Showing 1 - 10 of 13
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.
Human traffic
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 03/11/2017
» Edmund Yeo started writing the film Aqerat before the word "Rohingya" would make world news headlines -- entirely for a distressing reason. Now the Malaysian film, which had its premiere in the main competition of the 30th Tokyo International Film Festival this week, has proved prescient as over 500,000 of Myanmar's Rohingya minority have fled violence for Bangladesh in one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes in years.
Guests of honour
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 15/08/2017
» Last night when the clock struck 12, India turned 70. The birth of India or the rebirth after a century of colonial rule, is an ecstatic occasion that also has a darker edge in the partition of Pakistan, carved out of the former British Raj in a brutal bloodshed between Hindus and Muslims that killed hundreds of thousands and uprooted millions (Pakistan Independence Day was celebrated yesterday).
You can't beat Facebook; just ask the kids
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 20/05/2017
» Perched somewhere between stupidity and malice, we threatened to block Facebook. In trying to do so, we announced to the world that we believe in censoring the global stream of information, in stymying a new, collective consciousness. Apparently, we failed. Spectacularly. Not that it was the most surprising thing on this earth.
After the stardust has settled
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 01/01/2016
» Attending Cannes Film Festival is like watching Mad Max: relentless, breathless, and giddily exhilarating. The festival ended last Sunday, with the French film Dheepan by Jacques Audiard a dark-horse Palme d'Or winner, and it makes sense now to look back at the world's premier cinema showcase after a few days of recuperation from the madness, where things can be put into a better perspective.
Lessons from the hitmaker
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 20/11/2015
» Surprise, shock and awe greeted the news that GTH, Thailand's most commercially successful movie studio, will close shop at the end of the year.
Missing Picture, Berkeley premiere at Salaya Doc
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/01/2015
» It’s funny and sad that some Thai academics are still embroiled in a debate about whether documentary film is film. Funny, because it is. Sad, because Cambodia, whose film industry and film schools are struggling hard to regain their cultural significance, has a documentary film that won a prize in Cannes and was nominated for the latest Oscars — in the foreign language category where it competed with four other fiction films. That film, The Missing Picture, will finally have a Thailand premier at the “4th Salaya International Documentary Film Festival”, a cine-event that has consistently gained ground and reinforced the importance of documentary filmmaking as art and as a social statement.
A tale of two films
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 19/12/2014
» Two Thai films are playing in the cinemas, and their fates couldn't be more different. The mega-hit I Fine, Thank You, Love You is lighting up the till and on its way to becoming the year's top-grosser at a projected 250 million baht (if it hits that mark, it will join the pantheon of the country's all-time top-three hits, surpassing each of the King Naresuan films and behind only Suriyothai and Phi Mak Phra Khanong).
Fear of social change a step back
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 09/08/2014
» Those who live permanently in the past can't see the inevitability of the present. Those who worship the stegosaurus would do something so comical, so anachronistic as banning a computer game that most people have never heard of, prompting nearly everyone to hear about it and wanting to play it — just for kicks, just for a slap to the face, just to prove that techno-terrorism will leave the dinosaurs behind. In the world of bandwidth, in a time when information always slips through the iron fist like water or like pus, in short, in the downloadable, Wiki-leakable 21st century — banning data is the practice of ants trapped in prehistoric amber.