Bangkok Cinema Scene: Movies opening April 30-May 6, 2015

Doc Holiday: 1971

Since last December, an initiative branded Doc Holiday has been bringing popular recent documentaries to Bangkok multiplexes. It's given movie-goers a chance to see such acclaimed titles as the found-photos treasure trove of Finding Vivian Maier, and Life Itself, about influential film critic Roger Ebert. And of note recently, there was the Oscar-winning public-surveillance exposé Citizenfour.

The latest release is another film that has us watching who is watching us, 1971, a critically acclaimed feature by debuting director Johanna Hamilton. It recalls when a group calling itself the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI broke into a bureau office. The burglars, who are interviewed, brought to light files related to Cointelpro, a secret, illegal domestic-spy program that targeted civil-rights leaders, journalists, politicians and other leftist figures who were deemed enemies of the state by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.

The film is part of the ongoing Doc Holiday series at SF cinemas, which is organized by the Documentary Club, a personal project started by Bioscope magazine editor Thida Plitpholkarnpim. It's different, experimental and grass-roots, and it taps into the welcome recent trend of documentaries – both foreign and Thai, and independent – being eaten up by local audiences.

The deal works like this: Documentary Club's limited screenings are first set up on weekends at SF World at CentralWorld. Then, driven by the viral power of social-media networking, and maybe even good, old-fashioned word-of-mouth, the frequencies may be extended to more days and other SF branches, depending on the films' popularity.

For example, after its initial weekend run at SF World, Citizenfour was expanded to daily screenings at other SF cinemas, such as SFX Lad Phrao. Documentary Club has also been doing opening-weekend screenings in Chiang Mai, at the SFX Maya.

Anyway, to find out the actual showtimes, you've got to check the Documentary Club's Facebook page. Only there will you find the updates on the latest times and venues. And, it'll be from there, where I'll attempt to track the films' progress each Thursday, if possible.

According to the latest Facebook post, 1971 screens at 7.30 tonight at SFW CentralWorld, and not at 7 as SF's poster seems to indicate. The film is then scheduled to move to a slightly wider limited release next weekend, May 8 to 10 at CentralWorld and at SFX Maya Chiang Mai. And then, who knows? It's all up to you.

Advance bookings through SF Cinema City's website are encouraged.

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Avengers: Age of Ultron

If it's not the FBI or National Security Agency trying to control our lives, it's that forever-meddling superhero Tony Stark. In Avengers: Age of Ultron, the egotistical billionaire weapons developer thinks it would be a swell idea to restart a long-dormant peacekeeping system. It turns out to be an artificial-intelligence entity that attains consciousness and decides that the only way to save the world is to destroy it. Nice going Tony.

To clean up his mess and stop the scary robot Ultron, Stark needs the help of eye-patched maestro Nick Fury and the Avengers – Thor, Captain America, Hulk, Black Widow, Hawkeye and a few other super folk. Robert Downey Jr., Samuel L. Jackson, Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner and many, many more all return for this sequel to 2012's first Avengers movie, which also ties in with the Iron Man movies and the Marvel TV series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Agent Carter. James Spader is the menacing voice of Ultron. Also joining the cast are Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen as the Maximoff twins, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, who you may have glimpsed at the end of Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

Cult-TV-series director Joss Whedon (Firefly, Buffy: The Vampire Slayer) again directs, marking what he says will be his last Avengers movie. As with the other entries in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, there will be tie-in scenes with upcoming Marvel films during the ending credits; so keep your seat and pay your respects to all the grips, gaffers, best boys and visual-effects artists.

Critical reception is generally positive, though maybe not as strong as the first Avengers. It's in converted 3D in some cinemas, including IMAX. Rated G

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Also opening

Gabbar is Back – And I didn't know he left. Bollywood action star Akshay Kumar takes a page out of Tony Stark's book. He's a vigilante who thinks it would be a swell idea to form a military strike team to systematically eliminate society's most-corrupt individuals. A pair of lawmen are on his case. It's in Hindi with English and Thai subtitles at Major Cineplex Sukhumvit, Rama III and Pattaya. Opens Friday.

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Also showing

The Friese-Greene Club – Woody Allen's Manhattan closes out the month tonight. Keep an eye on the club's Facebook page for May's schedule. Shows are at 8pm. The FGC is down an alley next to the under-renovation Queen's Park Imperial Hotel on Sukhumvit Soi 22.

Doc Weekend – Documentaries, documentaries, documentaries. We love documentaries. In addition to the Documentary Club initiative detailed above, this weekend there are 10 recent Thai documentaries on screen at TK Park at CentralWorld. It’s a chance to see some noteworthy films that played in local cinemas but maybe you missed, including Somboon, Mother and Wish Us Luck. It’s also an opportunity to catch up, with such examples as Siam Park City, a 2011 effort by Chonlasit Upanigkit, the film student who earned plaudits last year for his debut feature, W., a drama that was his graduation project and premiered in the Busan International Film Festival, and also had a limited local cinema run. The event is curated by local filmmaker Supakit Seksuwan, who put together last year's Thai Aurora the Horizon. Admission is Bt20. TK Park is on the eighth floor of CentralWorld, above the Central Foodhall. Shows start at 11am on Saturday and Sunday. For full line-up, you can check that other blog, the fest's Exteen blog or the Facebook events page.

