Boonsong Nakphoo keeps making movies, regardless of the obstacles. A champion of small people and small stories, he has lamented the difficulties of surviving in the movie business for years and yet he keeps churning out film after film, usually on a meagre budget. His latest output is now in cinemas: Nane Kradod Kampaeng (The Wall) recounts his own early struggle to make it as a filmmaker.
Almost 20 years ago, Boonsong made his name as a theatre actor and short-filmmaker focusing on stories of farmers and the social change happening around them. He dabbled in mainstream filmmaking, but in the past many years has carved for himself a place in the independent scene through rural-set films such as Wang Pikul (Village Of Hope), Satanee Si Phak (Scenes And Lives) and Tudongkawat (The Wandering). In each of them, viewers can feel the autobiographical presence of the filmmaker, either in the setting or the characters.
The Wall, however, is Boonsong's most overt attempt to blur his own experience with cinematic storytelling. It's playing in limited cinemas this week.
The film tells the story of a filmmaker who travels to scout a location for a script he wrote 20 years ago (Boonsong, an actor who appears in many Thai films and stage plays, plays the lead character himself here).
"The man wrote the story a long time ago, but when he goes back to look at the places that inspired him, nothing remains the same," he said. "Everywhere he goes, everywhere he spent his teenage years, has changed so much, and he felt out of place. It's the epic struggle of a man who tries to remember what was before.
"This is not exactly my real-life story -- let's say it's inspired by my life story," he laughed. "Fiction and fact come from the same place, which is life. Each of us thinks about our own lives much more than we think about other people's, right? One day I may want to make a film about other people, but now it's my life that supplies me with materials."
Boonsong sets all his films in rural areas, and they portray people in the harsh light of social realism. In a way, it feels dated to present-day viewers. But in many others, it reflect the bygone era of Thai films that committed to show the plight of common people in the agricultural sector who had to deal with a sudden shift in the socio-economic landscape. Films like that thrived in Thailand in the 1970s and 80s, before the multiplex boom and middle-class viewership altered the film market. "I grew up with realism films such as Phai Daeng [Red Bamboo], Thongpoon Khokpo [Citizen Thongpoon], Dek Wat [Temple Boy] and many more. But now if you tell a story of common people in the rural [regions], it feels out of place. It seems strange.
"We go to the movies to escape -- that's normal. But still I think cinema should still be a place for small stories, and I will continue to do that in my film."
The Wall
is showing at the Bangkok Screening Room and House RCA.
