The Amazing Stoner Movie Festival

++ Amazing Stoner Movie Manifesto ++

What is a stoner movie?
 
This was the Golden Ganja question as we watched the 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 idol.

All we weed is love.

Dr Alice Skinhead, Programmer
Amazing Stoner Movie Fest
at Cinema Oasis in Bangkok

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Previous Festival Flashbacks:

The 4th Amazing Stoner Movie Fest at Cinema Oasis
7-10 November 2024
The Golden Ganja Awards

Perhaps you must be stoned to understand why a documentary on the battle between good and evil monks for the soul of Burma has won the same Most Shocking Stoner Movie prize invented to honour ‘Space Birth 2’ in 2022. Burmese monks inciting and absolving bloodlust vs German space castration, which is more shocking?

After the Golden Ganja awards ceremony, sunk in a beanbag sipping a joint watching stoner movies in the ever-changing glow from the screen at the final open air screening (the sombre note of Shorts 4: Holy War Zone), I was filled with this overwhelming realisation: how vital it is to be happy, to do happy things with happy people of good will. To be present here and now, watching the same film together, dreaming the same dream. A film festival like a sweet bloom abuzz with new friends and old coming together to inspire and be inspired.

The emotional highlight was the zoom session with director Christian Linaban, now seeking asylum abroad after sinister police harassment of his family as a consequence of making and, worse, screening ‘SuperPsychoCebu’, a ‘druggy film’ in a country in the grip of Duterte’s War on Drugs. The film won the very first Golden Ganja in 2019 and has gone on to become a cult stoner movie worldwide. Big hugs and good luck to him.

Thank you everyone for coming together so joyously to make this happen, including our first ever corporate sponsor Thai Stick for the premium free sample given out to filmmakers as well as the audience. Most of all, thank you filmmakers for your amazing films, which meant the competition this year was unusually fierce. The jury had a hard time deciding the winner, the scores were so close. This is why we’ve ended up with 3 Special Jury Prizes. Here are the awards announced yesterday (Sunday 10th Nov) at Cinema Oasis, presented with his usual stumbling flair by Thai ganja celebrity Piak Lek Hip who flew down from Pye in the Sky to hang out with us the whole Amazing Stoner Movie Fest:

Golden Ganja and USD 1,000 for Most Amazing Stoner Movie:

‘Bionico’s Bachata’ by director Yoel Morales from Dominican Republic for its extraordinary, even new, characters and filmmaking.

Baby Golden Ganja* and 5,000 baht for Best Stoner Short Film:
‘Brother’s Horn’ by director Majid Asadi from Iran for its sheer, meticulous rage and strangeness.
(*Formerly the Crystal Bong. This had to be changed after we had trouble sending it to a winner in an anti-cannabis country)

Special Jury Prize:
‘When This Is All Over’ by director Kevin Mayuga from the Phillippines
for its class warfare and intense emotions.

‘Vegetable Only Sir’ by director BC Amparado from the Phillippines
for its brave satire of the War on Drugs.

‘Forest At Night’ by directors Moritz Goebel and Luca Storch from Germany
for its mesmerising authenticity.

Most Shocking Stoner Movie*:
‘Monks and Generals’ by director Burma Bear from Myanmar
(*last given out to Space Birth 2)

Feel Good Stoner Movie:
‘World Naked Bike Tour’ by director William Bradford from Canada

The Stonest Movie:
‘Bubbler’ by director Nicholas Giombi from USA

Freedom Prize:
‘Eternal Void’ by director Pavaret Udompattanakij from Thailand
for bravely going where Thai filmmakers fear to tread.

Audience Award:
‘Dead Dead Full Dead’ by director Pratul Pundik Gaikwad from India

How interesting: the film that made everyone laugh so hard was Dead Dead Full Dead, a hysterical attempt to kill what cannot be killed, however annoying, evil and fake. More than ever, All We Weed Is Love (and we filmmakers and film lovers too). So please don’t make war on us. Shanti. Peace, man. Don’t ban weed or film.

L*O*V*E
(Dr) Alice Skinhead, Programmer
Amazing Stoner Movie Fest at Cinema Oasis