Thai Night and its Invitation Card Woes

Story and photo by Anchalee Chaiworaporn / TCN (Thaicinema.org News)

Princess Ubanrat (front) Fortissimo Film Sales representatives (back)

Cannes – Organized on May 19 at the Carlton Hotel from 6:30-8:30pm , this year’s Thai Night at the Cannes Film Festival received an honor from her royal highness Princess Ubonrat who opened the event.

The party actually commenced at around 7:00pm due to late arrivals of guests, although Princess Ubonrat had been at the event since a bit after 6pm . The Tourism Authority of Thailand Governor Juthamas Siriwan helped greet the guests.

When the auspicious time came, Los Angeles-based editors from Variety welcomed the guests and passed the microphone to Wouter Barendrecht and Michael J. Werner from Fortissimo Film to introduce Princess Ubonrat, who complimented the two representatives’ great work for having five films screening in Cannes and for receiving the Golden Kinnaree Award for their contribution to Asian cinema at the 2006 Bangkok International Film Festival. She also stated that next year’s Bangkok International Film Festival would be from January 26 to February 5 before the Berlin International Film Festival (February 8-18, 2007).

Overall, this year’s Thai Night passed the mark. The venue is grand and elegant unlike the cramped room organized by the Thai Film Federation last year. However, time remains a problem. If the organizer simply targeted the film market participants, think how plenty of guests attended the Korean, Taiwanese or Indian Film Nights, which were organized at such a late time from 9:00-11:00pm .

Actually, Princess Ubonrat’s attendance drew a major crowd because the invitation cards had clearly stated her presence. On my way to the party, a number of conversations seemed to mention this fact.

Then, how Thai Night continued to be plagued with problems? The invitation cards, somehow, failed to reach a number of important people in the Thai film industry, the Ministry of Culture, or even other Asian film industries. Most of the Thai attendees were the same group as the participants of the concurrent film market. GTH Studio representative had to give his invitation card to Kim Ji-seok from Pusan International Film Festival. Likewise, a kindhearted representative from Fivestar Production gave his card to me. Therefore, guests at the Thai Night consisted of mostly Westerners (only 50 Thai among the total number of around 500 guests).

The root of this problem fell to the party organizer, which was an all-American team. No wonder very few Thai or Asian guests were invited!

Moreover, I spotted no one from Sahamonkol Film and the Thai Film Federation!

The attending Thai guests included Nakorn Weeraprawat and actor Piroj Sangworabutr from Fivestar Production, and another group traveling with the Ministry of Culture.

Before the start of the event, I spoke with a representative from the Tourism Authority of Thailand about this invitation card problem and finally it was agreed that all Thai could attend the event. The problem, then, was that most of the Thai people had not received the invitation card so they did not come.

On the event’s organization, a number of Asian guests asked me why Variety editors had to introduce Fortissimo representatives to introduce Princess Ubonrat, as opposed to the editors introducing the Princess directly. More importantly, why did Fortissimo receive the spotlight when it had nothing to do with Bangkok International Film Festival?

I alone could not answer these questions. These comments, as well as the invitation card problem, reflected a sense of ignorance and an unwillingness to cooperate with the network of the Asian film industries from the American event organizing team hired by the Tourism Authority of Thailand.

This is just another complaint, very much similar to the Bangkok International Film Festival’s neglect of Thai and Asian film industries, which I had criticized before.