New York City film society to celebrate Thai director in May
New York City’s cinematic spotlight will shine on one of “the 21st century’s most essential artists” for seven days next month – Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul – when all his films, features and shorts, are showcased by Film at Lincoln Centre, which hosts the New York Film Festival.
Titled “The World of Apichatpong Weerasethakul”, the complete retrospective his career runs from May 4 to May 10, the film society announced. It will also include a selection of films that have inspired Apichatpong and were selected by him.
The film society described Apichatpong as a “towering figure in both world cinema and the art world” and one of “the 21st century’s most essential artists”.
“Apichatpong Weerasethakul has amassed a richly original and transcendently mesmerising body of work that few filmmakers can match,” it said, adding: his “formally daring oeuvre is marked by a meticulously controlled sense of cinematic sensuality and a powerful, understated gift for locating the political within the everyday.”
Along with Apichatpong’s seven feature films, his short films will be screened in four separate programmes.
The first day of the retrospective will include two American films that inspired the director, as part of the “Apichatpong Weerasethakul Selects” programme.
They are “Opening Night”, a 1977 psychodrama directed by John Cassavetes, and “I Walked with a Zombie”, a black-and-white film directed by Jacques Tourneur and released in 1943.
Apichatpong will introduce “I Walked with a Zombie”, which he describes as “one of the most beautiful black-and-white films ever made”
“A white lady in a trance walks through the sugar plantation, drawn by the sound of the drum and the sea waves. Every time I see it, I see something different,” he explained in a preview of “The World of Apichatpong Weerasethakul”.
Apichatpong will also participate in three Q&As.
The first will follow the screening of his 2021 film “Memoria” on May 4. The film, which is set in Colombia, won the Jury Prize at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival.
He will also answer questions on May 5, after the screening of his second feature film “Blissfully Yours”, which was released in 2002, and on May 6 after the screening of his first feature film: “Mysterious Object at Noon”. Film at Lincoln Centre describes Apichatpong’s 2000 debut as a film “that’s grounded in a very specific region, but feels like it came from another planet”.
