Apichatpong Weerasethakul is a key figure in recent Thai film and a highly original moving-image artist. He studied architecture at Khon Kaen University before completing a Master of Fine Arts in filmmaking at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Influenced by American experimental film, Weerasethakul is one of a small group of independent filmmakers working outside the Thai studio system; his video installations, shorts and feature films explore the genres of documentary and fiction in uniquely Thai contexts. Thai television, radio and comics provide story elements that may be enacted or embroidered by the characters that drive Weerasethakul’s films.
Syndromes and a Century premiered in competition at the Venice Film Festival 2006 and is the final part in Weerasethakul’s ‘jungle trilogy’, alongside Blissfully Yours (Le Prix Un Certain Regard, Cannes Film Festival 2002) and Tropical Malady (Prix du Jury, Cannes Film Festival 2004). The Australian premiere screening will take place on the opening weekend of APT5 at 7.00pm on Sunday 3 December, introduced by the filmmaker.
0016643225059 (1994)
Like the Relentless Fury of the Pounding Waves (1995) / All Ages
thirdworld (1997)
Mysterious Object at Noon (Dokfa nai meuman) (2000) / Ages 15+
Haunted Houses (Thai Version) (2001) / All Ages
Blissfully Yours (Sud Sanaeha) (2002) / Ages 15+
Nokia Shorts (2003)
The Adventure of Iron Pussy (Hua Jai Tor Ra Nong) (2003) / Ages 15+
This and a Million More Lights (2003)
Tropical Malady (Sud Pralad) 2004 / Ages 15+
Worldly Desires (2005)
Ghost of Asia (2005)
Syndromes and a Century (Sang Sattawat) (2006) / Ages 15+
4.00pm Friday 2 February (Apichatpong Weerasethakul Shorts) / Cinema A
16MM, COLOUR, 5 MINS, THAILAND, THAI (ENGLISH SUBTITLES) / DIRECTOR/SCRIPT/CINEMATOGRAPHY/EDITOR: APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL / RIGHTS: APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL / SCREENING FORMAT: BETACAM SP
The filmmaker dials 00166… to speak to his mother in Thailand during a long absence from home. In the film, memory and longing pervades the everyday space of an apartment; a voice on the line and a photograph underline absence.
Screening weekly 2.30pm Thursdays (with thirdworld + Ghost of Asia) / Cinema B
16MM AND VIDEO, B. & W., 30 MINS, THAILAND, THAI (ENGLISH SUBTITLES) / DIRECTOR/SCRIPT/CINEMATOGRAPHY: APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL I CAST: PIYAPORN TANANUPAPPISAL, JUTHAMANEE TANANUPAPPISAL, NOPPADOL TUNGSAKUL, TAWIN JAIDEE, CHATSAKKARIN PAHUKUL / PRINT SOURCE: KICK THE MACHINE / RIGHTS: APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL / SCREENING FORMAT: BETACAM SP
This impressionistic short film, depicting a hot day in Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s hometown of Khon Kaen, is woven together from location shots, photographs, and the soundtrack of a radio play — a popular form of entertainment in Thailand. Weerasethakul captures the livelihoods of ordinary Thai people connected by radio, as the melodramatic radio play The Sea Goddess is transmitted to different locations. Through this rich layering of images, sound, and subtitled text, a real and a fictional world merge. Like the Relentless Fury of the Pounding Waves shows the genesis of Weerasethakul’s unique approach to filmmaking as a poetic layering and transposing of memory, illusion, popular narrative and documentary.
Screening weekly 2.30pm Thursdays (with Like the Relentless Fury of the Pounding Waves + Ghost of Asia) / Cinema B
16MM COLOUR, 17MINS, THAILAND, THAI (ENGLISH SUBTITLES) / DIRECTOR/CINEMATOGRAPHY/EDITOR: APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL / SOUND: PAISIT PHANPRUKSACHAT, ADHINAN ADULAYASIS / CAST:CHUMNAN BOONYAPUTHIPONG, PAISIT PHANPRUKSACHAT, APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL, NAPPAPORN KONKIRATI / PRODUCTION CO: 9/6 CINEMAFACTORY / PRINT SOURCE: KICK THE MACHINE / RIGHTS: APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL / SCREENING FORMAT: BETACAM SP
Everyday moments on the southern Thai island of Panyi are depicted in thirdworld. The ironic title refers to the ascription of backwardness to South-East Asian cultures. Drawing on the raw quality of 16mm black-and-white film, Apichatpong Weerasethakul experiments with cinematic conventions for viewing landscapes and people: postcard-like images of rooms, landscapes and villages; subjects unaware of the director’s recording apparatus depicted only by their hands and feet. A formalist study of representation and the incongruity of sound and image across all of Weerasethakul’s films introduce into his work a heightened, poetic register.
