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FIFA 2018 Fans Must Legally Watch Games Only Through Exclusive Media Right Owner TVLAO

Restaurants, beer gardens and other entertainment venues that have the intention of publicly broadcasting the FIFA 2018 matches to their guests and customers are required to pay licensing fees in the amount of 5,000,000 kip (approximately US$595) to TVLAO, the sole company granted the exclusive right to broadcast the FIFA 2018 Games in Laos.

MOICT Notice

The Ministry of Information, Culture and Tourism (MOICT) has issued a notice stating that all commercial venues that wish to display FIFA 2018 football games at their sites may not do so from any other broadcasting company or source other than TVLAO.

Notice from TVLAO warning of possible fines against those who watch the FIFA 2018 Games through other non-TVLAO sources

Furthermore, TVLAO has issued its own statement to all football enthusiasts in Laos, including individuals watching for personal entertainment, that they would be fined if they were found to be watching the FIFA 2018 games from other cable box devices other than the one provided by TVLAO.

Source: Laopost

World Bank Economic Report: Formal Vs. Informal Financial Services

A World Bank report released last week reports that “informal” financial services continue to play an important role in the lending sector in Laos despite the fervent growth of legal micro-finance institutions (MFIs) around the country.

According to the report, which employs data garnered from Lao authorities, the legal micro-finance sector saw rapid expansion around the country. The total assets of MFIs in Laos reached US$450 million by the middle of last year. This figure marked an 11 percent increase over the same period last year, accounting for about 3% of the country’s GDP.

The World Bank also mentioned that the proportion of Lao adults using at least one regulated financial service was 47% in 2014, higher than Myanmar (at 30%), but lower than Nepal (at 61%) during the same year. It is surprising, however, to note that despite the growth of banking and non-banking institutions in Laos, informal financial services continue to play a key role in lending money to a significant proportion of the population. The reported number of adults using unregulated financial services was as high as 60% in 2014, compared to 33% in Myanmar and 21% in Nepal.

The World Bank report further noted that the interest rates offered by informal finance services in Laos were higher than those of formal financial institutions. However, this has not discouraged people from using their services. The strength of informal financial services was that they imposed fewer procedural requirements (as opposed to formal banks and MFIs).

Lao officials admit that one of the primary concerns for businesses seeking access to business expansion capital was the unnecessarily high number of processes they have to undertake in order to apply for commercial loans.

The Lao government has promised to streamline the loan approval process to help businesses access funds to invest in and to expand their businesses.

The Governor of the Bank of the Laos, Somphao Phaysith, said that the central bank is borrowing US$300 million to boost the expansion of SMEs. Some observers note that massive injection of funds into the micro-economic sector may help Laos handle the issue of informal financial services.

The Lao Economic Monitor is published twice yearly by the World Bank office in Laos.

To download the report, click here.

Source: Vientiane Times

Laos’ Biggest Ever Sticky Rice Basket Presented by Inthira Group

Inthira Hotels & Restaurants presented Laos’ biggest ever basket of sticky rice (khao niao) at the opening of LAOFOOD 2018 Exhibition, held at the National Convention Centre in Vientiane from 7-9 July, while also taking home honors at the event’s hospitality and culinary competitions.

Laos Expresses Contentment With North Korean-US Summit

Photo credit: Doug Mills/The New York Times
Photo credit: Doug Mills/The New York Times

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Laos (MOFA) has issued a statement welcoming the recent outcome of the North Korean-US Summit held in Singapore last week.

This Week in Lao Social Media

in-the-lao-social-media---pm-wife-naly-sisoulith

First Lady of Laos Visits Soldiers at Southern Border

This week the Lao social media has been awash with national pride after pictures emerged of the PM’s wife, Mrs Naly Sisoulith, making a trip to visit Lao soldiers stationed in the south. The First Lady of Laos swapped her sinh for military fatigues and set off into the jungle to offer her support for the military at the southern border of Laos.

Mrs Naly personally donated refreshments and supplies to the soldiers, and wished them good fortune with a baci ceremony.

naly sisoulith makes a donation to soldiers

From the looks of the photos, the trip to the camp was somewhat arduous, and a photo of Mrs Naly deftly skipping across the uneven ground captured the hearts of Lao social media users. Not bad for a woman who is nearly 70 years of age!

naly sisoulith walks in the jungle

Photos: Support Prime Minister Sisoulith

 

Lao Flag Flies High at World Cup Opening Ceremony

Lao Journalist Ekasan Thippachanh at the 2018 FIFA World Cup

The Lao flag has been spotted at the 2108 FIFA World Cup opening ceremony, held at the Luzhniki Stadium in Russia.

Lao journalist Mr Ekasan Thippachanh attended the event, bringing the flag of Laos with him. Photos and videos of Ekasan with the flag went viral in Lao social media as world cup fever takes over!

