultra-violent affair that is quite unlike his colorful cult-favorite earlier efforts like Tears of the Black Tiger or Citizen Dog. A deeper look will reveal Wisit's cheeky sense of humor and sly digs against product placement and the cliches of Hollywood action films. Perhaps it's Wisit's frustration boiling to surface, since making The Red Eagle – a much-anticipated reboot of the 1960s action franchise that starred Mitr Chaibancha, with Ananda Everingham taking over the storied role – left Wisit feeling so creatively hamstrung he vowed it would be his last studio film. But it's not his last film. So even if Wisit doesn't come back to direct Insee Dang out of his cliffhanger ending, there's hope he'll get his indie Muay Thai film Suriya off the ground.

1. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

Winner of the Cannes Film Festival's top prize, the Palme d'Or – the first for a Thai film – Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Uncle Boonmee is a bit different form his previous features like Tropical Malady and Syndromes and a Century, which had elliptical qualities that told abstract stories. Here, the stories are just fractured as ever but there's a solid narrative that makes Boonmee perhaps more accessible than the previous films. Sure, there's still viewers who haven't a clue what to make of such things as the Monkey Ghost with the glowing red eyes, the ghost wife and the princess and the catfish. Apichatpong has said his movie channels his movie memories, mainly from when he was growing up and going to the Khon Kaen cinemas in the 1980s. The magic of Uncle Boonmee is that in its blissfully weird way it can speak to anyone's movie memories. For example, I felt like I was watching Apichatpong's version of Star Wars, even though he's said he wasn't influenced by George Lucas. Though perhaps Planet of the Apes fit in there somewhere.

Sivaroj Kongsakul's debut feature Eternity (ที่รัก, Tee Rak) is among the three Tiger Award winners at the International Film Festival Rotterdam.

The other two winners are The Journals of Musan by Park Jung-Bum of South Korea and Finisterrae by Sergio Caballero of Spain.

In all, 14 first or second films competed in the 2011 Tiger Awards Competition. The jury included Thai filmmaker Wisit Sasanatieng, as well as director Lucrecia Martel of Argentina, former IFFR director Sandra den Hamer, director of the EYE Film Institute Netherlands and former IFFR director; Romanian filmmaker Andrei Ujica and Sonic Youth musician Lee Ranaldo, who put on a solo concert as part of the awards ceremony.

Here's the jury statement about Eternity:

"With a great sense of cinematic duration, this film builds its own universe, finding its own pacing, so consistently, to tell its particular story. A film that seems on the surface to be about death but which is really about love, a beautiful and delicate love story."

Produced by Aditya Assarat, Umpornpol Yugula, Soros Sukhum, the film was supported by IFFR’s Hubert Bals Fund.

Eternity premiered at the Pusan International Film Festival last year and was the opener of the World Film Festival of Bangkok.

The film deals with the memories Sivaroj has of his father, who died when the filmmaker was very young. The story tracks the man through the stages of his life and afterlife, from a ghost haunting his boyhood home, to the romance of his wife and finally to years after his death when memories of him have faded but longing by loved ones still lingers.

Sivaroj talked a bit at the fest about his film. Here's a bit from the IFFR website:

It’s an immersive experience, and one that Kongsakul doesn’t mind audiences scratching their heads over. “I didn’t expect the audience would understand the whole film, but everybody would have at least one shot that would trigger something for them,” he says. “I didn’t want to trap people into specific feelings.”

[...]

The three parts of the story are marked by formal changes. Kongsakul was especially attentive to sound, using surround sound to capture a natural ambience and shifting registers. “The first part is intended to be a bit ghost-like,” he says. “The sound there was more mysterious – I didn’t really understand it myself. We were trying to get the sound of the feeling of hurt, of separating from your body – not pain, exactly, but lots of confusing things together.” The result is a kind of ambient drone.

Early in the festival, the poster for Eternity was selected by Mubi.com's Adrian Curry as the Movie Poster of the Week.

Other Thai films at Rotterdam this year were Immortal Woman by Jakrawal Nilthamrong, which was in the short film competition, Wisit Sasanatieng's The Red Eagle, Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner by Wang Jing, Anocha Suwichakornpong and Kaz Cai and the shorts All That Remains by Wichanon Somumjarn, My Father by Pimpaka Towira, Cherie Is Korean-Thai by Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit and A Tale of Heaven by Phuttiphong Aroonpheng.

Short films by Pimpaka Towira, Wichanon Somumjarn, Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit and Phuttiphong Aroonpheng are in the International Film Festival Rotterdam's Spectrum program:

Three of the shorts form the combined program Homecoming:

• All That Remains, Wichanon Somumjarn, 2010, 8 min. The filmmaker collects memories of his youth. His brother often told him about being stung by a poisonous jellyfish. Here he retells the story.
• My Father, Pimpaka Towira, 2010, 22 min. We watched the confrontation between those in power and the people in Bangkok on television. But who were the demonstrators? We follow one back to his village.
• Cherie Is Korean-Thai, Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit, 2010, 19 min. A matter of casting. A diva-like soap actress is given the role of a female builder, opening her eyes to the lives of others. Very witty.

All That Remains was previously screened at the World Film Festival of Bangkok. Pimpaka's politically colored My Father premiered at last year's Dubai International Film Festival in the Muhr Asia-Africa Competition for Short Films. And Nawapol's Cherie Is Korean-Thai was the top prize-winner at the 14th Thai Short Film & Video Festival.

Another Rotterdam shorts program, Memory and Loss, has A Tale of Heaven, a 6-minute work by Phuttiphong Aroonpheng. The Thai-Japanese production is described as "A delicate Thai Super-8 film in which a spirit comes back to visit the family. Something accepted as normal in Thailand."

Those are in addition to the Thai entries in Rotterdam: Sivaroj Kongsakul's feature Eternity (Tee Rak) and Jakrawal Nilthamrong's short Immortal Woman in the Tiger Awards competition, plus Wisit Sasanatieng's The Red Eagle and the pan-Asian shorts trilogy Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner by Wang Jing, Anocha Suwichakornpong and Kaz Cai.

The International Film Festival Rotterdam has announced its complete competition lineup, including its short films, and among those is Immortal Woman by Jakrawal Nilthamrong (จักรวาล นิลธำรงค์).

It's the European premiere for Jakrawal's 9-minute work, which is an intimate yet haunting landscape study of an elderly woman. It's previously been exhibited as an art installation in Bangkok and was screened at the Singapore Art Museum.

That's in addition to previously announced Thai titles in the IFFR's 40th edition, Sivaroj Kongsakul's Eternity (Tee Rak) in competition and out-of-competition slots for Wisit Sasanatieng's The Red Eagle and the pan-Asian shorts trilogy Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner by Wang Jing, Anocha Suwichakornpong and Kaz Cai.

Wisit and Anocha are on the Tiger Awards jury, and Wisit is also taking part in CineMart.

IFFR runs from January 26 to February 6.