And speaking of genre films, action dramas are always well-represented in Thai film. This year at the Bangkok film festival, international guests saw the premiere screening of Thai martial arts film Ong-Bak as the festival's closing movie. In this fast-paced action film, there are stunningly choreographed Thai-boxing scenes, Jackie Chan-style kung-fu comedy, and a Bruce Lee-like muscleman who fights against foreigners in order to save his countryman and Buddhism. For those who have never seen a Thai-style martial arts film before, Ong-Bak is an eye-opener that shows how fierce, violent and fascinating Thai boxing can be.
With the recent bevy of homegrown movies, "the market share of Thai films has increased from 1 percent to 20 percent," said producer Kongcharoenvoot. The other 80 percent is composed of Hollywood films. This is already a big leap compared with the current situation in Taiwan, where local films share less than 1 percent of the market. In Asia, Korea owns the biggest local film market with a 50-percent market share for local films.
"In Thailand, a film that reaches 50 million baht [US$1 million] at the box office can be considered just ok. Over 70 million baht can be seen as a success," said Kongcharoenvoot. This is another embarrassing fact for Taiwan, where people uncork the champagne and throw parties if a local film reaches NT$5 million.
So like Korea, whose Pusan International Film Festival has accompanied the boost of the Korean film industry, Thailand is also ready for a big-scale international film festival. The Bangkok film festival has allegedly invested US$3 million for organizational purposes. During the festival, 80 percent of the screenings were fully booked, with a few films needing extra screenings to meet higher-than-expected demand. The festival's Golden Kinnaree Award was probably the only disappointment, with none of the winners attending the awards ceremony, including Golden Kinnaree winner Talk to Her by Spanish director Pedro Almodovar.
"I still believe that we have many advantages to make Bangkok a perfect festival place. First, we have fanatical audiences, with a lot of them being foreigners and tourists. Second, we have many well-appointed cinemas and multiplexes. And third, we have superior hotels congregated around the festival venue and many more tourist spots in the city," said local film journalist Pemika Sripisit. "Compared with Pusan, it's not too late for us to open a big film festival."
It seems that, like Korea, Thailand has emerged as one of the innovative forces in modern East Asian cinema. In Bangkok alone, there are 300 quality screening venues for movies. This factor helped Bangkok become the host of last year's CineAsia convention. This Asia-Pacific film market had been held in Hong Kong over the previous eight years and has now relocated to Thailand.
The bustling Bangkok film festival may be over for this year, but the battle between the two Asian stars -- Korea and Thailand -- has just started.
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