One surprising legacy of the United States’ public diplomacy across Southeast Asia during the Cold War is an eighteen-minute film featuring dialect and music indigenous to Thailand’s northeast region. Produced by the United States Information Service (USIS), The Community Development Worker (1963) pairs black-and-white 16mm footage of the smartly dressed titular subject touring a dusty village on foot to a soundtrack of jaunty, laudatory songs. Scenes of him offering guidance to beaming villagers segue into footage of lectures, laborers digging sunbaked fields, and provincial officers orchestrating the rebuilding of a school. Meanwhile, the lyrics of the accompanying mor lam—a propulsive form of sung storytelling accompanied by a khaen (bamboo mouth organ)—beseech the people of Isaan, as this region is known, to not be lazy, and to work together to improve their community rather than wait for government. This melodious attempt to ward off communism in Isaan demonstrates how the United States’ Cold War propagandizing included the co-opting of vernacular forms and local voices, as well as the invocation of rural stereotypes and center-periphery dynamics. Yet in the hands of Ukrit Sa-nguanhai—one of four artists contributing to this group exhibition at the Thai Film Archive on Bangkok’s outskirts—its local resonances are …