Alliance Française – "French films with children" is the theme for May, beginning with Tirez la langue, mademoiselle (Miss and the Doctors), about a pair of brothers who are both doctors. They start looking after a diabetic child and fall for the kid's mother. It's in French with English subtitles at 7pm on Wednesday, May 6.

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Take note

Next Thursday, May 7, is the opening of the photo exhibition “40 Years Later: the Commemoration of the Fall of Phnom Penh” by Roland Neveu at the Alliance Française Bangkok. The opening will have the one-off screening of the emotion-filled documentary Cambodge, après l’adieu (Cambodia After Farewell), in which co-director Iv Charbonneau-Ching follows his family's return to Cambodia after their escape from the Khmer Rouge regime in 1975. Tickets are 100 baht. You can reserve your movie ticket online. For more details, check the Facebook events page. Neveu's photos will be up through May 24.

Bangkok Comic-Con is happening this weekend at Bitec. It'll have booths and all kinds of things in addition to costumed superheroes wandering around. There's more about it in an article in The Nation today.

Bangkok Cinema Scene special: Salaya Doc 2015

With an abiding focus on Southeast Asia, as well as filmmaking and cultural preservation, the Salaya International Documentary Film Festival returns for its fifth edition from March 21 to 28 at the Thai Film Archive in Salaya, Nakhon Pathom, and from March 24 to 27 at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre.

Opening film

• The Look of Silence – Director Joshua Oppenheimer continues to examine genocide in Indonesia with this follow-up to his Oscar-nominated The Act of Killing, which rounded up the lethal men behind Indonesia’s anti-communist purges of the 1960s. The Look of Silence centers on an optometrist who uncovers the identity of the men who killed his brother. Winner of the Venice fest’s grand jury prize and awards at many other festivals, The Look of Silence has been much acclaimed, and has even been made required viewing for Indonesian military troops.

Closing film

• Y/Our Music – Unusual figures at the fringes of Thailand’s music scene are featured in this indie doc by Waraluck “Art” Hiransrettawat Every and David Reeve. It journeys through the Isaan countryside and hidden pockets of Bangkok to survey an array of musicians, from the amateur maker of bamboo saxophones to veteran performers of traditional songs. The documentary premiered at last year’s Busan fest, and this week makes its North American premiere at the music-leaning South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas.

Special screenings

• Southeast Asian Cinema – When the Rooster Crows – Italian director Leonardo Cinieri Lombroso interviews four of the region's cinema talents: Cannes-winning best director Brillante Mendoza from the Philippines, Singapore’s Eric Khoo, Indonesia’s Garin Nugroho and Thai auteur Pen-ek Ratanaruang. It is generously sprinkled with clips from all the directors’ films, and has interviews with producers, critics and behind-the-scenes talents. I reviewed it at last year's Luang Prabang Film Festival.
• Flowers of Taipei: Taiwan New Cinema – Here's a look at the influential stalwarts of Taiwanese cinema, among them Edward Yang and Hou Hsiao-hsien, and how they aided Taiwan’s transformation from a hub of cheap plastics manufacturing to a cultural and technological powerhouse. Artists and filmmakers from other parts of the world are interviewed about how Taiwanese cinema has shaped their work. They include Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul invoking his “film is memory” mantra, along with Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Jia Zhangke, Wang Bing, Ai Weiwei and others.
• Love is All: 100 Years of Love and Courtship – Rare footage from the British Film Institute and Yorkshire Film Archive covers this history of romance in film, from the very first kisses ever caught on film, through the disruption of war, to the birth of youth culture, gay liberation and free love. It's directed by Kim Longinotto directs, and Richard Hawley, formerly of the British rock band Pulp, provides the soundtrack.
• No Word for Worry – Norwegian director Runar Jarle Wiik looks at the fast-fading culture of Moken “sea gypsies” in Myanmar, and one young man's efforts to preserve it.
• The Wages of Resistance: Narita Stories – This is a followup to the series of classic documentaries by Ogawa Shinsuke about the farmers who opposed the building of Tokyo's Narita airport in the 1960s. They haven't given up, and are now fighting airport expansion. It's directed by Daishima Haruhiko with Otsu Koshiro, who served as cinematographer on Shinsuke's earlier docs, which I saw at the 2011 edition of Salaya Doc.
• National Gallery – And the festival continues to fete the esteemed 85-year-old “institutional” documentarian Frederick Wiseman. Last year the festival featured his At Berkeley and this year it's an exhaustive three-hour look behind the scenes of the revered London art museum.

Asean competition

• The Storm Makers – Cambodian filmmaker Rithy Panh, whose Oscar-nominated The Missing Picture screened in Salaya last year, produces this work by French-Cambodian director Guillaume Suon. It's the story of Aya, a young woman who at age 16 was sold into work as a maid in Malaysia, where she was exploited and beaten for two years without receiving any pay. “I should have died over there”, she says. The director then has a chat with Pou Houy, the notorious head of a recruiting agency who shamelessly admits he doesn’t care what happens to the women he hires, and that he’s only interested in profit.
• Die Before Blossom – Indonesian director Ariani Djalal focuses on two families during a decisive period of their daughters’ schooling in Yogyakarta, just as public education in Indonesia is coming under political pressure to include more Islamic teachings in its formerly secular curriculum.
• Lady of the Lake – Yangon Film School student Zaw Naing Oo directs this examination of Myanmar’s “cult of the nat” – spirit worship – in a village on Moe Yun Gyi Lake, in the country’s southcentral Bago Region.
• Echoes from the Hill – In northern Thailand, a village inhabited by the “Pgaz K’Nyau” – simple humans – is under threat. Their sacred belief is to remain in harmony with nature, even as they come into conflict with the Thai government’s attempts to build a dam and make their ancestral forest lands a national park. Jirudtikal Prasonchoom and Pasit Tandaechanurat, students King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang direct.
• Madam Phung’s Last Journey – Ageing drag queens lead a transgender carnival troupe around Vietnam. At each town, a pattern is repeated. Locals are at first enchanted by the entertaining visitors, but later at night, after the drinks have flowed, the scene turns ugly, and the troupe has to beat a hasty retreat. Nguyen Thi Tham, who spent around a year embedded with the troupe, directs. I reviewed it at last year's Luang Prabang Film Festival.
• 03-Flats – Lei Yuan Bin seeks to dispel the dull and drab image of Singapore's public housing program with help from three single women who have made their flats into spaces that can truly be called homes.

