Apichatpong Weerasethakul
In the expanded cinema of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, nature and technology are never set into opposition. Lights, camera, electricity, sound mixing: all these constitutive elements of the film/video medium interweave with the given materials of the world. NIGHT COLONIES studies the actions of hundreds of bugs on a white bed. There is no probing micro-photography, no attempt to mimic the insect point-of-view. Voices from political demonstrations in Bangkok are occasionally filtered in. An indirect response to the pandemic, it pictures a bug-eat-bug community that is also strangely peaceful.
A global portrait documenting the year's events, Cinetracts '20 features the work of an international lineup of 20 filmmakers. Capturing the zeitgeist in their own backyard, the artists' short films are the culmination of a year-long residency project.
The acclaimed filmmaker has created an original short film in response to the global pandemic, titled October Rumbles.
Over 30 filmmakers and friends of Strand Releasing have come together to honor the company’s indelible contribution to independent cinema over the past thirty years. The participating filmmakers have each created a short film for the project, all shot on iPhones. Produced by Strand Releasing and Connor Jessup.
A collection of short films by five Thai directors imagining their country ten years into the future.
Composed of intimate and unencumbered moments of people in a community, this film is constructed in a form that allows the viewer an emotive impression of the Historic South - trumpeting the beauty of life and consequences of the social construction of race, while simultaneously a testament to dreaming.
Canadian actor and filmmaker Connor Jessup (Closet Monster, Falling Skies) profiles Apichatpong Weerasethakul, a maverick of Thai cinema who explores the slippery nature of time and consciousness with a sublimely idiosyncratic, often surreal approach to film form.
The first railway line in Thailand was inaugurated in 1893 – a sign of progress and prosperity. Shot over eight years on every active line of the country’s railway system, this wondrous documentary offers an unprecedented immersion into the country’s past and present.
A collaboration between Apichatpong and Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto from his album “async”. The people falling asleep in this film are all his friends, he sent cameras to friends and asked them to shoot. Apichatpong often carries Digital Harinezumi camera with him, and completing a lot of works with this camera. This work was first exhibited at the WATARI Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo (Japan, 2017).
The work is part of the Memoria Project, the first major series of work that is set outside of Weerasethakul’s home country. Given his affinity for the Amazon, of which Thai jungle tales were originally inspired, Weerasethakul has started to explore South America - and since 2017, has been developing a film based in Colombia. He is drawn to its topography, where active volcanoes and landslides ceaselessly transform natural landscapes. The Memoria Project presents both personal and collective memories, while retaining the artist’s fascination with illumination. A vital part of the video and photographic works is the presence of a lone protagonist on the beach. Weerasethakul worked with Canadian actor Connor Jessup who visited him during the filming of a documentary at Nuquà area in Chocó Department, western Colombia. Here, the actor is a spirit that contemplates the artist’s journey, his dream of both real and imaginary films.
Invisibility displays Weerasethakul’s continued interest in the issue of perception and memory. The installation takes threads from his recent films, Cemetery of Splendor and Fever Room, both of which feature the same actors. Here, he takes them deeper into an imaginary world and ponders the future of shared consciousness. The videos depict a landscape where the protagonists are confined to a room, along with the viewers. With no way out, they infiltrate each other’s dreams. Invisibility mirrors the troubled state of Thailand’s politics. It proposes a decayed vision of the future where one needs to constantly evade reality. The viewing experience shifts between seeing and not seeing, fact and fiction, space and void.
The “digital revolution” reached the cinema late and was chiefly styled as a technological advancement. Today, in an era where analog celluloid strips are disappearing, and given the diversity of digital moving picture formats, there is much more at stake: Are the world’s film archives on the brink of a dark age? Are we facing the massive loss of collective audiovisual memory? Is film dying, or just changing? CINEMA FUTURES travels to international locations and, together with renowned filmmakers, museum curators, historians and engineers, dramatizes the future of film and the cinema in the age of digital moving pictures.
