Agrarian Utopia (Uruphong Raksasad)

After a series of brilliant shorts and the feature Stories From the North (which is, in essence, a series of more shorts) which all dealt with man, nature and village culture, Uruphong returns with the hypnotising documentary-fiction hybrid Agrarian Utopia which is once again set amidst Northern Thailand’s rural areas. In an increasingly wired-up culture addicted to YouTube, Blackberries, iPhones and Facebook, it almost seems like interplanetary travel to visit a community completely divorced from modern technology: Uruphong’s utopian setting sees men farming rice paddies with the most bare-basic of tools as the seasons drift by.

But as the men labour, the stars flash past and the rains come, we’re reminded of the earthly pleasures which still remain outside of ever-expanding cityscapes and suburban districts, quietly compelling and utterly entrancing in Uruphong’s distinctive style. In one euphoric, visually astonishing moment children skip through the mud in slow-motion; in another, the night’s sky dazzles with stars. What all this amounts to is (1) a graceful plea to recognise mother nature before we all disappear under rising sea levels and choke from air-pollution, (2) an invaluable social-document of a rapidly dying culture and (3) the best sign of ‘09 that Thailand’s film culture is alive and kicking.