Please note that the screening schedule had not yet been completed when I last checked, and that this is only a tentative lineup. I'll aim to have further information in time for my usual update next Thursday. For more details, check www.Fapot.org or www.Facebook.com/SalayaDoc.

Bangkok Cinema Scene: Movies opening October 16-22, 2014

Dracula Untold

Luke Evans stars in Dracula Untold, a historical-epic retelling of the origins of literature's most famous vampire.

Evans is Prince Vlad, a former Turkish slave whose peaceful life is disrupted when the local sultan (Dominic Cooper) wants Transylvanian boys to fill out the ranks of his army. Not wanting to lose his son, Vlad makes a deal with the Master Vampire (Charles Dance of Game of Thrones) to gain vampire-like powers for three days. However, if he gives in to the taste of blood, he'll be a vamp forever.

Sarah Gadon also stars. Gary Shore, a first-time feature helmer, directs this latest entry in Universal studio's push to reboot all its classic monster-movie franchises.

Critical reception is mostly negative. There's probably better things to see, such as anything at the World Film Festival of Bangkok. Rated 15+

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Also opening

Sbek Gong – The biggest-budget movie yet made in Cambodia, Sbek Gong is an insane blend of comedy, romance and the supernatural, as well as contemporary Cambodian society and the old traditional ways. The story involves the conflict between rival disciples of a black-magic master. Sisowath Sereiwudd, Un Sethea, Nhem Sokun and Duch Lida star. Pol Vibo directs. It's Thai-dubbed only; subtitles uncertain. Rated 18+

The Best of Me – Yet another tear-jerking Nicholas Sparks romance novel is adapted for the big screen, telling the mushy story of former high-school sweethearts who are reunited after 20 years when they return to their small town for the funeral of a friend. Although romance is reignited, they find that the forces that drove them apart 20 years ago still exist. James Marsden and Michelle Monaghan star as the lovers with their younger counterparts portrayed by Luke Bracey and Liana Liberato. Michael Hoffman (Gambit, The Last Station) directs. Critical reception is mixed. Rated 15+

3 Antarai (3 อันตราย, a.k.a. TV Game Net) – Thai society's cultural ills are fingered in this compilation of three stories. They involve a schoolboy who tries to rape his girlfriend after watching a TV show, a gunman coping with his autistic son’s addiction to video games and a college student who becomes involved in the online sex trade. At 6.30 nightly until Wednesday at the Lido.

Saint Seiya: Legend of Sanctuary – In this computer-animated adaptation of the popular manga, five young armored sword-toting warriors are given the mission of protecting the reincarnation of the goddess Athena. It's SF Cinemas, Thai-dubbed, except for Terminal 21. Rated G.

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Also showing

The Friese-Greene Club – Wong Kar-wai makes his English-language debut wth tonight's screening, My Blueberry Nights, starring musician Norah Jones as a young drifter woman. "I'm not even supposed to be here today." That's the plaintive uttering of the hero of Clerks, the low-budget cult film that launched the career of Kevin Smith. I assure you, it's showing at 8 tomorrow. Saturday's Friedkin film is The Birthday Party, adapted from a play by Harold Pinter. And on Sunday don't blink for the Hitchcock highlight, Rope, which is essentially just one long take. Next Wednesday's Richard Attenborough tribute is his biopic Chaplin, with a bravura performance by Robert Downey Jr. Shows are at 8pm. The FGC is down an alley next to the Queen's Park Imperial Hotel on Sukhumvit Soi 22. There's just nine seats, so book them. Also, check the Facebook page for updates and program changes.

12th World Film Festival of Bangkok – Opening tomorrow night with the Thai documentary Somboon, there are many highlights. Saturday's entries include Ice Poison, the latest drama by Myanmar director Midi Z. There's also The Blue Room from France, as well as Truffaut's classic The Last Metro, which also runs on Sunday. And there's a whole bunch of French animation, including the French-Israeli production The Congress, a sci-fi fantasy about an actress (Robin Wright) who sells off the rights to her digital image. The festival is at SF World at CentralWorld. Tickets are 120 baht. For the full schedule, check the festival website.

Alliance Française – Classic French films are on offer in October with the theme of "eternal thrillers". Next week it's L’assassin habite au 21 (The Assassin Lives at No 21), a 1942 thriller by Henri-Georges Clouzot. Pierre Fresnay stars as a police inspector who goes undercover in a boarding house in a bid to catch a serial killer. It's in French with English subtitles at 7pm on Wednesday, October 22.

