Photo by Chutharut Pornmuneesoontorn

Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2005

Courtesy Kick the Machine, Chiang Mai, Thailand

Apichatpong Weerasethakul, still from "Vampire" (2008). High-definition video, 19 min.

February 2009 Field Guide

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For the past decade, Apichatpong Weerasethakul has directed fearlessly anomalous films that interweave the 1960s experimentation of Andy Warhol and Bruce Baillie with a heady range of vernacular Thai influences, including ghost stories, love songs, folklore, soap operas, and Buddhist fables. The results are a clutch of lush, haunting works that jettison the conventions of narrative, scripts, or professional actors to explore themes of sexuality, politics, mythology, and the idiosyncrasies of a globalizing Thailand. His Tropical Malady won the Jury Prize at Cannes in 2004, while Syndromes and a Century, which debuted at the Venice International Film Festival in 2006, was later banned in Thailand, leading Weerasethakul to found the Free Thai Cinema Movement. His activism against censorship indirectly led to his next multi-faceted project, the installation part of which is opening at the Haus der Kunst in Munich this month. Presented as a multiscreen installation (the related feature-length film will be completed in 2010), Primitive explores the story of the sleepy village of Nabua, which, from the 1960s to ’80s, was violently occupied by the Thai Army in their efforts to stamp out Communism. Many of Nabua’s men disappeared into the jungle, and the village became known as a "widows’ town." Primitive features a young all-male cast who attempt to reimagine its suppressed history. Weerasethakul checked in from Nabua on the eve of shooting. — LK

How did you learn about Nabua’s hidden past?

In 2007, Peter Sellars gave me a book by Terry Glavin called Waiting for the Macaws. The book sparked my interest in issues of extinction, about the disappearance of species and beliefs. So I traveled around northeast Thailand to get to know the history of my native region. In the middle of the trip, I visited Nabua. I did a lot of interviews and decided that this was the best place to talk about disappearance.

You describe Nabua as having become a town of widows, yet in your films in the installation, only young men populate the village. Why?

I imagine the men are freed from the place that had captured them and their spirits.

How do you negotiate the desire to tell a straight story for political clarification and your allegiance to the poetic?

Actually, part of the Primitive project is a book of interviews with citizens of Nabua. That is a form of documentary. But Nabua’s history is too personally intense for me — it is impossible for me to do a straight story on film.

You studied architecture in college. Do you think installations make films more architectural?

It is always interesting for me to question the relationship between visual art and film. Film shown in a theater is about control. Installations are about relaxing this control and giving an audience their own space and time. Sometimes it does indeed become architectural because of this open-ended structure.

You once mentioned that you cut particular scenes because they were "too beautiful." What is the danger in too much beauty?

Buddha said beauty makes you sick.

Primitive, Feb. 20-May 17, Haus der Kunst, Munich, hausderkunst.de. The installation will travel to FACT, Liverpool, in Sept.

"Apichatpong Weerasethakul" originally appeared in the February 2009 issue of Modern Painters. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Modern Painters' February 2009 Table of Contents.