’Runaway’ foreign film productions from a global South perspective: film workers’ memories and site-specific traces from Thailand

Abstract

This article explores the subject known in the Anglophone context as ‘runaway’ film productions through examining records by peripheral film workers and the legacy associated with a specific film location in Thailand. Considering the post-Cold War period when ‘foreign’ filmmaking had just taken off and the more recent (post)-COVID-19 labour movement within the country, the article proposes a revisit to film production history via a consideration of on-the-fringe paratexts, sporadically circulated in the public domain, as a way to explore discourses associated with this kind of transnational film productions. The article draws on two key written records associated with the making of The Killing Fields (1984) namely a set diary by the late Sompol Sungkawess, a writer/translator who worked as a local assistant director for the film; and a published monologue by the late Spalding Gray, a playwright/performer who took a minor role in the movie. By conducting a ‘palimpsestuous reading’ of these accounts along with various site-specific traces, the article explores past and present conditions and practices with the aim to project alternative imaginaries of transnational screen service industry from a global South standpoint.