THAILAND’S LOVE AFFAIR with the cinema dates back to 1897, when a Swiss filmmaker by the name of Francois-Henri Lavancy-Clarke made a short film record of King Chulalongkorn’s arrival in Bern. The King brought the film back to Thailand where it was exhibited and soon local businessmen, sensing a profitable future, were bringing in foreign films and newsreels.

By the 1920s, the Kingdom had a movie industry of its very own and people flocked to the cinema not just to be entertained but to explore the world through newsreels. Music performances and game shows were also part of a night out at the cinema.

“In a way, the birth of the movie was the introduction to globalisation. It made the world smaller and Thai people could learn about foreign cultures from watching films. They could update themselves through news from China, Japan or Europe. Cinema was the equivalent of the Internet,” says Thai film archivist Dome Sukvongs.

Much has changed over the decades and the arrival of modern technology over the last 20 or so years has greatly affected the magic of moving pictures. Prints are no longer used in shooting films and those that exist are being transformed into digital formats, the reels replaced by a compact DCP hard-disk box that delivers crystal-clear pictures and full surround sound on the big screen.

The culture of watching film in cinemas has changed too. While the advent of television 60 years ago did lead to a fall in moviegoers, the apparent preference to watch film on computer screens, tablets and smartphones is having a much greater effect.

Dome says he’s confident movies will survive though he admits to be being less certain about the fate of the cinema.

“I believe that human beings are social animals who can’t live individually. For that reason, I have long believed that the cinema is like a church where people gather for communal events. Going to the cinema is a social event – it’s still what a lot of young people do when they start dating – but I can’t guarantee it will last forever. If the movie culture is dead, then so is the church,” says the 65-year-old archivist.

Dome fell in love with film as a kindergarten student and recalls stealing his mother’s handkerchiefs to use as screens on which to project the small pieces of film he collected from the floor of his local cinema’s projection room. He attended Chulalongkorn University’s Faculty of Communication Arts in the days before it introduced its film studies programme and started recording Thai film history in the 1980s, the first time such a task had been undertaken. Dome followed every source he could think of – old newspapers at the National Library, chasing up old film prints and interviewing veteran filmmakers and academics. His labour of love led to the founding of the National Film Archive in 1984.

“To me, the movie is a religion in terms of giving life lessons from its story. If a film both entertains and inspires, then it is successful even if its quality leaves a lot to be desired,” he says.

“That’s why I think of today’s movies, which are often no more than a commercial product, as junk food. People love eating it despite knowing it’s bad for their health. If they are given healthier alternatives from which to choose, they could well opt for what is best for themselves.”

That’s where Dome’s Film Archive (Public Organisation) Thailand comes in. Despite being located in Nakhon Pathom, the archive has been successful in luring students from more than 70 schools to its Sri Salaya Theatre to watch good movies. Most of these young people have no previous experience of the cinema and the archive’s staff and teachers take the opportunity to guide them on the etiquette of watching a film with fellow members of the audience. They are also invited to share the ideas that come to their minds after watching a film,

“When the 400-seat cinema is finished, it will be the place for young visitors to watch films not only with their friends at the same school but with students from other schools. It’s a good way of teaching them how to behave properly in a real public space,” he says.

The archive’s mobile cinema truck makes regular sorties across the Kingdom, bringing selected quality films to students in locations too remote to have a cinema.

“If the movie culture is to survive, we all need to adapt,” he says. “Diversity in film is also crucial and one of the problems we face now is the regulation and the censorship in the film act.”

He cites as an example the rules that say a movie cinema has to be registered as a commercial business. “Somehow that makes owners feel they must focus on profit rather than offering more alternatives to the public,” he says.

“I think the law should provide different regulations for people who want to run spaces where alternative films or art films can be screened with little or no concern for profit. If it works, then the audience will have other options than a cinematic junk food diet.”

The Film Archive is also working on preserving old films – both in print and through the digital format. An example is the movie “Santi-Vina”, which was recently rediscovered after years of believing that the old prints had been lost.

“We preserve every kind of movie, from home video to the remaining footages of some films. We don’t pass judgement on the films or pick only the good ones. They are all part of our history and perhaps the record will be useful for the generations to come,” he says.

“Though perhaps in 100 years from now, the movie will be as obsolete as its original medium. If that’s the case, I think we can safely bet there will be a call to bring it back. Just look at vinyl records.”

