Isan Odyssey

Isan, the largest and most impoverished region of Thailand, has long been a thorn in the kingdom’s flesh with its legacy of pro-democratic movements. Isan Odyssey takes viewers on an enlightening, music-filled journey through the forgotten pages of Thailand’s political history.

What can a musical form tell us about the world? According to Thunska Pansittivorakul’s captivating, multifaceted documentary Isan Odyssey, a great deal. Mor Lam, a traditional folk music with roots in Laos, continues to be popular in Isan, a Lao-majority region of northeastern Thailand. Although once a vehicle for Isan self-determination against perceived “Thaification” of the region’s culture, today Mor Lam is a glossy multimedia spectacle dominated by love songs.

This insight, however, is only the starting point for Pansittivorakul’s voracious undertaking. What begins as a modest look at a popular artform spirals out into a sprawling treatise on Thai politics and history: the kingdom’s strained relationship with its ethnic Lao population, its brutal US-backed purge of alleged communists, its clamping down of student movements and the continued disappearance of its pro-democracy activists.

To realise the film’s vast ambition, Pansittivorakul (This Area Is Under Quarantine, IFFR 2009) uses a dynamic form that blends direct interviews, music clips, dance performances, archival footage and even vlogs. The result is an eclectic and constantly surprising work that never ceases to reinvent itself.

– Srikanth Srinivasan

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