• LIFE

  Thai independent films going strong

  Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 12/08/2016

  » History, identity, cavemen, dwarves -- independent Thai films taking on those subjects (and curiosities) are making the rounds at the film festival circuit this season. While the big multiplex release of the year is likely to be Fanday, the first output from GDH 559 (previously GTH) slated for Sept 1, some Thai indie titles are busily injecting necessary edge and provocation to the scene.

• LIFE

  Nepalese film scoops top prize at SGIFF

  Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 06/12/2016

  » A Nepalese drama about political and cultural divides won top prize at the 27th Singapore International Film Festival (SGIFF). The 12-day event, part of the Singapore Media Festival that ended on Sunday, also saw two Thai feature films in its Silver Screen Competition, though they came home empty-handed.

• LIFE

  Melancholic, dissonant memories

  Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 23/10/2015

  » Jakrawal Nilthamrong's Vanishing Point is a story of loss, death, alternative destinies and reminiscence of sadness. It floats a few inches above the ground, it connects, disconnects and reconnects lives and fates, sometimes in a dissonant manner, and even though you may scratch your head wondering what exactly is going on, the film's semi-experimental style and narrative rupture has a strange intoxication.

• OPINION

  It's really best when you say nothing at all

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 20/09/2014

  » Dear diary, it is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt, as Mark Twain said. How charming my mouth has been in the past week. If it had been Yingluck Shinawatra saying those things, I'm sure a riot would've broken out and the sound of a million whistles would've shattered your eardrums. But it's me, so it's different. It's not the action but the man. How could those pettifogging critics interpret my speech as avuncular nonsense, when in fact they're pieces of wisdom worthy of being chronicled in the national archives and inscribed onto monuments?

• LIFE

  A not-so-mundane history

  Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 27/06/2018

  » A lampshade, elegant and shiny, bears a distinct image of the Siamese constitution over the map of Thailand. A nielloware cigarette box, in solemn brass and black, also features an engraving of the constitution -- the emblematic figure of a folded scripture on a tray. Next to it are matchbox labels, pins, a glass bottle, a bowl, a water jar, an ashtray, a vinyl record. All of them carry the symbolism of the seismic transformation that took place 86 years ago.

• OPINION

  Regime trawl for small fry no joke at all

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 20/01/2018

  » The big fish hardly ever gets caught, not here. Only the small, the trivial, the nonsensical fish, the clownfish especially. As in school, or in prison, the bullies never bully the big kid. They only confirm their sense of power when they go after the small guys, the nerds, even the girls.

• OPINION

  A comedy likely to end only in horror

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 03/02/2018

  » The junta can read the stars and history and they must know this isn't going to end well. As frustration grows, as protests form, as their support ebbs even their idol Gen Prem Tinsulanonda flat-out said so they amp up censorship and tighten the squeeze, not with gusto but with desperation. With Deputy Prime Minister Gen Prawit Wongsuwon looking increasingly like a plump Chinese deity on the verge of losing his worshippers, the regime reacts with force, gagging tactics and plain old bullying.

• OPINION

  It's always sunset in our land of exiles

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 30/09/2017

  » Either to Dubai or London, Yingluck Shinawatra has gone West and will likely live the rest of her life in exile. Either in an Emirati villa overlooking the Persian Gulf or a London penthouse by the Thames, she may be contemplating the difference between exile and banishment, or between exile and a holiday, but in the end it doesn't matter: She has fled, and her flight means the old power of Thailand has seen off the element regarded as threat. The ghost has been exorcised, the devil purged -- not once but twice, since there are two Shinawatras -- and now the military will charge ahead on their black horses as they gather us up and gallop us off into sunset (not sunrise).

• OPINION

  In our special situation, hail the metaphors

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 22/07/2017

  » We can still speak, preferably in English, or even better in metaphors. The dilemma is painful: We speak in coded words and we risk being irrelevant, obscure, snobbish; but if we say it too directly, we risk something else, such as a summons, a slap on the wrist, or a mark on the forehead as the Biblical executioners arrive at the gates of Jerusalem. For those to whom Thailand remains home, both paths are strewn with barbed wire.

• LIFE

  Oct 6-related Thai film screened in Toronto

  Kong Rithdee, Published on 12/09/2016

  » The sole Thai film at the Toronto International Film Festival 2016, is <i>Dao Khanong</i> (By the Time It Gets Dark), and it is likely to stir a timely debate about what happened in Thailand on Oct 6, 1976, with its references to some of that deadly incident's iconic images.

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