Pimpaka Towira

September 3rd, 2007

Best known for directing the 2003 thriller One Night Husband, Pimpaka is decidedly in the art-house camp of filmmakers. Her upcoming documentary, The Truth Be Told (see Calendar page 16), captures the life of Supinya Klangnarong, offering glimpses of the media activist in the midst of her judicial ordeal with Shin Corp, while also delving into Supinya’s personal life a bit. The film is scheduled to play on September 6 and 8 at The Digital Forum at Grand EGV. Pimpaka also recently announced, with two business partners, a new production company called Extra Virgin, which will concentrate on indie films.

Most people recognize me as a hard-to-understand filmmaker.

I’m not against mainstream movies, I loved Spider Man. I don’t really watch romantic comedies though,
and I don’t like horror movies.

I admire old classics like Rong Ram Narok (Country Hotel) directed by Rattana Pestonji. I also appreciate
Apichatpong and Pen-Ek.

Supinya and I are in different worlds: I’m in the art scene, she’s in the activist scene. I thought she might be very aggressive, but she’s totally different from what I thought. She’s quite humble.

I don’t know how she remained calm during the lawsuit. Me, I would be panicking.

She’s really sweet, and I liked that she stayed with her parents when we went to her hometown in Surat Thani. In Bangkok, she lives alone and seems to be an independent woman.

She’s sweet, but not very open. She seems to keep some things to herself and it was difficult to shoot her in the beginning. We had to spend a lot of time together for her to open up.

I’m sad because I thought, when I started to make the film, that it would encourage people to be aware of freedom of expression. I thought that now we can have freedom of expression because she won. Then came the coup and the new acts which control the media.

After the coup, people thought she supported it, but she was against it. People thought, if you’re against Thaksin, you’re for the coup. It’s not like that.

I’m part of the Free Thai Cinema Movement. When Apichatpong’s film [Syndromes and a Century or Saeng Satawa] had four scenes cut by the government censors, we thought it was time to make a statement. We
don’t need the censorship.

The government will still pass the new bill and we will have a rating system, and it will give the power to the authority to cut or ban a film.

I didn’t plan to be a controversial director, but film is exposure of life.

My next film, The Island Funeral, is a road movie about a young Muslim girl from Bangkok who travels with her brother to the southernmost part of Thailand and deals with the situation in the South. I’m curious about what is happening down there.

I actually support piracy sometimes; I’ll buy a pirate DVD that I cannot find in a legal shop. I think creativity should be rewarded, though, but the government wants to do so many campaigns, and I don’t think they will work.

To young aspiring filmmakers: I think if you would like to make films, just do it and be brave. Just don’t ask how much you’ll be making.—Interview by Joel Gershon