Thailand (Lonely Planet, 13th Edition) - China Williams [54]
Apichatpong has become a role model for the next generation of new wavers, many of whom are working in short films due to budget restrictions. Pimpaka Tohveera has garnered praise for One-Night Husband (2003). Thunska Pansittivorakul was recently honoured in 2003 with a government-sponsored Silpathorn Award given to contemporary artists. His documentary Happy Berry (2003) follows four hip friends trying to live the Bangkok dream of fashion and music.
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All film and print depictions of Anna Leowens in the court of Siam, best known through the 1950s musical The King & I, are banned in Thailand.
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Colourful tales that merge myth and reality are vital parts of the Thai imagination. Fah Talai Jone (Tears of the Black Tiger; 2000), directed by Wisit Sasanatieng, bridged the gap between new wave and the 1960s action genre with a campy homage, while Jira Malikul’s Mekhong Sipha Kham Deuan Sip-et (Mekong Full Moon Party; 2002) juxtaposes folk beliefs about mysterious ‘dragon lights’ emanating from Mekong River with the sceptical Bangkok scientists.
With a tradition of martial arts and a thriving mafia, Thailand is fertile ground for home-grown action flicks. The Pang Brothers (Danny and Oxide) imported movie know how from Hong Kong to Thailand with their 1999 hit Bangkok Dangerous, about a deaf-mute hit man. The movie was remade in 2008 and starred Nicholas Cage in the lead (albeit speaking) role. Prachya Pinkaew’s Ong Bak (2004) and his follow-ups Tom-Yum-Goong (2005) and Ong Bak 2 (2008) created an international moo·ay tai hero in Tony Jaa, often likened to a younger Jackie Chan.
The up-and-coming generation of filmmakers have a penchant for horror thanks to Thailand’s wealth of ghost stories and occult arts to mine for material. Art of the Devil I and II (2004/2005) is a set of movies, unrelated except by name, made by a collective of Thai filmmakers called the Ronin Team, specialising in grotesque gore and black magic. Picking from a crowded field, See Phrang (4bia) is considered one of 2008’s best fright fests with four directors, including Yongyoot Thongkongtoon, telling suspense-filled tales about phobias.
A startling cinema hit, Rak Haeng Siam (Love of Siam; 2007), directed by Chookiat Sakveerakul, engaged both the art-house snobs and the love-struck teens. The story is a sombre drama about a family limping along after the loss of a daughter. Character-driven movies are on a roll thanks to screenwriter-turned-director Kondej Jaturanrasamee’s Kod (Handle Me with Care; 2008), about a three-armed boy and his journey to Bangkok to get surgery to remove his extra appendage.
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LITERATURE
The written word has a long history in Thailand, dating back to the 11th or 12th century when the first Thai script was fashioned from an older Mon alphabet. The first known work of literature to be written in Thai is thought to have been composed by Sukhothai’s Phaya Lithai in 1345. This was Traiphum Phra Ruang, a treatise that described the three realms of existence according to a Hindu-Buddhist cosmology. According to contemporary scholars, this work and its symbolism was, and continues to be, of considerable influence on Thailand’s artistic and cultural universe.
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Thailand’s literacy rate is a whooping 92.6%, though reading anything other than the newspaper or comic books is regarded as an eccentric hobby.
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Classical
The 30,000-line Phra Aphaimani, composed by poet Sunthorn Phu in the late 18th century, is Thailand’s most famous classical literary work. Like many of its epic predecessors around the world, it tells the story of an exiled