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Sneak previews

Gone Girl – The onslaught of autumn Oscar hopefuls continues with this thriller from David Fincher, starring Ben Affleck as a husband who comes under intense media scrutiny and suspicion when his wife disappears. Rosamund Pike, Neil Patrick Harris, Tyler Perry and Kim Dickens also star. Critical reception is great. It's screening from around 8 nightly at most multiplexes before opening wide next week. Rated 18+

Whiplash – The big winner at Sundance this year and a hit at Cannes and Toronto, this indie drama stars Miles Teller as a drummer who joins his music conservatory's jazz band, and comes under the cruel tutelage of the tyrannical band director (J.K. Simmons). Yet another film already attracting Oscar buzz, critical reception is fantastic. It's screening at 8.20pm on Saturday as part of the World Film Festival of Bangkok then begins a sneak preview run on Monday, before opening wide on November 30.

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Take note

No movies at House RCA this week. They are closed until October 24 for auditions for The Voice Kids Thailand.

Bangkok Cinema Scene special: 18th Thai Short Film and Video Festival, August 28-September 7, 2014

The schedule is out for the 18th Thai Short Film and Video Festival, which has many highlights, among them the screening of Filipino auteur Lav Diaz' four-hour opus Norte, the End of History.

Think of it as the experimental "video" portion of the Thai Short Film and Video Festival, which has long given space to medium- and feature-length works in its Digital Forum section.

A nominee for the Golden Palm at last year's Cannes Film Festival and winner of the best director award at the Cinemanila festival, Norte centers on three characters – a struggling family man who is framed for murder and sent to prison, the man's wife, left behind alone to pick up the pieces, and the real killer, whose disillusionment with society is pushing him to the edge of sanity. Norte producer Moira Lang will be among the festival guests. Norte screens from 6 to 10.30pm on Monday, August 1 at the Lido, while the rest of the festival takes place in its usual venue, the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre.

Shorter offerings are among the highlights of a new French Connection program.

"Too many good French films were submitted this year, so we decided to select some of them for a special programme," says Sanchai Chotirosseranee, a festival programmer and deputy director of the Thai Film Archive, which organizes the fest.

Among the offerings will be the festival's opener on Thursday, Cambodia 2099, by young French-Cambodian director Davy Chou, who previously surveyed Cambodia's lost cinematic golden age in Golden Slumbers. He'll also be a festival guest and will judge the international short-film competition. Selected for the Directors' Fortnight at Cannes this year, the 20-minute film has three friends gathering on Phnom Penh's Koh Pich, aka Diamond Island, talking about their dreams and what Cambodia will be like at the end of this century.

Still more French connections come from the Clermont Ferrand International Short Film Festival, the world's largest short-film showcase. As the Thai Short Film and Video Festival has done for the past several years, there will be special package of the Best of Clermont Ferrand. This year's line-up will have five films, among them La Lampe au beurre de yak, which won the grand prix. Directed by China's Wei Hu, it has a young itinerant photographer and his assistant trying to photograph Tibetan nomads in front of various backdrops.

Six of Southeast Asia's top filmmakers join for one film, Letters from the South, each taking a segment to look at the Chinese diaspora in the region. The directors are Thailand's Aditya Assarat, Singapore's Royston Tan and Sun Koh, Myanmar's Midi Zhao and Malaysia's Tan Chui Mui and Tsai Ming-liang.

And more views from across the region can be seen in the S-Express program curated by film experts from Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines.

And, in celebration of the Film Archive's 30th anniversary, there will be a special programme from the Archive's collection as well as the annual Queer shorts collection of Thai and foreign films.

As always, the centerpiece of the Thai Short Film and Video Festival is the competition among Thai indie filmmakers for the top-prize RD Pestonji Award, named in honor of the country's pioneering auteur, along with documentaries, animated shorts and student films vying for other awards.

Again, the schedule can be found at this link, and more details and images from the fest can be seen at the festival's Facebook page.

Bangkok Cinema Scene: Movies opening June 5-11, 2014

Edge of Tomorrow

Wash, rinse, repeat. Tom Cruise is Tom Cruise in another post-apocalyptic tale of the future. In Edge of Tomorrow, he's an ordinary suit-and-tie guy who is drafted into the military, dropped into a D-Day-style warzone and almost instantly killed. However, he finds himself caught in a time loop and fighting and dying over and over and over again. Sounds like all his movies.

He then meets a more-seasoned soldier – a tough lady warrior (Emily Blunt) who takes no guff. She whips him into shape and teaches him how to stay alive a bit longer and get closer to finally defeating the mysterious enemy.

Bill Paxton, Brendan Gleeson and Noah Taylor also star. Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity, Swingers) directs. It's adapted from a 2004 Japanese light novel All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka. The script, long in development, went through the Hollywood mill, with the final draft by Christopher McQuarrie, the writer-director of Reacher, which also starred Cruise.

