Local Sensations

Shot on black-and-white 16mm film, LOCAL SENSATIONS opens a loose, playful dialogue with Chatri Prakitnonthakan’s essay, How to Design a Modern Monument That Won’t Become a Shrine. Rather than illustrating the text, the film generates pluralities—unraveling the dichotomy of object and subject—and gestures toward a kind of topological politics.

Though it circles around ideas of monuments, monumentality, and sanctification in Thai society, no statues or literal monuments ever appear. Instead, fragments, only obliquely connected, are woven into an evolving, gently destabilizing field of sensation. Together, they form an ecological and metaphysical nexus—an invitation to reconsider what “locality” and “monumentality” might mean, and how close they are to us.

Precedes

Narrative

Directed by Anocha Suwichakornpong

As Thailand’s justice system continues to suppress efforts toward civic accountability, NARRATIVE weaves together the testimony of family members of the murdered activists. The result is a haunting meditation on truth, justice, and the unfinished work of history.