ทองปาน

Curated by Sarnt Utamachote

Elysium vô bờ (Elysium without Shores)
Arlette Quỳnh-Anh Trần, Vietnam South Korea, 2024, 10 min. Vietnamese with English subtitles

ทองปาน (Tongpan)
Isan Film Group, Thailand, 1977, 62 min. Thai with German and English subtitles, 16mm

Introduced by Sarnt Utamachote. Followed by an interactive reading/sound performance by Mon Sisu Satrawaha and Tanaad

1975: A group of activists – Paijong Laisakul, Euthana Mukdasanit, Surachai Jantimatorn, Khamsing Srinawk, and Michael Morrow – form the Isan Film Group after attending seminars about the politics of dam and water management in Northeast Thailand (near the border with Laos and so-called “communist expansion”). In collaboration with Tongpan, a local farmer, they create Thailand's earliest hybrid documentary. Its production spanned Thailand’s short era of student democracy (1973-76), before the military coup and massacre forced Paijong Laisakul into political exile in Sweden where she finished the post-production. After its distribution in Europe, and with some of the collective members joining the Communist Party of Thailand, it was banned in Thailand. Tongpan played in one more film, Son of the Northeast from 1982, directed by Vijitra Kunawut. Kunawut also directed Boon Rawd, a film from the curator’s program In Nobody’s Service. Tongpan has recently been reactivated in many discursive programs which center ongoing Cold War legacies in cinema, including un.thai.tled Film Festival 2021: Common Cold. 

In Elysium without Shores, we are invited to join a collective ritual conducted by an imaginary community to celebrate the destruction of the hydroelectric dam which, like Tongpan, was violently built along the Mekong river, thereby reclaiming right to the land.

After the screening, the audience is invited to read anti-American political manifestos from Social Science Review (สังคมศาสตร์ปริทัศน์) – a critical academic journal established in 1965 by activists and writers, including Sulak Sivaraksa, who appears as a character in Tongpan. Between 1973-1976, anticolonial and Marxist texts from Frantz Fanon, Paolo Freire, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh were freed from censorship and translated into Thai. Facilitated by Sarnt Utamachote and Mon Sisu Satrawaha, this interactive reading will be accompanied by sound from Tanaad, echoing the anti-imperial legacies of student uprisings. 

Mon Sisu Satrawaha (ม่อน ศิศุ สาตราวาหะ) is a Thai filmmaker, artist and curator. Her research-based practice moves within disciplines such as installation, performance and food, exploring themes of diverse social viewpoints, anthropology, intercultural relations and contemporary culture.

Tanaad is a Bangkok-born music producer, musician and DJ, currently based in Berlin. He is the initiator of the blozxom community and record label project.