About this Event
Date:
Monday, October 5, 2026
Location:
Espacio de Culturas - 53 Washington Square South New York, NY 10012
Description:
Thai filmmaker Sompot Chidgasornpongse joins NYU for a special screening and masterclass. Sompot will screen selections from his earlier documentary and narrative work and discuss his filmmaking practice — including how documentary observation, and working with real people and places, have shaped his move into narrative cinema.
Documentary, narrative, and experimental filmmaking are often taught as distinct approaches. Sompot’s work offers a chance to consider how these ways of making films can overlap and inform one another — how observation, experimentation, and storytelling can all become part of a single filmmaking practice.
The masterclass comes just ahead of the NYFF North American premiere of Sompot’s narrative feature, . Following a Thai family on a pilgrimage to nine Buddhist temples, the film explores faith, ritual, family, mortality, and everyday life in contemporary Thailand. Sompot has worked for many years as an assistant to acclaimed Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
Sponsored by NYU Undergraduate Film & Television, co-sponsored by the Martin Scorsese Department of Cinema Studies, the Open Screen Cooperative Club, and the New York Southeast Asia Network (NYSEAN).
Schedule:
1:00 – 2:20 PM — Railway Sleepers (documentary, 2016, 102 min)
2:20 – 2:50 — The Physical Realm (narrative, 2023, 30 min)
2:50 – 3:00 — Break
3:00 – 4:50 PM — Masterclass with Sompot Chidgasornpongse
About the Speaker
Sompot Chidgasornpongse (Boat) graduated with a bachelor’s degree in architecture from Chulalongkorn university, and an MFA in Film/Video from California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). His films explore the possibility of representing everyday life in a creative, critical, and thought-provoking way. They were shown at various international film festivals around the world, such as Oberhausen, Rotterdam, Viennale, Visions du Réel, Indielisboa, Signes de Nuit, etc. He’s also a Berlinale Talents, and Talents Tokyo alumnus. His first feature documentary, 'Railway Sleepers' had its world premiere in Documentary Competition at Busan International Film Festival, European premiere in the Forum section at Berlinale, and later at True/False, Sheffield, Melbourne IFF, RIDM, TIDF, and many other festivals worldwide.
Sponsors
Sponsored by NYU Undergraduate Film & Television. Co-sponsored by Open Screen Cooperative Club, NYU’s Martin Scorsese Department of Cinema Studies, and the New York Southeast Asia Network, in collaboration with Prof. John Gershman, Professor of Public Service at NYU Wagner.
Event venue & nearby stays
NYU Espacio de Culturas, 53 Washington Square South, New York, United States
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