Salaya Doc sets premieres for 'Songs of Rice', 'Missing Picture'

The opening film will be “At Berkeley”, the latest work by veteran documentarian Frederick Wiseman. Running for four hours, it chronicles the debate over tuition increases and budget cuts at the University of California at Berkeley.

“The Songs of Rice”, the latest feature by “Agrarian Utopia” director Urupong Raksasad, will be the closing film. A poetic look at the various rites that accompany rice cultivation in Thailand, it premiered at this year’s International Film Festival Rotterdam, where it won the Fipresci Award from an international jury of film critics.

“The Missing Picture”, the first Foreign Language Film nominee for Cambodia at the Academy Awards, is the latest work by Cambodian filmmaker Rithy Panh to examine the legacy of the Khmer Rouge. It combines archival footage and uses clay figures of his vanished family members in a bid to reconstruct fading memories.

Another special screening will be “Receiving Torpedo Boat”, rarely viewed 1935 footage by Luang Kolakarn Jan-Jit, aka Pao Wasuwat, about Royal Thai Marines going to Italy to acquire a torpedo boat. It was added last year to the Culture Ministry’s Registry of Films as National Heritage.

The Director in Focus this year is Kazuhiro Soda, with screenings of two of his films, “Campaign 1” and “Campaign 2”.

There will also be a selection of UK-produced documentaries co-presented by the British Council – “Rough Aunties”, “Requiem for Detroit”, “Moving to Mars” and “Soundtrack for a Revolution”.

Still to come are entries in this year’s Southeast Asian documentary competition.

 

 

Docs on order

_ Salaya Doc runs from March 22 to 29 at the Thai Film Archive in Salaya, Nakhon Pathom, and from March 25 to 28 and March 30 at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre.

_ For more details, visit www.facebook.com/SalayaDoc.