williamaveryhudson

Polamuang Juling / Citizen Juling (Kraisak Choonhavan, Manit Sriwanichpoom, Ing K, Thailand) (European Premiere)
Tuesday, February 10
Read the Forum synopsis

In the spring of 2006, a gang of criminals disguised in full burqa broke into a charity preschool for poor Muslims in southern Thailand, where they imprisoned and beat a Buddhist teacher from the north into a coma from which she never awoke. The 26-year-old teacher, Juling Pongkanmul, died the following year, the object of a nationwide vigil. Her spine crushed in several places, more than forty fractures to her skull, her brain swollen, her brain stem torn and bleeding.

Journalist Ing K, photographer Manit Sriwanichpoom, and opposition senator Kraisak Choohavan journeyed the length of the land to investigate the attack and its context in the rich and tortured culture of Thailand. Mostly they look and listen, leaving interpretation to their interview subjects and the viewer.

The tragedy and the wisdom of their film - beyond documenting Juling’s murder site, her hospital bed, and her childhood home - is our observation that all of the interview subjects are good people. It leads us to wonder who are the bad people who killed Juling, and to pray with her parents that they stop committing crimes like this.

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Yanaka boshoku / Deep in the Valley (Funahashi Atsushi, Japan) (World Premiere)
Monday, February 9
Read the Forum synopsis

The Yanaka district of Tokyo is a place apart. Peaceful, leafy and traditional, the neighborhood marks the night of July 6, 1957 as a watershed moment when a five-story wooden pagoda dating from the Edo era burned down.

One of several “semi-documentaries” in this year’s Forum, Yanaka boshoku combines historical narrative, a fictional love story, and real-life film forensics to make an entirely original entertainment.

An innovative musical score builds throughout the film, as images coalesce around a final revelatory document of the night the pagoda burned down.

Director Funahashi Atsushi confronts his frustrations with preconceptions of documentary and fiction film head on, as well as conceptions of what is high (pagoda building) and low (filmmaking).

The film’s featured group, the Yanaka Film Preservation Society, exists in reality.

Posts for peace, sound environmental stewardship, humane economic policy and promotion of human health and creativity. About the blogger.

Technorati tags:
film festivals berlin film festival

Comments and Links Appreciated!