Critical reception is surprisingly positive. "Gripping, well-acted, funny and clever," says the consensus. It's in 3D (converted) in some cinemas, including IMAX. Rated G

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Also opening

7500 – Too soon after the mysterious tragedy of the vanished Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, this air-travel thriller deals with a Los Angeles-to-Tokyo flight that encounters a supernatural force over the Pacific Ocean. Leslie Bibb, Ryan Kwanten, Jerry Ferrara, Amy Smart, Jamie Chung and Scout Taylor-Compton star. Takashi Shimizu (The Grudge) directs. This was supposed to come out sometime last year, but was delayed for unknown reasons. There isn't much of a critical response. Rated 15+

The Rooms (ห้อง/หลอก/หลอน, Hong/Lork/Lorn) – Three directors – Panjapong Kongkanoi, Itthisak Uasoontornwattana and Jaded Uaychimplee – offer a mix of romance, horror and comedy in a trio of ghost stories. Asa Wang, Taveerit Joonlasap and Sawika Chaiyadej star. Rated 15+

Sri Thanonchai 555+ (ศรีธนญชัย 555+) – Thanachat Tulyachat, the young actor best known for the Boonchoo comedy franchise reboot, stars in this period-costume comedy as the historical folklore figure Sri Thanonchai, a consummate trickster who is famous for his wit but also uses his gifts to take advantage of others. Rated 15+

Poo Baow Tai Ban (ผู้บ่าวไทบ้าน อีสานอินดี้) – It's a Northeastern rural comedy-romance from a new Khon Kaen-based outfit, E-San Indy Film Studio. Sri Thanonchai leading man “Arty” Thanachat Tulyachat also stars in this one. He's a guy pining after a local lass who has plans to leave the village and move to the big city. Martin Brewer, a Briton with a farm and family in the area, also appears. It's at Major Cineplex, mainly upcountry branches for now, and is in Northeastern dialect with central Thai subtitles. A wider Bangkok release is planned for later. Rated G

Holiday – Akshay Kumar is a military officer who goes undercover to destroy a terrorist sleeper cell in this Bollywood action comedy. Sonakshi Sinha also stars. Brought in by the BollywoodThai crew, it's in Hindi with English subtitles at SF Cinema City Terminal 21. For more details, call (089) 488 2620. Opens Friday.

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Also showing

Kafka Festival in Bangkok – Wrapping up with a screening at 6 tonight, the Goethe-Institut's celebration of writer Franz Kafka has two films – the 1965 Czech short Postava k podpírání (Joseph Kilian) and the 2006 documentary Who Was Kafka? For details, see the website.

European Union Film Festival – Various quirky characters come together in Finsterworld, the first fictional feature by documentarian Frauke Finsterwalder. Aiming to explore the German psyche, it screens at 6.30 tonight as the final entry in the Bangkok edition of the annual EU fest. Tickets are handed out 30 minutes before showtime. For details, check SFCinemaCity.com or www.Facebook.com/EuinThailand.

The Friese-Greene Club – Democracy? That's what Jack Lemmon is questioning when he travels to Chile in 1973 in search of his son in 1982's Missing by Costa-Gavras, screening tonight. Tomorrow's modern interpretation of classic stories is Cruel Intentions, a 1999 reworking of Les Liaisons dangereuses with wealthy New York high schoolers in place of 18th century French aristocrats. Saturday, say no to censorship with Klip, a sexually explicit 2012 Serbian drama about a 14-year-old Belgrade party girl. Follow that up with Sunday's Marilyn Monroe movie, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Wear your diamonds. Next Wednesday has Zhang Yimou's 1990 tragedy Ju Dou, which was initially banned in China because it was so vividly bleak. It stars Gong Li in the title role as a young woman sold into an abusive marriage who captures the eye of her husband's young adopted nephew. It won the Luis Buñuel Special Award at Cannes. Shows are at 8pm. The FGC is down an alley next to the Queen's Park Imperial Hotel on Sukhumvit Soi 22. There's just nine seats, so book them. Also, check the Facebook page for updates and program changes.

Filmvirus K-PopPop – Twelve contemporary South Korean films will be screened from this Sunday until July 13 in the Pridi Banomyong Library at Thammasat University, Tha Prachan. Organized by Duangkamol Bookhouse's Filmvirus crew, the series was to have started last Sunday, but was wisely postponed when they got wind of plans for a protest. Starting at 12.30pm, the lineup opens with Bleak Night, a 2010 coming-of-age drama that centers on a father searching for answers after the mysterious death of his teenage son. That's followed by Ba-bi (Barbie), in which young sisters are at odds when an American man has to choose which one of them to adopt. Other films in the series are The Yellow Sea and Life Track on June 15, a double bill by Jang Jooh-hwan of Save the Green Planet and Hwayi: Monsters Boy on June 22, National Security and Terror Live on June 29, Montage and The Five and July 6 and Iri and Breathless on July 13. The venue is the Rewat Buddhinan Room on floor U2, the basement. Dress appropriately and inform the desk worker you are there to see a movie. They'll then want an ID that can be copied. The campus is located on the river opposite the Chao Phraya River Express Wang Lang (Siriraj) pier. Take a ferry heading to Tha Prachan or Wat Mahathat. Phone numbers to try are (02) 613-3529 or (02) 613-3530.

ChopShots Travel Festival – Award-winning documentaries from this year's ChopShots Documentary Film Festival in Jakarta will screen on Sunday at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre's fifth-floor auditorium. Here's the lineup:

• Consider – Panu Saeng-Xuto directs this 20-minute examination of a transgender teenager's conflict with one intolerant teacher. 1.30pm.
• Where I Go – The winning Best Southeast Asian Short Documentary, Cambodia's Neang Kavich directs this look at a young Cambodian-Cameroonian man and the struggles he's faced with discrimination and coming to terms with his own identity. Follows Consider.
• Flaneurs #3 – The second-place Southeast Asian short by Indonesia's Aryo Danusiri is a 13-minute experimental work that captures "a throng of believers crowd[ed] together in front of a stage. The speeches have ended. They are enraptured." 4.30pm.
• Madam Phung's Last Journey – A special mention winner, this feature by Vietnam's Nguyen Thi Tham follows a cross-dressing carnival troupe with such fairground attractions as a lottery, a miniature train ride, a bouncy house, merry-go-round, balloons and darts and a shotgun aiming at members performing songs and sketches. 4.45pm.

