Showing 1 - 7 of 7
The world is on fire, but we still have the Oscars
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 13/03/2026
» Tight races in several categories as two outstanding American films, Sinners and One Battle After Another, vie for glory with other international titles.
Pandemonium
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 30/09/2022
» The first shot of Athena will be discussed in every writing about the film. A bravura choreography of movement that begins with an intimate close-up of a face and ends, after 10 blood-rushing minutes, with an explosion of revolutionary rage -- a la Les Miserables and Do You Hear The People Sing? transported to a predominantly-Muslim Paris suburb -- that opening shot is so hypnotising and immersive in its non-stop kineticism that we're led to forgive that it's also an earnest show-off, a proud enshrinement of style and attitude over everything else. Romain Gavras, a filmmaker known for making music videos for Jay Z and M.I.A, will cement that approach with many similar shots throughout the film -- long, seemingly uninterrupted shots with parkour camerawork full of angry bodies -- more than enough for aspiring filmmakers of the world to slobber over.
Art as our escape
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 16/09/2020
» This year's theme is at once hopeful and ironic: "Escape Routes" suggests a flight from our unusual times of pathological disruption and political cataclysm -- here, there and everywhere -- and yet the theme is an acknowledgment of those in-our-face uncertainties from which we struggle to find an exit.
Memories buried in soil
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 19/07/2019
» Memories and war, illusory borders and invisible scars: These themes are resonant in two documentary films shown late last month at the SAC Film Festival (hosted by the Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre). In the Thai documentary Din Rai Dan (Soil Without Land), a Tai Yai man in Shan state talks about his life as a waiter in Bangkok and as a soldier in his ethnic army. In the Vietnamese film The Future Cries Beneath Our Soil, a group of men in a rural village bear the indelible wounds of the Vietnam War, still stinging after 40 years.
Mid-career recognition
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 29/08/2018
» Respect is earned, although in Thailand respect often comes with age. To motivate artists on the rise, the Office of Contemporary Art and Culture, Ministry of Culture, initiated the title Silpathorn Artist in 2003 to honour mid-career artists — those who've contributed to their respective fields for a number of years but still not 'masters'. The Silpathorn Award focuses on contemporary disciplines — fashion, architecture, literature, music, film, performing art and visual art — and recipients, who are between 30 to 50, represent the youthful, progressive energy in the Thai creative scene. An exhibition showing their bodies of work, from design sketches to a film screening, is ongoing at Ratchadamnoen Contemporary Art Center until Sept 9.
Deep trouble
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 25/06/2018
» He got up close with a 13m whale shark near the Galapagos and swam with a curious hunchback whale in Tonga. "She was larger than a bus," he said, "the largest animal I've ever seen." At Burma Banks in the Indian Ocean, he drifted with sharks and at Similan Islands he realised that the coral reefs in the Thai seas were among the most beautiful in the world.
Familiar faces or rogues gallery?
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 28/02/2018
» The entire wall is covered with faces -- a zoo of faces, if you will, each of them caged by a square frame. Naturally, upon entering Artist+Run Gallery visitors engage in a guess-who game: these are familiar faces of politicians, celebrities, athletes, monks and coupmakers, and yet some of them aren't instantly identifiable. Is that the government spokesman? From which coup? Who's that pretty face? Is that reddish thing Thaksin Shinawatra? That's easy -- it's Aung San Suu Kyi.