Photos: Pakaad

 

Bokeo Officials Set Prices for Pork and Beef

In an effort to control the price of meats at the markets, a Bokeo official seems to be holding up a banner that stipulates the prices for pork and beef. Consumers are urged to call the phone numbers included on the banner if there are vendors who violate the guidelines set by the Bokeo District Department of Industry and Commerce.

Social media users praised the government’s move as it would protect consumers against the rising cost of living.

Photos: Pakaad

 

Savannakhet Citizens Seriously Perturbed by Foul Smell From Nearby Paper Factory

Netizens from Seno (Savannaket) have made exceptionally strong complaints on social media for the past several days about a terrible odor that has invaded their beautiful city. Unconfirmed sources point to a nearby Chinese-owned paper factory, Sun Paper, that has been blamed as the cause of the odor.

The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MONRE) has been urged to take action and inspect the activities of the paper factory.

Essential ingredients

Keeping it real is the name of the game for Les Artisans Lao

High above an art gallery, in a small room in a narrow building off a side street in downtown Vientiane, is a humming laboratory.

There, young locals in white lab coats hover over heating and cutting machines, surrounded by glass vials and bubbling oils. Shelves are crammed with brown bottles, many with hand-written labels. It could be a mad scientist’s lab, or a chemist’s workspace, except that the smell is just heavenly. There’s citronella, tea-tree and jojoba, for a start, and the busy-bee workers are trialling products to see how they perform as essential oils, soap, shampoo, lip balm and insect repellent.

This last is one of the company’s best sellers – one of several beautifully packaged cosmetic products that form part of a range by Les Artisans Lao, a company that makes natural skincare products, fragrances and handicrafts, including furniture and jewellery.

Les Artisans Lao is the brainchild of Michel Saada, a French native who has been in Laos so long, he can’t ever imagine going back to his old life in France. It was more than 25 years ago that Saada left Paris, where he ran a restaurant, and fetched up in Vientiane. That was in 1993, back when Laos was just opening up to international tourism. It was a very different place then – no cars, no motorbikes, not much commercial enterprise. But, desperate for a reason to stay in a place he had swiftly fallen in love with, Saada began making handicrafts.

It began, he says, with an ornamental bowl made of coconut, which fell on the floor and shattered. He put a hole in one piece and began wearing it as a necklace, and before too long, he was making them for anyone who asked. He moved on to other decorative pieces made from coconut, and eventually opened a gallery, T’Shop-Lai, in a repurposed terrace house a street back from the Mekong, still his main headquarters today.

He moved onto a special technique involving crushed eggshells and resin, from which he and his team make everything from furniture to homewares, and invited other artists to stage exhibitions in the space. In the process, he was also training young, unskilled Lao people to create objects and run the business with him.

“Usually, I train people, and soon they can do the work even better than me,” he says.

But even with a gallery and burgeoning handicrafts business, he couldn’t quite solve the conundrum of throwing away piles of coconut flesh as a by-product of many of his works.

“Then someone from America told me I could make oil from it, and I said, really, I can make oil? So I started to make oil,” he says. But of course, it wasn’t quite as simple at the time.

Today, he says, he knows “everything about coconuts – I am crazy about coconuts”, but making refined oil was a long learning process that involved a donated machine and a lot of trial and error.

And no sooner had he perfected his coconut oil game, that another friend suggested he try making soap, another slow learning process in the age before the Internet. A friend agreed to join the enterprise as a financial backer, and so, six years ago, he launched the Les Artisans Lao line of

skincare and fragrance products. It was perfect timing, with the ever-growing trend of natural alternatives to commercial skin products, and a clamour among well-heeled tourists to take home the perfect classy souvenirs as gifts from Laos.

“We’re really careful with packaging – we have many products coming out every few months, but when we make a new product, we have to wait for six months or one year to see how the stability is,” he says.

“Our formula is very precise and we are very careful. I say to people, if it’s not correct, if you make a mistake, throw it away and make it again…From when you create until you go to the market it takes maybe one year and a half or two years.”

Indeed, exclusivity could be one of the company’s main selling points, beyond being naturally sourced and ethically produced. Saada has so far declined to export the products, fearing a dilution of quality if demand grows too high. In this way, the products are the very definition of sustainable – not to mention desirable.

Today, Saada employs around 25 people – all Lao and non-English-speaking – and the products are sold everywhere in Laos’s main cities, from small handicrafts shops to international minimarts and large-scale supermarkets. And, to Saada’s surprise, his biggest market is Chinese and Korean consumers, many of whom buy the products in large quantities, safe in the knowledge that they’re sourced on a small scale in Laos, and can’t be bought elsewhere.

Visit artisanslao.com for more information.

 

Originally Published in: Champa Meuanglao

Latest Updates From the Luang Prabang Film Festival 2018

The Luang Prabang Film Festival (LPFF) has announced that its ninth annual event will take place on 7-12 December 2018. The festival, which celebrates Southeast Asian cinema every December in the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Luang Prabang, Laos, will feature a range of feature film screenings, short film programs, public discussions, and events.