Five award-winning ASEAN film directors celebrate Southeast Asian art through this collection of short films. As an omnibus of short films, is inspired by the art collection found at the National Gallery Singapore, Each of the five directors – Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Brillante Mendoza, Eric Khoo, Ho Yuhang and Joko Anwar – handpicked a masterpiece from the 19th and 20th century as inspiration for their short films.
In a hospital, ten soldiers are being treated for a mysterious sleeping sickness. In a story in which dreams can be experienced by others, and in which goddesses can sit casually with mortals, a nurse learns the reason why the patients will never be cured, and forms a telepathic bond with one of them.
"Fever Room" features Jenjira (Jen) and Banlop (Itt), two of Apichatpong’s regular actors who also appear in his film, "Cemetery of Splendour". Like the film, this projection-performance presents the layers of reality and fantasy. Apichatpong fuses his memories with the actors’ and fictionalises the narrative. Here the people takes refuge in dreams while their land is on a brink of collapse, echoing Thailand’s present state of military dictatorship.
With Taiwan remaining in the grip of martial law in 1982, a group of filmmakers from that country set out to establish a cultural identity through cinema and to share it with the world. This engaging documentary looks at the movement's legacy.
Weerasethakul's contribution to an omnibus production exploring analogies between football and everyday life. The project was created by Mexican film director Daniel Gruener and originally broadcast during the 2014 FIFA World Cup.
This film depicts Bunleua Sulilat’s temple/sculpture garden 'Sala Keoku', located in northern Thailand. Passages of blackness sporadically dissolve under the fitful internal illumination of sparklers, which light up to reveal Sulilat’s unorthodox temple populated with a fantastical concrete menagerie of beasts and figures; the sculptures range from the broad, whale-like contours of a frog’s face, to a cavalcade of dogs on mopeds, to a pair of skeletons partially embracing as if sitting for a double portrait. These images are interspersed with those of an older Thai couple mysteriously wandering around the temple like wraiths, the woman’s plodding progress hampered by the use of crutches.
Apichatpong Weerasethakul's solo exhibition "PHOTOPHOBIA" is held commemorating the 5th anniversary of the opening of Kyoto City University of Arts Art Gallery @KCUA.
The original footage in Father was shot in 2003 by Weerasethakul’s brother when their father was undergoing kidney dialysis. Forever stuck in his memory, the artist reuses the footage here as well as in a prominent scene in his feature film Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives.
Made for the Venice Film Festival's 70th anniversary, seventy filmmakers made a short film between 60 and 90 seconds long on their interpretation of the future of cinema.
Blue Propeller is made to be shown with One Water. The fingernails were painted the color of the sky and the sea. But the sky was grey. The nail color instead matched the plane engine’s blue.
Tilda Swinton, a British actress and friend of Weerasethkul, organized Film on the Rocks, a film festival in the Maldives where she invited the artist to take part in the project. While he was with her, Weerasethakul asked Swinton to recall her dreams in front of his camera. One Water portrays a poignant friendship between the actress and filmmaker, who continue to collaborate today.
“The age of dejection.” This is how Director Lee Chatametikool remembers Thailand in 1997. Concrete Cloud is a film that tells us about the young men who survived an era of financial crisis. Mutt, who is working as a stockbroker in the United States, must suddenly return home when his father commits suicide. After the funeral, he runs into his old girlfriend, Sai. Meanwhile his younger brother Nic falls in love with Poupee, a schoolmate and neighbor. None of the relationships come easy, however. Each is harboring a secret and there is a big gap between dreams and reality. What links them together are memories—but memories alone cannot hold their relationships together in the face of harsh realities. As the characters in the film remember their pasts, the director ruminates on his own recollections of 1997, hence the scenes reminiscent of a ’90s music video. Overall, this film is really about time.
In collaboration with Lomo, an Austrian camera company, and Mubi, a global film website, Weerasethakul was invited to make a work to launch the new LomoKino, a portable motion picture camera. Ashes juxtaposes the intimacy of his daily routine with the destruction of memories and his observations of the dark side of Thailand’s social realities.
