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Pride season in Bangkok has a familiar shape by now. A brand slaps a rainbow on its window, a parade rolls through and everyone packs the bunting away until next year. Beyond the Rainbow continues.
For two days this month, TUFF BAR turns over its whole floor to a programme of film screenings, workshops, talk shows and performance art, running 11am to 11pm on July 25 and 26. It comes together through Little Light Lab, a small experimental outfit, and a handful of partners who pool people, ideas and money to make the thing happen. The stated aim is a genuinely safe room where the queer community can, in the organisers' word, 'shine'.
The name does some heavy lifting. The rainbow is the shorthand everyone recognises, but the weekend reaches wider than six colours. It isn't only a screening series. The line-up runs workshops, performances and activities built to help people collect and keep their own stories, and that matters because preserving the lives of ordinary people has never been a private hobby. It is part of a longer history of struggle.
Saturday, July 25
The first day opens with periods. 'Let's Talk Periods, but Make It Queer-Friendly' hands everyone, bleeders and non-bleeders alike, a tray of beads and a length of string, and asks them to thread a bracelet that tracks a menstrual cycle in a way that matches their own identity. Later, Zurapun takes the mic for a stand-up hour, 'Love Is (Not) All Around'. She is a creator known for pop-culture storytelling and her subject is love, the thing that surrounds everyone except, apparently, her. Admission is free.
Then three films. 'Minister Chucky' (2025) looks at trans and non-binary lives in the run-up to Trump's presidency. 'CHHESANG – The Untold Story' (2024) follows a trans man in Nepal who still menstruates. 'The Insecurity Echoes' (2025) sits with queer refugees from Myanmar surviving along the Thai border, and a discussion afterwards fills out what exile actually looks like day to day.
Sunday, July 26
Sunday puts a pen in your hand. 'QUEER in Film / ME in Film' walks the room through writing a script, laying out a storyboard and binding a zine, with poetry read aloud along the way. Jai Rom Project follows with 'My Journey with an Umbrella', a quiet piece of performance art.
The Sunday films travel further afield. 'We Are Perfect' (2023) traces the fight for queer visibility inside a film industry with little room to spare. 'Crossing Into Tomorrow' (2025) tells of two Tai women in love who arrive as labourers on New Year's Eve. 'The Last Gig on Earth' (2016) is a confession made before the aliens land. The closing talk carries the weekend's best title, 'The Buddha, Aliens, and Other Beings'.
All weekend
Between screenings, 'Queerism Interactive' takes over a wall with a giant sheet of paper. You pick up a marker and answer prompts like 'Who was the first queer character you ever loved?'. Next to it sits a 'Draw an Alien' station, open to whatever version you fancy. Every alien comes out different, which is more or less the point.
Where the money goes
The part worth reading twice. Every baht of ticket revenue is mapped out. Half pays organisers and staff who work overtime as a matter of routine, 35 percent funds menstrual-product donations for people hit by disaster, war and plain shortage, routed through Little Light Lab's network, and the last 15 percent or so covers commission, venue, tax and the ticketing system that keeps guest data secure. The organisers say the breakdown is open to anyone who wants to check it.
Getting in
Films and discussions run B150 for one day or B250 for both. Each workshop or performance costs B250. Students, disabled guests and anyone travelling from outside greater Bangkok get a B50 voucher to spend on the day, free of charge.
See you at TUFF BAR, July 25 and 26, 11am to 11pm. Tickets are online now here.