7.00pm Friday 2 February / Cinema A
1.30pm Wednesday 7 February / Cinema A
16MM, B. & W., 85 MINS, THAILAND, THAI (ENGLISH SUBTITLES) / DIRECTOR/SCRIPT: APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL / PRODUCERS: GRIDTHIYA GAWEEWONG, MINGMONGKOL SONAKUL, APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL / CINEMATOGRAPHY: GRIDTHIYA GAWEEWONG, APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL / EDITOR: MINGMONGKOL SONAKUL / SOUND: PAISIT PHANPRUCKSACHAT / CAST: DUANGJA HIRANSRI, KONGKEIRT KOMSIRI, SAISIRI XOOMSAI, SOMSRI PINYOPOL, TO HANUDOMLAPR / PRODUCTION CO: 9/6 CINEMAFACTORY / PRINT SOURCE: KICK THE MACHINE / RIGHTS: APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL / SCREENING FORMAT: 35MM
Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s experiment in collective storytelling was inspired by the Surrealist game ‘Exquisite Corpse’, in which players draw a part of a picture (usually a figure), or write a line of a story, without awareness of the whole. Shooting ‘on the road’, the director and his small crew asked people they met throughout the country to contribute the next lines of a story about a handicapped boy and his tutor, a woman named Dogfar. The interviewees — muay thai kickboxers, grandmothers, video game-saturated school children — all participate enthusiastically, employing uniquely Thai modes of storytelling.
4.00pm Friday 2 February (Apichatpong Weerasethakul Shorts) / Cinema A
DIGITAL VIDEO, COLOUR, 60 MINS, THAILAND, THAI (ENGLISH SUBTITLES) / DIRECTOR/CINEMATOGRAPHY: APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL / SOUND: SOONTARA PINWISAI / PRODUCTION CO: KICK THE MACHINE, LA-ONG DAO COMPANY LIMITED / PRINT SOURCE: KICK THE MACHINE / RIGHTS: APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL / SCREENING FORMAT: BETACAM SP
Haunted Houses is Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s take on the impact of soap dramas upon the lives of rural Thais. After 8.00pm, several million houses in the country are ‘haunted' by popular soaps. The Thai version is the first work of the ‘Haunted Houses’ series, and was directly scripted from two episodes of a popular Thai television series about melodramatic love and the problems of the wealthy. Weerasethakul then travelled to six remote villages and asked villagers to act out the script. The actors playing the characters constantly change as the location moves from one village to another.
7.00pm Wednesday 6 December, introduced by Apichatpong Weerasethakul / Cinema A
2.00pm Sunday 17 December / Cinema A
35MM, COLOUR, 122 MINS, THAILAND, THAI AND BURMESE (ENGLISH SUBTITLES) / DIRECTOR/SCRIPT: APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL / PRODUCERS: ERIC CHAN, CHARLES DE MEAUX / CINEMATOGRAPHY: SAYOMBHU MUKDEEPROM / EDITOR: LEE CHATAMETIKOOL / ART DIRECTION: AKEKARAT HOMLAOR, ARTHIT MAHASRI / SOUND: TEEKADET VUCHARADHANIN, LEE CHATAMETIKOOK / CAST: KANOKPRN TONGARAM, MIN OO, JENJIRA JANSUDA / PRODUCTION CO: LA-ONG DAO COMPANY LET, KICK THE MACHINE / PRINT SOURCE: KICK THE MACHINE / RIGHTS: APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL
Blissfully Yours is a languid, leisurely road movie that follows two Thai women and a man who has immigrated illegally from Burma, as they attempt to steal away from the responsibilities of their daily lives in order to experience a time and space of eroticism and relaxation. Influenced by Buddhist notions of suffering and attachment, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s prize-winning film uses amateur actors and long takes to poetically capture the politics of happiness among Thailand’s working classes, and the plight of displaced people. It won the Circle of Dutch Film Journalists (KNF) Award at the Rotterdam Film Festival 2003.
4.00pm Friday 2 February (Apichatpong Weerasethakul Shorts) / Cinema A
DIGITAL BETACAM, COLOUR, 2 MINS, THAILAND, THAI (ENGLISH SUBTITLES) / DIRECTOR/SCRIPT/CINEMATOGRAPHY: APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL / MUSIC: MASATO HATANAKA / PRODUCTION CO: KICK THE MACHINE / PRINT SOURCE/RIGHTS: APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL / SCREENING FORMAT: BETACAM SP
A body in close-up, erotic images on television, a swimmer in a pool — Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s contribution to Nokia Shorts experiments with the formal quality of images created from a mobile phone camera.