Created in celebration of the three-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, this short essay centres on a monologue delivered by a reincarnation of the philosopher in twenty-first century Thailand.
Cactus River is a diary of the time Apichatpong Weerasethakul visited a newlywed couple near the Mekong River.
Prominent film critic Tony Rayns has long been a supporter of Korean cinema. This film illustrates Rayns’ affection for Korean cinema through interviews of Korean cineastes that have a special affinity for him, including JANG Sun-woo, LEE Chang-dong and HONG Sang-soo among others.
Shifting between fact and fiction in a hotel situated along the Mekong River, a filmmaker rehearses a movie expressing the bonds between a vampire-like mother and daughter...
In memory of the Japanese earthquake on 3.11, each director presents a 3 minute and 11 second short film in tribute to those who were lost that day.
The official trailer for the 2011 CinDi FIlm Festival. An intimate choreography blurs the boundaries between stage curtain and screen.
Suffering from acute kidney failure, Boonmee has chosen to spend his final days surrounded by his loved ones in the countryside. Surprisingly, the ghost of his deceased wife appears to care for him, and his long lost son returns home in a non-human form. Contemplating the reasons for his illness, Boonmee treks through the jungle with his family to a mysterious hilltop cave—the birthplace of his first life.
A fluorescent tube illuminates an empty playground in the evening. Nearby a flash of light is projected on a makeshift screen. This outdoor movie is a portrait of a village repeatedly struck by lightning. As night falls, the silhouette figures of young men emerge, they are playing with a football raging with fire. They take turns kicking the ball which leaves illuminated trails in the grass. The lightning on the screen flickers amid the fire and the smoke rising from the ground. The game intensifies with each kick that sends the fireball soaring into the air. Finally the teens burn the screen and crowd around it to witness the blazing canvas, behind which is revealed the ghostly white beam of a projector. Phantoms of Nabua is part of the multi-platform Primitive project which focuses on a concept of remembrance and extinction and is set in the northeast of Thailand.
Petch, one of the young men of Nabua, composes and plays this song about his village. One evening, he sang a song to Weerasethakul’s film crew regarding an August event when the former members of the Communist Party of Thailand gathered to commemorate the first shoot out in the field more than 45 years ago. Weerasethakul layers Petch’s song with an image of his friend, Kamgiang, whose grandfather was killed by the soldiers in the field not far from his home.
A filmmaker captures images that characterize the violence and repression as well as the hope of rebirth and remembrance in northeastern Thailand.
An insightful documentary about Thai cinema, which features a colourful and long running film history, yet struggles as the industry attempts to move forward. This film examines the past and focuses on the Thai New Wave since 1997 by combining film clips, and interviews from Thai directors and others artists, like Asian hip-hop sensation Thaitanium, who are trying to create a more personal style of art.
There is a room at a Palace Museum that is filled with spirits. It accommodates countless of memories spanning several centuries. The room has observed the artifacts, the faces, the sounds, and the moving images. The room itself is a moving image, a moving vehicle. It is a spaceship that has been sailing through the landscapes and time, from the Ages of Stone, Bronze, the Greek, the Roman, the Communist, and the Tsai Ming-liang. Now the artifacts have disappeared, so as lives. We are in the age of extinction. (...)
A joyful shot recorded by Weerasethakul himself and two young men who become acquainted by filming each other in the back of a moving pickup truck. Though seemingly playful, the short film is a subtle portrait of migrant workers in the north of Thailand.
Made to celebrate the new year. A single firework travelling through the night sky.
Glistening objects from a jewelry collection inspired by carnivorous plants are transformed into a colourful sea of garden creatures through hand-drawn animations of roots, insects and various other organisms. A loving tribute to Weerasethakul's mother's garden. Commissioned by Dior; first presented at Musée de l’Orangerie, Jardin des Tuileries, Paris, to mark the opening of a new set of jewellery designed by Victoire de Castellane, 27 February 2007.
