APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL
The Thai film-maker Apichatpong Weerasethakul trained as a fine artist, and his highly controversial and challenging reflections and techniques have opened up new horizons for contemporary Thai cinema. His works take as their subject matter the realities of everyday life, blurring the lines between fictitious drama and documentary, and interweaving a mutual resonance between the two forms in order to create a new genre of film. His nonlinear, fragmented narrative method frequently surprises and puzzles viewers who expect plot, meaning, or deep symbolic metaphors.
Weerasethakul's feature-length film Mysterious Object at Noon (2000), for example, is closer to a prose poem than to a conventional movie, Inspired by the Surrealist game "Exquisite Corpse" (in which participants randomly select words and then link them together into sentences, which are then developed into stories), it begins with a mysterious murder case but becomes loose and disassociated, gradually relinquishing focus until no connection remains between the beginning and end of the film.
Mysterious Object at Noon contains re-edited footage from the earlier black-and-white short film thirdworld (1997). Much like his other works, the film puts little stress on plot and meaning; Weerasethakul's aim was to depict the reality of his own life. Combining scenic shots of Panyi Island in southern Thailand with interior scenes and enigmatic dialogue, he deliberately cultivates a coarse aesthetic quality, playing to western stereotypes of "undeveloped countries. His high-contrast black-and-white images blot out any sense of "pastoral," romantic Yearnings or exoticism. Viewers never see the narrators' faces, only their hands and feet, implying that they are "every man" whose difficulties in life are universal. The tranquil images in thirdworld provide a subtly unsettling reflection on reality, touching on aspects of ordinary people's lives that have been forgotten or ignored in the modern urban experience.
http://www.the-artists.org/ArtistView.cfm?id=89507089-5804-4AA5-A75F4ADDC653C400
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_MOPAM/is_138/ai_110472621
http://movies.yahoo.com/shop?d=hv&id=1808448738&cf=info&intl=us
http://www.iacnet.ne.jp/-sair/artists/2001/joe/article01_e.html
http://www.photography-now.com/artists/K10417.html
http://www.kickthemachine.com/about%20filmmaker.htm
http://hk.news.yahoo.com/040523/10/10d4k.html
http://www4.cca.gov.tw/movie/festivals/world_13_b.htm
http://hk.news.yahoo.com/040523/12/10cx2.html
Born 1970 in Khon Kaen, Thailand
Lives and works in Bangkok, Thailand
thirdworld , 1997
16 mm, 17'
Courtesy the artist
16 mm, 17'
Courtesy the artist
The Thai film-maker Apichatpong Weerasethakul trained as a fine artist, and his highly controversial and challenging reflections and techniques have opened up new horizons for contemporary Thai cinema. His works take as their subject matter the realities of everyday life, blurring the lines between fictitious drama and documentary, and interweaving a mutual resonance between the two forms in order to create a new genre of film. His nonlinear, fragmented narrative method frequently surprises and puzzles viewers who expect plot, meaning, or deep symbolic metaphors.
Weerasethakul's feature-length film Mysterious Object at Noon (2000), for example, is closer to a prose poem than to a conventional movie, Inspired by the Surrealist game "Exquisite Corpse" (in which participants randomly select words and then link them together into sentences, which are then developed into stories), it begins with a mysterious murder case but becomes loose and disassociated, gradually relinquishing focus until no connection remains between the beginning and end of the film.
Mysterious Object at Noon contains re-edited footage from the earlier black-and-white short film thirdworld (1997). Much like his other works, the film puts little stress on plot and meaning; Weerasethakul's aim was to depict the reality of his own life. Combining scenic shots of Panyi Island in southern Thailand with interior scenes and enigmatic dialogue, he deliberately cultivates a coarse aesthetic quality, playing to western stereotypes of "undeveloped countries. His high-contrast black-and-white images blot out any sense of "pastoral," romantic Yearnings or exoticism. Viewers never see the narrators' faces, only their hands and feet, implying that they are "every man" whose difficulties in life are universal. The tranquil images in thirdworld provide a subtly unsettling reflection on reality, touching on aspects of ordinary people's lives that have been forgotten or ignored in the modern urban experience.
http://www.the-artists.org/ArtistView.cfm?id=89507089-5804-4AA5-A75F4ADDC653C400
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_MOPAM/is_138/ai_110472621
http://movies.yahoo.com/shop?d=hv&id=1808448738&cf=info&intl=us
http://www.iacnet.ne.jp/-sair/artists/2001/joe/article01_e.html
http://www.photography-now.com/artists/K10417.html
http://www.kickthemachine.com/about%20filmmaker.htm
http://hk.news.yahoo.com/040523/10/10d4k.html
http://www4.cca.gov.tw/movie/festivals/world_13_b.htm
http://hk.news.yahoo.com/040523/12/10cx2.html