12.00pm Tuesday 5 December, introduced by Apichatpong Weerasethakul / Cinema A
Screening weekly from 10 December 3.00pm Sundays / Cinema B
DIGITAL VIDEO, COLOUR, 90 MINS, THAILAND, THAI (ENGLISH SUBTITLES) / DIRECTORS/SCRIPT: APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL, MICHAEL SHAOWANASAI / PRODUCERS: PEYANAN CHANTRAKLOM, PHEERAYA PROMMACHAT / CINEMATOGRAPHY: SURACHET THONGME / EDITOR: PANU TATWISETWONG / ART DIRECTION: AKEKARAT HOMLAOR / MUSIC: ANIMAL FARM / CAST: MICHAEL SHAWANASAI, KRISSADA TERRENCE, DARUNEE KRITBOONYALAI, JUTHARAT ATTAKORN, VARIN SACHDEV / PRODUCTION CO: GMM GRAMMY AND APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL / PRINT SOURCE/RIGHTS: GMM GRAMMY / SCREENING FORMAT: BETACAM SP
Apichatpong Weerasethakul brings his signature visual style to this third installment of American-born Thai visual artist Michael Shaowanasi’s cult ‘Iron Pussy’ series, begun on low-budget video in the late 1990s. Shaowanasai co-directs and stars as secret agent Iron Pussy, a heroine in drag who uses her powers of seduction to investigate money laundering, drug manufacturing and terrorist plots within high society. The most ambitious of the series to date, the film mixes musical, Western and urban action cinema styles in a hilarious and affectionate tribute to genre cinema.
4.00pm Friday 2 February (Apichatpong Weerasethakul Shorts) / Cinema A
DIGITAL VIDEO, COLOUR, 1 MIN, SILENT / DIRECTOR/CINEMATOGRAPHY: APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL / PRINT SOURCE: APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL / SCREENING FORMAT: BETACAM SP
A strobing fluorescent light inter-cuts scenes from an urban swimming pool; a young boy tempts the water.
7.00pm Friday 8 December, introduced by Apichatpong Weerasethakul / Cinema A
2.30pm Wednesday 13 December / Cinema A
35MM, COLOUR, 118MINS, THAILAND, THAI (ENGLISH SUBTITLES) / DIRECTOR/SCRIPT: APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL / PRODUCER: CHARLES DE MEAUX / CINEMATOGRAPHY: JARIN PENGPANITCH, VICHIT TANAPANITCH, JEAN-LOUIS VIALARD / EDITOR: LEE CHATAMETIKOOL, JACOPO QUADRI / ART DIRECTION: AKEKARAT HOMLAOR / SOUND: AKRITCHALERM KALAYANAMITR / MUSIC: NUTCHA WEERANUKUL, GANDHI ANANTAGANT, RUNG, JAY / CAST: BANLOP LOMNOI, SAKDA KAEWBUADEE / PRODUCTION CO: ANNA SANDERS FILMS, TIFA, THOKE+MOEBIUS, DOWNTOWN PICTURES, KICK THE MACHINE / PRINT SOURCE/RIGHTS: CELLULOID DREAMS
The original Thai title of this beautifully constructed exploration of first love, carnality and longing, translates as ‘beast’ or ‘monster’. Tropical Malady depicts a burgeoning attraction between a young soldier, Ken and an uneducated country boy, Tong. Director Apichatpong’s visual language then implodes into myth and allegory in the film’s second half, as the psychological consequences of the boys’ passion are played out in a menacing Thai jungle setting. Apichatpong sites the adventure tales of Thai author Noi Intanon, and director, Jacques Tourneur (I Walked With a Zombie (1943) and the original Cat People (1942)) as inspiration for this sensuous, structuralist romance-come-thriller. French film journal Cahiers du cinéma identified Tropical Malady as the best film of 2004.
