Join us for this screening with an introduction and post screening Q&A with Helena Gouveia Monteiro.
Saturday August 16th 2025, 3pm
Tongpan by Isan Film Group (Thailand, 1977, 16mm, 60 min.)
Created by the Isan Film Group in Thailand, a collective of university students who had participated in the popular uprising of 1973 that deposed the country’s military dictatorship, Tongpan is a key instance of Thai cinema, a docu-fiction focusing on the micropolitics of a seminar held in the country’s rural northeast, where participants discuss a proposed mega-dam on the Mekong river.
The titular character of Tongpan, a displaced villager whose lands had been destroyed by an earlier hydroelectric project, is played by farmer Ong-art Ponethon. In the film, he is invited by a group of students to join in discussions along with other villagers; when he arrives, the talk is dominated by government officials, academics, and a white spokesman who delivers a speech in untranslated English.
After shooting was completed, this reformist period came to a sudden end with the right-wing coup of 1976 and a subsequent massacre of leftist protestors. Many who worked on the production were hunted down by police after the still-unreleased film had been banned as pro-communist. Filmmaker Paijong Laisakul was able to smuggle the film reels out of the country and carry out the editing in Europe.
Free, book on Eventbrite or come on the day subject to availability.
