{"id":11404,"date":"2025-08-25T16:27:17","date_gmt":"2025-08-25T14:27:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yun-berlin.com\/journal\/?p=11404"},"modified":"2025-08-27T13:21:40","modified_gmt":"2025-08-27T11:21:40","slug":"taste-tenderness-and-cinema-with-sarnt-utamachote","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yun-berlin.com\/journal\/taste-tenderness-and-cinema-with-sarnt-utamachote\/","title":{"rendered":"TASTE, TENDERNESS, AND CINEMA WITH SARNT UTAMACHOTE"},"content":{"rendered":"

Walk through Berlin\u2019s Museum Island and you\u2019ll find crowds queuing to see ancient artifacts looted from other continents, or the latest exhibitions featuring celebrated artists flown in from abroad. But the real heart of the city\u2019s cultural landscape often beats elsewhere, in its \u201ckommunale\u201d galleries, underground festivals, and community-run spaces.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is where we meet Sarnt Utamachote, a Thai-born filmmaker, curator, and cultural organiser who has spent the past decade reshaping Berlin\u2019s film landscape from the ground up. Through their work with XPOSED Queer Film Festival, Sinema Transtopia, and collaborations with other cities such as the Short Film Festival Hamburg, Sarnt is reimagining what cinema can be, not merely a screen in a popcorn-scented room, but a living, breathing ecology rooted in care, dialogue, and disruption. When Sinema Transtopia first opened its doors in 2020, the ceiling leaked rain during a screening of Railway Sleepers (2016), an almost poetic accident, perfectly echoing the film\u2019s quiet meditations on transience and movement.<\/span><\/p>\n

Their approach to cinema is both intellectual and instinctive, rooted in a philosophy that merges care, collectivity, and curiosity.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cTaste,\u201d<\/span> Sarnt says, <\/span>\u201cis what you allow to go inside you, what you allow to change you.\u201d<\/span><\/h5>\n

For them, taste is not just aesthetic. It is emotional, ethical, and political. It determines which stories we let in, and which we leave outside. In Thai, as in many Southeast Asian languages, the word for taste could share a Sanskrit root with \u201cfeeling\u201d, a reminder that taste is as much about the body as it is about the mind. This sensibility is inherent in all their work, building film programmes that invite audiences not just to watch, but to feel, reflect, and sometimes confront.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sarnt\u2019s journey to Berlin was less a planned pilgrimage than a leap into the unknown. <\/span>\u201cI worked in fashion in Bangkok. I hated it,\u201d<\/span><\/i> they recall with a laugh. <\/span>\u201cBack then, Berlin was cheap. I could rent a room for \u20ac300 a month, cheaper than Bangkok. I didn\u2019t even know what Berghain was. I just wanted to start over.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Their early creative life was shaped by design school, a compromise with parents who, like many in the global south, would not allow a child to \u201c<\/span>just study art\u201d<\/span><\/i>. Film arrived on the periphery, through student clubs and underground screenings, some of which collided with international politics. <\/span>\u201cI remember an Iranian lesbian film, Circumstance (2011) was to be screened at Chulalongkorn University Film Club, and the Iranian embassy came to stop the screening. That was when I realised: cinema is not just entertainment. It\u2019s politics.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

When they arrived in Berlin in 2014, they applied to every film school they could find. All rejected them. Rather than give up, Sarnt picked up a camera anyway, learning the craft in living rooms, borrowed studios, and among friends. That act, creating without institutional permission, felt like rebellion, and it forged a philosophy they carry into their curatorial work today.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cCinema is no longer just about the screen,\u201d Sarnt says. \u201cIt\u2019s about the world around it, who watches it, where, and why.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/h5>\n

They describe curating as building an ecology, a living network of films, communities, conversations, and moments of collision. Sometimes a programme begins with a single film; sometimes it begins with a rumour overheard in a market or a conversation in a darkroom even. <\/span>Sarnt\u2019s work thrives in collectivity.<\/span><\/p>\n

XPOSED, Berlin\u2019s fiercely independent queer film festival, is everything a commercial queer festival is not: politically rigorous, discursive, and dedicated to films, both short and feature, that push the boundaries of form and content.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cQueer cinema can\u2019t just be \u2018queer people on screen\u2019 anymore,\u201d<\/span> they explain. <\/span>\u201cIt has to mean anti-colonial justice, disability justice, a bigger ecology of care.\u201d<\/span><\/h5>\n

