People On Sunday

“People on Sunday” is a reinterpretation, a response, and a homage to a pioneered German silent film “Menschen Am Sonntag” (1930), literally translated as “People on Sunday”. Nevertheless, this response is executed from a different context, different era, different country, and different working conditions. The original film was one of the first films that marketed itself as “a film with no actors” as it employed only amateur-actors/non-actors. Its anecdote is that the film was shot only on Sundays in 1929 as these non-professional actors had to work on weekdays. What initiated the Saenjaroen to revisit and reinterpret the film was the setting of the story—simply about their day-off, life in free time. From Saenjaroen’s point of view, these non-professional actors performed as they were having pleasure leisure for the camera, having free time while they’re actually working. In other words, they worked/acted as not-working/not-acting. This film attempts to provoke the question of representability of free time, of cognitive labour and mental exhaustion, of contemporary work ethic, and of the paradox between control and freedom via the frame of cinema and its production.