Local Sensations
Tulapop Saenjaroen / Thailand / 2026 / European Premiere / 25 min
An elegant and thought-provoking film shot in graceful black-and-white images that move from room to room in an exploration of location, architecture, and monuments.
Shot on black-and-white 16mm film, ‘Local Sensations’ opens a loose, playful dialogue with Chatri Prakitnonthakan’s essay, ‘How to Design a Modern Monument That Won’t Become a Shrine’. Rather than illustrating the text, the film generates pluralities – unraveling the dichotomy of object and subject – and gestures toward a kind of topological politics. Though it circles around ideas of monuments, monumentality, and sanctification in Thai society, no statues or literal monuments ever appear. Instead, the film drifts through an arborist’s walking tour, a glassblowing workshop, a drawing game among architecture students, a multi-instrument improviser, a recreation center with its non-human inhabitants, and a snow town in a theme park.