New Artist Member: Taiki Sakpisit
Posted January 13th, 2022 in Announcements, New Acquisitions, New Digital Files, News / Events
Canyon Cinema is pleased to welcome the Bangkok-based filmmaker and visual artist Taiki Sakpisit to the collection!
A graduate of San Francisco State’s Cinema program, Taiki’s works explore the underlying tensions and conflicts, and the sense of anticipation in contemporary Thailand, through precise and sensorially overwhelming audio-visual assemblage using a wide range of sounds and images. His films produce heightened and uneasy modes of spectatorship that often relate to the tumultuous socio-political climate in Thailand. Taiki’s moving images and experimental shorts have been presented at numerous exhibitions and film festivals. His feature-length film The Edge of Daybreak premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in the Tiger Competition and won the FIPRESCI award.
Two of Taiki’s films are now available to rent from Canyon:
Shadow and Act (2019, 23 minutes, color, sound, digital file)
Shadow and Act navigates through the remains of Chaya Jitrakorn, once a prominent photo studio constructed in 1940, Bangkok, and shuttered in 2012. The preferred studio of dictator Field Marshal Plaek Phibunsongkhram, a forceful nationalist and modernizer, Chaya Jitrakorn translates as “the shadow of the artist.” Located in Bangkok’s Chinatown, Chaya Jitrakorn was built like a castle with many secret pathways and rooms and counted important Thai political figures such as Sarit Thanarat and Thanom Kittikachorn as frequent patrons. It is said that this particular photo studio was the only choice for these powerful men when it came to their pictorial representation. This work likens the defunct photo studio to the decaying body of Thailand presented through the detritus of this seventy-two-year-old archive comprising the aforementioned political figures, uniformed male and female officers standing in front of now demolished buildings, historical trial sessions, haunted portraitures, official events, field inspection, and national ceremonies, amongst others. By unveiling the surface and skin of Chaya Jitrakorn, the work endeavors to expose the body and soul of a nation’s haunted past.
The Mental Traveller (2018, 18 minutes, color, sound, digital file)
The Mental Traveller is a poetic reflection on the nature of remembrance. It navigates through the mental spaces of people consumed by memories of lost time. The film meditates on the passing of time, external behaviors, habitual patterns of thought, and the sensorial realities of five individuals with mental health conditions inside the psychiatric ward in Chanthaburi Province, east of Thailand, in which it is filmed. The film was conceived from the director’s connections to his parents and companions as they went through states of sickness, impending death, dementia, grief, and temporary insanity. At the same time, it echoes upon the turbulent years of political upheavals and repercussions in Thailand, resulting in a nation undergoing a state of delirium, lunacy, and trauma.
