Two and a half weeks after one of the worst natural disasters in the region's history seemed the wrong time to go to a film festival there, but when the Bangkok International Film Festival decided to go ahead as scheduled, and to donate part of the ticket proceeds to the relief effort, it seemed impossible to refuse the invitation to show a film I had directed. Which is why I found myself recently flying the nearly 24 hours from New York to Bangkok, where I arrived just as the festival was getting under way.
I had expected to find a city in mourning, but in fact there was less talk -- at least within the festival bubble that I lived in -- about the tsunami than there had been in New York. The opening night of the festival was a benefit for the relief effort, there were collection boxes at the theaters, and I once saw, in an English-language crawl on an electronic billboard near the center of town, an appeal for blood donations -- but unless I asked, no one I encountered mentioned the disaster. If I hadn't already known about it, I could easily have spent a week in Bangkok and never been the wiser.
I did ask many of the Thais I met how the tsunami had affected them, and though it didn't touch the city of Bangkok physically (apart from the initial earthquake causing some tall buildings to sway a bit), most I spoke to had either lost friends or family, or knew people who had. Even the king lost a grandson. One of the young volunteer liaisons at the festival said her best friend at university had lost her entire family. Another actually went down to a resort near Phuket with her mother on the evening of the December 26, despite knowing about the tsunamis, and stayed several days. Her hotel was just outside the disaster area, undamaged. Even if they had wanted to come back early, she said, all the planes were full of bodies.
The Thai economy is so dependent on tourism that the government is working hard to persuade foreigners to overcome their reluctance to sunbathe on beaches so recently covered with dead bodies. So the English-language papers were full of photographs of tourists swimming and tanning, along with encouraging statements by various government ministers. The impression was given that what Thailand wants tourists to do, even more than volunteer in the relief effort, is to go to the areas affected and spend as much money as possible.
Meanwhile, there's a political campaign on, leading up to elections on February 6, and the prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, a communications tycoon, seems to have impressed people with his swift response to the crisis and improved his chances in the upcoming election. My own panel of election experts -- the young volunteers (mostly female, mostly university students) who worked at the film festival -- assured me that the prime minister, who is not particularly popular, will win, though perhaps with a smaller majority than he now has. Bangkok's streets are lined with election posters, my favorite showing a man with a fierce look and a raised sledgehammer, promising to smash corruption and dishonesty. The parliamentary candidate himself having made his fortune from “massage parlors,” my panel did not expect him to win.
The image of the 77-year-old King Bhumibol, the world's longest-reigning monarch, is everywhere. At the start of every screening at the festival, we all stood for a tribute to him: while a gauzy montage of photographs of his highness, from his boyhood to the present, played onscreen; the “king's anthem,” in a particularly resonant choral version, pounded us into reverent submission. There was a touch of North Korea and the Dear Leader here, though the king has almost no power and, by all accounts, including that of my panel of experts, he actually is universally adored.
Just as it was hard to tell from the surface that tsunami had killed so many so nearby, it was also hard to tell unless you were in the middle of it that an international film festival was going on. The festival seemed to have done some advertising on Thai television, and I saw one billboard for it on my trips around town, but a low profile was maintained, as though in deference to the recent tragedy (though the real reason seemed to be limited funding even before the tsunami struck).
The films were all screened at multiplexes in the center of town, accessible from my hotel by the new sky train, the elevated subway that has gone into service in the last five years. The theaters were secreted deep within vertical shopping malls, up a maze of escalators, and through floor after floor of screaming video games, fast-food parlors, bowling alleys, ice-skating rinks, and stores selling everything a teenager might want. It was very loud, very vivid, very Blade Runner. I was surprised that anyone was able to find the theaters, but screenings were fairly well attended, at least compared with last year, when some films were apparently seen by audiences of one or two. Attendance was particularly impressive because all the films were shown in English, or with English subtitles. This language bias reflects the fact that the film festival was created and is sponsored by the Tourism Authority of Thailand, which is hoping to use it to promote the country and its culture.
This being the goal, it's not altogether surprising that direction of the festival was contracted out to two Americans based in Los Angeles, Craig Prater and Jennifer Stark, both formerly of the Palm Springs Film Festival. They put together an impressive program of international features, documentaries, and shorts, with particular emphasis on Asian films. It was extremely rich and varied, from the Spanish film The Sea Inside with Javier Bardem (recently playing in the United States and winner of the best-film prize at the Bangkok festival) to Wong Kar-Wai's 2046 (the director's visionary follow-up to In the Mood for Love, which screened last year at Cannes) to a wide range of Thai, Malaysian, and Indonesian films we're unlikely to see on this side of the Pacific. There were tributes to Oliver Stone, Joel Schumacher, and Olivier Assayas, with screenings of their latest films, along with a tribute to the late Thai director Vichit Kounavudhi.
Unusual among film festivals, and much to this one's credit, the art of cinematography was honored separately, with seminars and special screenings introduced by the films' directors of photography. A seminar on shooting erotic scenes (that I sadly missed) was held, with the great Christopher Doyle (In the Mood for Love, 2046, Hero), Rodrigo Prieto (Alexander, Frida, Amores Perros), Eric Gautier (Clean, The Motorcycle Diaries), Dante Spinotti (The Insider, L.A. Confidential), and others.
Perhaps because it's held in a developing nation that just experienced a major natural disaster, or perhaps as a result of its being organized from 18 flying hours away, or both, this wasn't the most organized festival I've ever been to, with last-minute schedule changes, poor communication, and dreadfully bad projection for the many digital features. In only the third year of its existence, the Bangkok International Film Festival is a work in progress, progress that seems only slightly slowed by the tsunami. It'll be interesting to see how it develops -- whether it takes root as a genuinely Thai festival, with deep local support (and maybe even Thai subtitles one day); whether it helps introduce the Thai film industry to a wider audience; and whether it promotes tourism, as the tourism authority hopes. I hope I'm invited back someday to see.
Alan Wade is a New York-based filmmaker whose The Pornographer (a love story) has been shown at the Tribeca, Avignon, Locarno, and Bangkok film festivals.
