Gl asgow FILM
FESTIVAL
Apichatpong Weerasethakul (right)
sgow Gla S H O R T F I L M F E S T I V A L
A L L N I G H T L O N G Scott Henderson chats to award-winning director Apichatpong Weerasethakul, whose work will screen as part of an overnight fi lm experience at Glasgow Short Film Festival
installations
I t’s a rare i lmmaker who continues making short i lms having embarked on their feature i lm career. Rarer still is the director who wins the Palme d’Or and still can be found tinkering and experimenting with cinematic technologies like Super 8. Like his Cannes-winning Uncle Boonmee, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s shorts are enigmatic, subtly humourous, meditative, often ethereal affairs – in fact, it’s hard to think of a better way to experience them than in an overnight marathon at Glasgow’s CCA.
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As a short i lmmaker you’ve been prolii c throughout your career, working on feature i lms hasn’t changed that. What is it about shorts that keeps you coming back? Feature i lmmaking takes a long time to make; short i lm is a great help in changing the inertia, the rhythm. Most of my short i lms are not big productions. Making them allows me to be more intimate with the camera and the subjects.
You’re shooting on everything from Super 8 to digital. How does the practical or artistic intersect in your camera choice? When you don’t consider what you do work, you take pleasure in it as if you are a child, immersing yourself in it with full curiosity. Different camera ‘eyes’ excite me and stimulate the i lmmaking because I think this craft always ties in with technology and invention, since when we were in caves and scratching images on the rocky surfaces. What do you recall about your i rst short i lmmaking experience? I was working on 16mm i lm. Afterwards, I spent more time in the darkroom than the shooting. I somehow enjoyed the calculations of frames, exposures. It’s intimate and suits my character well. I remember the anticipation awaiting a roll of i lm from the lab, putting it on a projector, and making more calculated adjustments. This ritual is no more.
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these Are there short i lmmakers in Thailand, or elsewhere, whose work you especially admire? talented i lmmakers: Pathompon I Tesprateep, he works on 16mm i lm, lyrical and political. Sompot Chidgasoronpongse, my assistant who is like my twin, intellectually. He made a i lm called Railway Sleepers, which you can sleep in. Chulayarnnon Siriphol, he is attracted to cosmic manifestation, a fatalist, an artist. Taiki Sakpisit, a man of little compromise. Wichanon Somumjarn, he’s from Khon Kaen, the same town I was from in the northeast [of Thailand]. He has captured the life, the mundane of us so well. Sutthirat Supaparinya, she’s a media artist. She documents places that are changing, and places that refuse to change.
How do you feel about your work being shown in non-traditional cinema spaces? I think we are in a transitional period, like when we moved from silent to talkies, black and white to colour. The bridge is littered with subpar materials before we i nd solid ones to build a strong bridge. I think VR is the direction we want to cross towards. We try to eliminate the frame, to make cinema (or whatever you want to call it) closer to dream. At GSFF, your short i lms are being screened as part of an overnight performance – how does this experience i t your work? I encourage the organiser to bring some beds, and the audiences to bring pillows, sheets. I hope that at one point in the night, one doesn’t need to interpret meanings but let the image and sound l ow like a river. You cannot control it, just marvel. I also think the experience reminds me of when I was young and slept in the movies that my parents took me to see. The drifting, the youth, the comfort of this dark cave . . .
Apichatpong Weerasethakul All-Nighter, CCA, Glasgow, Sat 17 Mar. Glasgow Short Film Festival, various venues, Wed 14–Sun 18 Mar.
1 Feb–31 Mar 2018 THE LIST 25 1 Feb–31 Mar 2018 THE LIST 25