The King Was Cinema: From the King of Thailand’s Control of “Projection” to Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Practices of Projected Image

Abstract

In Thai movie theatre, a propaganda film of the king is shown before the screening of the film. It is a composition of the king controlling the nation-state through the projection of images. Filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s feature film Cemetery of Splendour (Cemetery of Splendour, 2015) exposes this intimate relationship between Thai cinema/projections and the king and the state, and reconstructs the history of Thai cinema and the politics surrounding it. The aim of this paper is to bring to light the relationship between Thai cinema and the king and the state through the technology of projection. The first section reconstructs the conventional history of Thai cinema in terms of the relationship between the king and cinema=projection. The second section further historicizes projection in Thailand, referring to the earlier work of Thai regional scholar Thongchai Winichakul. The map is the king’s screen. The king projects a virtual, disembodied land on this screen. The author juxtaposes the political use of projection with the political use of cinema in Tomb of Light. In this article, Apichatpong casts a critical eye on the history of Thai cinema and the political relations of projection, and reveals the process of renewing his own projective practices.