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Bangkok’s 3rd Amazing Stoner Movie Fest 2023 is excited to screen the Best Stoner Movies from around the world! And Best Film can win $1,000 USD!! Get Stoned and WIN $1,000! And your movie may WIN the Crystal Bong prize of $200! The world is opening up and Ganja is being accepted for medical and recreational use. We look forward to holding Amazing Stoner Movie Fest November 9 – 12, 2023.

“Love is all we weed”… Filmmakers showed us their love by joining us for a successful kick-off to our annual Amazing Stoner Movie Festival! Our second “Bongfest” will be postponed until 2023!  Now that Thailand has legalized ganja, we would like to hear your stories and spread the word to everyone who can now enjoy!

Siam is the land of the hallowed Thai Sticks. But there are no Cheech and Chong, no Harold and Kumar in Thai cinema. Let’s set right this travesty with the Amazing Stoner Movie Contest at Cinema Oasis. The Beautiful Cinema Oasis will be the venue for this exciting contest.

For more info about Cinema Oasis: www.cinemaoasis.com
Official Trailer:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=107gIO1n9gw

This is our third Stoner Film Festival organized by Cinema Oasis Foundation! The world is changing and finally accepting ganja for medical and recreational use. It has always been an underground, secretive society. But now, you have the chance to tell us your story and enlighten everyone to the world of Ganja.

The contest is wide open to all types of film: fiction & non-fiction, full-length features & shorts, documentary & video art. You can be nonsensical, poetic, real, or make a serious film to argue for or against the wave of legalization sweeping across the world. Anything goes so long as it’s good cinema.

What is Foundation Cinema Oasis?

……….One could almost say this is the house that Shakespeare built. In 2012, the Thai government under PM Yingluck Shinawatra banned the Shakespearean horror movie ‘Shakespeare Must Die’, a Thai adaptation of ‘Macbeth’, as damaging to national pride and a threat to national security. The filmmakers recorded their struggle to free their film in a documentary ‘Censor Must Die, which received a historic ruling from the censors as being exempt from the censorship process since it was “made from events that really happened.” Even so, ‘Censor Must Die’ still couldn’t be released as the censors also threatened to sue any cinema that would show the film. To find a way out of this Catch 22, the filmmakers set up Foundation Cinema Oasis to build and run a city-center yet non-profit cinema and art space with the following aims:

To constructively, sincerely and seriously promote creative freedom of expression in cinema and other arts.

To promote, support and honor neglected and oppressed films, filmmakers, and other artists.

To bring back pleasure in art and joy in the communal cinematic experience; to foster cultural and spiritual immunity among the general public, young and old, to better withstand the dehumanizing impact of all-encompassing consumerism and globalization.

To support films and other works of art that inspire cultural tolerance, emotional sensitivity, and spiritual subtlety in Thai society and the world.

To inspire constructive conversations on the creative freedom of expression and related issues such as the role of cultural colonialism, deep history, and propaganda.
To co-operate with other art and cultural institutions in healing and strengthening the Thai art scene.

Amazing Stoner Movie Manifesto

At first there was some fearful resistance way back in March 2018 at a Cinema Oasis meeting when I suggested the idea of a stoner movie contest. It did seem a bridge too far. We’re already taking on the battle for cinematic freedom, how stupid is it to jeopardize such a lofty mission impossible with something so…well, silly.

The plain simple fact is I wanted to see a Thai stoner movie. The world has Cheech & Chong, Harold & Kumar, but no Piak & Odd, say. Ganja is our culture since “the days of King Louse”—when we were cavemen infested with lice. It’s in our blood, our cuisine, our medicine, our relaxation; it’s in the music of Kamron Samboonyananont. But no Thai stoner cinematic culture (except for the lovely smoked-out taxi scene in one of the great Mum Jokmok movies). Why is this?

The obvious answer is the state censors’ power to ban any cinematic behavior deemed to promote drug use and promiscuity, the questioning of the nature of reality and so the end of tin-pot civilization.

Our simple prayer to see Thai stoner movies has been miraculously answered, as you can see for yourself. Amazingly, we’ve also received some lovely films from abroad including from Saudi Arabia, Japan, Italy, Korea, Germany, Philippines, USA and Malaysia. All here to celebrate, with Bong Party and Cinema Oasis, the freedom to live our truth.

But what is a stoner movie? This was the Golden Ganja question as we watched these exotic entries one after another. It’s not just the dude stuff or the trippy images with disassociated dialogue. It dawned on us that what makes a film a stoner movie is its sense of reality, a certain observational distance—Zen detachment. They don’t all show ganja on screen or even touch on weed culture, but they all have in common the state of being stoned.

The point being: If contemporary consensus reality with its abusive half-truths is clearly losing its mind, artists, filmmakers and cinephiles have the right—even the dharma—to subvert and shatter that cherished mirage.

All we need is love.

Dr Alice Skinhead, programmer
Cinema Oasis Amazing Stoner Movie Fest
Bangkok, August 2019