Tag: Thailand
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Manta Ray (dir. Phuttiphong Aroonpheng, 2018)
There is a stealthiness and a dreaminess in Manta Ray (2018), the first feature film by cinematographer Phuttiphong Aroonpheng who was born in 1976. The film is one of the first fiction films to evoke the crisis of the Rohingya, a persecuted Muslim minority in western Burma (Myanmar), from the perspective of Thailand, the land…
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Memoria (dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2021)
In Cemetery of Splendor, characters dispense zen-like nuggets of wisdom in a lethargic state. Paced like a Buddhist meditation, the plot marches to a slow and subtle but abundant poetic song under the branches of psychotropic jungles, crossed by bizarre animals, tropical diseases, erotic projections, and otherworldly light. Undoubtedly less bewitching than the previous opuses…
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Mae Nak (dir. Pimpaka Towira, 1992)
Images of devotion form the nexus of Thai religions and social life. As shown by Justin McDaniel’s ethnography on the shrines of Mae Nak, a well-known Thai female ghost based on a mother who dies in childbirth during the reign of King Rama IV (1804-1868). In his article, “The Agency Between Images,” McDaniel recounts his…
Geronimo Cristobal 