Ashort film about the perils of greed will be screened on Saturday as part of Bangkok's World Film Festival.

"El Diente de Oro" ("The Gold Tooth") won the 2005 Jury award from the Montreal World Film Festival for its director, Daniel Rodriguez of Peru and director of photography, Thailand's Tanon Sattarujawong.

The two were classmates at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, where the aspiring Tanon acted as director of photography (DP) on several NYU film projects including Miguel Salazar's "Martillo" and Erik Ryerson's "Red Letters", for which he won the Best Cinematography Award at First Run Film Festival.

He's also the cinematographer on Rodriguez's first feature "El Acuarelista".

"As DP, you are separate from the director but, at the same time, you overlap with him. But it's less depressing than being a director," says Tanon who is now a commercial director at the acclaimed Film Factory Company.

A graduate of Thammasat University's journalism and mass-communications faculty, he was the first student to receive a prestigious scholarship from the Anandamahidol Foundation under royal patronage to study filmmaking overseas.

Tanon says Rodriguez, who is in his 40s, was the oldest student in the New York school's master's-degree class.

But family and work pressures forced the Peruvian, who the Thai describes as "a successful businessman obsessed with filmmaking", to return home before he completed the course.

"He's the owner of several schools and a university in Peru," says Tanon, who speaks good Spanish and has experience in working with production from his Latino friends.

Tanon was happy to fly to Lima when his friend asked him to handle the photography for the project.

The film tells the story of a man living in an apartment who accidentally drops one of his shoes in the courtyard. Before he can go down to bring it back, he finds a clean, new shoe outside his room.

Surprised, he tries leaving an empty dish outside the room only to find it returned, piled high with delicious food.

Spurred on by greed, he takes a pair of tongs, extracts his gold tooth and puts itin a large trunk, expecting the trunk to be returned filled with gold.

All he gets in return is pain from the extraction.

Thai audiences may be reminded of "Mercury and the Workmen", Aesop's cautionary tale of an honest workman who drops his axe in the pond and despite being tempted by an angel, refuses to claim the golden and silver axes retrieved from the water as his own.

Tanon says that the story originally had darker overtones but was given a lighter, comedic treatment after Rodriguez read it to children as a bedtime story.

Although "Diente" is a Peruvian production, Tanon says there's a universal appeal to the film. It's set in an ordinary Spanish colonial building in downtown Lima and the actor's a regular guy.

"The movie goes beyond national boundaries. It could be from any country," he says.

The running time is 18 minutes but this seems to stretch thanks to slow paced shots and a music score that lends an ethereal atmosphere.

Tanon and Rodriguez worked as a team, videoing scenes in blocks rather than drawing a storyboard prior to filming.

"Daniel is a perfectionist so he didn't want any mistakes. But it's boring as in effect you're shooting the whole thing twice. For the director of photography, it really cuts creativity."

Due to technical limitations, "Diente" is shot on 16mm film.

"In Peru, it's hard to get modern equipment for 35mm film. It made me realise how advanced we are here in Thailand.

"We have better facilities than in other places but at a much lower price than New York."

Tanon will also be taking part in the festival's Produire au Sud workshop, which covers a wide range of subjects including co-production, regulations for filmmakers and film finance.

His debut feature, "Karn Derntang Soo Thid Tai" ("Voyage Underneath"), is one of the four projects selected for the Bangkok workshop. The team with the best project selected by the committee of Produire au Sud will be invited to attend the prestigious Festival des trois continents in Nantes in November, along with winners from other parts of the world.

"Voyage" tells the story of a man's journey through the jungle in search of his brother, a monk who he hasn't seen in more than a decade. He sets out after receiving a letter from the monk informing him that he is dying.

"It's a road movie," Tanon says.

Tanon's works include the short films "This is Connected?" and "Alternate Route" that won best short film and best documentary at Thailand's National Film Awards in 2000.

His documentary "A Short Journey" won the Fipresci Special Mention at Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival 2003, the outstanding film award at Busan Short Asian Film Festival 2004 and was selected for Sundance 2004.

"Enlightenment", his thesis film at NYU won first prize and Best Directing at the university's First Run Film Festival in 2004 and has since been shown at the Melbourne, Raindance (London), Bangkok and Tribeca festivals.

"El Diente de Oro" ("The Gold Tooth") shows after the short film from Switzerland "The Accord" at Major Cineplex, Central World Plaza 4 on Saturday at 1pm and again on Thursday, October 19, at 6pm. For more information, visit www.worldfilmbkk.com.

Parinyaporn Pajee

The Nation