Tongpan
Paijong Laisakul, Euthana Mukdasanit
Thailand – 1977
Screenplay: Paijong Laisagoon, Mike Morrow, Khamsing Srinawk
Cinematography: Frank Green
Production: Isan Film Group
Language: Thai
Duration: 63 min
Color: Black and White
Synopsis: This docudrama recreates a seminar that took place in Northeast Thailand in 1975 to discuss the proposed Pa-Mong Dam on the Mekong. A West-funded hydroelectric company invites the villagers to attend a stakeholder meeting full of sophisticated diagrammatic visuals which aim to persuade them of the wonderful benefits of the dam. Interwoven are sequences depicting a poor farmer, Tongpan, who has already lost his land to a similar project some years prior, and now struggles to make ends meet on a rented patch of land. Tongpan is recruited by a student activist to attend the seminar and to speak for all those who have been dispossessed and left to fend for themselves in the name of progress. He attends the seminar, but the hardships back home weigh heavily on him, and when it comes time for him to speak, he is already gone.
Notes:
In the mid-1970s, a group of Thai student activists which included Paijong Laisakul and Euthana Mukdasanit produced the docudrama Thongpan, one of the first feature length films not affiliated with a commercial film studio. New voices from the leftist youth counterculture had begun to emerge at that time, many of which were associated with Thammasat University where several uprisings had taken place, and where Euthana was studying journalism and acting. He was well known in the student movement and Tongpan was a compelling work of art activism that was officially banned until 1978 due to its socialist message and suspected communist undertones. Based on a true story, one that repeats itself time and again throughout the economically developing world, Tongpan follows the story of a student activist who hopes to recruit a simple farmer to speak up for himself in the name of social justice and equality; to step up politically and develop a social conscience. Even after the ban was lifted, the film was not available in Thailand until 2006 when it was released on VCD.
In subsequent projects, Euthana became associated with producer Prince Chatrichalerm “Mui” Yukol, whose commercial company Five Star made social realist films in which the themes of social criticism were sympathetic to the spirit of the student movement, though the affiliation with dynastic power and ownership of the means of production meant that the films had to be all the more sensitive to social and political issues. Indeed, films produced by Chatrichalerm do resist depicting ahistorical glamor epics or entertainment, focusing instead on the poor, downtrodden working classes. One such is the 1985 drama Butterfly and Flowers set in southern Thailand where the Muslim majority lives on the edge of starvation. Aside from exposing Thai audiences to regional poverty, the film broke new ground by portraying a Buddhist-Muslim romance. Butterfly and Flowers was screened and won Best Film at the East-West International Film Festival in Honolulu, Hawaii, the following year.