The longest film at the 18th Thai Short Film and Video Festival will run at 250 minutes. That's not particularly short, but it speaks volumes about the cinematic health and enthusiasm offered by the festival that runs until Sept 7.
Sid Lucero in Norte, The End Of History.
This is the longest-running festival in the country (free admission too, as always). Besides short films — by definition no longer than 30 minutes — from students and the public, the event has in the past six years augmented its reputation as a cheerleader of independent cinema by adding special screenings of feature-length films. This year, while the programming of shorts remains as relevant as ever, one of the highlights is the screening of the four-hour-10-minute-long Norte, The End Of History, a Filipino film by the contemporary master Lav Diaz. It's scheduled for the Sept 1 at Lido, at 6.30pm, and the last time I heard, the seats are nearly booked-out.
Diaz, 54, has made 13 feature films, all of them long or very long — the longest is 11 hours, and most of them running from six to nine hours. Norte, at slightly over four hours, is thus considered short in the Diaz oeuvre. This isn't the first time Bangkok will get a full Lav Diaz experience on the big screen; eight years ago, the Thai Short Film and Video Festival screened Heremias Book One: The Legend Of The Lizard Princess, a nine-hour epic about a natural disaster, which is what every disaster is, that befalls a man in rural Philippines.
I was at that screening at the then-EGV Siam Discovery (now no more). The film started at around 11am and finished at 8pm. There were about eight or nine people in the cinema, and we emerged from the dark womb knowing we'd been through something special.
Diaz's arduous, voluptuous length isn't self-indulgent. His long films are never long-winded, his slow cinema is never sluggish. "Slow" isn't exactly right, given that the rhythm of reality isn't one second faster than the temporal blossoming that Diaz has found a way to capture in his films. We watch the characters deeply, their every gesture and movement — then their motivation or mystery — growing more familiar and intimate to us on a psychological level (even spiritual), and all of this is achieved mostly through observational, unobtrusive camerawork. In most of his films, Diaz's epic of common men unfurls with the density of literature. In Norte, The End Of History, which is showing in the festival, the obvious reference point is Dostoevsky's Crime And Punishment (Diaz told me that he wasn't really thinking about that until the script was almost done).
The story involves a young, ideology-spouting law student called Fabian (the fabulously tormented Sid Lucero) who kills a miserly loan shark — a case of socialism against capitalism, sort of. Things get much more complicated than that when Fabian gets away with the crime, and the man who's arrested and jailed is the poor, hard-working Joaquin (Archie Alemania). What follows is a trope of Diaz's themes: guilt, moral corruption, a desperate attempt at salvation and the reflection of contemporary Philippines through glimpses of its colonial history.
Diaz has made films since the mid 1990s, and over the years he has cultivated a following, skimpy yet ardent, among hard-core cinephiles. In the past five years or so, his unique style has earned him recognition in the wider circle of international film festivals, including Norte selection into Cannes last year. His latest film, From What Is Before, running at five-and-a-half hours, just won the grand prize at the Locarno International Film Festival earlier this month. The new film, which I haven't seen, is about a series of strange incidents that take place in a remote village during the times of Ferdinand Marcos' dictatorial rule.
Given its length — and its gentle demand for you to stay transfixed — any of Diaz's film should be appreciated on the big screen. The bad news is that the seats have been booked very fast — it's a free screening — and I'm not sure how the festival will handle the obvious case of over-demand of a film that the organiser thought would attract only a handful (as mentioned, the last time it was nine people). Cinema-going is in robust health, at least in the tiny independent quarters.
The 18th Thai Short Film and Video Festival is on until Sept 7 at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre auditorium, fifth floor and in screening room 401, fourth floor. (Except the screening of Norte, The End Of History, which will take place on Sept 1 at Lido). Free admission. For screening schedule, visit www.facebook.com/ThaiShortFilmVideoFestival.
Cambodia 2099.
Other Highlights from 18th Thai Short Film and Video Festival
Cambodia 2099.
The regular programmes of the festival return in full force, including the student film competition in the “White Elephant” section and a competition for the public in the “R.D. Pestonji” section. Many of them touch on the issues that mainstream films rarely look upon, and the energy of young filmmakers is something to be reckoned with.
This year the festival also features “French Connection”, a programme of best French shorts. The highlight is Cambodia 2099 , by Davy Chou, which tells the story of young Cambodian men on Diamond Island, a new housing estate built in the middle of the waterway in Phnom Penh.
“S-Express” is a programme of short films from Southeast Asian countries. The festival initiated this section a decade ago, long before Asean became a buzzword, and to watch stories from Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines is a good way to get in touch with the issues being discussed in those places.
“Queer Programme” is a section dedicated to gender diversity. This year there are short films from Senegal, France, Austria and the US.
Another special screening is the omnibus film Letter From The South . This is a collection of six short films about the topic of the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia. Each film is presented as a letter representing the filmmaker’s feelings and emotions toward their original homeland, China. The six filmmakers are Aditya Assarat (Thailand), Royston Tan (Singapore), Midi Zhao (Myanmar), Sun Koh (Singapore), Tan Chui Mui (Malaysia) and Tsai Ming Liang (Malaysia).
As usual, the festival will screen a selection from the Clermont Ferrand International Short Film Festival, the world’s biggest short film event. The international menu offers a variety of topics and styles, from filmmakers from every continent. The highlight is this year’s winner from Clermont, La Lampe Au Beurre De Yak , about a itinerant photographer and his assistant who take photographs of Tibetan nomads.
