Bangkok: Images and Politics

To celebrate 150 years Thai- German Diplomatic relations, the Southeast Asian Department of Universität Passau & Project Südostasien of Universität Passau, the Honorary Consul-General of the Kingdom of Thailand in Munich and the Royal Thai Embassy were arranging the film festival under the theme “Bangkok: Images and Politics”.

Watching the Movie Mahanakorn

Based in Universität Passau which the festival taking place at the ITZ 004 on the 13^th and 14^th July 2012, this film festival was initially aimed to describe the dynamic of the capital city, Bangkok: the city of angels, according to the concept of Urbanism, one of the strength points research focus of our department . However, the festival was not only to introduce Bangkok in various perspectives but also to offer participants to exchange and discuss what is actually going on the current issues in Thailand at the present time.

The program started from the presentation of 150 years of Thai-German Diplomatic Relations documentary film and then followed by the Overview of Bangkok and the history of movie in Thailand by Prof. Dr. Rüdiger Korff and Dr. Pitch Pongsawat.

Bangkok Street

After the opening of “Bangkok Street” and Lunch at the Street of Bangkok which was set by students, there were selected short films provided by Thai Public Broadcasting Service (Thai PBS) under the name of “Sawasdee Bangkok” project.

There were 2 short films selected to be shown, “Mahanakorn” and “Sightseeing”. “Mahanakorn”, produced by Bandit Rittakol, is the story about a peasant couple, having won a lottery prize, travels to Bangkok with the goal of taking a photo with Temple of Dawn. “Sightseeing”, produced by Wisit Sasanatieng, is about a blind girl who gets a special tour of Bangkok from a man who claims to be an angel who once helped build the city.

The last movie was the contemporary popular movie – Bangkok Traffic Love Story (in Thai:  Rodfaifah Ma Ha Na Ther) is a Thai romantic comedy film which tells the story of a thirty-year-old woman feeling desperate about being last among her friends to marry, and her relationship with an engineer working on the BTS Skytrain system. The film was about the young middle-class female Bangkokians could identify with the contemporary setting.

Apart from interesting movies shown, there were many interesting discussion upon 3 different categories whithin 2 days event as themes below:

• Images and Future of  Bangkok,
• Love, Women, Hi-technology and the Middle class in Contemporary Bangkok
• Bangkok Street and Politics

Discussing Movies

The discussions were extremely interesting participated by Passau professors, lecturers, bachelor, master and PhD students. It also was our great pleasure that we had many distinguished guest speakers and participants from all over the world, for example: Prof. Surichai  Wun’gaeo from Center for Peace and Conflict Studies, Chulalongkorn University; Mr. Martin Schalbruch from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin;  Ms. Emma Masterson, Thai actress,  Miss Asia Pacific 1997 who is now studying at the Universität Freiburg;  Lieutenant General Dr. Peerapong Manakit from National Broadcasting andTelecommunications Commission (NBTC);  Mr. Claudio Sopranzetti from Harvard University, the author of “Red Journeys” and  Mr. Nick Nostitz, the photographer and author of “Red vs. Yellow Volume 1&2”.