The Baturu Cultural Festival marks the establishment of the Asia-Pacific Feminist Cultural Network in preparation for the 30th anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women or Beijing+30. Launched on 25 November at FCCT, the festival takes place over 10 days across Bangkok, bringing artists and filmmakers to Thailand from across the region to speak about women’s rights and the importance of international cultural communication to promote public awareness via arts and culture of women’s rights in Asia-Pacific. As part of the festival, the organizers in collaboration with SEA Junction held three panel discussions, two on 30 November 2024 (2-4pm and 5-7pm) and another one on 1 December 2024 at SEA Junction. The panels were an occasion for women artists from eight countries, namely Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Myanmar, Philippines, Sri Lanka, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam to share the ways they use art to express gender equity issues encountered in their countries.

Panel III: Zero Tolerance for Gender Violence in Southeast Asia

Three women artists discussed the way gender violence including sexual violence, domestic violence, and discrimination faced while working abroad affect women from Southeast Asia and how they use art to document and expose such realities to advocate zero tolerance in societies.

Speaker Bios:

Raksmey KONG, Cambodia

Kong Raksmey, joined the training of documentary filmmakers from Bophana Center in 2022. She is a public speaker, a journalist, a photographer, and an immediate Past President of PUC Toastmasters Club. She had written for Internews’ Mekong Eyes and Earth Journalism Network and was a photographer of the NomadiX Art Tour. She will talk about sexual harassment experienced by female college students on campus in Cambodia.

Devina Sofiyanti, Indonesia

The filmmaker and lecturer is based in Jakarta, Indonesia. Her work consistently addresses women’s issues within the genre film landscape. Her short film, Heirlooms, has been featured in both international and national genre and women’s film festivals. She will share about the short film she shot about domestic violence and its negative impacts.

Yoon Sung-A, South Korea

Yoon Sung-A is a French-Korean artist and filmmaker based in Brussels. She studied at Sorbonne Nouvelle (theater), Paris-Cergy Fine Arts school and INSAS (cinema) in Brussels. Her work is concerned with process and mise en scène. Playing both with the conventions of documentary practice and the codes of narrative cinema, she makes hybrid films that resist narrow categorization. Her talk focuses on protection of women workers and the discrimination and abuse faced by Filipino migrant workers.

 

Photographer: Chawin Chantalikit