It's so meta sitting at House RCA cinema watching how its founders used to get their fix of indie films.
The Master recalls the heyday of pirate videos in Bangkok.
In the documentary film The Master, Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit interviews 20 clients of "Mr Van", a man who sold bootleg VHS tapes of art-house films in the late 1990s to early 2000s. This was the period when Thai film geeks discovered French New Wave without having the chance to watch Breathless; when Studio Ghibli films weren't shown in cinemas; when no one had yet seen the crammed spaces of Hong Kong turn sensual from the vision of Wong Kar-Wai. The absence of art-house cinema in Thailand meant Mr Van's piracy was an oasis in a desert.
Many of the clients grew to become notable filmmakers, scholars, and critics: Pen-Ek Ratanaruang (Headshot, Monrak Transistor), Songyos Sugmakanan (Hormones), Kongdej Jaturanrasamee (Tang Wong), Banjong Pisanthanakun (Shutter, Phi Mak Phra Khanong), Prawit Taengaksorn, and our the Bangkok Post's film critic Kong Rithdee, to name a few. One client even began working for Mr Van translating subtitles into Thai. It is a boys club though. No woman is interviewed.
Nawapol's documentary pieces together an intriguing narrative of how Mr Van essentially contributed to the creation of a generation of filmmakers — the interviewees sit in front of a white background telling anecdotes from the 90s.
The film paints Mr Van, or "Van Video", as he's known to clients, as a man of mystery. A policeman shows up to sketch a facial composite of him. He wore glasses, hence the name. He wasn't fat, because he wasn't "Fat Van", who emerged later.
The Master is a nostalgic project. (Nawapol's previous film 36 was also an elegy to the physical film in the age of digital.) For the younger generation, it is perhaps more of a history lesson than a lament for the past — something we never got the chance to experience, not something we miss.
The interviewees recall how art-house and foreign films were shown at places like Alliance Francaise and the Goethe Institute, but they were screened at 6pm and no one could make it there in time. They recall how small Mr Van's store was at Chatuchak market, how hot and crammed it was, and how they would buy dozens of the 120 baht tapes at a time. They talk of how Mr Van would update his collection, where the Japanese horror film The Ring inspired Thai movie Shutter and how Takeshi Kitano's films influenced the hit Thai film Fan Chan.
Kong recalls that when he went on a trip to the US, Mr Van gave him a list of films to bring home from Kim's Video and Music shop in the East Village of Manhattan (a fabled place among New York cinephiles). A re-enacted scene involving an opened suitcase evokes the moment when Tilda Swinton puts Infinite Jest into her bag in Jim Jarmusch's Only Lovers Left Alive. These scenes give Nawapol's documentary the sense of being like a personal museum. Images of tapes roll across the screen.
The Master reveals a fascinating moment in history before the internet and torrent content took over. The interviewees are a part of an insider circle. Mr Van was referred to as "That Guy" to keep his anonymity — he was doing something illegal after all.
Much of the film focuses on copyright issues. Mr Van opened the door for many people who became big names in the Thai film industry but also did so at the expense of filmmakers.
About midway through the film, the loving narrative about the mysterious Mr Van and how these filmmakers found their velvet goldmine veers off into a rather inadequate exploration of the ethics or lack thereof of Mr Van's commercial enterprise. This point is as obsolete as the VHS tapes are now as objects. Nawapol fails to expand on the ambiguity of Mr Van's practices in the context of the age of digital distribution, and fails to make a connection between the disparity between distribution and commerce today.
Many interviewees say they never thought buying the VHS tapes was wrong — there wasn't any other choice. Many are now directors themselves. Pen-Ek, a well-known director, talks about meeting Peter Greenaway, who was glad that his films were being pirated, and that people all over the world could see his work.
While I was watching the trailer of the documentary on YouTube, a link to the full version of Nawapol's Mary Is Happy, Mary Is Happy appeared on the column on the right — it has 182,644 views at the time of writing. The person who uploaded it apologised to Nawapol in a comment, saying he just wanted as many people as possible to see the film (Mary Is Happy, Mary Is Happy was a tremendous success when it was released at House RCA and Lido Theatre last year). Nawapol replied with a list of where a DVD of the film could be purchased, but left it up to the person to decide whether to take the film down. He didn't.
YouTube, iTunes and Pirate Bay are casually mentioned in The Master. Nawapol captures the riveting history of consumption at the turn of the century, but he isn't committed to further the discourse about modern-day buying habits.
At the end of the film, Mr Van still remains a sort of mystery. The internet and BitTorrent shut Van Video down. They also allow us, if we choose, to watch any film we want, anytime we want, anywhere we want. Maybe that's kind of sad.
The Master A documentary by Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit. In Thai with English subtitles. At House RCA.
