Location, Location, Location
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A new festival promotes Thailand as a filmmaking destination
Riding high on the wave of successful foreign films such as “The Hangover Part II”, “The Impossible” and “Lost in Thailand”, the Department of Tourism aims to highlight Thailand’s role as a film location with the Thailand International Film Destination Festival.
The event include screenings of foreign films shot here. In the past five years, foreign film productions have contributed around Bt10 billion to the local economy.
However, most of the festival’s Bt80 million budget is being spent on the Amazing Thailand Film Challenge, a contest that will see 48 foreign teams and two Thai teams rush to make winning shorts about Thailand.
Working feverishly over seven days, the teams will spread across Thailand in search of their subject, actors or interviewees and complete their films in time for the April 8 deadline.
The festival is covering airfares for the two-member teams as well as accommodation in Thailand, plus a modest budget. The top prize is Bt1 million and the shorts will be used in the filmmaker’s own countries to promote Thailand.
Films will include such made-in-Thailand favourites as “The Beach”, “The Lady”, “Vinyan” and “Lost in Thailand”.
There will also be the local theatrical premieres of director Prachya Pinkaew’s Hollywood action debut “Elephant White” starring Djimon Hounsou and Kevin Bacon, “Formosa Betrayed”, in which Thailand stands in for Taiwan in the 1980s, the Danish romantic comedy “Teddy Bear” and the globalisation drama “Mammoth”.
April 9 will be Pang Brothers Day, dedicated to Hong Kong twin directors Danny and Oxide Pang who made many movies in Thailand. It will feature Oxide’s 2007 thriller “The Detective”, with Aaron Kwok as a downtrodden Bangkok Chinatown private investigator hired to track down a missing young woman.
On April 5, there will be the seminar, “Managing Expectations in the Different Business Culture”.
Contest winners will be announced during the festival’s closing ceremony on April 10, an event that will also feature a red-carpet procession of stars.
BEHIND THE LENS
The Thailand International Film Destination Festival runs from April 1 to 10 at SF World Cinema. Find out more at www.ThailandFilmDestination.com.
