Showing 1 - 10 of 11
Marina's soul searching in Bangkok
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 13/10/2023
» Like Dante guided by Virgil, Marina Abramovic drifts through the purgatory that is Bangkok chaperoned by the little monkey prince. After praying at shrines and temples of assorted spiritual inclinations, she is taken to the Monkey King (Pichet Klunchun), whose rhymed, melodic prophecy finally guides Abramovic to the prayer hall of Wat Pho where her salvation awaits clad in a saffron robe.
Time for Asean films to shine
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 08/12/2021
» The pandemic notwithstanding, it has been a stimulating year for Southeast Asian cinema. Reflective, heartfelt and oddball new titles from Indonesia, Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand have won major prizes or become critical favourites at international film festivals throughout 2021. Now, many of these films are coming to the big screen in Thailand as the Bangkok Asean Film Festival 2021 (BAFF) is set to open tonight.
Cool Pattani
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 06/09/2019
» Last weekend, along an old street in Pattani, skater boys and Lambretta riders were hanging out with poets and activists. As the rain let up and the night cooled, jazz musicians hummed and strummed, while a DJ was spinning upbeat music next to a digitally-mapped, fashionably-faded brick wall.
A note on Thailand Biennale
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 02/01/2019
» One recent morning at Nopphrat Thara beach, the high tide flooded the lower part of a strange, interwoven structure. Rising from the blue water of the bay, it looked like an island, a new, unmapped island of Krabi visible from this popular spot where tourists visit and board tour boats to outlying islands.
The many interpretations of bliss
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 08/10/2018
» With the monsoon comes the art. With the wind and bluster come the artists. Here it is, finally, after a year of fanfare and preparation. The first Bangkok Art Biennale 2018 (BAB 2018) will open on Oct 18 and run until next February in a city-wide surfeit of artistic affairs, from exhibitions to talks, workshops to pool parties (which is, of course, art!). The programme will keep Bangkokians and visitors busy for months starting from next week.
Old boyz n the Charoen Krung hood
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/08/2018
» The boys once ruled Charoen Krung Road -- the boyz from the hood, sons of Chinese merchants and Muslim roti-makers, rough-around-the-edges teen bred and drilled in the network of sois, who leapt into the Chao Phraya every evening and caught catfish when the river swelled every November, who roamed Bang Rak market when it was still sludgy with vegetable scraps and sneaked into the Prince Rama Theatre when it was still showing, err, adult movies.
Where history begins anew
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/01/2016
» When does history begin? We are at the start of 2016, when it's still not too late to say Happy New Year, and our perception of time and space has hit a refresh button. The year, new and old, is a necessary illusion that gives us a sense of order in this disorderly universe. What has happened has become "history", but history is not always in the past, not always dictated by the BC, AD, the Buddhist BE or the Islamic AH.
The Shrine's history: more than four faces
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 19/08/2015
» Unperturbed, the four-faced Brahma statue still stares out at the Ratchaprasong intersection, the scene of Bangkok's worst bomb attack in recent memory. One of the most popular tourist spots in the capital has become a site of terror and tragedy and as the dust begins to settle, it's worth taking a look at the long and sometimes tortuous history of the shrine. This history is influenced as much by the city's modernisation and superstition as it is by its politics and moments of insanity.
Romanticising the insurgency
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 24/07/2015
» Rarely do we see a Thai film set in the Deep South and rarely do we see a film with so many people saying "assalamu alaikum" to each other. So now that we have one in the cinema, it turns out to be such a piece of romantic fluff that it hardly does justice to the complicated reality of the region and its people. What should we expect when Latitude Tee Hok (Latitude No.6) has been financed by the military — the Internal Security Operations Command, to be precise — and produced by UCI Media, an affiliation of a company that sells communication equipment to the army?
Passion for film, football out of control
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 18/05/2013
» The only thing that inspires more passion than cinema is football. And vice versa. As social and literary critic Roland Barthes rightly said, everyone is an expert when it comes to movies and sport. A cheeky hyperbole, but not entirely false. What Barthes was actually saying, I think, is that everyone is entitled to have a strong, vehement opinion when it comes to those two subjects. Barthes was French (of course), and this week France has seen footballing and cinematic events that pumped a rush of blood to the head and boiled the haemoglobin of spectators.