Showing 1 - 10 of 24
Deep in the paradox
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 25/05/2022
» In Cairo, a religious student at the prestigious Al-Azhar Islamic University is recruited by secret police to infiltrate a Muslim Brotherhood cell. In Mashad, a holy city in Iran, a serial killer prowls a seedy suburb and strangles head-scarfed prostitutes. In the first film, bloodlust officials torture dissidents with abandon. In the second film, religion is evoked and the name of God is cited as a justification for murder. This begs the obvious question: Will Boy From Heaven be banned in Egypt, and Holy Spider Iran?
Asean on screen
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 02/09/2020
» Ahead of the BAFF featuring Southeast Asian movies plus Chinese and Japanese titles, Life spoke with two filmmakers about their work
Knives are out in death penalty row
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 23/06/2018
» To execute or not to execute, the question weighed on Thai society in the past week with the force of righteous anger. It is a tough question, one that lays bare the complex intersection of morality, law, religion, belief, value, and even the position of the country on the spectrum along which the international norm is moving.
Religious fervour serves no god well
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 07/04/2018
» Aformer rock musician has embraced the role of online preacher and denounced, above other things, rock music. In fact, he objects to most kinds of music, deeming it against Islam. Weerachon "Toh" Sattaying, once the high-pitched frontman of the band Silly Fools (love the name), has over the past six years quit his former lifestyle and became a born-again Muslim. Bearded, skull-capped, fiery-eyed and charismatic, Weerachon runs a dry-aged beef business and hosts an online religious programme that has cultivated quite a following.
The human condition, from a distance
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 21/12/2017
» Ai Weiwei's Human Flow is a film that spans the latitudes of a mural painting, vast and long, covering one end of the Earth to the other, many times with a top-down view. This documentary about forcibly displaced people around the world -- from Syria and Iraq, from Eritrea to Mexico -- plays out in the broad scope of Refugee 101, and it works as a (very long) campaign presentation of United Nations High Commission of Human Rights (UNHCR).
Life before death
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 01/12/2017
» With the Thai film Die Tomorrow, writer-director Nawapol Thamronrattanarit tries to capture that rarefied feeling of the eternal fleetingness of life. Presented as vignettes in which the viewer (though not necessarily the characters) knows that someone on the screen is going to die, the film aches to be a melancholic contemplation of perhaps death's greatest power -- its unpredictability.
Southern discomfort, by those who live it
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/08/2017
» 'I'm not really a photographer. In fact I hated photography," said photographer Mumadsoray Deng from Pattani.
'Bob' Halliday gone, but his light lives on
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 03/06/2017
» Bob told me many stories from a time when I hadn't even been born: During the Oct 14, 1973 student uprising, the authorities suspected he was a spy. When the Oct 6, 1976 massacre took place and the stench of blood was still fresh at Thammasat University, he surveyed the wreckage and bemoaned the state of the country he had adopted as his new home. Some evenings he reminisced on how he had lived through several dictators and prime ministers, hijacked or elected, overthrown or incapacitated -- he talked about Richard Nixon, Thanom Kittikachorn, Tanin Kraivixien, Thaksin Shinawatra, Prayut Chan-o-cha, etc. It didn't matter what happened, he'd say, as long as he could prowl produce markets in search of the perfect durian -- the caramelised Holy Grail of the fruit he adored above all else, the fruit that, as he'd say, made him "slobber like a mastiff".
'Double-tap' evil mustn't conquer hope
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 13/05/2017
» In Pattani, the checkpoints are frequent, more frequent than Islamic prayers. Every few turns, your van goes through one. Sometimes the driver is asked to lower the window, other times the armed soldiers just peer inside and wave the vehicle onward.
Noble quest to ease misery is not IS support
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 26/11/2016
» In 2011 Naiem Wongkasorn crossed the border from Turkey into Syria. The civil war had already plunged the country into chaos and it was just before the Islamic State (IS) swept across the land on their evil rampage. Travelling with two Thai friends and some Turkish NGO workers, Naiem found himself in the town of Idlib in northeastern Syria. They were there to donate money raised from Thai donors to the refugee camps.