• LIFE

  Time for Asean films to shine

  Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 08/12/2021

  » The pandemic notwithstanding, it has been a stimulating year for Southeast Asian cinema. Reflective, heartfelt and oddball new titles from Indonesia, Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand have won major prizes or become critical favourites at international film festivals throughout 2021. Now, many of these films are coming to the big screen in Thailand as the Bangkok Asean Film Festival 2021 (BAFF) is set to open tonight.

• LIFE

  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.

• LIFE

  A note on Thailand Biennale

  Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 02/01/2019

  » One recent morning at Nopphrat Thara beach, the high tide flooded the lower part of a strange, interwoven structure. Rising from the blue water of the bay, it looked like an island, a new, unmapped island of Krabi visible from this popular spot where tourists visit and board tour boats to outlying islands.

• OPINION

  Old boyz n the Charoen Krung hood

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/08/2018

  » The boys once ruled Charoen Krung Road -- the boyz from the hood, sons of Chinese merchants and Muslim roti-makers, rough-around-the-edges teen bred and drilled in the network of sois, who leapt into the Chao Phraya every evening and caught catfish when the river swelled every November, who roamed Bang Rak market when it was still sludgy with vegetable scraps and sneaked into the Prince Rama Theatre when it was still showing, err, adult movies.

• OPINION

  Paper-thin alibi for kids' day gun play

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 13/01/2018

  » The irony must have been lost on him and on everyone around him. This Children's Day -- the day of machine guns, tanks and rocket launchers -- Thai kids will also get to take pictures with our cardboard prime minister, 10 standees in fact, in various poses and costumes deployed around Government House as special attractions.

• LIFE

  Luang Prabang film fest moves forward

  Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 14/12/2017

  » There was the crowd, the spontaneous chaos, and the outdoor screening that has become a hallmark of the Luang Prabang Film Festival. Its eighth edition ending last night, the film festival in a town without cinemas has grown into an annual highlight every December, with its eyes firmly fixed on Southeast Asian titles and an attempt to expand its role and relevance to regional audience and filmmakers.

• LIFE

  A trip to Diamond Island

  Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 07/04/2017

  » It's a story of Cambodia but also of Southeast Asia: the new rich built on the back of rural labour, young men who leave their homes in the countryside to carry bricks and build real-estate edifices in the capital. The promise of the future is built on the uncertainty of the present.

• LIFE

  From Bangkok To Mandalay and back

  Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 11/11/2016

  » For the scenery of Myanmar, this is pleasant enough. For a story of love lost and found, not really. From Bangkok To Mandalay, a Thai-Myanmar co-production opening this week after hitting cinemas around Myanmar on Nov 4, is a tired road-movie romance that switches between two periods in the present and the 1960s. Like most romantic stories, this one exists in a bubble and whether you'll be lulled into its cross-country voyage with four attractive leads of both nationalities depends on how much you enjoy drifting in this 120-minute bubble.

• LIFE

  To Myanmar with love

  Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/11/2016

  » The big problem about shooting a film in Myanmar, says Thai filmmaker Chartchai Ketnust, was not obtaining permission. It was the mob of onlookers trying to get a peek of the stars.

• TRAVEL

  Journey to Middle Earth

  Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 16/06/2016

  » It's the Earth not the Moon, I think. We are walking the path that skirts the pool of geothermal geysers at the Whakarewarewa site in the town of Rotorua, New Zealand. The moon-grey rocks are smothered in mud and pungent smoke, with sporadic hissing that suggests the chemical fury underneath. The scene is alien. The air is calm, a kind of nervous calm because we know there will be an outburst. Once every 40 minutes or so, the subterranean pressure pushes the heated, underground water through the crack and shoots up a jet of spray up to 30m, drawing cheers from fortunate visitors who happen to be present at the moment of thermal activity.

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