Insee Thong (Thailand, 1970)

When watching one of the Insee Daeng movies - or any other existing example of popular Thai cinema from the 1960s - its possible to see a separate story being told in the countless pops, skips and scratches that riddle the severely weathered and damaged available prints, much as you might see a story in the lines etched in an aged human face. And that story, depending on how you look at it, can be either a sad one or a happy one. On the one hand, those wounds and blemishes speak of a unique part of world popular cinema that is on the verge of being lost to history - the ragged condition of each surviving film testifying to the many, many more that have ceased to exist entirely. On the other, as with a child's threadbare teddy bear, that conspicuous wear and tear serves as evidence of just how much these movies have been loved and enjoyed by their intended audience, thread over and over again through projectors - be they in urban cinemas or makeshift outdoor screenings in small villages - until there was little left of them to thread; in short, loved by their audience to the extent that today they have been virtually devoured...

Read the full review at The Lucha Diaries