THURSDAY, March 28, 2024
nationthailand

Making tracks to Berlin

Making tracks to Berlin

Sompot Chidgasornpongse's documentary "Railway Sleepers" receives a warm welcome at one of the most important film festivals

Despite the Thai film industry going through difficult commercial times overseas as well as at home, a local feature documentary, one of just two Southeast Asian films selected for this year’s Berlin International Film Festival, received a warm welcome from the largely foreign audience when it was screened last week. 
Premiered at the Busan International Film Festival last year, and in Thailand at the World Film Festival of Bangkok, Sompot Chidgasornpongse’s “Railway Sleepers” made its European debut in Berlin in the Forum section, in which films with new formal and thematic development from around the world are shown.
An assistant director who has worked with Apichatpong Weerasethakul since his 2004 release “Tropical Malady”, Sompot has directed many shorts, among them “To Infinity and Beyond” (2004) and “Diseases and a Hundred Year Period” (2008), both of which have been screened at various film festivals. In 2005, his “Heartbreak Pavillion”, a project produced by Apichatpong and co-directed with Thunska Pansittivorakul won top prize from the Pusan Promotion Plan, a film-pitching programme at Busan International Film Festival. “Heartbreak Pavillion” remains to be made, but his efforts to come |out with a full-length feature film have borne fruit through the selection of “Railways Sleepers” for one of the world’s most important film festivals. 
“This project started in 2007”, Sompot says of the film. “I studied at CalArts and I had to do my thesis for my third year. I was living at a dormitory and didn’t have a car, which made it difficult to go anywhere. One day I had to take the train alone. The light at dusk was so beautiful that it made me cry. I saw a Mexican boy talking with his father on the train. I felt like I understood what they were talking about and that made me want to come back to Thailand to film families travelling on the train.”
Sompot later dropped out from school for a year and came back to Thailand to film those train journeys. 
“I wanted to record just a few moments in the lives of people, of families, on the train but I found more interesting things during the trip, so I recorded them as well,” says Sompot.
 “I edited the footage and submitted a version as my thesis, although it was far from the complete version I wanted. My professor understood and saw the potential in it, so I graduated.
“I filmed more footage then stopped because I had to work on |the production of Apichatpong’s film. After that I just filmed whenever I had time. It’s taken almost 10 tears!
“Apichatpong helped me a lot |as a producer. He gave me some money to buy film equipment. |He also gave feedback on the editing of the film, which he felt wasn’t strong enough in the earlier versions.”
Less hardy filmmakers might well have given up if they had to spend a decade making just one film, but Sompot is made of sterner stuff.
“I was frustrated that I couldn’t finish it, but I never wanted to give up,” says Sompot. “The problem was I couldn’t find the right ending, and I didn’t have money for post production. I applied for funding from many sources, but I didn’t get it. Then I received the Asian Network of Documentary Fund from the Busan International Film Festival and knew it was time to finish the film.”
“People are different in each class of the train. In third class, which is free of charge, there are too many people and the journey is too exhausting. I talked with many people on the train and sometimes they shared their sad stories with me. In first class, I met foreigners and people I couldn’t film because of privacy concerns. The atmosphere in the trains is also different in each region. In the South, you see soldiers walking through the carriages. Things like that reflect the wider issues in our society.”
Indeed, the audience in Berlin seemed fascinated by the reality on the train in Thailand. They also enjoyed the surreal touch when the director interviews a British engineer who constructed Thailand’s first railway line. 
“I wanted to include something in the film that is more than observation. I did some research and I found a book about engineers who constructed Thai railways. History can be boring but told through a man, it can be more interesting, so I created this character,” he says.
“I was very happy with Berlin,” Sompot says of his experience at the film festival, where every screening was packed. 
“Berlin has a very strong culture of cinema. I hope that this could happen in Thailand in the future as well.”
After the first screening in Thailand last month at World Film Festival of Bangkok, the film will be screened again in March and go on limited theatrical release sometime this year.
 

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