THURSDAY, March 28, 2024
nationthailand

Thailand in their eyes

Thailand in their eyes

Southeast Asia filmmakers take residence and team up with Thai directors to tell stories or our country from our neighbours' point of view

IT SEEMS AS though we can hardly turn a page or check out a website without reading about an upcoming event that will help prepare us for the start of the Asean Economic Community in 2015 by learning how our neighbours live and work.
The Asean Filmmakers in Residence project takes the opposite stance, however, setting out to show us how our neighbours see us.
Organised by the Culture Ministry, the project invited filmmakers and scriptwriters to submit stories demonstrating a connection between their country and Thailand for its new filmmaker-in-residence programme.
The response was good, with 45 projects submitted from eight countries (Thailand was obviously excluded, as was Brunei, which doesn’t yet have a film industry). The finalists – from Singapore, Laos, Indonesia, Myanmar and The Philippines – then flew to Thailand, spending four weeks as artists in residence, visiting the Thai Film Archive, meeting local filmmakers and travelling to the locations chosen for their films before submitting their treatments last Saturday.
“The concept was very similar to the Thailand Script Project, which gave Thai viewers the award-winning movie ‘Tang Wong’,” explains Pantham Thongsang, who helped set up the project. This year, though, the project wanted to approach Asean filmmakers and discover how they see Thailand through their movies.
The ministry’s Deputy Permanent Secretary Apinan Poshayananda notes that the project allows writers to experience firsthand the cities at the centre of their plots, which are often different from how they imagined them – sometimes better, sometimes worse.
“I’m always hearing how Thailand must be the leader as the start of the AEC draws near,” he says. “But I think we should learn how the other countries see Thailand. As a member of the community, we should be supportive rather than just thinking about being on top.”
The project was announced through the film communities of each country and Pantham interviewed all 45 applicants even before they had submitted a plot to the ministry. He and his team finally chose Sun Koh from Singapore, Anysay Keola from Laos, Min Htin Ko Ko Gyi from Myanmar, Ifan Ismail from Indonesia and Universe Baldoza from the Philippines to take part in the residence programme.
Each writer was paired with a Thai director to serve as mentor, with care taken to match styles as closely as possible.
Nonzee Nimibutr teamed with Ifan for his story “A Fishy Adventure” depicting a down-on-his-luck Aceh fisherman working in a traditional boat who accidentally becomes entangled in a web of regional conflicts from stealing fish to human trafficking as well as Indonesia’s terrorist problems.
After Ifan visited the locations in the southern provinces, he discovered that human trafficking in the Thai fishing industry only involves Cambodian and Myanmar victims, not Indonesian and thus was forced to change some of the details in his story.
Pen-ek Ratanaruang paired with Filipino director Baldoza. Her fantasy story is set in the Thai jungle and follows one woman, the only victim to remember what happened when an entire town in the Philippines vanishes over night. She discovers that the disappearance is related to a strange fruit that is a known poison in Thailand but a cure in the Philippines.
Kongkiat Khomsiri worked with Keola, whose gritty story revolves around crimes in the Golden Triangle ranging from prostitutes, boat robbery and betrayal.
Keola says he came up with the idea two years ago after chatting with actor Ananda Everingham about the Triangle. He is also a long-time admirer of Kongkiat’s thrillers and says Kongkiat’s advice has been crucial to developing the plot, which he hopes to finish soon. The co-founder of the Lao New Wave Cinema company adds that with the Lao film industry still very much in its infancy, he spends most of his time working on TV commercials, which leaves little time for features. His first film, the thriller “At the Horizon” was done as a student film while Anysay was a Chulalongkorn University. Lao New Wave then did the commercial comedy “Huk Um Lum”, which was released in Thailand last year.
Sun Koh, meanwhile, was mentored by Yongyooth Thongkongtoon. She’s written “The Wedding Proposal”, a comedy about a Thai and Singaporean couple.
The story, which is loosely inspired by her own life, tells the story of a gay couple travelling to Chiang Mai to get married after Thailand passes a law permitting gay marriage and relates the how they deal with the approval and disapproval of their family and friends.
Koh herself moved to Sweden with her Malaysian wife and has only recently returned to Singapore. She decided to choose Chiang Mai as her location even though she knows Bangkok better.
“I heard about Chiang Mai so often from Apichatpong Weereasethakul that it seemed a logical place to pick. I was thrilled when I arrived in Chiang Mai to meet so many lesbian couples. Many of them have opened business together,” she says.
Somkiat Vituranich, who is best known for his romantic drama “October Sonata”, worked with Min Htin Ko Ko Gyi on his romantic melodrama “Love One Another”, which will be the first to be shot, with the first scenes going into the can probably as early as June or July.
It centres on Myanmar artist Khon Lu Min who is invited to showcase his work at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre where he meets Mali and falls in love. Mali hails from Ayutthaya and her parents are opposed to anything and anyone Burmese, blaming even the new generation for sacking the Kingdom some 500 years earlier. They refuse to accept the artist even though he apologies for the past and the couple eventually elopes. They split up not long after Mali falls pregnant and she’s forced to raise her daughter Kularb alone. The family is reunited years later when the now adult Kularb goes to work in Taung Gyi, Shan State.
Min Htin Ko Ko Gyi says he is in discussions with Thai actress Davika Hoorne to play Mali but nothing is yet confirmed. The project is being funded by a Myanmar company with a possible co-production arrangement with a Thai company.
The other filmmakers will all come back to Thailand to pitch their movies for financial support during the Bangkok Film and Digital Content Festival being organised by the ministry and scheduled for June.
 

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