Free Thai Cinema Movement

Apichatpong Weerasethakul, one of the leading New Thai Cinema directors and one of the most original avant-garde film-makers in world cinema, has withdrawn his film Syndromes & A Century from distribution in Thailand.

Thai censors wanted to cut scenes of [shock!] a monk playing frisbee and guitar, and [gasp!] a doctor drinking liquor and his trousers bulging. Understandably fed up with this nonsense, Apichatpong refused to censor the film and consequently one of Thailand's most important and impressive films will not be shown here.

Apichatpong has launched the Free Thai Cinema Movement, with an online petition (petitiononline.com/nocut) calling for drastic changes in the Thai censorship system. T-shirts are available to promote the cause, by mail-order from Bioscope (bioscopemagazine.com).