ChopShots is coming to you

AWARD-WINNING DOCUMENTARIES From this year’s ChopShots Documentary Film Festival in Jakarta are coming to the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre on Sunday in the ChopShots Travel Festival.
The line-up includes ChopShots’ winning Best Southeast Asian Short Documentary, “Where I Go” by Cambodia’s Neang Kavich. It’s a look at a friend of his, San Pattica, who is a living legacy of when the country was administered by Untac – the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia – in 1992-93. Pattica’s father was a Cameroonian UN worker and his mother was a Cambodian beer girl. At first raised by his grandmother, San suffered discrimination and abuse because of his mixed heritage. He was eventually sent to an orphanage and then got involved in the Cambodia Living Arts programme, where he was trained in Khmer classical dance. While exploring his self-identity, Pattica describes the discrimination he encounters in his daily life.
Intolerance is the subject of the travelling fest’s opener, “Consider”, by Thai documentary director Panu Saeng-Xuto. His 20-minute short profiles a transgender teenager named Tay. Interviews with classmates and a teacher who is also transgendered are heartwarming testaments to their acceptance of Tay, but one teacher’s prejudice was enough to make the story a sad one. It screens at 1.30pm, followed by “Where I Go”.
Bias against transgender people is also addressed in “Madam Phung’s Last Journey”, which won a special mention in ChopShots’ feature documentary competition. Directed by Nguyen Thi Tham, it follows a Vietnamese cross-dressing carnival troupe as they travel the country with such fairground attractions as a miniature train ride, a bouncy house, merry-go-round, balloons and darts and a shotgun aiming at members as they perform songs and sketches. It screens at 4.45pm.
And at 4.30, there’s the fest’s second-place Southeast Asian short, “Flaneurs No 3” by Aryo Danusiri. A look at the “new Indonesia”, the 13-minute experimental work captures “a throng of believers crowd[ed] together in front of a stage. The speeches have ended. They are enraptured”.
From 3 to 4.30, there will be a talk with filmmakers Kavich and Panu plus two others, Thai directors Kamolwan Nophaket and Nontawat Numbenchapol. Kamolwan’s short documentary “Light the Way”, about popular DJ Nakadia, screened at ChopShots as did Nontawat’s latest, “By the River”.
The ChopShots Travel Festival is organised by the Goethe-Institut and DocNet Southeast Asia, with support from the Thai Film Archive. Other stops for the touring festival are Yangon from June 15 to 19 and Phnom Penh from June 19 to 22.
 BEST IN SHOW
 n The ChopShots Travel Festival runs from 1.30pm on Sunday in the fifth-floor auditorium at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre.
n Admission is free and all films have English subtitles.
n For more details, visit www.BACC.or.th or DocNetSoutheastAsia.net.