Bangkok Post, Thailand
Nov 24 2006

A SHINING EXAMPLE
Classic Thai films were screened as part of the Amiens Film Festival

KONG RITHDEE

Celebrating seven decades of Siamese cinema.

The town of Amiens boasts a huge Gothic cathedral, canal-fed,
cobblestoned quarters straight out of a Kafka story, the Jules Verne
museum (he was a local), and a long-running film festival keen on
exploring cinematic heritages from remote parts of the globe. This
year the 26th Festival International du Film d’Amiens, which ended on
Nov 19, curated an anthology of Thai films from the 1970s to screen
to a number of curious, enthusiastic audiences.

It is a mark of honour, as well as a surprise, that this small
university town north of Paris should take an interest in le cinema
Thailandais, particularly the landmark films from the specified
decade. The screenings of Siamese movies here – the fest also showed
a few recent Thai titles, as well as a five-film retrospective of
director Pen-ek Ratanaruang – seemed to confirm the place of our
national cinema in the consciousness of global cinephiles. At this
point in the new century when moving images have become the most
convenient (though not necessarily the most accurate) medium to
represent the culture, the history, the social as well as political
atmosphere, of any given country, the cinematic legacy of one place
seems to have acquired greater meanings than the people in that place
have realised.

For instance, it’s almost impossible for Thai audiences today to have
a chance to see Piak Poster’s key film from 1972, Choo (The Lover),
on a 35mm print, which is exactly what the Amiens spectators did.
Having been content with new releases of old films on grainy VCDs,
today’s Thai viewers have forgotten how Piak’s cinematography of the
southern islands looks so crisp and clear on print, and how the
tumultuous story of a fisherman, his wife and her lover could be so
radical when it first came out 34 years ago.

Jean-Pierre Garcia, the Amiens festival director, rightly chose to
showcase Thai films from the 1970s because that decade saw the
emergence of filmmakers like Piak Poster, Vijit Kunawuti and MC
Chatrichalerm Yukol. It was also a period when social realism and
political subtext provided new inspirations for artists/moviemakers –
a contrast to the vaudeville spirit of Siamese films in their
commercial heyday of 16mm films of the 1960s.

Characters in the ’70s had more depth, the cinematography was more
stylish, and some titles, like MC Chatrichalerm’s Khao Chue Karn
(1973) and Theptida Rongram (1974), alluded to the brewing political
drama of those years. A film like Thong Pan (1977), which brims with
leftist sentiment, is hardly ever seen by Thai viewers in any format.
In any case, it’s suffice to say that the films from those years had
the highest degree of relevance to Thai society at large, a condition
that was not repeated in the movies from the following decades.

The Amiens crowds – students, film buffs and the general public –
were also eager to establish a link between contemporary Thai films
and the legacy left by the classics. French audiences are familiar
with maverick Thai auteurs like Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Pen-ek
Ratanaruang and Wisit Sasanatieng – as well as blockbuster hits like
Ong-bak – but in the spirit of true culture vultures, they’re curious
to learn if and how these newcomers have inherited their styles and
sentiments from old Thai films, and they believed they might be able
to detect some clues in the titles from the 1970s.

But is there any connection between films from the two periods?
Perhaps only in the awkward realism of Apichatpong’s movies can we
see the vestige of Thai classics of yore, and perhaps the crude,
CG-less stuntwork of Ong-bak is a happy revival of low-budget action
flicks of the old days. Besides those, the artistic sentiments of the
1970s have hardly left any marks on the local cinema of the 21st
century, notably the lack of political motivations in new Thai films.
The Amiens festival last week also screened the horror hit Shutter,
the transsexual drama Beautiful Boxer, and the epic Suriyothai – each
of these titles has a modern approach that, frankly put, is far
removed from the grit and grime of the 1970s.

Other vintage films shown in Amiens included Cher Songsri’s Plae Khao
(The Scar), Vijit Kunawuti’s Khon Pukhao (Mountain People) and Luk
E-San (Son of the Northeast) as well as Piak Poster’s Thon.

Besides the Thai section, Amiens put together programmes of African
movies (Morocco, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Chad etc) as well as a
retrospective of Armenian cinema. With its interest in Third-World
filmmaking efforts, Amiens is an example of a small cinefest that has
striven over the years to build a distinct character. It’s also a
very good example of a movie festival that needs more than loads of
money – it needs sincerity, devotion, and concern for local
audiences. The fest has a special section curated for young children
(schools organised field trips to the cinema), and 95 percent of the
films shown have French subtitles, because to have just English
captions, according to one of the organisers, "would be too elitist."

The atmosphere of cultural exchange was fostered to the fullest by
the compact venues and friendly, knowledgable introductions of most
movies. Students could approach filmmakers after the screening, and
there were also midnight screenings of horror movies. All in all,
it’s a festival for the people, and that’s the only reason why
somebody would bother to organise a film festival in the first place.