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This is the second virtual roundtable discussion for the new series – Theory/Praxis/Politics. This forum highlights film practitioners and programmers’ thoughts and reflections on the practices of censorship across Asia. Join our panelists, Sudarat Musikawong, Raymond Phathanavirangoon, and Thaiddhi, as they articulate their first-hand experiences in the field and unfurl the complexities of censorship both in the production and circulation of cinema.

Theory/Praxis/Politics is a webinar series working to advocate for and bring together perspectives of academics, filmmakers, programmers, civil servants, and other stakeholders with an interest in the question of censorship across Asia and its diasporas. We consider Asia as a productive site in which theory, practice, and politics overlap. The intersection allows us to question not only our understanding of censorship and the ways in which we engage with cinema in the region but also to reconsider the relationship between theory, aesthetics, and politics.

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RAYMOND PHATHANAVIRANGOON is a film producer and Executive Director of Southeast Asia Fiction Film Lab (SEAFIC). Previously he was programmer or delegate for Toronto International Film Festival, Hong Kong International Film Festival and Cannes Critics’ Week. Prior, he was Director of Marketing & Special Projects (Acquisitions) for sales agent Fortissimo Films. His producing credits include Pen-ek Ratanaruang’s SAMUI SONG (Venice 2017) and HEADSHOT (Berlin 2012), Boo Junfeng’s APPRENTICE (Cannes 2016), Josh Kim’s HOW TO WIN AT CHECKERS (EVERY TIME) (Berlin 2015), Pang Ho-Cheung’s DREAM HOME (Tribeca 2010) and ABERDEEN (Hong Kong Film Awards Best Picture nominee 2014), the upcoming THIRTEEN LIVES by Ron Howard, among others.

SUDARAT MUSIKAWONG is an Associate Professor at the Institute for Population and Social Research at Mahidol University in Thailand. She received her Ph.D. and MA in sociology from the University of California at Santa Cruz and her BA in Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of California at Santa Barbara. She positions her investigations within cultural-political sociology and ethnographic research. Her publications include with Malinee Khumsupa, “Notes on Camp Films in Authoritarian Thailand,” Southeast Asia Research Journal (2019)Her publications include “Gendered Casualties: Thai Memoirs in Activism,” Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism (2013); “Mourning State Celebrations: Amnesic Iterations of Political Violence in Thailand,” in Identities, Global Studies in Culture and Power (2010); “Between Celebration and Mourning,” in Toward a Sociology of the Trace, (University of Minnesota Press, 2010); “Art for October Thai Cold War State Violence in Trauma Art,” positions: east asia cultures critique, Volume 18, Number 1, Spring 2010.

THAIDDHI is a Filmmaker, Producer, and also Film Programmer. He studies Filmmaking at FAMU in the Czech Republic for 3 years master’s degree program in Cinema and Digital Media. His first short film “Awake” won Best Short Film at FAMU Fest 2009. He co-founded Wathann Film Festival in 2011 and worked as a Programmer for the festival. In 2013 he founded Third Floor Film Production to produce Myanmar Independent short films and documentary films. He produced a short film Cobalt Blue (2019) by Aung Phyoe which was selected for the Pardi di Domani International Competition at 72nd Locarno Film Festival. He also worked as a Cinematographer in the recent film Money Has Four Legs (2020) by Maung Sun, which was premiered at New Currents (Busan International Film Festival 2020).

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ABOUT THE BOOK:

What happens when refugees encounter Indigenous sovereignty struggles in the countries of their resettlement?

From April to November 1975, the US military processed over 112,000 Vietnamese refugees on the unincorporated territory of Guam; from 1977 to 1979, the State of Israel granted asylum and citizenship to 366 non-Jewish Vietnamese refugees. Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi analyzes these two cases to theorize what she calls the refugee settler condition: the fraught positionality of refugee subjects whose resettlement in a settler colonial state is predicated on the unjust dispossession of an Indigenous population. This groundbreaking book explores two forms of critical geography: first, archipelagos of empire, examining how the Vietnam War is linked to the US military buildup in Guam and unwavering support of Israel, and second, corresponding archipelagos of trans-Indigenous resistance, tracing how Chamorro decolonization efforts and Palestinian liberation struggles are connected through the Vietnamese refugee figure. Considering distinct yet overlapping modalities of refugee and Indigenous displacement, Gandhi offers tools for imagining emergent forms of decolonial solidarity between refugee settlers and Indigenous peoples.

PARTICIPANTS’ BIOS:

Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi is an assistant professor of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the author of Archipelago of Resettlement: Vietnamese Refugee Settlers and Decolonization across Guam and Israel-Palestine (University of California Press, 2022).

Helga Tawil-Souri is an Associate Professor in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication and the Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at NYU. Helga’s work deals with spatiality, technology, and politics in the Middle East, with a particular focus on contemporary life in Palestine-Israel.

Professor Sarah Ihmoud is a sociocultural anthropologist who works at the intersection of anthropology and feminist studies. Her current ethnographic research in Jerusalem focuses on militarization, state violence and Palestinian feminist politics. She also writes about the politics of sexual violence and feminist approaches to activist research in anthropology. In addition to her research, Dr. Ihmoud is invested in building collaborative Black, Indigenous and women of color feminist praxes in and outside of the academy geared towards expanding visions of liberation and decolonial futures.

Thy Phu is a Professor of Media Studies at the University of Toronto, Scarborough. She is coeditor of Feeling Photography, also published by Duke University Press, and Refugee States: Critical Refugee Studies in Canada. She is also author of Picturing Model Citizens: Civility in Asian American Visual Culture.