The Films Of Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Delving into Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s films, this book uncovers a plethora of conceptual paradigms. Apichatpong's films frequently utilize rural Thailand as a backdrop, showcasing daily life, interactions, rituals, and customs, all infused with a Southeast Asian essence. This utilization of local imagery provides a national quality to his works, allowing a global audience to explore both urban and rural aspects of Thai society, along with discourses on history, culture, politics, and practices. Beyond the surface, the films also address universal and intricate themes, transcending cultural boundaries. The book delves into a range of lesser-explored aspects regarding the films and filmmaking of Apichatpong, developing fresh perspectives on the representation of nonhumans, hybrid forms, transmedia plot, technique, production among others. With meticulous analyses of his key works this interdisciplinary study unveils the threads that bind Apichatpong’s creative practice, innovative techniques, and philosophical insights. An essential read for cinephiles, scholars, and seekers of cinematic depth, this book uncovers the vibrant tapestry of meaning within Apichatpong’s enigmatic film-worlds.

Thai filmmaker Apichatpong "Joe" Weerasethakul is widely praised as a central figure in contemporary cinema. Trained in the United States as a visual artist, Weerasethakul stunned the film world with five innovative and dreamlike features made since 2000, including such award-winning films as Blissfully Yours, Tropical Malady, and Syndromes and a Century. James Quandt, one of the foremost film critics and curators working in North America today, has edited the first English-language book on Weerasethakul. Along with his essays, contributors include Benedict Anderson, Tony Rayns, Kong Rithdee, and the British actress Tilda Swinton.

Working outside the strict confines of the Thai film studio system, renowned Thai film director Apichatpong Weerasethakul (born 1970) has directed several acclaimed features and dozens of short films, including Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, winner of the prestigious 2010 Palme d'Or prize at Cannes; Tropical Malady, winner of a 2004 Cannes jury prize; and Syndromes and a Century, which premiered at the 63rd Venice Film Festival. Themes in Weerasethakul's films include dreams, nature, sexuality and Western perceptions of Thailand and Asia; the director also shows a preference for unconventional narrative structures, like placing titles/credits at the middle of a film, and for working with those who have no previous experience of acting. For Tomorrow For Tonight features new work exploring the theme of night through video, photographs and installation.

Nocturnal Fabulations is an essay in intercessing. This is not a book that is simply 'about' Apichatpong Weerasethakul, though it does engage his work in detail. It is a book that deeply questions what else might be at stake in setting up the conditions for collaboration across two genres: cinema and writing. This collective project is animated by a shared curiosity in the pragmatics of fabulation and its speculative gesture of bringing forth a people to come. In an encounter with Apichatpong's cinematic dreamscape, the concepts of ecology, vitality and opacity emerge to articulate an ethos of fabulation that deframes experience, recomposes subjectivity and unfixes time. This work was published by Saint Philip Street Press pursuant to a Creative Commons license permitting commercial use. All rights not granted by the work's license are retained by the author or authors.

Offering a fresh perspective on the work of internationally acclaimed filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul (born 1970), the Apitchapong Weerasethakul Sourcebook moves between scientific documents and personal documentary, interviews and epistolary dialogue, the cinematic and the poetic. In its multimodal approach the Sourcebook reflects Weerasethakul's artistic practice in which he portrays the everyday alongside supernatural elements while suggesting a distortion between fact and folklore, history and storytelling. Weerasethakul's personal writings and interviews, much of which is translated here for the first time, draw out his deep commitment to stories often excluded in history in and out of Thailand: voices of the poor and the ill, marginalized beings and those silenced and censored for personal and political reasons. The Sourcebook includes materials on such topics as implanted memories in mice, caves in Laos left over from the Indochina wars, new methods for listening underwater and meditations on light and darkness, plus interviews between Weerasethakul and leading art historians as well as texts drawn from his personal library. The Sourcebook invites readers into Weerasethakul's intimate exploration of his influences--in his words, "like [a] stream of consciousness, suffocated by the data."

Nocturnal Fabulations is an essay in intercessing. This is not a book that is simply ?about? Apichatpong Weerasethakul, though it does engage his work in detail. It is a book that deeply questions what else might be at stake in setting up the conditions for collaboration across two genres: cinema and writing. This collective project is animated by a shared curiosity in the pragmatics of fabulation and its speculative gesture of bringing forth a people to come. In an encounter with Apichatpong?s cinematic dreamscape, the concepts of ecology, vitality and opacity emerge to articulate an ethos of fabulation that deframes experience, recomposes subjectivity and unfixes time.

A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org. Many recent works of contemporary art, performance, and film turn a spotlight on sleep, wresting it from the hidden, private spaces to which it is commonly relegated. At the Edges of Sleep considers sleep in film and moving image art as both a subject matter to explore onscreen and a state to induce in the audience. Far from negating action or meaning, sleep extends into new territories as it designates ways of existing in the world, in relation to people, places, and the past. Defined positively, sleep also expands our understanding of reception beyond the binary of concentration and distraction. These possibilities converge in the work of Thai filmmaker and artist Apichatpong Weerasethakul, who has explored the subject of sleep systematically throughout his career. In examining Apichatpong’s work, Jean Ma brings together an array of interlocutors—from Freud to Proust, George Méliès to Tsai Ming-liang, Weegee to Warhol—to rethink moving images through the lens of sleep. Ma exposes an affinity between cinema, spectatorship, and sleep that dates to the earliest years of filmmaking, and sheds light upon the shifting cultural valences of sleep in the present moment.

World Cinema and the Essay Film examines the ways in which essay film practices are deployed by non-Western filmmakers in specific local and national contexts, in an interconnected world. The book identifies the essay film as a political and ethical tool to reflect upon and potentially resist the multiple, often contradictory effects of globalization. With case studies of essayistic works by John Akomfrah, Nguyen Trinh Thi and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, amongst many others, and with a photo-essay by Trinh T. Min-ha and a discussion of Frances Calvert's work, it expands current research on the essay film beyond canonical filmmakers and frameworks, and presents transnational perspectives on what is becoming a global film practice.