From 3 to 4.30, there will be a talk with filmmakers Neang Kavich, Nontawat Numbenchapol, Panu Saeng-Xuto and Kamolwan Nophaket. Admission is free and all films have English subtitles. For more details, check the BACC page.

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Take note

The curfew has been lifted in the prime travel destinations of Pattaya, Samui and Phuket, but Bangkok and the rest of the country remain under lockdown from midnight to 4am. Keep your eyes and ears open for news of protests. As with last weekend, the military may move into areas and shut everything down.

Bangkok Cinema Scene special: Salaya Doc 2014

The schedule has been completed for the fourth Salaya International Documentary Film Festival, which runs from March 22 to 29 at the Thai Film Archive in Salaya, Nakhon Pathom and from March 25 to 28 and on March 30 at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre.

Highlights include the Thai premieres for the Rotterdam award-winner The Songs of Rice and the Oscar-nominated Best Foreign Language Film The Missing Picture.

The opening film will be At Berkeley, a brand-new work by documentarian Frederic Wiseman. Running for four hours, it chronicles the debate over tuition increases and budget cuts at the University of California at Berkeley.

The Songs of Rice, the latest feature by Agrarian Utopia director Urupong Raksasad, will be the closing film. It was among a big crop of Thai films at this year's International Film Festival Rotterdam, where it made its world premiere and was given the Fipresci Award.

The Missing Picture, the first Foreign Language Film nominee for Cambodia at the Academy Awards, is the latest work by Cambodian filmmaker Rithy Panh to examine the legacy of the Khmer Rouge. It combines archival footage and uses clay figures of his vanished family members in a bid to reconstruct fading memories. It makes its Thai premiere in a special screening.

Another special screening will be Receiving Torpedo Boat (การรับเรือตอร์ปิโด), 1935 footage by Luang Kolakarn Jan-Jit (Pao Wasuwat) about Royal Thai Marines going to Italy to acquire a torpedo boat. The film was added last year to the Registry of Films as National Heritage.

The Director in Focus this year is Kazuhiro Soda, with screenings of two of his films, Campaign 1 and Campaign 2
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There will also be a selection of UK-produced documentaries co-presented by the British Council – Rough Aunties, Requiem for Detroit, Moving to Mars and Soundtrack for a Revolution.

Entries from Cambodia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam have been selected for the festival's Asean Documentary Competition.
Two of them are by Thai indie filmmakers – Sivaroj Kongsakul and Wichanon Sumumjarn.

In Homeland, Sivaroj continues on the themes he explored in his semi-autobiographical debut feature, 2010’s family drama Eternity (Tee-Rak). The 23-minute documentary is about a schoolteacher who, after 36 years of instructing first-grade pupils, hopes to own her own home before she dies.

Wichanon, who made his feature debut with the semi-autobiographical documentary-drama In April the Following Year There was a Fire, looks at a young Isaan lass as she takes a job as a product presenter in Pretty Woman Walking Down the Street.

From Myanmar, Aung Nwai Htway dissects his parents’ marriage in Behind the Screen. His folks were film icons in 1960s Myanmar, but today Htway struggles to reconcile those glamorous images with the painful memories of his parents’ divorce.

The Cambodian entry Red Wedding looks at a legacy of the Khmer Rouge, which forced some 250,000 women into marriages. Directed by Lida Chan and Guillaume Suon and produced by Rithy Panh, Red Wedding tells the story of Sochan, who at the age of 16 was forced into a marriage with a soldier who raped her. After 30 years of silence, she brought her case to the international tribunal in Phnom Penh.

Another Asean neighbour’s past is unearthed in To Singapore, With Love by Tan Pin Pin. Her controversial film features interviews with the country’s political exiles.

The past also lingers in the Vietnamese entry, Mrs Bua’s Carpet, in which director Duong Mong Thu goes looking for memories and traces of war in Danang.

And Jazz in Love by Filipino filmmaker Baby Ruth Villarama centres on cross-cultural romance as it looks at a young Filipino named Jazz as he awaits the arrival of his fiance, a middle-aged German man.

Hit the following link to download the schedule.

(Via The Nation)

Bangkok Cinema Scene: Movies opening March 15-21, 2012

This Must Be the Place

Sean Penn stars in This Must Be the Place, portraying Cheyenne, an ageing, semi-retired glam rock star who arrives too late to reconcile with his estranged father.

Bored and jaded, Cheyenne decides he needs to confront the Nazi war criminal who tormented his father in the Auschwitz concentration camp. He sets out on a road trip across America to find the fugitive.

Frances McDormand, Judd Hirsch, Kerry Condon and Harry Dean Stanton also star. Musician David Byrne has a cameo, and the title references the Talking Heads song "This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)". Byrne also composed original songs for the film, co-written with singer-songwriter Will Oldham. However,, Penn does not actually sing the songs himself.

Paolo Sorrentino, making his English-language debut, directs. He and Penn got together after Penn expressed interest in working with the Italian director after the actor was head of the jury at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival and saw Sorrentino's Il Divo.

