Graiwoot Chulphongsathorn

A Thai documentary about 'Van VDO' the VHS shop in 1990s. The shop established the independent cinema scene for Thai audience by selling VHS of American, European, and Asian indie films. However, all of them are pirate and illegal.

This film was made from hundreds of educational slides that belonged to the late Professor Somkiat Tang-namo, a pioneer of art aesthetics in Thailand and the founder of the first Thai virtual university for free public education. The educational slide, once a new educational medium, is now an obsolete one – a ghostly medium that hides memories of its time.

Longing for a life beyond her hometown in the Thai province of Buriram, Ploy moves to various Southeast Asian cities in search of work. She ends up in Singapore as a sex worker at an illegal, makeshift brothel operating under the cover of a jungle’s leafy darkness that is eventually turned into a public park.

A visual project made from old film negatives discovered in an out-of-business film lab.