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  • News & article

    The way I see it...

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 25/03/2022

    » Ahead of the Academy Awards on Monday, our film critic shares his thoughts on the big runners.

  • News & article

    Return to paradise

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 13/01/2022

    » At Maya Bay, hawk-eyed park officials patrol the sandy stretch, whistles at the ready. It was a gorgeous morning last Thursday, just days after the fabled beach on Phi Phi Leh Island had reopened after three years of closure, and the 300 or so holidaymakers, masked or otherwise, were ambling or striking catwalk poses on the pillow-soft sand, awestruck by the emerald splendour around them.

  • News & article

    It's alive!

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 21/12/2021

    » Doomsayers will have to hold out a little longer. Cinema -- as in people sitting in the dark taking in a communal experience of audiovisual sensations -- is still breathing, moving, enlightening.

  • News & article

    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.

  • News & article

    Pedro Almodovar celebrates life in all its messy turns

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 23/11/2021

    » Pedro Almodovar's films turn camp into art, or art into camp. Or even better, he isn't bothered all that much whether the candy-coloured hijinks, the sexual anything-goes, the carnal perfidy and maternal heartbreak in his movies are a form of art or a celebration of camp. And we, the audience, shouldn't either. Almodovar, the internationally best-known Spanish filmmaker, thrives on something much simpler, I think. Freedom.

  • News & article

    Into the devil's lair

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 05/11/2021

    » Like a session of cinematic séance, Rang Zong (The Medium) channels a cemetery-sized roll call of classic horror elements. The film, recently picked as Thailand's representative for the Oscar's International Feature, is proudly possessed by the ghosts of The Exorcist, The Blair Witch Project, the Paranormal Activity franchise, and Ari Aster's Midsommar, but with Southeast Asia's earthy voodooism, plus a serving of Korean-style blood-and-viscera gore as well as an icing of zombie scare-aesthetics. It's a full-course buffet of fright tricks, complete with an apocalyptic, 30-minute-long exorcism orgy that leaves no spell unuttered and no human unpossessed. All of this is couched in a faux-documentary setup, with handheld shots, grainy CCTV footage and characters speaking directly to the camera.

  • News & article

    Time is not on anybody's side

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 15/10/2021

    » There's the anatomy -- the bone and the flesh, supple or flaccid. Then there's time, the cruellest judge of all. In Jakrawal Nilthamrong's Anatomy Of Time (the Thai title is simpler, Wela), the first sound we hear is a tick-tock metronome like the soundtrack of the cosmos as we watch an old lady gently tending to her tubed and bedbound husband. Time will be folded back. The old woman will become young and her dying husband will appear as a spirited, dashing military captain fighting communist insurgents for the good of the nation.

  • News & article

    Girlhood and a city in flux

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 12/10/2021

    » An Indonesian teen drama and Cambodian prize-winner shine at Busan Film Festival.

  • News & article

    BIFF unveils rich line-up

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 23/09/2021

    » The Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) has unveiled the line-up for its 26th edition to take place on-site from Oct 6-15. Asia's premier gathering of film professionals aims to shake off pandemic-related uncertainties with a slate of over 190 titles, with the focus on Asian cinema as usual. Busan is also pushing for a wider definition of "film festival" by including, for the first time, television series as part of its official programme.

  • News & article

    Thai project wins at Doc By The Sea

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 15/09/2021

    » An important gathering of documentary filmmakers in Southeast Asia "Doc By The Sea" this year had to move online, though it remains a rich, stimulating event that contributes to the documentary community in the region. Usually held in Bali -- thus the "by the sea" moniker -- DBTS this year was titled "Doc By The Sea Accelerator 2021", with a week-long event that ran from Aug 16 to Sept 4 consisting of workshops, masterclasses and pitching sessions for new documentary projects from around the region, while mentors also logged in from Europe, the US and Asia to give commentary and guidance.

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