Cinema in Thailand

Cinema of Thailand started many years back. In 1897, when king Chulalongkorn came to Switzerland, the whole incident was recorded by Francois Henri Lavancy Clarke. After shooting, the film was brought to Bangkok. There the film was exhibited and the response was very good. After this Thai Royal Family and local businessman start talking interest in film production. They also started organizing some film festivals where foreign films were shown. In 1920, a local film production center was started in Thailand while in 1930 the Thai film industry celebrated its golden age with some of the finest locally produced films. After Second World War, Thai film industry had a revival as by that time they started shooting films in 16 mm. Nonzee Nimibutr, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, etc. are known as new wave directors in Thailand. By 1990 for them and also action hero Tony Jaa, Thai films were appreciated around the world.

In today’s film fraternity awards has taken an important part. Your film is not hit if it has not grabbed any award and that is the usual scene in filmy world. In 1997 Thai film industry organized Thai short film and video festival. In 1998, Bangkok had started organizing film festivals. In 2002, the Tourist Authority of Thailand organized Bangkok International Film Festival and this was a great event. Recently in 2007, Digital Forum was started in Bangkok. This has begun as an outgrowth of Thai video and short film festival. In the same year Phuket Film Festival took place and it has also seen a great success.
In Thailand, the first award was the ‘Golden Doll’. This was given by Tukata Tong magazine. The formal awards were given in the year 1957. At first the awards was designed after Thai classical dancer but later it was remodeled as Phra Suratsawadi who was Thai god of art. Eth Tulaka Tong awards ceremony was stopped after eight years, but again revived in the year 1974. At that time the Association of Entertainment News Journalists organized it. Thailand National Film Association Award is popularly known as Subhanahongsa award.