Chimeric Cinema: The Formation of Thai Film Culture explores the many beginnings and affordances of cinema, as well its latent practices of institutionalization and nationalization in Siam (renamed Thailand in 1939). This book explores early Thai cinema as an important disciplinary site to investigate Siam’s semi-colonial status and it distinct polities from the period of the absolute monarchy to the democratization of the nation after the Siamese Revolution in 1932. Chimeric Cinema draws from extensive archival research from archives in Thailand, Singapore, the UK, the Netherlands, and the US. The result is a book that unpacks ambivalent desires for representation of different castes and complex relationships between cinema, sovereign power, modernity, and statecraft.
The mythical monster chimera is lion-headed, goat-bodied, and serpent-tailed. Chimeric Cinema navigates these formal boundaries and its knotting together of possibility and impossibility. The book offers a history that focuses on many forms and epistemological imagining that made cinema legible and viable in Siam.
Forthcoming on this site:
I’m currently collecting the moving images used in my book and will repost them for my readers and general public to use as references. They will be gradually uploaded here once I clear copyright permission.
Courtesy to the owners of the clips, including Thai Film Archive, and many film archives in Europe and North America. My scholarship would not have come this far without their unwavering endeavor in film preservation.
Last updated: August 2024
Palita Chunsaengchan
Palita Chunsaengchan 