Pen-Ek Ratanaruang
Two rookie soldiers are left at a garrison as other troops head to the city to deal with a protest. Now free, the soldiers smoke, play guitar and go fishing in the country, where they meet a girl.
A journalist meets with Pob, a Thai ghost, who confesses to a murder. Finally finding an outlet for complaint, Pob explains how the murder happened and requests for his story to be published. However, the journalist declines and the two make a deal of a lifetime.
A soap opera actress finds herself increasingly pressured by her husband, a rich foreigner entirely devoted to a charismatic cult leader.
Southeast Asia Cinema - When the rooster crows is a voice of diversity reaching for change. Brillante Mendoza, Eric Khoo, Garin Nugroho, Pen Ek Ratanaruang give voice to a region rich with traditions, ethnic groups, languages, politics, and religions. It is cinema, at its purest form, fighting for freedom of expression, documenting real lives of ordinary people, giving voice to the underdogs and the outcasts. The amalgamation of these aspects gives birth to an ultra-neo-realistic cinema language currently unique to films from this region.
A stylish, urban woman and her boyfriend end up as castaways on a deserted island. They meet a rugged hermit, whose solitude and detachment draw them together.
A Thai documentary about 'Van VDO' , the VHS shop in 1990s. The shop established the independent cinema scene for Thai audience by selling VHS of American, European, and Asian indie films. However, all of them are pirate and illegal.
Paradoxocracy, co-directed with Pen-ek's longtime friend and producer, Pasakorn Pramoolwong, begins with the 1932 Siamese Revolution - which transformed Thailand from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional one - and works its way to the present day, chronicling the country's major political revolutions, movements and countless coups along the way. Using a combination of archival footage, voice-overs and interviews with 15 unnamed academics, activists and political leaders, the film presents the directors' personal journey to come to an understanding of how their country arrived at its current state of near-constant political division and dysfunction.
The film is a collection of one-minute short films created by 60 filmmakers from around the world on the theme of the death of cinema.
A man came to Earth to gather water for his planet. A short made from recycled footage.
Thai directors give their take on Thailand's capital city of Bangkok. 1. Bangkok Blues 2. Bangkok Stories 3. I Love Bangkok 4. Lost but not Forgotten 5. Maha Nakorn 6. Pi Makham 7. Sightseeing 8. Silence 9. Sisters
An insightful documentary about Thai cinema, which features a colourful and long running film history, yet struggles as the industry attempts to move forward. This film examines the past and focuses on the Thai New Wave since 1997 by combining film clips, and interviews from Thai directors and others artists, like Asian hip-hop sensation Thaitanium, who are trying to create a more personal style of art.
One of three films commissioned by the Jeonju International Film Festival in 2006. It is a short film based on Beauty and an Airplane, a short story by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Ratanaruang's film tells the story of a man (Ananda Everingham) who falls in love with a woman (Khemapsom Sirisukha) he sees at the check-in counter of an airport. Most of the film takes place in the sleek blackened interior of the plane's cabin -- the camera panning between the two seats, lighting now one, now the other of the occupants. The two passengers never exchange a word, title cards occasionally allowing us to know what the man is thinking. Those familiar only with his work on Dumplings or Wong Kar-wai's films might be surprised at cinematographer Christopher Doyle's uncustomary restraint. Christopher Doyle doubles as both taxi driver and captain in the film.
This program features three digital short films by Asian filmmakers. Singapore veteran filmmaker Eric Khoo's NO DAY OFF (39 min) records the life of a maid who leaves her husband and baby for Singapore. Darezhan Omirbayev's ABOUT LOVE (38 min) is a bitter love story based on Anton Chekhov's novel, in which a lonely math teacher falls in love with her married university classmate. Pen-ek Ratanaruang's TWELVE TWENTY (30 min) depicts the encounters of a man and a woman on a long haul flight, where they spend the next twelve hours and twenty minutes reading, drinking, eating and watching movies and sleeping by each other's side, as if they are a married couple.
This atmospheric, violent thriller revolves around a hitman called Kyoji who has just killed his lover, Seiko. She was the wife of Kyoji’s boss, Wiwat, who, when he heard about the affair, hired his rival to murder the unfaithful Seiko. Kyoji hides himself away on a cruise ship bound for Thailand. On board he meet a mysterious beauty named Noi. A passionate affair ensues. Their destinies are more interwoven than Kyoji and Noi could ever imagine. As Kyoji fights for his life and struggles to cope with mounting feelings of guilt he discovers the truth about the secretive Noi. Furious, wounded and thirsting for revenge, Kyoji might even make it home again.
Follow the life of Pod as he moves to Bangkok from the country. Pod's new life starts with getting a job, losing a finger and dreaming about a girl. A movie were nothing is impossible, and just because you get killed by raining red helmets doesn't mean you have to stop driving a motorcycle taxi.
On hearing the news of the death of his sister, a Buddhist monk leaves the temple where he has lived since childhood and struggles to adjust to life on the outside as an uncle to a young niece and as a businessman running a hair salon in a small Thai town in a southern province. He even must learn to ride a bicycle and zip up his trousers without injuring himself. He is confronted by a flood of feelings - sexual, for a woman and family friend across the street; as well as fear and hatred for the Muslims, who he believes is responsible for his sister's death and other sorrows in his life.
An obsessive-compulsive Japanese librarian living in Bangkok spends most of his days contemplating suicide in his lifeless apartment. His life changes when he witnesses the death of Nid, seconds before he was about to jump off a bridge. This brings him in contact with Nid's elder sister Noi - these two lost and lonely souls help each other find the meaning to their meaningless existences.
Phaen is a suburban young man with a great love for music. He never misses a chance to show off his voice at temple fairs in his village. It is at one of the fairs that he meets and falls in love with Sadao. On their wedding day, Phaen gives Sadao a transistor radio that the new family loves, and it also gives Phaen many a daydream of becoming a famous singer himself. Soon, Sadao is pregnant and it is hard for Phaen to leave home, but he has to enter military service. While there, he enters a singing contest, and winds up first runner-up. So he decides to leave the service and heads for Bangkok to follow his dream. He spends two years in a band that never goes anywhere, and eventually is forced to work in a sugarcane plantation. But a fight causes him to lose his job. As things go from bad to worse, he recalls his transistor radio with fondness, for it evokes in his mind much better and more peaceful times, when dreams were still possible. Written by
Pu, a young girl, has been dreaming that her mother, who had died some years before, is building a house. A fortune teller advises her that, should she continue to have this dream, her father will die when the house is completed. Her father, a playboy, is a karaoke regular. He eventually becomes involved with Yok who has connections with the Chinese Mafia. Noi, son of an American soldier who dreams of saving money, is learning English and wants to leave for America. He is in love with Pu, but too shy to reveal his love for her. Pu cannot stop dreaming about the house. Her father's relationship with Yok brings him nothing but bad luck.