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT in Singapore has long been criticised by human rights groups, yet the majority of us know little about it other than reading the occasional few sentences in the local media.

Talented director Boo Junfeng set out to change that with his second feature, “Apprentice”, a prison drama that focuses on the men behind the executions. It was selected for the Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard section and, while it didn’t win a prize, it won a good deal of acclaim from audiences.

Junfeng is a rising talent, whose first feature, the 2011 drama “Sandcastle” screened at Cannes Critics’ Week. While “Sandcastle” was about a teenager about to be enlisted into the army, “Apprentice” has a much more serious bent, focusing on the life of Aiman, a young man who decides to work in a Singapore prison. There he meets Rahim, the prison’s chief executioner and forms a relationship with him. The twist comes when Rahim learns that he was responsible for hanging Aiman’s father.

“I think this is the first time that a film like this has been made in Singapore,” says Junfeng, adding that it shows a side of the city-state that is rarely discussed.

“The film is basically driven by my sense of curiosity. I was fascinated to learn the executioner’s point of view, to look at his job and see what he has to go through,” says Junfeng, who interviewed a real-life executioner in Singapore before making his film.

“I needed to know how they manage to bring themselves to do the job. One of them has been doing it for a long time. And what struck me was how much I liked him when I was talking to him. Before the interview, I was really nervous. I had a certain character in mind and when I met the executioner he was a very nice grandfather type of figure, very funny, very lovable. That completely changed my attitude, and forced me to think hard about the character I wanted to create.”

One of the possible reasons why no Singaporean film has touched this subject before is the strict censorship for which the country is known. Yet the film received financial support from the government’s Media Development Authority.

“We got 40 per cent of the funding from them but we had to find the rest by ourselves. So far I haven’t faced any issue regarding censorship,” he says.

“We decided to cast colour-blind,” he says of his selection of the main characters in the film, all of whom are Malay and speak Malay, also unusual in Singaporean cinema.

“For the characters I created, it doesn’t really matter where they are from. We cast Chinese actors, Malay actors and Indian actors. In the end, Wan Hanafi Su from Malaysia landed the role of the executioner, and Fir Rahman from Singapore was cast as Aiman mainly because of the chemistry between them.”

Wan, a veteran actor, has become something of a film-festival favourite of late, starring in Liew Seng Tat’s “Men Who Save the World” and Dain Said’s “Bunohan”. Fir Rahman, on the other hand, is a TV actor and a rookie to the big screen.

“Since both of them are Malay, we decided to make the dialogue between them Malay. Even though there are Malay filmmakers in Singapore, they are in a minority. That’s purely for commercial reasons though. Singapore is 70-per-cent Chinese and that’s why a lot of Singapore films tend to stick with Mandarin as the language. It didn’t really matter to us as we saw the market of this film as more international than local. What mattered was the chemistry between the characters.”

Filmed partially in Singapore, much of the film was shot in Australia. “We shot a number of the exteriors of the prison in Singapore for which we received permission, but we didn’t ask for permission to shoot inside. I very doubt that it would have been given and even if it had, I don’t think a real prison in Singapore would be a very cinematic space,” says Junfeng with a grin.

He therefore chose an abandoned prison in Sydney, which was built a long time ago and is of a similar design to prison in other countries once under the realm of the British Empire.

“It could easily be a prison in Singapore,” he says. “The architecture is authentic.”

“Apprentice” earned plenty of praise after its screening at Cannes and will shortly go on general release in France.

“It’s been quite overwhelming. People came up to me and told me they had been affected by the film. I am very happy that my cast and crew from all over the world worked so well together.

Lee Chatametikool edited “Apprentice”, says Junfeng, referring to the award-winning Thai director and editor.

“The film will open in Singapore in June. Right now there’s a nice buzz surrounding it, so hopefully we can show it to as many people as possible.”

BEFORE HE MADE his new film about the death penalty, Boo Junfeng sat down to tea with some of Singapore’s retired hangmen.

He also talked to the clergymen who helped condemned prisoners make their last walk to the gallows.

And most difficult of all, the young filmmaker spent years trying to reach through the curtain of shame to families who had lost fathers and sons to the hangman’s rope.

But it was only after Boo, whose film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on Monday, met one particularly “humane” executioner that he had an epiphany.

He realised that no movie has ever dealt with the whole horrible business from the perspective of the man who pulls the lever.