12 noon Monday 4 December, introduced by Apichatpong Weerasethakul / Cinema A
BETACAM SP, COLOUR, 40 MINS, THAILAND/SOUTH KOREA, THAI (ENGLISH SUBTITLES) / DIRECTOR: APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL, PIMPAKA TOWIRA / PRODUCER: APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL / SCRIPT: SOMPOT CHIDGASORNPONGSE / CINEMATOGRAPHY: SAYOMBHU NUKDEEPROM, SIVAROJ KONGSAKUL / EDITOR: APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL, SOMPOT CHIDGASORNPONGSE / ART DIRECTION: AKEKARAT HONLAOR / PRODUCTION CO + PRINT SOURCE: KICK THE MACHINE / RIGHTS: APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL
This fragmented short work, a formal study of the filmmaking process, is also a landscape film drawn from Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s memories of shooting his feature Tropical Malady in the jungle from 2001 to 2005. We observe a film crew through the jungle branches: a Thai soap opera about a runaway couple whose love is forbidden (written by Weerasethakul’s assistant) is being filmed by day, and a music video is being shot by night. The organisation of narrative into day and night sequences disintegrates as the pop-musical rhapsody, ‘Will I Be Lucky’, comes to penetrate the austere, melodramatic dialogue of the TV script. Deadpan humour, digital camera work and original framing devices have occasioned comparisons to the work of Morgan Fisher, Tsai Ming-Lang and Owen Land.
Screening weekly 2.30pm Thursdays (with thirdworld + Like the Relentless Fury of the Pounding Waves) / Cinema B
BETACAM, COLOUR, 10 MINS, THAILAND/FRANCE, THAI (ENGLISH SUBTITLES) / DIRECTORS: APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL, CHRISTELLE LHEUREUX / PRODUCERS: CITÉ SIAM, ALLIANCE FRANÇAISE, (BANGKOK), FRENCH EMBASSY (BANGKOK)/ SCRIPT: JANTRAKANSORN SUKKRAJANG, SAKDA POKA, NANTAWAT POONPEUM / CAST: SAKDA KAEWBUADEE, DECHA WOONGON / MUSIC: GANDHR ANANTAGANT / PRODUCTION CO +PRINT SOURCE: KICK THE MACHINE / RIGHTS: APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL / SCREENING FORMAT: BETACAM SP
Ghost of Asia takes the recent Tsunami in Asia as its starting point to celebrate the creative spirits of human lives lost at sea. A collaboration between Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Christelle Lheureux, the film was inspired by the idea of a ghost character who lives and wanders along the rocky coastline of a Thai island. Three children are invited by the directors to make a movie using this idea, with a single actor to play the ghost for their camera. The film is structured to follow the children’s real-time directorial decisions, as they project fantasy and possibility into the flesh of their actor–ghost. An otherworldly approach to disaster and human geography, Ghost of Asia celebrates filmmaking as a form of spiritual play.
7.00pm Sunday 3 December, introduced by Apichatpong Weerasethakul / Cinema A
1.00pm Sunday 10 December / Cinema A
35MM, COLOUR, DOLBY SRD, 104MINS, THAILAND, THAI, (ENGLISH SUBTITLES) / DIRECTOR/PRODUCER/SCRIPT: APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL / PRODUCERS: PANTHAM THONGSANG, CHARLES DE MEAUX / CINEMATOGRAPHY: SAYOMBHU MUKDEEPROM / EDITOR: LEE CHATAMETIKOOL / MUSIC: KANTEE ANANTAGANT / SOUND: AKRITCHALERM KALAYANAMITR, SHIMIZU KOICHI / CAST: NANTARAT SAWADDIKUL, JARUCHAI IAMARAM NU NIMSOMBOON, SOPHON PUKANOK, JENJIRA PONGPAS / ART DIRECTION: AKEKARAT HOMLAOR / PRODUCTION CO: KICK THE MACHINE, NEW CROWNED HOPE, ANNA SANDERS FILMS, BACKUP FILMS, TIFA / PRINT SOURCE: FORTISSIMO FILMS
A fictional tribute to the love and work of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s parents (both doctors), Syndromes and a Century spans two hospital settings separated by 40 years. A painfully shy young man courts Dr Aroon who is drawn instead to an orchid expert, and a young monk has an unexplained attraction to a dentist. Exploring the rhythms of attraction and hospital life, the film draws also upon an experience of architecture ingrained into the filmmaker’s memories of his parents’ workplace. Syndromes and a Century is one of seven films commissioned by the New Crowned Hope Festival, part of Vienna's Mozart Year in 2006. Its exhibition as part of APT5 is an Australian premiere which follows the world premiere in September 2006, in competition at the Venice Film Festival.
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Street address
Stanley Place
South Bank
Brisbane
Australia
Postal address
PO Box 3686
South Brisbane
Queensland 4101
Australia
Telephone
+ 61 (0)7 3840 7303
Fax
+ 61 (0)7 3844 8865
Opening hours
Monday to Friday 10.00am - 5.00pm
Saturday and Sunday 9.00am - 5.00pm
ABN
66 758 806 810
