Showing 1 - 10 of 21
Looking for redemption
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 23/05/2019
» Young Ahmed believes he's a true Muslim, one of the few in his Muslim neighbourhood in Belgium. He refuses to shake hands with women, quotes verses from the Koran, berates his mother when she drinks, and condemns Jews and pretty much everyone else as infidels. Fellow Belgian-Muslims who do not subscribe to his imam's rigid interpretation of Islam are branded heretics unworthy of uttering the prophet's name. Young Ahmed, 13, is packed tight on the assembly line of Islamic radicalisation, fired up by a sense of self-righteousness so extreme and narrow that we wonder if it leaves room for something else in him, like love, forgiveness or humanity.
Toilet porn
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 12/09/2018
» Last week in a toilet in Bang Rak Bazaar, a man looked down at his own body while also gazing up at the paintings of naked women on the wall. Placed above a row of urinals, the paintings -- modelled after images taken from pornographic websites -- were impossible to miss.
Time is not on our side
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 25/01/2018
» This is a note on an important Thai film that is unlikely to be shown in Thailand. Such is the fate of home-grown cinema in a time of disease, the time of a black hole.
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.
Close your eyes
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 13/09/2017
» In June 13, 1981, Issei Sagawa, 32, was arrested after he was seen dumping two suspicious suitcases in the Seine. A student of comparative literature at Sorbonne, the Japanese man two days earlier had killed his Dutch classmate, raped her corpse, stored her body in his fridge and ate morsels after morsels of her flesh to stimulate his sexual desire. Only when the smell became unbearable did he pack what remained in the suitcases and threw them into the river. The French court declared Sagawa legally insane and released him. He returned to Japan, wrote a comic book about his world-famous case, became a food critic (no kidding), and starred in pornographic films. Today Sagawa, old and paralytic, still lives in a suburb of Tokyo.
We all live in a regime submarine
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 29/04/2017
» What did Donald Trump say when he was a hotshot Republican candidate in January 2016? "I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters."
Pray against intolerance in the far South
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 18/02/2017
» Being a teenager is hard. Being a teenager in the deep South is harder. Being an LGBT teenager is also hard. And being an LGBT teenager in the deep South is even harder, sometimes the hardest.
Careful what you click, but keep thinking
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 10/12/2016
» Be careful what you wish for. Be even more careful what you like. Be most careful what you share.
Hunting the Antichrists a sign of fear
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 05/11/2016
» As the mourning period continues, the hunt for Antichrists has also intensified. Are they the two consequences of the same cathartic loss of Oct 13? Yes, definitely. In light there's also darkness, in grief there's also hatred, and in this strange period of limbo the grip is being tightened.
Will the best films win the Oscars?
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 26/02/2016
» The Oscar night is also the Oscar-bashing night. It was always the night (or morning, in our time zone) of constant bemoaning and condescension, because the Academy voters, like most voters, always get it wrong, at least to million others around the world who believe, in our collective delirium, that we have a stake in this pageant taking place somewhere in Los Angeles. Things have taken a turn for the worse with the snap judgement made possible by social media; now the outrage and disbelief are so raw since they're aired in real time, on Facebook and Twitter, like I did last year when I was convinced that it was against every law of nature that Birdman, a well-crafted display of pretension and self-obsession, won over the more delicate Boyhood.