A peasant farmer leaves his village in Isan (in the arid North-East of Thailand) when his infant son dies for lack of medical treatment; he finds a factory job in Bangkok and is drawn into a strike, little suspecting the management reprisals which will follow. At the same time, a university graduate originally from Isan returns to his home village with ideas for various self-help projects to improve life in the region -- only to find himself branded a communist by local vested interests. Both of these stories about the traffic of people between Isan and Bangkok were drawn from recent fact, and the film (acted by non-professionals) aims for maximum realism and credibility. Manop was a 26-year-old poet and writer of short-stories who had never made a film before. On the Fringe of Society was financed by a Catholic development organisation and had only ′underground′ distribution in Thailand -- which still had, at the time, fascistic military government. It is a prime example of a film made independently to raise questions which would be hard to pose elsewhere. (Tony Rayns)