Branding collaborative pan-Asian authorship in the transnational works of New Thai cinema auteur Pen-ek Ratanaruang

ABSTRACT

This article examines the definition and characteristics of pan-Asian film authorship and aesthetics advocated by the late Wouter Barendrecht, film producer of Fortissimo Film Sales, as employed to promote the Thai film auteur Pen-ek Ratanaruang. Through collaboration with East Asian film industries, such as the ones in Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea during the period of intensified pan-Asian co-production at the turn of the century, Pen-ek was branded a pan-Asian auteur for the global film market on account of his pan-Asian identity, rather than his association with the New Thai Cinema label. Barendrecht employed two strategies – the auteur as brand, and the region as brand – to construct the image of this new pan-Asian author. By considering these branding strategies, it can be argued – following Nissim Otmazgin and Eyal Ben-Ari – that a cultural imbalance between East Asia and Southeast Asia still persists: East Asia as cultural producer and Southeast Asia as market.

KEYWORDS:

• Auteur branding
• co-productions
• producing
• regional hierarchy
• pan-Asian aesthetics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. There is some inconsistent information on various lists of co-production partners. The Thai press kit also suggests France’s Paradis Films as another partner.

2. See more details on Rattanarueng’s collaboration with his advertising crew in Chaiworaporn (2023, 15).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anchalee Chaiworaporn

Anchalee Chaiworaporn has taught at Thailand’s University of Mahidol and Malaysia’s Multimedia University. For more than two decades, she has received numerous foreign grants – such as Japan Foundation and Rockefeller-attached Asian Cultural Council - to do research on Asian cinema in Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, and New York. She has contributed more than 10 books on the cinemas of Thailand and Asia in several languages. Through University of Southampton’s Vice-Chancellors Award, she has finished her PhD in Film Studies, specializing on transnational cinema, art and popular cinema, auteur cinema, and film industrial studies. She was also invited to several film festivals around the world from Busan, Seoul, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Estonia, Karlovy Vary, Vladivostok – to name a few. She has also received two Thailand’s writing awards in film criticism and article and feature, as well as led several researches on criticism and cinema from Thailand Research Fund.