TEEM Nov 20, 9:53 min. TEEM Nov 21, 22:38 min. TEEM Nov 22, 27:31 min. Each projection in this work is a daily morning portrait of Teem, the artist’s partner. As winter approached in late 2007, Teem informed Weerasethakul that he would hibernate until February 2008. As a result, he slept a lot during this time while Weerasethakul observed and sometimes disrupted his partner’s mission with his mobile phone.
A story about director Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s parents who were both doctors, and his memories of growing up in a hospital environment.
In The Pilgrim Kamanita, a Buddhist novel written in 1906 by the Danish writer Karl Gjellerup, the protagonists are reborn as two stars and take centuries to recite their stories to each other, until they no longer exist. Morakot is a derelict and defunct hotel in the heart of Bangkok that opened its doors in the 1980's: a time when Thailand shifted gears into accelerated economic industrialization and a time when Cambodians poured into Thai refugee camps after the invasion of Vietnamese forces. It was a hosting time. Later, when the East Asian financial crisis struck in 1997, these reveries collapsed. Like Kamanita, the unchanged Morakot is a star burdened with (or fueled by) memories. Apichatpong collaborated with his three regular actors, who recounted their dreams, hometown life, bad moments, and love poems, to re-supply the hotel with new memories.
A group of people is in a boat traveling along Mekong River that stretches along the Thai-Laos border. They are running against the wind, anticipating a farewell. In the middle of the river, the lady head of the family casts the ashes off into the stream. The white dust merges with the muddy water. The boat makes a u-turn at the bridge that links two countries. The passengers are tired and start to drift off into their own world. The film disintegrates. The crew and the cast wander off in the river of simulation. The border links the worlds of the dead and of the living. The memory of an anonymous dead father lingers. The boat still moves on as the dusk arrives. Apichatpong and his crew traveled to Nong Khai, a small town near Mekong River, and recruited local villagers to participate in the project. For two days, the crew and cast reconstructed a fake ceremony and find a narrative.
The Anthem is a celebration of filmmaking and the viewing experience. In Thailand, before every cinema film screening, there will be a Royal Anthem before the feature presentation. The purpose is to honour the King. It is one of the rituals imbedded in Thai society to give a blessing to something or someone before certain ceremonies. The Anthem presents a 'Cinema Anthem' that praises and blesses the approaching feature for each screening. This audio-visual purification process is performed by three old ladies. They also channel energy to the audience in order to give them a clear mind.
Taking the recent tsunami in Asia as its starting point, the filmmakers have used the idea of a ghost seen wandering along the rocky coastline of a Thai island and, in a life-affirming gesture, they have invited some local children to direct the film for them, suggesting and filming the movements of the actor-ghost.
One of three films commissioned by the Jeonju International Film Festival in 2005. A couple escaped their family to look for a spiritual tree in the jungle. There is a song at night, a song that spoke about an innocent idea of love and a quest for happiness. Worldly Desires is an experimental project where I invited a filmmaker friend, Pimpaka Towira, to shoot the love story by day and the song by night. The story, Deep Red Bloody Night, was written by my assistant who wanted to reprise a forbidden love story in a more romantic time in the past. I picked a pop song, Will I be Lucky? to convey a sense of guiltless freedom one feels when being hit by love. The video is a little simulation of manners, dedicated to the memories of filmmaking in the jungle during the year 2001-2005. -Apichatpong Weerasethakul
The passionate relationship between two men with unusual consequences. The film is divided in two parts. The first half charts the modest attraction between two men in the sunny, relaxing countryside and the second half charts the confusion and terror of an unknown menace lurking deep within the jungle shadows.
Before Weerasethakul makes a new feature film, he conducts thorough research related to the topic of his interest. For his feature film, Tropical Malady, Apichatpong asked his colleague Ton to visit the army in the Kaeng Krachan Dam area to study the lives of soldiers and their daily routines. This video documents Ton during his research trip, which later became a reference for the main character in Tropical Malady.
A transvestite secret agent is sent on a mission to the Thai countryside.
Shot on a mobile phone and funded by Nokia, Thailand to promote their first phone with integrated camera.
