The cinema of Thailand dates back to the early days of filmmaking, when King Chulalongkorn's 1897 visit to Bern, Switzerland was recorded by François-Henri Lavancy-Clarke.

[6] Competition from Hollywood brought the Thai industry to a low point in the 1980s and 1990s, but by the end of the 1990s, Thailand had its "new wave", with such directors as Nonzee Nimibutr, Pen-Ek Ratanaruang and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, as well as action hero Tony Jaa, being celebrated at film festivals around the world.

[10] One of the early works produced was Sam Poi Luang: Great Celebration in the North (Thai: สามปอยหลวง), a docudrama that became a hit when it was released in 1940.

[14] Hollywood would also make movies in Siam during this time, including the documentary Chang, by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, about a poor farmer struggling to carve out a living in the jungle.

Robert Kerr, who served as assistant director to Henry MacRae on Miss Suwanna, returned to Siam in 1928 to direct his own film, The White Rose.

The screenplay was by writer Malai Chupinij, who would go on to script other films of the era, including Chao Fah Din Salai (Till Death Do Us Part).

Another filmmaker active during this time was Vichit Kounavudhi, who made his share of action films as well as more socially conscious works like First Wife, about the custom of men taking "second wives" or "mia noi" – a euphemism for mistress.

Also in 1985, director Euthana Mukdasanit made Pee Seua lae Dawkmai (Butterfly and Flowers), highlighting hardships along the Southern Thailand border.

[22] In the wake of the Asian financial crisis in 1997, three directors of television commercials – Nonzee Nimibutr, Pen-Ek Ratanaruang and Wisit Sasanatieng – were thinking that films needed to be more artistic to attract investors and audiences.

The first breakthrough was in 1997, with Nonzee's crime drama, Dang Bireley's and Young Gangsters (2499 Antapan Krong Muang), which earned a record box office take of more than 75 million baht.

Also in 1997, Pen-Ek's crime comedy, Fun Bar Karaoke, was selected to play at the Berlin Film Festival – the first time in twenty years that Thai cinema had had any kind of an international presence.

Wisit, who wrote screenplays for Dang Bireley's and Nang Nak, broke out with Tears of the Black Tiger, a super-stylised western homage to the Thai action films of the 1960s and '70s.

With the New Wave directors achieving commercial and artistic success, a new crop of filmmakers has grown up outside the traditional and often restrictive Thai studio system to create experimental short films and features.

Featuring a risqué sex scene involving a Burmese man and a Thai woman in the jungle, the movie received only limited screenings in Thailand and a Thai-released DVD of the film was censored.

[25] Other indie directors include Aditya Assarat (Wonderful Town), Anocha Suwichakornpong (Mundane History), Pimpaka Towira (One Night Husband), Thunska Pansittivorakul (Voodoo Girls), Sivaroj Kongsakul (Eternity), Wichanon Somumjarn (In April the Following Year, There Was a Fire) and Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit (36).

On some VCDs and DVDs produced in Thailand, the censors sometimes take a hard line against depictions of nudity, sex, smoking, the presence of alcohol and guns being pointed at people, images that are forbidden on broadcast television.

Imported DVDs are generally not altered by the Thai authorities, though the Ministry of Culture's watchdogs do ban items, or at least strongly encourage retailers to not carry them.

In 2005, the comedy Luang phii theng (The Holy Man) starring comedian Pongsak Pongsuwan as a street hood who becomes a Buddhist monk, was one of the top films at the domestic box office.

One of the first was Youngyooth Thongkonthun's Iron Ladies, or Satree lek, based on a true story about a transgender gay men's volleyball team that won a national championship in 1996.

More loosely based on a true incident was the 2002 film Saving Private Tootsie, which tells the story of a group of gay and kathoey entertainers who are lost in rebel-held jungle territory after their plane crashes.

And the life of transgender Muay Thai champion Parinya Kiatbusaba (or Nong Tum) is related in 2003's Beautiful Boxer, directed by Ekachai Uekorngtham.

The narrative of the film then abruptly shifts in the middle to relate a folk tale about a tiger shaman, with the soldier alone in the jungle, haunted by the tiger-shaman's spirit.

Apichatpong also co-directed the low-budget digital movie, The Adventure of Iron Pussy, with artist Michael Shaowanasai, who portrays a transgender secret agent.

In 2011, Thanwarin Sukhaphisit's Insects in the Backyard, a movie depicting the struggles of a family in which a transgender teenage son and daughter's lives are tormented by a lack of communication and an inability to communicate with their biological father to the point that they end up selling their bodies looking, very much in vain, for a way out of their own lives, became the first film to receive the Haw Heep rating, which banned the distribution and showing of the film.

The film portrays the story of a young boy whose father forces him to become a monk after he catches him wearing his mother's clothes and dancing around effeminately in his room.

Nonzee Nimibutr's Nang Nak in 1999 was a ghost story based on the same folkloric theme that had been depicted dozens of times throughout the history of Thai cinema and television.

The film's modern, visual style offers a sharp-focus snapshot of the city of Bangkok and a plausible account of the mating game in its current forms.

The short film is shot in a minimalist style and slowly moves along the encounters of a man and a woman on a long-haul flight, where they spend the next 12 hours and 20 minutes reading, drinking, eating and watching movies and sleeping by each other's side without talking.

Notable films include the Hong Kong-co production The Pang Brothers' Bangkok Dangerous, Suddenly It's Magic, although a Filipino production, had starred popular Thai actors Mario Maurer and Pimchanok Luevisadpaibul, the internationally co-produced film by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Memoria, and Banjong Pisanthanakun's The Medium, co-produced by South Korea's Na Hong-jin.

In 2007, Digital Forum was begun in Bangkok as an outgrowth of the Thai Short Film and Video Festival, to showcase feature-length independent digital-video productions.