Showing 11 - 20 of 76
The Faustian promise in a blaming game
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 16/12/2017
» Through a tangled web of pride, vanity, moral superiority, Nietzschean negativity, Faustian promises and pseudo-Jedi cool, the junta keeps to its playbook by blaming everyone except themselves.
Shooting star
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 11/12/2017
» In Europe, the angle at which sunlight hits Earth is lower than in Thailand, says Sayombhu Mukdeeprom. In Europe, he explains, the air also has less humidity, meaning the suffusion of colour in the light is more intense.
'Mad clown' a mascot for failed govt PR
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 02/12/2017
» In a rough week for the military government, the best response they could come up with was unveiling a nightmarish mascot right out of a horror movie. In a week that called for deft public relations manoeuvring, the government spokesman riled the Muslim South with disgraceful doublespeak. In a week that required a calm port in a storm, the prime minister's infamous blustering blew the top off every lid of decency.
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.
Four inspiring tales for the price of none
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 25/10/2017
» The gift of love, kindness and generosity from the late King Bhumibol lives on in the minds of all Thais. It serves as the inspiration behind the anthology film Khong Kwan (The Gift), comprised of four short films by four Thai directors to be screened free of charge beginning Saturday at cinemas nationwide.
Life, love, liberation
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 15/09/2017
» In the sole Thai film showing at Toronto International Film Festival this week, a soap opera star stuck in a loveless marriage tangles with an eccentric hitman and a powerful cult. Samui Song is the latest feature film by Thai director Pen-ek Ratanaruang, who's fashioned a crime thriller that also plays as a critique of many things: patriarchal oppression, faux-Buddhism, public healthcare and the act of cinema-making itself.
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.
Squaring off at Cannes
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 02/06/2017
» It was "a bad year", "a disappointing year", "a weak year", and so on. Curmudgeonly, typically, sometime jeeringly -- I count myself in the pack -- the critics bemoaned Cannes' official selection in the year it was supposed to be all glory and fireworks as the world's most important film festival blew its 70th candle. To the press corps present, the consensus (or something close) was that the "elite" competition titles were a catalogue of predictable provocations and unrealised ambitions, on top of the more-of-the-same arthouse fare from directors who attract attention by their names rather than by their latest works. It's true. But as always with Cannes, the expectation is too high, the collective hallucination too overpowering, and the four-to-five-films-a-day ordeal took a toll on enthusiasm even to the most passionate out there.
'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.
The women of Wanita
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 08/03/2017
» Nine years ago, Ropita Mahamat almost lost her son in a shooting incident, a dishearteningly familiar story in the Deep South. One night at 9pm in Pattani, her son was picking a relative from a pondok school when unidentified gunmen opened fire on him -- or, more likely, on someone else, though the bullets hit him. This circumstance, like so many similar ones in the region, was never clearly explained.