“I had already started to write [the film] but after I met the first hangman I couldn’t write for three months. What completely threw me was how much I enjoyed his company,” says Boo. “He was not like I thought. He was likeable, charismatic, grandfatherly jocular and open about what he did. He took pride in the almost caring way he looked after the prisoners trying to make it as humane as he could, and I realised how difficult that was. He really shook up my ideas and forced me to rethink everything.”

So Boo took his film, which he toiled over for five years, one step further.

For “Apprentice” has a shocking twist. It is the story of a young man who ended up learning the executioner’s trade from the man who opened the trapdoor on his own father.

More surprising still is the intensity of the almost father-son relationship that develops between the young prison guard and the hangman.

“He is in some ways searching for his father,” Boo says. “And in doing that he finds this man. What I was going for was human truth. I didn’t want to make it an activist film.”

The death penalty is nevertheless a hot political issue in Singapore and in neighbouring Indonesia, particularly when foreigners have fallen foul of strict anti-drug smuggling laws.

The execution of seven foreigners in Bali last year, including two Australians and a mentally ill Brazilian, sparked an international outcry, and several others, including a British woman and a Frenchman, are still on death row there.

Boo said he began his research with the book “Once a Jolly Hangman” which features Darshan Singh, Singapore’s chief executioner for nearly 50 years who once executed 18 men in one day.

Its British author Alan Shadrake was arrested the morning after the book’s Singapore launch in 2010 and was held for a month in Changi prison for insulting the country’s judiciary.

He had criticised the way he claimed the death penalty was disproportionately applied to the poor, while well-connected criminals and wealthy foreigners escaped the noose.

Boo shot the prison scenes in disused prisons in Australia to avoid controversy in the city-state, where an estimated 95 per cent of the population still support the death penalty.

“It would have been easy to make a film about the death penalty itself, but it’s much bigger than that. I learned so much about the value of human life” from making the movie.

Boo, 32, one of a new wave of talented Singapore filmmakers, said his friends who are against the death penalty “may be disappointed by the film”, which is showing in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard programme.

“I took myself out of the comfort zone to address the issue from a different point of view. I don’t have a view myself [in the film]. Because the humanity behind the issue is so much more complex,” says Boo, whose semi-autobiographical first feature “Sandcastle” was a hit at the French festival in 2009.

“Apprentice took so long because I had so much to learn, so many things were beyond my experience and very few people really knew [about this world] … and unfortunately almost of them are not around” to tell the tale.

 

THERE WERE VERY few films from Southeast Asia in any of the sections of this year’s Berlin International Film Festival though Thailand did get a look in with the screening of Pimpaka Towira’s “Prelude to the General” in the short film competition section.

Pimpaka is not new to the festival. Indeed her first feature film ‘One Night Husband” was selected for the Forum Section, while in 2011 her short film ‘Terribly Happy’ competed in the same Berlinale Shorts section.

“The film is a part of my next project, ‘The General’s Secret’,” says Pimpaka of her current feature film project, which in 2013 was selected by the Culture Ministry as part of the Thai pitch to the Cannes Film Festival.

“‘The General’s Secret’ tells the story of a young female journalist who learns about the general’s well-guarded secret from an old masseuse.

“The project is in the process of development. We are still looking for funding. ‘Prelude to the General’ is a part of this project and shows the two main protagonists in an illusory reality,” Pimpaka explains.

In “Prelude to the General”, the journalist warns the old masseuse to run away. Then we see the young woman wandering in a place that could be either fantasy or reality.

Beautifully lensed in 2.35 aspect ratio by cinematographer and short filmmaker Kong Pahurak, “Prelude to the General” has a different feel from Pimpaka’s previous works.

“I want to try another style of storytelling. For composition and framing, we want this film to be like illusory reality, like when we watch a painting that’s trying to look as real as possible.”

The winner of the Golden Bear for Berlinale Shorts this year was “Batrachian’s Ballad” by Leonos Teles from Portugal. “A Man Returned” by Mahdi Fleifel won the Silver Bear Jury Prize, and the Taiwanese short “Anchorage Prohibited” by Chiang Wei Liang picked up the Audi Short Film Award.

But despite not bringing back any prizes, Pimpaka was very happy with her showing at the festival as well as the feedback she got from the audience.

“The feedback was very warm. Many audience members came to talk with me about the filmmaking and content. Arte channel also interviewed me about the film. The audience is looking forward to seeing my feature film project come true”, Pimpaka says.

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