TwoMag: Please tell us more about your project with Pichet?
Shane Bunnag: Pichet and I have been working on a film, for now we are calling it Demon Dancer. It started by chance. I was lucky to catch Pichet’s solo performance, I am a Demon, and immediately afterwards, as I was leaving the theatre I asked him if I could film it at some point. It was not the first time I had seen his work but it touched me profoundly, in a way that I had never expected or experienced with dance. I am a Demon encapsulated many feelings I have about Thailand, and in particular Bangkok, feelings and intimations I had a hard time even defining. So when we met up to discuss filming we decided to take the project a few steps further, and attempt something more ambitious that could be a documentary about his process, a showcase for some of his past works, and a meditation on the state of Thailand. I am a Demon would serve as the backbone to a more expansive creative documentary. His only condition was that I take my time and get to know his work properly.
TwoMag: Is it an ongoing project/collaboration?
SB: We began with a film but after two years we seem to be working on exploring film rather than just making a single piece.
I took his request for slowness to heart, and yet it turns out that Pichet works rapidly. Since we started shooting he has completed four new dance performances, and several gallery pieces with artwork. He doesn’t seem to rest, he’s always either practicing, rehearsing or developing a new choreography.
We have just completed the stand-alone film of I am a Demon, with support from the Jim Thompson Foundation, which will serve as a basis for the rest of the piece. The performance is very exacting on Pichet both physically and psychologically. He gave me a few days to shoot, during which we broke the performance into segments, so we could choreograph the camera movements, and also capture the live intensity with a full-length run through at the end of each day. I felt like I was torturing him for three days, not that he complained, or ever missed a mark.
Apart from I am a Demon, I have been filming Pichet documentary style, in Bangkok, up country and in even in France. Separately from the main project, Demon Dancer, we are also planning a new short film based on his latest work, to shoot in November.
TwoMag: How is it a hybrid?
SB: I have been calling Demon Dancer a hybrid project, or a creative documentary, because it doesn’t fit the standard categories. The film will weave together staged performance and observational documentary, with archival material. It’s not going to explain the roots of traditional Thai dance, or give an overview of the dance community in Bangkok, but it will explore the process, character and unique work of an extraordinary artist.
Pichet’s work is often genre defying, blending classical Thai with contemporary dance, featuring verbal digressions and multimedia. It’s fitting to hybridize the documentary form in this case and also play around with some of the narrative elements Pichet introduces in his live performances, the social commentary, the subtext within physical language.
TwoMag: When can we expect to see the film(s)?
The wider project of exploring dance in film has only just begun but for this specific piece I think I’ve finally got enough material. Lee Chatametikool, one of Thai cinema’s greatest assets, is producing Demon Dancer. If we can raise the final funding, it would be great to complete the main project next year. In the meantime I am a Demon will play at festivals and our short film should be done by December.