ThaiMovie : Thai Indie Film in Vancouver; Apichatpong Among the Jury

ThaiMovie : Thai Indie Film in Vancouver; Apichatpong Among the Jury

Independent film director Urupong Raksasad leaps to fame this year when his documentary The Stories from the North is chosen to compete in the “Dragons & Tigers” category in the 2006 Vancouver Film Festival.
Urupong is the one to watch after winning the Digital Spectrum JJ-Star Award, one of the two top prizes at the 2006 Jeonju International Film Festival in South Korea this past May, for The Stories from the North and now bringing the same film to Vancouver.
The jury members this year include the Thai independent director Apichatwong Weerasethakul, Cashiers du Cinema editor Jean-Michael Frodon, and independent film critic and former editor at The Village Voice and Time Out London Jessica Winter.
Apichatpong will also showcase his latest film Syndromes and a Century. Pen-ek Ratanaruang’s short feature Twelve Twenty will also be screened.
The Festival’s handbook praises Urupong’s work as here: "Uruphong Raksasad is the real, back-to-nature deal. After majoring in film and photography at Thammasat University, he began working in the film and TV industries in Bangkok as an editor and post-production supervisor. Four disillusioning years later he gave it all up and went back to the North (he was born in Chiangrai) to live a more natural life... and to become an indie filmmaker. His graduation film March of Time became the first of these Stories from the North. Each chapter in this startlingly beautiful film is set and shot in villages in Lanna (the name means “a million rice paddies”). There are nine in all, or perhaps 8?, each one a carefully judged vignette: children trying to scare each other with ghost stories, a man carrying a child through a field to the road, an 84-year-old woman looking forward to her death, a farmer protecting his water buffalo from a gang of rowdy bikers. This poetic (and gently surreal) portrait of a time, a place and a people gradually reveals the absence of young adults, all of whom have fled to big cities; these are communities of the very young and very old. Some of the chapters recreate Uruphong’s own childhood memories; all of them capture a way of life that will soon be gone."
Tony Raynes, a renowned British film critic, made the selection of films competing in the “Dragons & Tigers”. Past Thai entries included Daeng Bailey and Young Gangsters (1998) by Nonzee Nimibutr, Tears of the Black Tiger (2001) by Wisit Sasanatiang (which won the award in 2001, Mysterious Objects at Noon (2001), Blissfully Yours (2003) by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Isan Special (2003) by Mingmokol Sonakul, and Crying Tigers (2005) by Santi Taepanich.
Aside from Apichatpong’s and Urupong’s works, two other Thai independent films that were selected for this category in the past were Motorcycle and Waiting, two short films by Arthit Assarat.
The Stories from the North will vie for the US$5,000 prize, along with the following films:
BETELNUT (Yang Heng) – China
DOG DAYS DREAM (Ichii Masahide) – Japan
DO OVER (Cheng Yu-Chieh) – Taiwan
FACELESS THINGS (Kim Kyong-Mook) – South Korea
GEO-LOBOTOMY (Kim Gok, Kim Sun) – South Korea
LOST IN TOKYO (Ikawa Kotaro) – Japan
STORIES FROM THE NORTH (Uruphong Raksasad) – Thailand TODO TODO TEROS (John Torres) – The Philippines

By Anchalee Chaiworaporn / Sorradithep Supachanya