A showcase of ideas

NOW IN ITS 19th year, the Thai Film Archive and Thai Film Foundation’s Thai Short Film and Video Festival is upon us, running until August 23 at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre. With dozens upon dozens of films, it’s a daunting event to wrap your head around, and as an attendee for the past 10 years or so, my strategy has been to not overthink it – just show up, sit down, shut up and take it all in. I always find something I like, or at least something to think about.

Here, I’ll try and boil it down further.

 

International appeal

Despite its name, the Thai Short Film and Video Festival isn’t only about Thai films for Thai people – there are several programmes devoted to world cinema. Chief among these is the “best of” selection from France’s Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, which is the biggest of its kind in the world.

This year the Clermont-Ferrand offerings are split into two sets – “Youth”, which has kid-friendly animation and family stories, and “Homage”, an inventive mix of live action and animated shorts that seem to take their cues from the great directors of the past.

There’s also the International Competition, which has annually seen increasing numbers of submissions. This year the entries are from such places as Serbia, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Iran, South Korea, Australia, Ukraine and Kosovo, along with the usual cinema powerhouses France, Germany, Russia and Poland.

 

Regional vibe

One of the centrepieces of Thai Short has been S-Express, a travelling line-up curated by experts in Thailand’s neighbouring countries. This year the S-Express selections come from Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore, all countries that have vital indie moviemaking scenes. Always interesting and worth a look, the S-Express package has a special resonance this year with the launch of the Asean Economic Community.

 

Special interests

Festival organisers are quite proud of their Queer Programme, which groups together shorts dealing with issues of sexuality. A special programme this year is “Out of Place”, which compiles expat-relatable stories of foreigners stuck in foreign lands, and including such titles as “Superman Isn’t Jewish (...But I Am a Bit)”, with other entries from Japan, China, Vietnam, Ireland, Finland and elsewhere.

 

Going local

Thai entries fill competition slots, which are further broken down into categories for youth titles (for directors age 18 and under), student films (from universities), documentaries, animation and the top-tier category for up-and-coming moviemakers, the RD Pestonji Award, named after Thailand’s pioneering auteur.

Among the perennial winners of past years is inventive filmmaker and video artist Chulayarnnon Siriphol, who this year has been given the task of creating the festival’s official “bumper”, a very-short short that plays before each programme. Ordinarily, the bumpers have something to do with eggs or embryos – one of the festival’s recurring icons – so it’s always a treat to see what different directors do with the concept of “giving birth to ideas”.

 

A word from our sponsor

This year the RD Pestonji competition has higher stakes thanks to VS Service, which will give a cash prize, waive equipment-rental fees and provide a crew to the top-prize winner, and free use of equipment to the runner-up. VS Service is better known for its work with foreign productions, but in the past year or so it’s demonstrated its willingness to support and educate indie Thai filmmakers, with an active internship programme and other initiatives.

 

EGGED ON

The 19th Thai Short Film and Video Festival runs until August 23 at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre.

Screenings, many with English subtitles, begin at 5.30pm from Tuesday to Friday and at 11am on Saturday and Sunday (the BACC is closed on Monday).

Admission is free. For the schedule and more details, see www.Facebook.com/thaishortfilmvideofestival.