In Sum

Corroded pixels and archival Cold War images move through one another, assembling a partial account of “development” in Thailand’s northeast, a region long shaped by Cold War tensions and rural modernization projects. Voices drawn from the film Thailand’s Role in the Vietnam War and images from the Shell Film Company’s documentation of the Mekong River development project, alongside Isan Film Group’s Tongpan, appear, distort, and thin out. At irregular moments, rural farmers appear and speak plainly with the cameraperson, outside of any official narrative. Texts emerging from these broken images form a restless presence that is part-archive, part-machine, part-memory. This film began with an outdated point-and-shoot camera discovered in the drawers of the filmmaker’s old family home. The footage was gathered during its final period of use. Its corroded sensor struggles to form a “perfect” image, producing distortions that run alongside the narratives of development it encounters.