One of several one-minute artists’ videos made for the Nelson Mandela Foundation’s 46664: Give 1 Minute of Art to AIDS campaign.
The story of a love affair that begins during a picnic on the Thai-Burmese border.
The soundtrack to a radio soap opera set in a luxury hotel is acted out by characters who are riding a ramshackle bus from Bangkok to the small town Nong Bua in Thailand's Northeast (Isaan). When the bus stops, the drama in the characters' real lives can be seen. In different cirumstances, it's not hard to imagine the characters - a young small-town girl (glamorous model), an older woman (hi-so boutique owner), an illegal Burmese immigrant (hotel waitress), half-Thai backpacker (handsome hotel owner), soldier (ladyboy hostess) and dodgy businessman (dodgy businessman) - assuming the lives of their larger-than-life soap opera alter egos.
A collaboration with a group of villagers on the periphery of Khon Kaen province in the northeast of Thailand, recording them as they agree to take turns to act scenes scripted from two episodes of the TV series 'Tong Prakaisad', a rags-to-riches TV soap, in the familiar surrounding of their homes.
Mock documentary following the escapades of three teenagers on an afternoon jaunt.
Apichatpong Weerasethakul brought an appetite for experimenÂtation to Thai cinema with his debut feature, an uncategorizable work that refracts documentary impressions of his homeland through the surrealist concept of the exquisite corpse game. Enlisting locals to contribute improvised narration to a simple tale, Apichatpong charts the collective construction of the fiction as each new encounter imbues it with unpredictable shades of fantasy and pathos.
The subject is a 10 year-old boy who is in charge of the microphone. He roams to places around Bangkok to gather sounds for the video. The sound indicates the direction he headed during the filming and displays his point of interests. The filmmaker is in charge of the image, film roughly along at the boy’s locations. The narrative of the film, presented in texts, is taken from a Thai comic book available around the place of the filming. This faces and places documentation can be viewed as a one-afternoon diary of a day out in Bangkok.
A depiction of the landscape, both metaphorically and realistically, of Panyi island.
0116643225059 is an early experimental film by Weerasethakul made during his time at SAIC. The work is about a long-distance telephone conversation between the filmmaker and his beloved mother in Khon Kaen, Thailand. Weerasethakul superimposed a photograph of his mother in her youth alongside his own image and his apartment in Chicago. It renders a strong bond between the artist and his family.
A short documentary by Apichatpong Weerasethakul about lives connected by radio.
An anthology film conceived as a love letter to cinema, with each director crafting their portion of the film during the pandemic.
The bas-relief represents Sarit Thanarat, former Thai prime minister who ruled Thailand in the early 1960s. This wall is also located next to a statue of Sarit, in the city of Khon Kaen, where Apichatpong Weerasethakul grew up. The artist represented Sarit Thanarat in various artworks, calling into question the value of his sculpture as an object of worship and as a glorification of the role of the army in Thai politics. For Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Sarit was a product of American involvement during the Cold War and an archetype of generals of the army who subsequently took power through coups d’état, including the most recent in 2014.
Jenjira Pongpas-Widner describes a dream in which she discovers her lifeless body in a field.
A Scottish orchid farmer visiting her ill sister in Bogota, Colombia, befriends a young musician and a French archaeologist in charge of monitoring a century-long construction project to tunnel through the Andes mountain range. Each night, she is bothered by increasingly loud bangs which prevent her from getting any sleep.
Decameron was shot in lockdown during the Thai monsoon season, in 2020. In a dark room, a woman removes insects from a mosquito net in order to cook them. The moving light she holds briefly reveals her face, the transparent panel of the mosquito net and the insects left outside of it.
Sakda Kaewbuadee (Tong) describes a dream in which he and his friend Somchai find themselves in a room full of a huge book collection.
The official trailer for the 2011 CinDi FIlm Festival. An intimate choreography blurs the boundaries between stage curtain and screen.
A family of 9 takes their grandmother on a merit-making trip to 9 temples in 1 day, hoping to prolong her life. But the trip takes an unexpected turn.