This year’s Spotlight will focus on the Indonesian film industry. Curated by KOLEKTIF Project Manager Gayatri Nadya, the program will offer audiences a full day of programming and lively discussion from leading Indonesian film experts and filmmakers. Recent years have seen a cinematic resurgence from this territory as it opens to more foreign investors, builds more theatres, and continuously breaks its own box office records. New and exciting Indonesian talent has emerged, making a notable impact on the international festival circuit with a fresh vision that has won high praise from critics and audiences alike.

This December, LPFF will bring to the screen a strong selection of these films, exposing audiences to some of the best examples of this new wave of creativity from Indonesia.

Along with the announcement of the festival’s dates, LPFF has also released the visual identity for this year’s festival, which takes inspiration from vintage travel posters in support of Visit Laos Year 2018. The main design features a chic Southeast Asian filmmaker location scouting in Luang Prabang during the festival. Once again, this concept was executed by the very talented Manilla Chounlamountri, Art Director of the Vientiane-based MeIdea Full Service Agency.

“We feel a lot of pressure to top our previous years’ graphics, and we’re confident that our designer has, somehow, accomplished it once again,” said Festival Director Gabriel Kuperman. “I love all the references within the visual- you have the throwback travel poster feel, the empowered female filmmaker (that we see many of at our event), the backdrop of this gorgeous little town with its mixture of traditional Lao and colonial French architecture, and of course, there’s our intimate festival stuck in there so naturally.”

New Visual Identity Depicts Filmmaker on Location Scout in Festival’s Host Town

Last year’s festival welcomed over 22,000 attendees to its screenings, Q&As with filmmakers, panel discussions, and live performances that go beyond the screen to include dance, theater, and live music. This year’s audiences are expected to grow even larger, as the Luang Prabang Film Festival solidifies itself as one of the largest international events in Laos, and one of the most important film events in the region.

However, despite its size, LPFF manages to maintain the intimacy that attendees have grown to love. At the 2017 festival, 23 of the festival’s 32 feature films had directors or producers on hand to speak to audiences after screenings of their films, both in groups and one-on-one.

LPFF has also made its mark in the region in regards to its Southeast Asian artist development programs. Last year’s Talent Lab, led by the Tribeca Film Institute®, provided training on grantwriting and project pitching to ten different projects from around the region. After an open pitch forum, Raising a Beast, written and directed by the Lao filmmaker Xaisongkham Induangchanthy, and produced by Filipina Abigail Lazaro, was selected by a jury to attend the TFI Network Market at the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival®. Hosted annually by TFI, the industry market gives filmmakers the opportunity to build connections with a wide range of industry insiders who can potentially help them advance their projects. TFI set up dozens of meetings with producers, post-production houses, editors, and financiers for the Raising a Beast team, and will also mentor them through the completion of their project. All participants in last year’s Talent Lab will also receive preferential consideration for any of TFI’s grants. This Talent Lab will take place again at December’s festival, and will be expanded to three days.

Additionally, LPFF will hold a masterclass on screenwriting, as well as a weeklong workshop on animation, organized in partnership with the American Film Showcase.

All festival events are open to the public and free of charge, and visitors can go easily between the main venues on foot or via LPFF’s complimentary tuk-tuk shuttle service.

LPFF is funded by corporate sponsors, non-governmental organizations, embassies, and private donors.

To stay up-to-date on the Luang Prabang Film Festival and its activities, follow the project on Facebook (www.facebook.com/lpfilmfest) or visit its website (www.lpfilmfest.org).

US-Based Filmmaker Raises Funds for Feature Documentary on the Secret War in Laos

Filmmaker and Pulitzer fellow Erin McGoff is currently running a ​30-day Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign​ to help raise part of $37,000 to finish her ambitious documentary featuring the secret bombing campaign in Laos, which was the scene of an intense yet clandestine proxy war during the Vietnam Conflict.

McGoff has brought on two-time Emmy-Award winning composer Jeremy Zuckerman to score the film. She also plans to tour the film all of 2019 in the hopes of educating more Americans about Laos and sparking a national conversation.

Erin McGoff on set.
Phetsamay, the main character of the film.

The fundraising campaign will end on July 6th at midnight. This film has been supported by The Pulitzer Center, NextPix, and World Without Mines. As of the writing of this article, the Indigogo campaign is currently 62% funded with $9,240 USD raised by 71 backers.

Indiegogo campaign: 62% funded with $9,240 USD raised by 71 backers

During the Vietnam War, the United States secretly bombed Laos more heavily per capita than any country in history, and 80 million unexploded bombs continue to terrorize, kill and maim innocent Lao people today.

But McGoff saw a bigger story here: the humanity of the Lao people. They are resilient, optimistic, and kind – and she showcases this in her upcoming feature film, This Little Land of Mines.

 

For more information on this documentary, please check out its following social media presences:

 

Instagram: thislittlelandofmines

Twitter: @littlelandmines

Facebook: This Little Land of Mines