DOCUMENTARY FILM AND DEMOCRACY IN THAILAND AND MALAYSIA

Abstract

This thesis investigates recent politically themed independent documentary films in Thailand and Malaysia, finding that their aesthetics reveal something of the limitations of academic writing about documentary cinema. It is shown that the literature on documentary filmmaking is dominated by English-language theorisations that take for granted liberal-democratic political conditions in which filmmakers assert their right to critical participation in the public sphere. In Thailand and Malaysia, however, such rights are substantially limited and so documentary practice may need to be considered in different ways. Conjunctural analysis is proposed as an alternative framework that will allow the films under discussion to be understood in their own contexts and on their own terms. Textual analysis then reveals that, in order to negotiate restrictions on political speech, documentary filmmakers in Thailand and Malaysia often adhere to a ‘peripheral logic’ of self-expression, addressing political turmoil indirectly and from the geographic, social and discursive margins.