A Circumstantial Collective: Tongpan and the Isan Film Group

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MacDonald, Richard. 2025. A Circumstantial Collective: Tongpan and the Isan Film Group. Senses of Cinema(112), ISSN 1443-4059 [Article]

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This article examines the pioneering Thai independent film Tongpan completed in 1976 and credited collectively to the Isan Film Group. Set on the Thailand-Laos border the film dramatizes a real-life story of a landless rural labourer who is serially displaced due to the construction of hydroelectric dams on the Mekong. Tongpan was filmed during a tumultuous period in Thai history marked by rising far right vigilante violence and assassinations culminating in October 1976 in the massacre of students at Thammasat University.

The article poses a simple question: How did Tongpan get made? Challenging previous attempts to position the film as the singular vision of an auteur, and drawing on extensive interviews and correspondence, the article offers a unique portrait of the people whose paths converged briefly to make the film as the Isan Film Group. The biographies of student activist Paijong Laisakul, American journalist Mike Morrow, and renowned short story writer and socialist intellectual Khamsing Srinawk, the three individuals who developed the idea of filming Tongpan’s story, are case studies in Cold War-era mobility along pathways that bound the United States and Southeast Asia. The article argues that coordination of collective effort and commitment through time, rather than singularity of vision, was what the production needed to bring Tongpan into existence. As such it revises previous accounts by acknowledging and foregrounding the vital creative role of the young student activist Paijong Laisakul, writer, editor, producer, who was there at the beginning and stayed to the end.

Tongpan is now widely recognized as a landmark environmental film and a pioneering work of independent Southeast Asian cinema. Recent screenings at the Flaherty seminar in Bangkok, 2024 have brought new audiences to this work. The article deepens our understanding of this rare and provocative film, situating it as an achievement that exemplifies the productivity of different modes of outsiderness.

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