An award-winning selection

Postponed from November by the floods, the ninth edition of the World Film Festival of Bangkok unspools this week with around 90 dramatic features, documentaries and shorts, many of them award-winners from prominent festivals, including Cannes, Berlin and Sundance.
 
The programme is divided into the usual five categories from past years – Asian Contemporary, Cine Latino, Cinema Beat, Doc Feast and Short Wave.
The festival’s annual Lotus Award will be presented to Hungarian director Béla Tarr, who’ll also be on hand to talk about his latest work, “The Turin Horse”. Shot in black-and-white in just 30 long takes by Tarr’s regular cinematographer Fred Kelemen, it depicts the repetitive daily lives of a horse and its owner. The film also recalls the whipping of a horse in Turin, the sight of which is rumoured to have caused the mental breakdown of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. It premiered at last year’s Berlin film festival, where it received the Jury Grand Prix. Tarr, 56, says “The Turin Horse” is about the “heaviness of human existence”, and that he intends it to be his last film.
A special programme in this year’s festival is the American Documentary Showcase. Presented by the US State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, the showcase comprises five features, all subtitled in Thai and screened for free. The selection includes a winner from last year’s Sundance, “If A Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front”, about the radical environmental group labelled America’s “No 1 domestic terrorist threat” by the FBI.
There’s also a special programme in celebration of the 50th Anniversary of Critic’s Week at the Cannes Film Festival, with two French titles, “Boy Meets Girl” from 1984 and “Little Jerusalem” from 2005 and from Poland, “Walkover” from 1965, the second feature by Jerzy Skolimowski.
Of the feature sections, the biggest is Asian Contemporary, with 16 titles.
Among them is “Leaving Baghdad”, following the odyssey of Saddam Hussein’s former personal cameraman. It won the Raindance Award at last year’s British Independent Film Awards.
There’s also an Independent Spirit “Someone to Watch” nominee, “Dog Sweat”, about young Iranians struggling to cope in their country’s oppressively conservative society.

“Dance Town”, about the adventures of a North Korean couple emigrating to the South, was a nominee for the Golden DV Award at last year’s Hong Kong film fest. And the Chinese drama “No 89 Shimen Road” won Best Feature at November’s China Independent Film Festival.
Other Asian films of note from the festival circuit are Taiwan’s “Juliets”, triptych by three directors, each offering a reinterpretation of Shakespeare’s classic character, and “Return Ticket”, about a pair of women who plan to fix up an old bus to transport other ladies to their home provinces for the Lunar New Year. And from Indonesia comes “Lovely Man”, about a young woman who discovers that her estranged father is a transvestite working on the streets of Jakarta.
Cine Latino includes a 2010 Sundance winner, “Undertow” from Peru, about a closeted gay man haunted by the ghost of his secret lover. There’s also Argentina’s “Las Acacias”, winner of the Golden Camera and two other prizes at last year’s Cannes Film Festival. The debut by Pablo Giorgelli, it’s about a truck driver who gives a ride to a woman and her child. And there’s the Academy Award-nominated documentary “Waste Land”, about Vik Muniz, a Rio de Janeiro artist who creates works from the rubble of the world’s largest trash city.
Venezuela’s “The Kid Who Lies”, about a 13-year-old boy searching for his family after the country’s worst natural disaster, has been screened at festivals in Berlin, Vancouver and Chicago.
Cinema Beat has more acclaimed movies, among them “A Screaming Man”, winner of the Jury Prize at Cannes in 2010. From Chad, it’s about a former swimming champ working as a hotel pool guard who is replaced at his job by his son. There’s also the Oscar-nominated animated feature “The Illusionist” by Sylvain Chomet, based on a screenplay by Jacques Tati.
And from 2010 Lotus Award recipient Nuri Bilge Ceylan is “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia”. A crime drama about men searching for a corpse in Turkey’s Anatolian steppes, it won the jury prize at Cannes last year and was a top recipient of last year’s Asia Pacific Screen Awards, winning the Jury Grand Prize and honours for directing and cinematography.
Also from Turkey is “Zephyr”, about an 11-year-old girl spending the summer at her grandparents’ house in the Black Sea Mountains, waiting for the day her mother will show up. It was a nominee for the Grand Prix at the 2010 Tokyo International Film Festival.
Doc Feast has more highlights, including the critically acclaimed “Cave of Forgotten Dreams”, director Werner Herzog’s mesmerising 3D look at prehistoric paintings in France.
There’s also “The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye”, about artist and musician Genesis P-Orridge. He used his position at the limits of society to challenge the very fundamentals of biology, and he became a she to resemble his beloved Lady Jaye. The documentary by Marie Losier won the Teddy Award for best LGBT film and Caligari Award at last year’s Berlinale.
Film festival favourites from Thailand to make local premieres
Acclaimed Thai movies that made their premieres at other festivals make their local bow at the World Film Festival of Bangkok.
The opening film “I Carried You Home” (“Padang Besar”) by Tongpong Chatarangkul debuted in the New Currents competition at last year’s Busan Film Festival. A drama about estranged sisters brought back together by their mother’s death, it’s been picked up for distribution in France, was featured in competition at the Marrakech International Film Festival and has been added to the Bright Future selection of this month’s International Film Festival Rotterdam.
There is also a trio that premiered at last year’s Venice Film Festival – “Lung Naew Visits His Neighbours” by Rirkrit Tiravanija, “P-047” by Kongdej Jaturanrasamee and “Passing Through the Night” by Wattanapume Laisuwanchai.
“Lung Naew” is the debut feature by Rirkrit, an internationally known artist. It’s a documentary about a 60-year-old rice farmer in rural Chiang Mai. “P-047” (“Tae Peang Phu Deaw”), about a pair of men who break into people’s homes to “borrow” their lives, garnered much critical acclaim from its last-minute, out-of-competition addition in Venice. It’s also been screened at in Busan as well fests in Dubai and Palm Springs.
“Passing Through the Night” is among a strong selection of Thai titles in the World Film Fest’s Short Wave programme. Other shorts include “An Indiscreet Incident on Yotha Street” by Japan-based Kong Pahurak and “Distinction” by Tulapop Saenjaroen, a prize-winner at last year’s Thai Short Film & Video Festival.
A fourth feature in the World fest is “The Unreasonable Man” (“Mai Roo Mun Ke Arai Tae Chob”) by Supharat Boonmayam. It’s a trilogy of shorts that star Somchai “Tao” Kemglad as a barber. Pramote Sangsorn also stars.
The documentaries include “The Cheer Ambassadors” by Luke Cassady-Dorion, about a Thai cheerleading team that went all the way to the World Cheerleading Championships in Orlando, Florida, and had great success.
And there’s “My Rohingya”, a documentary by Nation Channel reporter Thananuch Sanguansak about the Burmese Muslim refugees who were in the news in 2009 after reports of the Thai navy stranding boatloads of them at sea. It previously screened at last October’s Refugee Film Festival in Tokyo.
EYE-OPENERS
- The World Film Festival of Bangkok’s opening ceremonies will be at 6 tomorrow night at Paragon Cineplex, with the the presentation of the Lotus Award to Béla Tarr and the screening of “I Carried You Home”.
- The festival then runs from Saturday until January 27 at the Esplanade Cineplex Ratchadaphisek.
- The closing ceremonies will be at the Village Square at the Nine Neighbourhood Centre on Rama IX Road, with outdoor screenings of “Earthly Paradise” from Chile and a collection shorts by Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki.
- Visit www.WorldFilmBKK.com.