A black cloak of forgetting, suppressing and covering has descended on the events that took place in Bangkok in spring 2010. Black as the night of complete darkness in which the film opens. Two men are in a fishing boat talking. One feels more than one sees that the seawater around them is warm and smooth, teeming with brightly-colored fish. By night, the rubber plantation also comes across as enticing and full of secrets, until lurid reminders of the bloody massacre flash up.
This film arose from of a state of shock – about the news, about the subsequent repression in the authoritarian kingdom but also about the debilitating passivity that followed the pro-democracy Red Shirt uprising. It is a radical personal assessment in 17 episodes. An angry protest in the form of a diary, where sexual resistance and erotic fantasies are juxtaposed with thoughtful rummaging through the director’s family album, creating a confusing pamphlet. As a young boy in the 1970s, Thunska was already forced to flee Bangkok for the south with his mother. The film poses questions without knowing the answers, providing an unusual insight into an extremely traumatized society. –Berlinale
Thunska Pansittivorakul was born in Bangkok in 1973. He graduated from the Department of Art Education, Faculty of Education of Chulalongkorn University. He used to be a columnist of many magazines including Thai:Film Quarterly and a day. His short films, documentaries and feature films were screened in over 100 international film festivals, including Berlin International Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Hong Kong International Film Festival, Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival, etc.
He won the Grand Prize award at The 4th Taiwan International Documentary Festival 2004 for his documentary feature ‘Happy Berry’. His ‘Heartbreak Pavilion’ project won the Top Award from Pusan Promotion Plan (PPP) at The 10th Pusan International Film Festival 2005. In 2007 during Thaksin Shinawatra’s regime, he received the Silpathorn Award from The Ministry of Culture’s Office of Contemporary Arts, which is awarded to one outstanding artist each year. The past honorees… read more
