Somboonsuk Niyomsiri is a film director and the 2015 "National Artist of Thailand" in the field of cinema for helping shape the Thai screen of the 70s. He is known with the artist nick 'Piak Poster'.

The National Artist title rightly recognises his contribution in making movies — 29 of them — though Piak’s name is in fact synonymous with something else that also helped define the image of Thai cinema: Before writing and directing films, Piak was a prolific painter of film posters and cut-outs, those dramatic, earnestly realistic and colour-splashed pictures recognisable from miles away. Thus the moniker that became the only name people know him until now: Piak Poster.

He was born in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Teenaged Piak studied at Poh Chang Academy of Arts, funding himself by doing odd jobs and at one point as a labourer, carrying tar for building roads. In the early 1950s, when he was 17, he got a job painting advertisements for consumer and agricultural products at a shop in Bang Khunprom (“I did a lot of ads for fertiliser,” he recalls). The turning point came when a movie promoter saw his work: “He asked, ‘Can you paint actors?’,” Piak says. “I never did it before, but I was sure I could because it was just the picture of a person, so I said yes. The first film I did was called Pi Chai [Brother], starring Sor Assanachinda.

It’s been a long journey from painting to cinema and back to painting. A Bangkok native, Piak’s father was a soldier and naturally the old man wanted his son to follow in his footsteps, though the boy already set his compass on the opposite direction — he only wanted to paint. When his father died, his brother-in-law, a high-ranking officer, arranged to pull some strings to get him a job in a barracks, only that Piak had to sit an exam to make it convincing. He did go to the exam — but he turned in a blank paper, then proceeded to leave the house to become a painter.

A friend offered to sponsor him to direct a movie, Piak was reluctant at first, before agreeing on the condition that he would do it the way he wanted it. The big step came when the friend got him an internship at Daiei Film in Tokyo, where Piak spent three months learning how to make films like a pro.

Piak returned to Thailand with a script and storyboard of 'Tone', a drama about a poor temple boy and his roller-coaster life in Bangkok. The film was released in 1970 and made huge money to the surprise of everyone including himself and his producer. Because of his status then as an unknown — how could a poster painter direct a film? — Piak couldn’t get the top stars and settled with Chaiya Suriyan and Aranya Namwong. And because it wasn’t bankrolled by one of the big studios, 'Tone' can be considered by today’s jargon as an independent film.

Piak followed up with two more hits, Duang (Luck, 1971) in 1971 and Choo (The Adulterer, 1972), and together with Tone, they are now part of the classic Thai cinema canon. The poster man became a fully-fledged filmmaker. For another 20 years he kept making movies, the last one being Bin Laek, a pilot drama that came out in 1995, when Piak reached the age of 60. Then he called it quits. He also has taken part in acting, playing in the film ' The Billionaire' (2011), which he got nominated in

In Pak Chong on his throne surrounded by bottled colours, Piak has returned to do what he thinks he’s always done best: painting. “I wanted to paint since I was seven,” he says. “Making movies was a great ride, but now I am happy to do what I love again.”

(Source: Thai Wiki and Bangkokpost.com) Edit Biography