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  • News & article

    The old skeleton in the closet

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 05/04/2019

    » Motherly ghosts are Southeast Asia's fiercest creatures, as they cling to their memories with a vengeance. In Marn-Da (The Only Mom), a Myanmar-Thai haunted-house horror, a motherless child wanders her old colonial house -- she was already dead, sure -- looking for love and hugs. When a new family moves in, the girl-ghost finds the perfect mother she never had and the old skeleton in the closet comes tumbling out.

  • News & article

    Youth strike fear into old, cold hearts

    News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 08/10/2016

    » We can imagine the scene: Twenty policemen mobbed a 19-year-old boy arriving at the airport immigration. They took him to the detention quarters and kept him there, refusing communication, and consequently sent the entire world into a manhunt frenzy. Where's Joshua Wong? What has he done? Or more directly to the heart of the midnight stealth: What did the Thai authorities fear? Why did the mighty state have to send 20 officers -- not five, not 10, but 20 -- to whiz away a skinny boy on a red-eye flight? A boy whom I bet never won a fist-fight in his high-school yard.

  • News & article

    Regional favourites, new and old

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 15/04/2016

    » The 2nd Bangkok Asean Film Festival begins on Thursday at SF World Cinema, and will travel to Khon Kaen, Surat Thani and Chiang Mai later.

  • News & article

    2023 ROUNDUP A vintage year for Thai cinema?

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 25/12/2023

    » There were cheers of jubilation and gasps of disbelief as Thai cinema found itself awash with excitement in 2023. This has been the most successful year for mainstream Thai movies in a decade, a box-office triumph far exceeding all expectations. To many, the 2023 coup de theatre calls for celebration. "We are back!" cried optimistic pundits. But also: "Really? Is it just a one-time cinema party and can we keep the ball rolling?"

  • News & article

    Time is not on anybody's side

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 15/10/2021

    » There's the anatomy -- the bone and the flesh, supple or flaccid. Then there's time, the cruellest judge of all. In Jakrawal Nilthamrong's Anatomy Of Time (the Thai title is simpler, Wela), the first sound we hear is a tick-tock metronome like the soundtrack of the cosmos as we watch an old lady gently tending to her tubed and bedbound husband. Time will be folded back. The old woman will become young and her dying husband will appear as a spirited, dashing military captain fighting communist insurgents for the good of the nation.

  • News & article

    Melancholy and absurdity

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 14/05/2021

    » Chaitanya Tamhane was 27 years old when his breakthrough film Court became a critical sensation and won the Lion of the Future Award at the Venice festival in 2014. A film of understated power about India's Kafkaesque judicial tribulation, Court announced the arrival of an exceptional talent from Mumbai, a proud cinema city usually associated with rambunctious Bollywood titles.

  • News & article

    10 films to watch out for

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 16/05/2023

    » A fierce hijab girl, a Vietnamese pilgrimage, a Scorsese-DiCaprio team up and a new Cate Blanchett drama, Cannes Film Festival opens today with an eclectic taste of world cinema.

  • News & article

    Gay cowboys and glorious flesh

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 19/05/2023

    » After the lukewarm opening film -- Maiwenn's Jeanne Du Barry, a fluffy costume drama starring Johnny Depp as King Louis XV -- the 76th Cannes Film Festival had its hottest ticket in a short film. Not just any short though: it's Pedro Almodovar's queer cowboy movie Strange Way Of Life, which saw patient festival-goers queuing up in the Rivera drizzle for nearly an hour to fill up even the worst seat of Salle Debussy on Wednesday.

  • News & article

    Asian talents score big at Cannes

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 31/05/2023

    » From Japan to Malaysia by way of Vietnam, Asian filmmakers of disparate sensibilities triumphed at the recently-wrapped 76th Cannes Film Festival. The Palme d'Or may have gone to French filmmaker Justine Triet from her tense drama Anatomy Of A Fall, but six other awards handed out by the world's most influential film festival went to filmmakers from Asia, an unprecedented slate of recognition.

  • News & article

    Hear her roar

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 26/05/2023

    » The image of a girl taking off her hijab is wrought with cinematic symbolism. Kamila Andini shows it in her Indonesian film Yuni (2021); Hesome Chemamah in his Thai short I'm Not Your F*cking Stereotype (2019); Ana Lily Amirpour in the Iranian vampire film A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night (2014). Subversion? Provocation? Liberation? At this year's Cannes Film Festival, we see that image in Amanda Nell Eu's Tiger Stripes, a work as playful as it is potent in its portrayal of adolescence and what it entails for a young woman's body.

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