A Million More Lights: The Short Films of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, programs 1&2

Los Angeles Filmforum and UCLA Film and Television Archive present:

A Million More Lights: The Short Films of Apichatpong Weerasethakul

At the Billy Wilder Theater @ The Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90024

Apichatpong Weerasethakul in person!

Online tickets sold out; standby line only.

Internationally acclaimed Thai filmmaker and media artist Apichatpong Weerasethakul has won countless accolades for his feature films, including Tropical Malady (2004), Syndromes and a Century (2006), and 2010 Palme d’Or winner Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives.  Predating and continuing parallel to his work in features, he has also produced an eclectic and expansive body of short films, ranging in length from one minute to one hour, and covering extremely varied and potent cinematic ground.

These four programs, curated by Weerasethakul, place his earliest films made at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the mid-1990s alongside rarely seen commissions, adapted installation pieces, and festival favorites like Mekong Hotel (2012) and A Letter to Uncle Boonmee (2009).

In this unprecedented, complete retrospective of Weerasethakul’s short work, his unique and personal cinema takes complex form, defined by images and ideas of mysterious sensuality and poetry, heightened states of emotion and awareness, and a blurring of boundaries between reality, dream, and myth.

A Million More Lights: The Short Films of Apichatpong Weerasethakul is a retrospective organized by Los Angeles Filmforum, made possible through the generous support of Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts, and in collaboration with Film at REDCAT, CalArts, and the UCLA Film and Television Archive.

Programs curated by Apichatpong Weerasethakul.  Program notes by Mark Toscano.

Special thanks to Sompot Chidgasornpongse.

 

Tickets: $10 advanced (online); $9 general; $8student/senior; Free for UCLA students and Filmforum members. 

Available in advance from:

https://www.cinema.ucla.edu/events/2016/million-more-lights-apichatpong-weerasethakul

See below for Filmforum member ticket instructions.

 

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2016, 7:30pm

All films showing as DCP

PROGRAM #1:

Featuring A Letter to Uncle Boonmee, the short precursor to Weerasethakul’s Palme d’Or winner Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, this program comprises a selection of shorts produced in a wide variety of formats ranging from early mobile phone cameras to super 8 to digital to 35mm, and all seeming to speak in one way or another to the bewitching mystery of unfamiliar spaces and our desire to record and describe the ineffable.

Empire (2010, 2min.)

Nokia Short (2003, 2min.)

M Hotel (2011, 12min.)

Luminous People (2007, 15min.)

Monsoon (2011, 3min.)

Vampire (2008, 19min.)

Nimit (2007, 16min.)

Ghost of Asia (2005, 9min.)

A Letter to Uncle Boonmee (2009, 17.5min.)

 

PROGRAM #2:

These seven films spanning Weerasethakul’s entire filmmaking career explore themes of intimacy, distance, and inscribed or mediated memory, often through our relationship to the technologies that connect and enfold us.  From the formalist avant-garde approach of 0116643225059 through the TV recreations of Haunted Houses to the eerie, atmospheric minimalism of Vapour, these are films which explore activated spaces, often revealing media and technology as both the bridges and distorting lenses through which we see and experience our realities and ourselves.

0116643225059 (1994, 5.5min.)

My Mother’s Garden (2007, 6.5min.)

Sakda (Rousseau) (2012, 5.5min.)

Vapour (2015, 21min.)

Haunted Houses (2001, 60min.)

Mobile Men (2008, 3.5min.)

Morakot (Emerald) (2007, 11min.)

About Apichatpong Weerasethakul:

Apichatpong Weerasethakul is recognized as one of the most original voices in contemporary cinema. His seven feature films, as well as his short films and installations, have won him widespread international recognition and numerous awards, including the Cannes Palme d’Or in 2010 with Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. His Tropical Malady won the Cannes Competition Jury Prize in 2004 and Blissfully Yours won the Cannes Un Certain Regard Award in 2002. Syndromes and a Century (2006) was recognized as one of the best films of the last decade in several 2010 polls.

Born in Bangkok, Apichatpong grew up in Khon Kaen in north-eastern Thailand. He began making films and video shorts in 1994 and completed his first feature in 2000. He has also mounted exhibitions and installations in many countries since 1998 and is now recognized as a major international visual artist. His art prizes include the Sharjah Biennial Prize (2013) and the prestigious Yanghyun Art Prize (2014) in South Korea.

Lyrical and often fascinatingly mysterious, his film works are non-linear, dealing with memory and in subtle ways invoking personal politics and social issues. Working independently of the Thai commercial film industry, he devotes himself to promoting experimental and independent filmmaking through his company Kick the Machine Films, founded in 1999, which also produces all his films. His installations have included the multi-screen project Primitive (2009), acquired for major museum collections (including Tate Modern and Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris), a major installation for the 2012 Kassel Documenta and most recently the film installations Dilbar (2013) and Fireworks (Archive) (2014) variously presented in one-person exhibitions in important galleries in Oslo, London, Mexico City and Kyoto.  (Bio adapted from www.kickthemachine.com)

These programs, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s visit to Los Angeles, are generously supported by the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts.

These programs are also supported by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission; the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles; and Bloomberg Philanthropies. We also depend on our members, ticket buyers, and individual donors.

Los Angeles Filmforum is the city’s longest-running organization dedicated to weekly screenings of experimental film, documentaries, video art, and experimental animation. 2016 is our 41^st year.