This Must Be the Place premiered in competition at last year's Cannes Film Festival and was also featured at Sundance this year. Critical reception is fairly positive.

It's at Apex Siam Square. See it there before they tear the place down.

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Also opening

Mirror Mirror – Tarsem Singh (The Cell, The Fall) brings his penchant for wildly costumed fantasies to the fairy tale of Snow White. In this vivid and humorous-looking reimagination, Julia Roberts is the Evil Queen, with Lily Collins as the exiled princess who gets help from the seven dwarfs to reclaim her kingdom. Armie Hammer, Sean Bean and Nathan Lane also star. It's one of two Snow White movies coming out this year. Due in June is Snow White and the Huntsman, which casts the tale as a historical battle epic and stars Kristen Stewart from Twilight. The U.S. release of Mirror Mirror has been delayed until March 30, so there's no reviews yet. Rated G.

Puncture – Chris Evans is a brash young playboy lawyer who's covered with tattoos and has a love for recreational drug use and partying. But he finds a cause to fight for in an emergency-room nurse who was pricked on the job by a contaminated needle. As he digs deeper to expose a health-care conspiracy, heavyweight attorneys swoop in to threaten him. Critical reception is mixed. At Major Cineplex (Esplanade, Paragon, Paradise, EGV).. Rated 18+.

Special Forces – With Act of Valor in cinemas right now to serve as a recruiting commercial for the U.S. Navy SEALS, here's the French answer, depicting a unit of the Commandement des Opérations Spéciales, assigned to rescue a journalist (Diane Kruger) taken hostage in Afghanistan. Djimon Hounsou, Denis Menochet and Benoît Magimel also star. There isn't much critical reception yet. At SF cinemas. Rated 13+.

This Means War – Chris Pine and Tom Hardy are CIA operatives who become increasingly competitive rivals after they discover they are in love with the same woman (Reese Witherspoon). They engage in an escalating battle of wits, using all the hi-tech spy gadgetry at their disposal. McG (Charlie's Angels, Terminator Salvation) directs. Critical reception is generally negative. Rated G.

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Also showing

French Film Festival – Part of La Fête, the annual French-Thai cultural festival, the film fest continues through Sunday at SF World Cinema at CentralWorld. Movies this week are the teen drama Love Like Poison tonight at 8 and the parenting comedy A Happy Event tomorrow at 8. Saturday has a Checkout Girl's Big Adventure at 12.30, The Names of Love at 2.45 and Sarah's Key at 5pm. Sunday closes the fest with Altogether Too Many at 12.30, Service Entrance at 2.45 and Deep in the Woods at 5pm.

Salaya International Documentary Film Festival – The Sri Salaya Theater at the Thai Film Archive in Salaya, Nakhon Pathom survived last year's floods to hold another Salaya Doc fest, but this year the organizers will also bring a selection of their films to the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre. The opening feature on March 20 will be 311, a documentary by veteran filmmaker Tatsuya Mori on the aftermath of last year's earthquake in Japan. The closing film on March 25 will be Golden Slumbers, a documentary on the lost films of Cambodia's golden age of cinema by Davy Chou. Other films include The Cheer Ambassadors, about the first Thai team to participate in the World Cheerleading Championships. It's part of the Perspective section, which also includes Nicolas Philibert's Nenette, about the 40-year-old orangutan at Paris' Jardins des Plantes zoo; Aki Ra's Boys, about orphaned bomb victims at Cambodia's Landmine Museum; Repatriated, on North Korean spies who were held in South Korea for 30 years; and Word is Out, a classic, recently restored 1977 documentary by the Mariposa Film Group that shattered stereotypes of gays and lesbians. Another highlight is the Director in Focus. This year it's China's Xu Tong with Wheat Harvest, covering the sex industry in Beijing; and Fortune Teller and Shattered, a pair of films about a crippled itinerant soothsayer and his deaf, mute, mentally impaired wife. There's also an ASEAN documentary competition with entries from Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Burma and Indonesia. Some of the films will be repeated on March 31 and April 1 at the BACC. In addition to the screenings, there will be workshops and seminars. A story in The Nation today has more. Check out the film festival's blog for the full schedule.

Bangkok Cinema Scene: Movies opening May 19-25, 2011

Enemies of the People


More than a decade in the making, the documentary Enemies of the People chronicles the efforts by Cambodian journalist Thet Sambath to gain the trust of a man who was second-in-command of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge, a genocidal regime that was responsible for the deaths of 2 million people, including Sambath's father, mother and older brother.

In an attempt to understand the tragedy, Sambath sought to talk to the Khmer Rouge leaders, which led him to track down Brother No. 2, Nuon Chea.

Patiently and methodically, Sambath set aside the personal grief he had for his dead family members, and worked to get close to Nuon Chea as well as lower-ranking soldiers who carried out the killings.

At first Nuon Chea and the others were reluctant to talk about the Khmer Rouge, but Sambath persisted and eventually they talked about everything, even showing where the bodies were buried, and how they drew the knives across so many throats.

A collaborative effort with British journalist and filmmaker Rob Lemkin, the pair are now at work on their follow-up, Suspicious Minds, a documentary that explores the "reason" behind the Khmer Rouge killings.

