Young Thai filmmakers are using their cameras as a tool for peace, training their lenses on the kingdom's insurgency-torn south to try and promote understanding between Muslims and Buddhists.
The short films are on show this week at the fourth World Film Festival of Bangkok, and organisers hope the project will create a new generation of filmmakers driven by a desire for social change.
"When they first came to the project, the filmmakers had just some idea about reconciliation," Pasakorn Intoo-Marn, a freelance filmmaker and organiser of the Film for Peace project, told AFP. "I believe they have learned quite a lot on social issues, on staying together in harmony although they are different.
Now we have some filmmakers who want to promote social issues." Film for Change was funded by the National Reconciliation Commission (NRC), a now defunct body tasked with finding ways to end the ongoing violence in the three southern provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat.
Over 1,500 people have been killed in a shadowy rebellion that erupted there in January 2004. Much of the violence has been blamed on Islamic insurgents and separatist groups in the Muslim-majority region. Analysts say that cross-border crime also plays a large part in the violence, but reports linking Muslims with bombings has created tension between the communities.
"People don't understand each other in the three provinces," says Bounmy Sirisavath, who worked with charity Action Aid on the film project. "All the things we are doing are to promote peace down in the south." After securing funding from the NRC last year, Pasakorn placed an advert in a national film magazine inviting aspiring directors to send ideas for short films about the south.
Over 300 people applied, and the 11 chosen directors ranged from a group of 20-year-old students who had never held a camera before to professional filmmakers looking to use their skills to highlight social issues. The completed films then toured the country, provoking debate at universities in the north and south of Thailand, before ending up at the film festival.
The resulting 11 shorts vary in quality, ranging from simplistic tales of unexpected friendships between Buddhists and Muslims, to attempts to address the issue from an abstract or experimental viewpoint.
Dusit Silakong, the festival's deputy director, says he selected the films because they have some meaning, but he is not sure whether they achieve their aim of promoting reconciliation. "The story is weak and the art direction is not so good... the script is like they pretend," he tells AFP. The films do struggle to address the root causes of the violence and the complexities of the situation, but Pasakorn says the aim was not to produce slick films with all the answers.
"What I always say is the film itself has no answer, but it creates social dialogue," he says, adding that the most important result of the project was fostering ideas of social responsibility in a group of young filmmakers.
Monsak Hinprakob, 23, directed one of the shorts called "Good Morning", an atmospheric piece dealing with a difficult friendship between a Muslim rubber tapper involved with insurgents and Buddhist solider sent to protect him. "I want people to understand what is going on in the south," says Monsak, himself a Buddhist from eastern Thailand.
"Not every Muslim is a bad guy. What is the reason this man becomes a militant? Who is the mastermind, or are they just trying to survive the situation?" asks Monsak, who is now planning a film about society's treatment of retired military officers.
Victor Silakong, the director of the festival, which ends Monday, has high hopes for young Thai filmmakers, and points to the success of last festival's tsunami shorts, which addressed the December 2004 tragedy through film. "The tsunami shorts were a big success and went around the world to many festivals," he tells AFP. "I think we are going to do more like this. We put up a theme and invite young filmmakers to make them."
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