Abstract
Throughout the history of Thai cinema, documentaries have only recently become popular with Thai film-goers and young filmmakers. With the establishing of Doc Club, a documentary distributor, youngsters have become more exposed to documentary films. The success of a new generation of documentary filmmakers in international film festivals have inspired newcomers to try their hands at documentary filmmaking. Moreover, a new political consciousness, fueling the new generation during recent political protests, made them look for chances to speak on social problems. Documentary films have become a space for filmmaker to voice their concerns while trying to reach out for international audiences. This paper attempts to capture this moment in time where several documentary films, including, School Town King (Laisuwanchai, 2021), The Cave Lived (2020), Come and See (Boonprakob, 2019), and others have made it onto cinema screens and even being recognised with national awards. This paper will take a closer look at what lies beneath these films, contextualized by the rising of Pro-democracy movement since 2019 when the country had its first generation election since the 2014 coups d’état by General Prayut Chan-o-cha who was re-installed as elected Prime Minister. The demand for radical change in society by the new generation has kept its momentum up to the present day; these afore-mentioned films could give an insight into their mentality while attempting to destabilize the establishment’s traditional values in varying ways.
Author Information
Sopawan Boonnimitra, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand
Peerachai Kerdsint, Bangkok University, Thailand
Paper Information
Conference: MediAsia2022
Stream: Documentary History
This paper is part of the MediAsia2022 Conference Proceedings (View)
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To cite this article:
Boonnimitra S., & Kerdsint P. (2022) The Rise of the Documentary Film Movement in Thai Cinema During the Current Political Conflict ISSN: 2186-5906 – The Asian Conference on Media, Communication & Film 2022: Official Conference Proceedings https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2186-5906.2022.16
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2186-5906.2022.16
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