Showing 1 - 10 of 33
Living in Thailand's age of impunity
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 17/01/2026
» There's no place like Thailand. Joyscrolling TikTok and Reels reveals dozens of clips made by international visitors lamenting having to leave our lovely country and return to dreary Europe or joyless America. "Nobody talks about how hard it is to go from this" -- insert a cut of a wonderful beach in Krabi -- "to this"--cut to a drab, damp suburban street somewhere in the West. Add a crying-face emoji. "I want to move here!" the traveller announces. True, everybody loves Thailand.
The politics of taste in our election season
Oped, Kong Rithdee, Published on 26/12/2025
» Hell is other people's tastes. Hell is when we passionately hate what people unconditionally love. Hell is when we can't fathom how anyone on the face of the earth can like someone or something we find revolting -- a food, a film, a style, an opening ceremony, a politician, a president.
The troubled South seen from the top
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 06/11/2024
» Materials, objects, found items -- Prach Pimarnman's art is based on the strict conceptualisation of those elements. Raised in Narathiwat, with a family both in Bangkok and the southern province, Prach has investigated Deep South questions conditioned by a fraught, unsettling history and its contemporary aftermath. His works are grounded in the subtlety of texture -- teacups, cement, barbed wire, quilts sewn by local housewives -- and invites reflections on more than one level.
The Silent Film Festival keeps echoing
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 06/09/2024
» A rocket-bullet plunging into the Moon’s eye, its mouth pursed halfway between a sneer and a smile. You’ve seen it before, but it’s time to witness one of cinema’s most recognisable images from Le Voyage Dans La Lune (1902) in its colour glory at the 8th Silent Film Festival in Thailand, the annual banquet of early cinema hosted by the Thai Film Archive.
Cannes 2024 highlights
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 14/05/2024
» From Francis Ford Coppola's new epic to a Taiwanese drama starring a Thai actor and a Pol Pot drama, we pick hot titles from the French film festival that kicks off today.
Poor Barbie... Oppenheimer's the bomb
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 08/03/2024
» The annual guessing game to read the minds of inscrutable Oscars voters is here.
Coldplay across the universe
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 07/02/2024
» The latest Coldplay concert in Bangkok was a feat of photogenic spectacles designed to bedazzle, complete with light-blinking wristbands, sci-fi-warped animation on spherical screens, balloons in the shape of planets and exploding fireworks above the roof of Rajamangala National Stadium ("The football field not often used to play football on," as a Thai national squad member noted.)
Will gentrification respect city's people?
Oped, Kong Rithdee, Published on 28/06/2023
» We've lived for over a century in the shadow of grandeur: near the Customs House, known to Thais as rongpasi. "We" means my maternal family and the community of Haroon Mosque. Each day before sunrise, the muezzin's sing-song call rings through the neighbourhood, carried on the river wind towards the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, the French Embassy and Assumption Cathedral.
Montien Boonma, gone but never forgotten
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 23/12/2020
» Montien Boonma's death in 2000, at the age of 47, was perhaps the saddest episode ever felt by the Thai contemporary art circle.
The true nature of the beast?
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 20/11/2020
» 'Happy families are all alike," said Tolstoy, "every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."