Award-winning drama finds berth in Bangkok

FILIPINO DIRECTOR Brillante Ma Mendoza is a favourite of film festivals, winning many, many awards around the world.

His latest triumph came at Cannes, with actress Jaclyn Jose from his “Ma’ Rosa” winning best-actress, the first Filipina to win that honour.

Mendoza is also a favourite of the Contemporary World Film Series at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand, which has its next entry at 7pm on Monday with Mendoza’s award-winning 2012 drama “Thy Womb”. Starring screen doyenne Nora Aunor, the drama is about a midwife who can’t have children who wants her husband to remarry so he can become a father.

Both Mendoza and Aunor won accolades for their work on "Thy Womb", netting prizes from the Asia Pacific Screen Awards, the Venice Film Festival and a dozen or so others.

Next month, the FCCT will have three more films in its series, with the US Embassy contribution Stephen Spielberg’s “Lincoln” on June 6, a pair of Pakistani short films on June 13 and the Swiss film “Le Meraviglie” on June 20.

Entry is Bt150 for non-members plus Bt100 for the snacks and San Miguel laid on by the Embassy of the Philippines. For details, check FCCThai.com.

 

Also showing

 

Friese-Greene Club – The month winds down tonight with Peter Greenaway’s best-known film, “The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover”, which encapsulates everything that is Greenaway, with sudden violence, nudity and stylish eroticism. Tomorrow is classic Robert Altman, who has a sprawling cast in “Short Cuts”, an ambitious, interweaving adaptation of several short stories of Raymond Carver. And Sunday has one more Edward G Robinson film, his final role, co-starring with Charlton Heston in the dystopian sci-fi “Soylent Green”. Shows are at 8pm. For more details, check FGC.in.th.

 

Alliance Fran็aise – Tonight’s French film with Thai subtitles is “Je fais le mort” (“Playing Dead”), in which a struggling actor takes a job playing victims in crime re-enactments. And June’s schedule kicks off with next Wednesday’s French film with English subtitles, “L’affaire SK1”, a fact-based crime drama about a young police inspector who makes connections that put him on the trail of a serial killer. Shows are at 7pm. Admission is Bt100. For details, check AFThailande.org.

 

Take note

 

June and July are shaping up to be a very busy time, with the unveiling of more movie events.

The Silent Film Festival is already announced, running from June 16 to 22 at the Lido and Scala.

Dovetailing with that will be the second edition of the Bangkok Gay and Lesbian Film Festival from June 10 to 19 at the Quartier CineArt.

And SF World Cinema piles on with Singapore Film Festival from June 16 to 19, screening five award-winning entries from the city-state.

Heading into July, the Thai Film Archive will start a series of screenings of classic films that were viewed in local cinemas by His Majesty the King, starting with “Santi-Vina”, the 1954 feature that was lost for 60 years, was recently rediscovered and shown at the Cannes Film Festival.

Also in July, there will be another edition of the Thailand International Film Destination Festival at Paragon Cineplex, with another crop of foreign movies that were made in Thailand in recent years.