Thailand in technicolor

The sixth Thailand International Film Destination Festival is back and from today until Sunday, cinephiles can enjoy movies featuring the Kingdom at Paragon Cineplex. 
The festival, which aims to promote Thailand as the “World’s Best Film Location”, has as its theme “Colourful Thailand A True Sense of Thailand's Film Destinations”, and focuses on the diversity of eight tourism clusters defined by the TAT, showcasing their beauty, traditions, and culture. 

 

Last year, more than 810 foreign films, TV shows, music videos and documentaries were shot in Thailand, generating Bt3 billion. This was largely thanks to Thailand’s incentive measures, which attract filmmakers from around the world, and saw the filming of US movies “Changeland” and “Triple Threat”. 

 

As ever, the festival includes a short film competition. “This year, the activity follows the government’s policy in promoting tourism in Thailand, focusing on the eight clusters and in line with the strategies for tourism and sufficiency economy concept. For this reason, we invited Thai and international students to illustrate the beauty of Thailand through their films,” Anan Wongbenjarat, director general of the Department of Tourism, explains.

 

The invitation drew applications from 277 teams in 39 countries and this number was eventually whittled down to 24, who headed off to the eight clusters to focus on presenting the Thai way of life, natural beauty, culture and local traditions of from their own perceptions. Eight prizes will be given out to the winning team of each cluster and a Grand Prize will be given to the winner.
On the Thai side, 36 teams signed up and 15 were selected to make a short film on the sufficiency economy. The judges include film directors such as Nonzee Nimibutr, Pratchaya Pinkaew, Soros Sukhum, and Sophon Sakdaphisit and they will be handing out one Grand Prize as well as awards to two runners up.

 

The results will be announced next Tuesday at a star-studded awards ceremony at KBank Pic-Ganesha, Siam Square One. 
The highlight of the festival is “Thailand on Screen”, which this year brings seven films  three American (“Kick Boxer 1”, “Kick Boxer 2” and “All I See is You”) and films from Japan, Korea, Sweden and France that have generated a buzz among international viewers. They’re all being screened at the cineplex free of charge from today through Sunday. 

 

Reservations can be made by calling (097) 045 8526 or be going along to the Paragon Cineplex ticket booth. 
Find out more at www.ThailandFilmDestination.com