BKKIFF Day 5 - Tuesday

Bangkok Film Market

This is where I start to lose track of what day it is as every day seems to be spent in this airconditioned bubble and the only life I see outside is when I'm travelling back to my hotel in the evening. It's less intensive than the four day FrightFest event, but nevertheless there's a choice of seven different films screening at any one time, plus all the press activities and the BFM, so there's always something to be doing.

My first film of the day was Ahimsa: Stop To Run, a Thai comedy-drama which took an inventive look at karma. This was my first experience of Ultrascreen 1, one of the smaller cinemas in the venue; well, I say smaller... the auditorium and screen are the same size, but there's less seats - just six rows of six pairs of luxurious armchairs! In all my years of cinema going that is the most comfortable viewing experience I have ever had. Whats more, I was back in the same seat for my second movie, the Malaysian sports-comedy Goalposts & Lipsticks. I don't think I've ever seen a Malaysian film before but this was really well done and translated well, following the typical format of teen romance / sports movies. The director did a Q&A after the screening and said that the film had done so well that he's now been commissioned to develop a television series based on the movie.

In my break between screenings I discovered that tomorrow's showing of The Duelist is now going to be a Thai-dubbed print without English subtitles, so that caused me to rearrange my schedule somewhat. The rather frustrating thing is that no-one could confirm whether Saturday's screening would be the same print or the original Korean language with subtitles, so I'm just going to have to wait and see on that one. I also had another wander around the BFM where I bumped into Paul Spurrier, and I arranged a meeting with someone from Five Star Production to discuss The Art Of The Devil 2 which judging from its gory trailer could be an ideal candidate for this year's FrightFest event. I'll know more when I actually view the film tomorrow.

Ultrascreen 3

My final film of the day was an Austrian drama You Bet Your Life, obviously influenced by seminal seventies novel The Dice Man. For this screening I was in Ultrascreen 3, another of the luxury screens except this time there were only four rows of twelve seats, all of which reclined and came with their own little tables. I didn't get away from the Siam Paragon until nearly 11pm but the promise of free cocktails at an after-show party proved too tempting to resist, so I made my way over to the Q Bar on Sukhumvit Soi 11 and danced the night away until they closed at 1am.