Showing 1 - 10 of 15
A TV show born of pandemic
Life, Tatat Bunnag, Published on 22/09/2021
» Seven years ago, only a few people living outside the Philippines would have heard of director Erik Matti or his crime thriller masterpiece On The Job, despite it being a film to likely revive the long dormant action genre in the Philippines. Thanks to the age of streaming services, the film has recently landed on HBO GO, where Thai viewers can watch it for the first time in the form of a six-part miniseries.
Thai project wins at Doc By The Sea
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 15/09/2021
» An important gathering of documentary filmmakers in Southeast Asia "Doc By The Sea" this year had to move online, though it remains a rich, stimulating event that contributes to the documentary community in the region. Usually held in Bali -- thus the "by the sea" moniker -- DBTS this year was titled "Doc By The Sea Accelerator 2021", with a week-long event that ran from Aug 16 to Sept 4 consisting of workshops, masterclasses and pitching sessions for new documentary projects from around the region, while mentors also logged in from Europe, the US and Asia to give commentary and guidance.
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.
At the crossroads of justice and virtue
Life, Chris Baker, Published on 10/07/2020
» The judiciary is the least studied element of the Thai polity. That did not matter much 25 years ago because it played almost no political role. But now the courts bring down governments, exile leaders, dissolve political parties, punish protesters and jail people for thought crimes. This book is long awaited and does not disappoint.
Jury's out for Netflix series Trial By Media
Life, Yvonne Bohwongprasert, Published on 22/05/2020
» Netflix's latest crime documentary Trial By Media poses a thought-provoking question to its audience -- how does the court of public opinion impact a judicial system and its verdicts?
Art and coup: Four years and counting
Life, Ariane Kupferman-Sutthavong, Published on 23/05/2018
» Tuesday marked the fourth anniversary of the May 2014 coup d'etat. While it continues to underpin the political landscape, the coup also sparked an unprecedented rise in Thai artworks with political messages. A new political art exhibition took place almost every month since May 2014.
A treaty for peace
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 23/11/2017
» Following the two-decade-long Napoleonic Wars, Europe, not least France, licked its wounds and agreed "never again". Then they set about making a lasting peace. They felt able to do it. It was the Age of Reason and they were was intelligent as one could be in 1815.
One of a kind
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 03/11/2017
» In the US, and many other lands, justice is in the hands of the police and the courts. The citizenry must abide by their decision. But this overlooks the fact that vengeance is a human instinct.
The inciting incident
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 06/10/2017
» On Sept 24, 1976, two electricians were beaten and hanged to death from the top of a gate somewhere in Nakhon Pathom, victims of an escalating right-wing terror in Thai politics of that heady decade. Two weeks later, as protests against the return to the Kingdom of former dictator Gen Thanom Kittikajorn gathered steam, students at Thammasat University staged a play about the hanging of the two men. Soon the photographs of the play were used by nationalists to whip up anger and fear of communism, which led to the massacre on the morning of Oct 6 as police and militias laid siege to the university, killing, maiming and brutalising scores of people in one of the worst incidents of bloodshed in modern Thai history.
Off the bad guys
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 23/06/2017
» Nations are paranoid, apprehensive that they will be attacked from one direction or another. History has shown that today's friends may well be tomorrow's enemies. So they pre-emptively draw up plans for war against neighbours and distant lands, stockpiling weapons.