Anocha Suwichakornpong

Anocha Suwichakornpong (Thai: อโนชา สุวิชากรพงศ์, born 1976) is a Thai independent film director, screenwriter and producer. She is Visiting Lecturer on Art, Film, and Visual Studies at Harvard University.[1] Her films have been the subject of retrospectives at the Museum of the Moving Image, New York; TIFF Cinematheque, Toronto; Cinema Moderne, Montreal; and Olhar De Cinema, Brazil, among others.[2] Her work, informed by the socio-political history of Thailand, has received much international critical acclaim and numerous awards. She is the recipient of the 2019 Prince Claus award for "for pioneering a mode of intellectual feminist filmmaking, courageously and convincingly challenging hegemonic practices and established conventions, both in filmmaking and in society".[3] In 2020, she was a recipient of the Silpathorn Award.

Anocha Suwichakornpong
Born1976
Chonburi, Thailand
NationalityThai
Other namesMai
EducationColumbia University (MFA)
OccupationFilm director, screenwriter, producer
Known forBy The Time It Gets Dark (2016); Mundane History (2009)

She is the director of two feature films, Mundane History (2009) and By The Time It Gets Dark (2016), the latter of which won the Thailand National Film Association Award for Best Picture and Best Director, making her the first woman to be awarded, and was selected as the Thai entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the 90th Academy Awards. She has directed over a dozen shorts and video installations and is the co-director of Krabi, 2562 (2019) with British artist Ben Rivers.[4] In 2017, she co-founded Purin Pictures, a film fund that supports independent cinema in Southeast Asia, offering much needed assistance in a region that lacks adequate governmental support.[5] In 2007, she founded the independent film production company, Electric Eel Films, which has been recognized for its contribution toward supporting works by emerging talents from Thailand and abroad.[6][7]

Early life

Anocha Suwichakornpong was born in Thailand 1976. She spent the 1990s living in England, where she attended universities and graduated with bachelor's and master's degrees. In 2006, she graduated from the MFA film program at Columbia University, where she was a recipient of Hollywood Foreign Press Association Fellowship.[8]

She attended the Talent Campus of the Berlin Film Festival in 2006, where her feature-length script, The White Room, was among the 15 projects chosen to participate in the Script Clinic.[8]

Her thesis film Graceland was selected for the 59th Cannes Film Festival's Cinefondation program. It was the first Thai short film selected for the Cannes Film Festival.[9] It was also featured at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival and many other festivals.

Career

She co-founded her production company, Electric Eel Films, in Bangkok in 2006.

Anocha's debut feature was Mundane History (Jao nok krajok, เจ้านกกระจอก), a family drama about the friendship that develops between a young paralyzed man from a wealthy Bangkok family and his male nurse from Isan in the North of Thailand. The film is also a commentary on Thailand's class-based society and the frailty of life.[10] It was screened at several festivals, and won the Tiger Award at the 2010 International Film Festival Rotterdam.[11]

In 2010, Anocha was planning her second feature, By the Time It Gets Dark, the script of which won her the Prince Claus Fund Film Grant of €15,000 from the CineMart of the Rotterdam International Film Festival.[12] The film was released in 2016. It won the Thailand National Film Association Award for Best Picture and was selected as the Thai entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 90th Academy Awards.

Filmography
  • Features
  • Shorts
    • 747 (2001, co-dir)
    • Days Like This (2002)
    • Full Moon (2003)
    • Not a New York Story (2004)
    • Ghosts (2005)
    • Graceland (2006)
    • Jai (2007)
    • Like. Real. Love (ดุจ จิต ใจ) (2008)
    • Black Mirror (2008)
    • Lunch (2010)
    • Overseas (2012, co-dir)
    • Thursday (2015)
    • Coconut (2015)
    • Nightfall (2016, co-dir)

References
  1. "Harvard University, Anocha Suwichakornpong".
  2. "Harvard University, Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies". Harvard University.
  3. "Report from the 2019 Prince Claus Awards Committee June 2019" (PDF). Prince Claus Fund. 22 November 2019.
  4. "Locarno International Film Festival, Moving Ahead".
  5. "Purin Pictures About Us".
  6. "Electric Eel Films".
  7. "Electric Eel Films in Prince Clause Bio".
  8. "Electric Eel Films, Anocha Suwichakornpong". Electric Eel Films. Archived from the original on 7 April 2010. Retrieved 4 February 2010.
  9. "Rotterdam announces 2010 Competition lineup". International Film Festival Rotterdam. Archived from the original on 15 January 2010. Retrieved 6 February 2010.
  10. Rithdee, Kong (12 October 2009). "From Pusan: Mundane History and New New Thai Cinema". Bangkok Post. Retrieved 4 February 2010.
  11. "And the winners are ..." International Film Festival Rotterdam. 2010. Archived from the original on 1 March 2010. Retrieved 24 March 2014.
  12. "CineMart winners announced". International Film Festival Rotterdam. 4 February 2010. Retrieved 4 February 2010.


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