The Garage Screen and MIEFF.
Early films by Apichatpong Weerasethakul

The 'Garage' Museum of Contemporary Art and the Moscow International Experimental Film Festival (MIEFF) present a mini-retrospective of the early films of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, the winner of the Palme d'Or prize, including his short films and his first full-length film "Mysterious Object at Noon"

Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Apichatpong Weerasethakul (born in 1970 in Bangkok) started creating experimental films and video installations while studying at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, from which he graduated in 1997, receiving a master's degree in Fine Arts and Filmmaking. His first full-length film, "Mysterious Object at Noon," premiered at the Rotterdam Film Festival in 2000, and his second full-length film, "Blissfully Yours" won the top prize in the 'Un Certain Regard' program at the 55th Cannes Film Festival in 2002.

In 2010, Weerasethakul received the Cannes Festival's highest award – the Palme d'Or prize – for the film "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives". The film "Syndromes and a Century", shown at the 63rd Venice Film Festival, was the first Thai film to be included in the contest program of this festival. In 1999-2008, Apichatpong Weerasethakul co-organized the Bangkok Festival of Experimental Cinema. His films were also shown at numerous art exhibitions, including the 7th Istanbul Biennale (2001), the 10th and 11th Sharjah Biennale (UAE, 2011, 2013), dOCUMENTA (13) (Kassel, 2012), the 20th Sydney Biennale (2016), the 14th Lyon Biennale (2017), etc. In 2016, the Tate Gallery held a retrospective of the director's films, and in the autumn of 2017 will be open the "Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Kao Guimaranis" exhibition at the Amsterdam Film Museum EYE.

The Anthem

Thailand / UK | 2006 | 5 min

A blessing for any kind of event is one of the most important rituals of Thai society. That is why, before every film shown in Thailand, the national anthem is played as a sign of respect for the king. Weerasethakul pays respect to this tradition with a demonstration of "kinogimna", a special ceremony held by an elderly woman, designed to balance the viewers' energy and purify their minds to ensure the improvement of their lives by the end of the session.

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Thailand/ USA | 1994 | 5 min

This short film of Weerasethakul's student years, unlike his subsequent works, was filmed on 16 mm film during his studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The film consists of an image of the director's mother, flickering and blurred, accompanied by fragments of their telephone conversation.

thirdworld

Thailand / USA | 1997 | 16 min

«thirdworld» is a survey film of the landscape of Paniyi Island in the south of Thailand, and combines documentary filming of the island's landscapes with stories of local people's fantasies and dreams. The director himself defines the film as a "reconstructed documentary ". The name of the film plays on the expression adopted in the West to identify Thailand and other exotic countries.

А letter to Uncle Boonmee

Thailand | 2009 | 17 min

«A letter to Uncle Boonmee» represents the first step on the road to creating a full-length film called "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives," which received the Palme d'Or prize of the 63rd Cannes Film Festival. In 2008, Weerasethakul went to the village of Naboo in search of suitable content for the upcoming full-length film. The result of this trip was a short "film-letter" in which the director describes Naboo to Uncle Boonmee, a once-living person who claimed that he remembered his previous lives.

Vampire

Thailand | 2008 | 18 min

In their stories, residents of the north of Thailand describe a small bird called Nok Phi as a horrible predator with huge eyes, who feeds on blood. No one has ever been able to catch this bird, but in 2007 it was rumored that two species were seen high in the mountains. Weerasethakul's camera crew went to the jungle to find the Nok Phi bird and capture it on camera.

My Mother's Garden

Thailand | 2007 | 6 min

The silent film «My Mother's Garden» created by the request of the Dior fashion house, was inspired by Victoire de Castellane's jewelry, which looks like poisonous flowers and carnivorous plants.

Ashes

Thailand | 2012 | 20 min

A home photo-film filmed with a LomoKino camera takes viewers to the village for one day, where Weerasethakul lives. The director himself wrote a short description of his film: "King Kong rarely barked. She had been with us since she was three months old. Every night she slept and looked around in her dreams. We thought that our spirits were enriched by the fertile soil and the greenest leaves and the rarest insects and the abundance of humility. But came a day in March we woke up from our dream. The sky wept ashes. The rotten ground trembled as baby worms rose to taste the gray snow. Across the mountains the light of devotion shone and blinded our souls. The darkness was so bright we wept and shouted in silence. And we woke up again, and again."

Vapour

Thailand | 2015 | 21 min

Strange smoke descends on a village and engulfs it. It envelops roofs, beds, chairs, carpets, grass and bodies, infecting them with its white, numbing fever. The events of the "Steam" film take place in the village of Toongha, where Weerasethakul lived for several years. Like many other villages in Thailand, Toongha suffers from land management problems, which resulted in a confrontation between villagers and the local government lasting for more than sixty years. The film will be accompanied by a soundtrack, composed by Dmitry Anikin, an electro-acoustic musician.
July 21
22:00
'Garage' Museum
summer cinema, 18+
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PROGRAMME 2017