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In Phi Ta Khon: Ghosts of Isan, Director Robert Millis takes us to the town of Dan Sai, home to the festival known as Phi Ta Khon, which at once ushers in the rainy season and pays tribute to the spirit world. The result is a florid and fascinating combination of phallic and demonic imagery. Men dress as women, ghosts and demons walk the street and people everywhere brandish wooden red-tipped penises, which they pump into the air. As in Carnival in Rio or New Orleans, there are floats, costumes, dancers, musicians and plenty of drinking. Perhaps most impressive visually are the beautiful painted masks.

The key sonic component is the funky regional music known as molam. It’s all over this video and getting to hear and see an electric pin (Thai lute) player shred on the back of a sound truck is pure magic. Paired with the masks and costumes, the music creates an experience unlike anything that’s ever come out of your TV. I couldn’t tear myself away.

Millis and his partner (the Sun City Girls’ Richard Bishop) keep themselves out of the action in this doc, instead preferring a “you-are-there” approach. Interestingly, they also choose not to interview any of the participants; in fact, there’s strangely little talking at all. This is reminiscent of an old-school ethnomusicological approach—in the early days of ethno fieldwork, the focus was mainly on documenting the music event itself. Today ethnomusicologists focus much more on what the participants have to say about a music event. I could see some criticizing this video for an “objectifying gaze,” arguing that the lack of participant perspective makes Phi Ta Khon like a nature video in which the natives are simply doing their thing unthinkingly.

However, this is a work of art. Personally, I think interviews would destroy the vibe Millis cultivates. Yet I would say that, paradoxically, there is a feeling of distance inherent to this you-are-there approach, as the voices of the participants (including Millis’ and Bishop’s) are absent. It might have been interesting had they added an alternate voiceover track to listen to in a subsequent viewing.

The bottom line is, if you’d like travel shows on PBS and cable a lot more if only the spunky hosts would shut the hell up, Phi Ta Khon: Ghosts of Isan is your kind of documentary. It provides the armchair version of stumbling into northern Thailand not knowing a lick of the local language, then finding yourself in the middle of ritual/festival you only vaguely understand. There’s a lot to be said for that experience. For those of you on a jones for your next travel fix, this DVD is a shot of electronic Methadone.