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THE CALL 
2023
2K video | 2.39:1 | 11.13 min. | color | sound


The cinematic short film The Call explores the tension between fiction and history through a surreal sequence of ringing lobster phones that guides the viewer through Bangkok’s waning 1960s grandeur—an era shaped by early waves of Western tourism, Cold War alignments, and the shadow of the Vietnam War. Oscillating between imagined narrative and nostalgic residue, the precisely crafted short film follows a succession of characters responding to persistently ringing telephones: lobster-shaped receivers that pay homage to Salvador Dalí’s most irreverent surrealist object. Across the film, eight distinct versions of the lobster phone function as connective devices—at once absurd and subversive—binding one scene to the next. Each time a different hand lifts the receiver, only a few English words are spoken—“Hello?”, “Ok,” “Bye-bye.” This restrained repetition produces a gesture that is simultaneously playful and disquieting, forming an illogical circuit that links spaces haunted by geopolitics, vanished music scenes, and the city’s ongoing political unrest. Through this rhythmic recurrence, the lobster phone shifts from an eccentric prop to a call for connection across temporal layers, implying that alternative futures may unfold. Carried by the insistent ringing of the phone and underscored by songs of Luk Krung and Luk Thung—musical genres that emerged as Thai music absorbed Western influences—the fictional thread unfolds with ongoing suspense. Each character is tied to locations that continue to exist, yet now appear faded or partially abandoned: the Atlanta Hotel—once associated with red-light tourism but also a gathering place for writers, artists, and reputedly musicians such as Louis Armstrong—as well as a series of long-standing shops along Charoen Krung, Bangkok’s first commercial street, evoking the old glamour of the city’s golden era. Whether one is to trying to interpret the film’s plot or one is simply to enjoy the witty humor without revelation at the end, The Call certainly encourages repeated viewing and positions the audience not as passive recipients of a message, but as participants within its unresolved circuitry.



Directed / Camera / Edited: Kay Walkowiak  
Actor: Jacques Carrio
Composition & Sound Design: Natalia Dominguez Rangel  
Sound Design & Mix: Nigel Brown  
Color Grading: Andi Winter   
Production Assistant: Barbara Probst
Voice Over: Carlos Carcaré, Natalia Dominguez Rangel, James Lewis, Élise Mougin-Wurm, Jumpei Shimada  
Special Thanks: Georg Deutsch, Ulrike Walkowiak
Supported by: Federal State of Austria, Province of Salzburg, City of Salzburg, City of Vienna





︎ Archive Film