Festival features march of the independents

Since it started 11 years ago, one of the missions of the World Film Festival of Bangkok has been to support independent Thai filmmakers by giving them a platform to show their work.

This year’s edition of the World Film Fest, running from next Friday until November 24 at SF World Cinema at CentralWorld, has a large selection of Thai indies.

Among the highlights is “The Isthmus”, which premiered in competition at the Busan International Film Festival.

There’s also the closing film, “By the River”, which won a special mention at the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland.

Other new indie features are “Village of Hope” and “Mother”. And the fest will give space to a handful of features you may have missed when they played in cinemas earlier this year, “Tang Wong”, Karaoke Girl” and “Boundary”.

“We’re excited by ‘The Isthmus’,” says festival director Kriengsak “Victor” Silakong.

The debut feature by a pair of directors, Sopawan Boonnimitra and Peerachai Kerdsint, who are both film studies teachers at universities, “The Isthmus” tells an unusual story in an unusual language for a Thai film – it’s about a little Thai girl who starts speaking only Burmese after her family’s maid dies. The girl’s mother then sets off on a road trip to visit the Myanmar migrant community along the southern border.

“It’s the perfect film for now,” says Victor, especially with Myanmar coming under more intense focus thanks to the opening of the country after decades of military dictatorship.

The closing film, unusual because it’s a documentary, is “By the River” (“Sai Nam Tid Shoer”). It tackles the thorny subject of the Klity Creek environmental disaster, which created hardships for Karen villagers in Kanchanaburi Province.

Directed by Nontawat Numbenchapol, “By the River” premiered earlier this year at the Locarno Film Festival, where is earned a special mention award.

With a subject that’s ripped from newspaper headlines, Victor says “By the River” is an eye-opening film that takes on a difficult subject.

“We need more filmmakers like Nontawat, to challenge people,” he says.

The World Film Festival will also screen another of Nontawat’s challenging documentaries – “Boundary” (“Fahtum Pandinsoong”). It takes on the hot-button topic of the Preah Vihear temple in the disputed border area with Cambodia. “Boundary” debuted earlier this year at the Berlin fest and made its Thai premiere at the Salaya International Documentary Film Festival. Nontawat then sought a wide release for it in the multiplexes, but the sensitive political subject made that difficult for the theatre chains to swallow. He managed to secure a limited run for it in a few theatres by hiring out cinemas and personally handling the ticket sales.

The fest will also offer a chance to see a couple other indie features that received limited runs in Thai cinemas, Kongdej Jaturanrasmee’s “Tang Wong”, about schoolboys who make a vow to learn a Thai traditional dance, and Visra Vichet-Vadakan’s “Karaoke Girl”.

“Not many people went to see ‘Tang Wong’,” laments Victor, who notes the film offers important commentary on the state of contemporary Thai society and culture. It’s too bad many folks missed it, because “it’s the best Thai film of the year”, Victor says.

Meanwhile, “Karaoke Girl”, which premiered in competition at this year’s Rotterdam fest and recently screened at Bangkok’s Lido and House cinemas, didn’t break new ground in its story of a young Isaan woman working as a bar hostess in Bangkok. But what was noteworthy, Victor says, was the beautiful cinematography with the film featuring the work of two directors of photography, including Visra’s film-school professor from New York University, Sandi Sissel, whose past credits include Mira Nair’s “Salaam Bombay!”

Also worth catching will be “The Mother”, the debut feature of young director Vorakorn Ruetaivanichkul.

“It’s a highly personal story, drawn from the director’s own experiences of caring for his mother,” Victor says.

Another personal, heartfelt story comes from veteran director Boonsong Nakphoo and his rural ode “Village of Hope”, in which a soldier returns to his tiny farming community to visit his elderly grandmother.

Following Boonsong’s recent efforts “Poor People the Great” and “Four Stations”, which were also dramas set in the countryside, “Village of Hope” is filmed in black-and-white and is the director’s most “auteurlike” effort yet, Victor says.

 

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