Meanwhile the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia – the U.N.-backed Khmer Rouge tribunal – under which the 84-year-old Nuon Chea is being detained awaiting trial for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, is set to start on June 27, with Nuon Chea on trial alongside former Khmer Rouge foreign minister Ieng Sary, his wife and ex-social affairs minister Ieng Thirith and former head of state Khieu Samphan.

Enemies of the People was screened earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival, and has had screenings in Cambodia as well.

The film comes to Thailand through the Extra Virgin Company, marking the first foray into foreign film by the independent production and distribution company.

It's screening as part of the Extra Virgin Director's Screen Project at SF World Cinema at CentralWorld. Show times are at around 7 nightly with Saturday and Sunday matinees at around 2. Sambath and Lemkin will be present for Q&A sessions after the screenings tonight and on Friday. Rated 18+.

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Also opening


Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides – Heralded by its gala premiere out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival, the fourth entry in the Pirates of Caribbean franchise has Johnny Depp again daubing on the black eyeliner and donning his tri-corner hat as the comical pirate Captain Jack Sparrow. He's on an adventure to find the Fountain of Youth. Joining the cast this time out is Penélope Cruz, a former love interest for Sparrow and the daughter of the dread pirate Blackbeard, who is portrayed with appropriate menace by Deadwood star Ian McShane. Geoffrey Rush also returns as the indestructible Captain Hector Barbossa, and Keith Richards is back as Jack Sparrow's pirate-captain father. Rob Marshall (Chicago, Memoirs of a Geisha) takes over the helm from franchise director Gore Verbinski. Critical reception so far is mixed. At Cannes, there was more buzz about the red-carpet appearances by Depp, Cruz, Rush and other stars than there was about the movie. It's in 3D in some cinemas, including IMAX. Rated 13+.


Don’t Look Up – Hong Kong director Fruit Chan is best known for his creepy abortion thriller Dumplings starring Bai Ling, which was originally part of the pan-Asian shorts anthology Three Extremes and then expanded into a feature of its own. Fruit made a foray into English-language horror with 2009's Don't Look Up, a remake of Japanese director Hideo Nakata's 1996 thriller Joyû-rei (Ghost Actress). The story is shifted to Romania, where a young director (Reshad Strik) and his crew are making a movie about a gypsy curse, and the production seems to be haunted. Eli Roth, Rachael Murphy, Henry Thomas, Kevin Corrigan and Alyssa Sutherland also star. Critical reception is mixed. It's at House on RCA. Rated 18+.


The Ward – The first film in 10 years from master thriller director John Carpenter, The Ward is set in a haunted psychiatric hospital in the 1960s. Amber Heard stars. She's sent to this looney bin from hell after she sets a fire to a farmhouse. Critical reception is mixed. Rated 15+.

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Also showing

Bangkok International Student Film Festival – The second edition of the annual showcase of student films offers more than 200 shorts and documentaries from around the world, with screenings from around 11am daily until tomorrow on the fourth and fifth floors of the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre.

You Say You Want a Revolution – For the past several weeks, this exhibition at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre has been hosting retrospectives of short films by local indie filmmakers. This Saturday's screening features the work of Tanwarin Sukkhapisit, who has gained notoriety in the past several months after her feature film Insects in the Backyard was banned by the Ministry of Culture, whose authorities deemed the strong depictions of homosexual relations, sex acts and implied patricide harmful to Thai morals. The ban is being fought in the Thai courts and there's a legal defense fund you can contribute to. Tanwarin's been making short films for more than a decade now, and here's a great opportunity to see a selection of her work. The shorts include I'm Fine, Sai-Bai-Dee-Ka, in which the transvestite director is locked in a cage beside Democracy Monument, makeup melting off in the hot sun yet reassuring passersby that she's fine, just fine, thank you. There's also Where's My Doll?, which was made for the 2008 Thai Short Film & Video Festival's tribute to Thai cinema pioneer R.D. Pestonji. You can read more about the program at Limitless Cinema. The showtime is from 3 to 6pm on Saturday on the ninth floor of the BACC.


Scent of Oak (Roble de Olor) – The Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand's Contemporary World Film Series is back, and they are heading to Cuba for their next outing with this award-winning 2004 drama and romance by Rigoberto López. A fact-based tale, Roble de Olor traces the tumultuous love story between a woman from Haiti and a German man, at the beginning of the 19th century in Havana. The mixed-race couple goes on to establish an important coffee plantation where they aim to create a Utopian society, working the fields alongside their slave laborers in a direct challenge to management practices at the time. To further encourage their workers, they form a classical-music orchestra and play Mozart, Haydn, etc. Arousing anger among other farmers as well as bureaucrats and the German man's own family, the stage is set for confrontation. For the screening supported by the Embassy of Cuba, Ambassador Lazaro Herrera will lay on treats his country is known for, including rum and cigars, as well as the the Cuban band Fascinacion from the Senor Pico restaurant at the Rembrandt Hotel. The show time is at 8pm on Monday at the FCCT. Admission is 150 baht for non-members and 200 baht for anyone want to light a stogie, sip rum or enjoy Cuban snacks.


Ridicule – Director Patrice Leconte’s sumptuously costumed 1996 period comedy is a satiric view of the court of Louis XVI in the 18th century, where a poor lord learns to play the delicate games of palace intrigue as he tries to get royal backing for a drainage project. Charles Berling, Jean Rochefort and Fanny Ardant star. Screens at 7.30pm on Wednesday, May 25, as the closing film of the "Special Festival de Cannes" at the Alliance Francais Bangkok.