Sinema Transtopia, meanwhile, is a space for post-migrant and diasporic perspectives, giving visibility to films that are often politically uncomfortable or under-seen. Once housed in a former DDR building and now in Wedding, it has become a gathering place for audiences hungry for cinema that talks back to history. Screenings are rarely passive; they are accompanied by discussions, debates, and moments of collective reflection.<\/span><\/p>\n

This ethos is what Sarnt calls curatorial taste, a filter that is always in flux. <\/span>\u201cTaste is your first reaction,\u201d<\/span><\/i> they say. <\/span>\u201cIf it\u2019s good, you swallow. If not, you spit. But taste can also stop you from experiencing something new. You have to keep opening it up.\u201d <\/span><\/i>After years of programming, Sarnt has watched Berlin audiences evolve. There is a growing demand for accessibility, intersectional narratives, and conversations that extend beyond the screen.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c<\/span><\/i>Older <\/span>filmmakers complain<\/span> that cinema is too politicised now<\/span><\/em>,\u201d<\/span><\/i> they laugh. <\/span>\u201cI\u2019m like, it\u2019s always been political. Europe had colonies for 500 years. Cinema has never been unpolitical.\u201d <\/span><\/i>This frankness is matched by a love of contradiction. Sarnt delights in guilty pleasures, happily confessing their enduring love for <\/span>Pocahontas,<\/span><\/i> despite its colonial fantasy, alongside the meditative films of Greek auteur Theo Angelopoulos, Thai queer cinema, and Japanese animation. <\/span>\u201cOnly animation can make dying look beautiful,\u201d<\/span><\/i> they say, recalling <\/span>Grave of the Fireflies<\/span><\/i>. <\/span>\u201cYou can\u2019t achieve that tenderness in live action.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

This year, Sarnt is preparing a sound and video installation for Berlin\u2019s Museum of Asian Art, exploring trans futures and reproductive imagination. <\/span>The work, like much of their practice, reflects the layered experience of diasporic life in Europe,\u00a0 and the tension between visibility and marginalisation. <\/span>\u201cStop importing,\u201d<\/span><\/i> they say. <\/span>\u201cThe artists you look for are already here. We\u2019re here.\u201d <\/span><\/i>They\u2019re not speaking against the value of international exchange, far from it. But their point is clear: while major institutions often highlight global artists from afar, those living and working right here in Berlin<\/span>, <\/b>migrant, queer, working-class<\/span>, <\/b>are<\/span> frequently overlooked. Even as their work drives real community engagement, they remain underfunded and underrepresented.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a fitting closing note from someone who has spent years weaving together cinema, collectivity, and care into an artistic practice that insists on presence and on paying attention to the stories already unfolding around us.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sarnt wears Tommy in Black with Rapide lenses.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sarnt\u2019s Top Film Recommendations<\/b><\/p>\n

    \n
  • \u00a0All About Lily Chou Chou (2001)<\/span><\/li>\n
  • \u00a0The Piano (1993)<\/span><\/li>\n
  • \u00a0Trilogy: The Weeping Meadow (2004)<\/span><\/li>\n
  • \u00a0Mommy (2014)<\/span><\/li>\n
  • A Single Man (2009)<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

     <\/p>\n

    Sarnt’s Guilty Pleasures<\/b><\/p>\n

      \n
    • \u00a0The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994)<\/span><\/li>\n
    • \u00a0Pocahontas (1995)<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

       <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Walk through Berlin\u2019s Museum Island and you\u2019ll find crowds queuing to see ancient artifacts looted from other continents, or the latest exhibitions featuring celebrated artists flown in from abroad. But the real heart of the city\u2019s cultural landscape often beats elsewhere, in its \u201ckommunale\u201d galleries, underground festivals, and community-run spaces. This is where we meet […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":11421,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51,3,97,122],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yun-berlin.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11404"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yun-berlin.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yun-berlin.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yun-berlin.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yun-berlin.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11404"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/yun-berlin.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11455,"href":"https:\/\/yun-berlin.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11404\/revisions\/11455"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yun-berlin.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yun-berlin.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yun-berlin.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yun-berlin.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}