MASTERCLASS
APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL
This year’s winner of the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, Apichatpong Weerasethakul delivered a masterclass on Wednesday, December 8th at John Cassavetes Theater, within the framework of the 51st Thessaloniki International Film Festival and presented his entire body of work as a filmmaker, as well as a short film and multimedia project artist.
The Thessaloniki International Film Festival Director, Mr. Dimitris Eipides welcomed the artist and expressed his joy over the filmmaker’s presence in the 51st Festival. “After a lot of efforts, we managed to ensure the presence of the awarded director, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, a really important artist who is in the limelight of international attention.”, noted Mr. Eipides.
The artistic director of the “Independence Days” section Lefteris Adamidis, presented the artist to the audience and informed the spectators that they would have the chance to admire almost the entire body of his work as an artist, including short films and clips.
“It was very hard to gather all my short films so as to present them to you, but I pulled it through thanks to the help of the people of the Festival. I will show you a part of my work that is not widely known to the public.”, underlined Mr. Weerasethakul. The curtain went up with the screening of an extract from his new project, entitled “Primitive”, where he focuses on young people living in Thai villages and on their everyday habits.
The director revealed that he spent most of his childhood years in the hospitals of his homeland, where his parents worked as doctors. School and cinema had their share too, as the cinema hall represented a way out of the everyday reality. Even though he studied architecture, cinema was the art that won his heart and in particular experimental cinema, with which he got acquainted for the first time in the USA. “I was wondering for a long time whether I could survive financially and professionally by making movies, a strictly personal process, as I far as I was concerned. My introversion, my perceptions of life led me to experimental cinema, where the artist is completely free to express himself.”, explained Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Moreover, the director described to the audience the singular way with which he works with his actors: “I always talk with them, I ask them to be themselves and the film evolves through an exchange of views and the shaping of a common perspective.”, he remarked.
While extracts from his black and white film Mysterious Object at Noon were screened, the artist pointed out that this film is an experiment on the different ways to tell a story, using different people. “Whenever I had money, I traveled in the villages of Thailand and I asked the villagers to tell me a story and then I asked somebody else, in a different place, to pick it up from where the previous had left it. The result was a single story with multiple storytellers.”, explained the director.
In his film Blissfully Yours which revolves around happiness, Apichatpong Weerasethakul took on experimenting with the concept of time, while he engaged in working with a group of actors, with whom he continues to work up till now. Apichatpong Weerasethakul went on to reveal that during the shooting of his film Tropical Malady, which in reality is a film about love, he was forced to come in terms with a personal loss, as his father had passed away, an incident that projected to a certain extent, negative vibes over the film. “This film made me become more extroverted as I had to work with a lot of actors and an entire crew of technicians. When the film was selected for the Cannes Film Festival, I felt I suppressed myself to get out my shell, to find financiers, to talk with people. At that point, I had serious doubts as to whether I could make a career as a director”, he stressed.
While he presented extracts from his movie The Adventure of Iron Pussy, a trash movie as he called it, Apichatpong Weerasethakul said that he had directed four TV series episodes with the same title and plot and later on, he used one of those as his basis and built a feature length film upon it. “The film revolves around a character who tries to fight crime. While I was making the film, my way of thinking lacked…thinking”, he stressed in a humorous way, so as to accentuate the total freedom of expression he enjoyed while making this film.
His father’s loss, as the artist admitted, had an impact on him and as a result, his film Syndromes and a Century includes autobiographical aspects. “This movie is a dream, a mixture of my present and my past, dedicated to my parents.”, pointed out the director. He went on to say that the censorship committee in Thailand cut a scene that portrayed a doctor drinking alcohol while he was on duty. “I met with members of the committee and among other things, they advised to go back to the Film School and learn how to make movies. The law has changed now, there is an evaluation system supervised by the Ministry of Culture, but they have still the right to censor a movie.”, he said.
Afterwards, Apichatpong Weerasethakul introduced the audience to a series of video art installations and projects he has mounted in galleries and museums all over the world. Through his work, the artist explores the concepts of narration, time, happiness, memory and politics. He often used features of his country, as well as of his everyday life, in his art projects and adapted them to the culture of other countries and regions. “Within the framework of a project, we let many balloons fly up the sky in Thailand, in Mexico, in Amsterdam. Each balloon had a postcard on it with the phrases “What is happiness to you?” and “What happiness means” written on the postcard. The answers we received were of a great interest and revealed the differences between people in terms of their culture. “, he noted.
In his latest project entitled “Primitive” –a part of which is the film Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives that won the Palm d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and is screened at the 51st TIFF- the artist explores the concept of memory through metaphysical stories of reincarnation and with the help of people he had met, who claim to have memories from their past life. “The spark of inspiration came from a little book that a monk gave me, entitled A Man Who Can Recall His Past Lives. For a long time though, I couldn’t find the way to turn this inspiration into a movie.”, explained the director. On the occasion of his film Primitive, Apichatpong Weerasethakul embarked on a journey, pictures of which were projected in the Masterclass, with the purpose of interviewing people who claim they can recall memories from their past lives and managed to elaborate a film that explores the paths of memory and time.
When asked to comment on the issue of censorship in Thailand, as well as on the political status of his country, Mr. Weerasethakul mentioned that in his film Syndromes and a Century, which was censored, he replaced the scenes that were cut with black spaces, as a sign of protest. He added that even though the law has changed, there are still movies that are being censored. “The political status reflects on me, as well as on my way of thinking. Thailand seems a peaceful country, but the presence of violence is intense. I believe that my films in the future will be more politically-minded.”, concluded the director.
