Seeing in the Dark
Seeing in the Dark
Duration: 29 minutes
Aspect Ratio: 16:9 B&W and Color
Sound: Stereo
Subtitle: English
Year: 2021
Duration: 29 minutes
Aspect Ratio: 16:9 B&W and Color
Sound: Stereo
Subtitle: English
Year: 2021
Watch here at Canyon Cinema
Festival / Screening:
World Premiere: The 68th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen (International Competition)
33rd Singapore International Film Festival (Southeast Asian Short Competition)
26th Thai Short Film & Video Festival (The R.D. Pestonji Award, 2nd Prize)
Technological Ecologies Screening and discussion with World Records, Onyeka Igwe, and Laura Huertas Millán, e-flux Screening Room, Brooklyn, NY
CREDIT:
Director, cinematographer, editor and producer: Taiki Sakpisit
Sound: Worramet Matutamtada
Production Company: FahFuenFactory
Production Country: Thailand and South-Korea
Synopsis:
A sensorial, left-field take on Thai political history that moves between a subdued past etched in the landscape of Khao Kho mountain, once a stronghold of communist insurgents, and a dynamic near-present marked by Bangkok’s 2021 anti-government protests.
Background:
In the wake of the 2020-2021 Thai Protests, the dictator government has deployed the military information warfare, accusing the protest leaders as communists, the same method was used on the student activists in the ‘70s, causing them to join the Communist Party of Thailand in the mountain terrains. The history repeats itself and the film revisits the remnants of the Communist sites, the military legacy of the Cold War, and the ruined fortress that was once the Ministry of Treasury, where the gold bars and the sacred Emerald Buddha were hidden from the Japanese army during WWII.
During his premiership from 1938 to 1957, Field Marshal Plaek Phibunsongkhram had planned to relocate the capital city of Thailand to Phetchabun province; in WWII, he established the Ministry of Treasury at Tham Ruesi Sombat Cave where gold bars and the Emerald Buddha were hidden from the Japanese army. Since 2014, the dictator regime has attempted to diminish these historical sites. Now the remnants of the fortress and deteriorated Communist sites still remain among the Phetchabun mountains. The film interweaves these landscapes and echoes the dark enclosure of the current turbulent Thailand.