Los Angeles Filmforum and UCLA Film & Television Archive presents
A Million More Lights: The Short Films of Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Friday, October 21 & Saturday, October 22, 2016
LOS ANGELES, September 20, 2016 - Los Angeles Filmforum, in collaboration with UCLA Film & Television Archive is honored to host Apichatpong Weerasethakul in Los Angeles for the first complete retrospective of his short films, to take place in four programs on October 21 and 22 at the Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer Museum.
Internationally acclaimed Thai filmmaker and media artist Apichatpong Weerasethakul has woncountless 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 onehour, 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.
What: A Million More Lights: The Short Films of Apichatpong Weerasethakul
When: Friday, October 21, 2016 @ 7:30pm (programs 1 & 2); Saturday, October 22, 2016 @ 6:30pm (programs 3 & 4)
Where: Billy Wilder Theater @ The Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90024
Tickets: $10 advanced (online); $9 general; $8student/senior; Free for UCLA students and Filmforum members.
Tickets available in advance from:
https://www.cinema.ucla.edu/events/2016/million-more-lights-apichatpong-weerasethakul
For more information:
www.lafilmforum.org or 323-377-7238, or https://www.cinema.ucla.edu
Screening:
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.)
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SATURDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2016, 6:30pm
Note early start time!
All films showing as DCP
PROGRAM #3:
The short feature Mekong Hotel is a fascinatingly eccentric work which de- and re-constructs an abandoned ghost story film project, unfolding dreamily as cinematic fictionintertwines with the production process. Accompanying Mekong Hotel are Malee and the Boy, a formally inventive collaboration with a curious 10-year-old; This and a Million More Lights, Weerasethakul's entry in the Give 1 Minute of Art to AIDS project; and Ashes, a visually arresting and intimate film shot almost entirely on a 35mm Lomokino camera.
Mekong Hotel (2012, 56min.)
This and a Million More Lights (2003, 1min.)
Malee and the Boy (1999, 27min.)
Ashes (2012, 20.5min.
PROGRAM #4:
This program brings together a number of Weerasethakul's more experimental short works, including two of his early projects from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Following The Anthem, a fabulous"purification service" to bless the theater, five other remarkable films explore the deep seduction of the recorded image and the narrativization of our worldly experiences.
The Anthem (2006, 5min.)
Like the Relentless Fury of the Pounding Waves (1994, 22.5min.)
Windows (1999, 12min.)
thirdworld (1997, 16.5min.)
Cactus River (2012, 10min.)
Worldly Desires (2005, 42.5min.)
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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 makingfilms 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)
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These programs, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul's visit to Los Angeles, are generously supported by 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 experimentalanimation. 2016 is our 41st year.
Coming Soon to Los Angeles Filmforum:
Nov 6 - Program TBA, presented by guest curator David Dinnell (venue TBA)
Nov 10 - Billy Woodberry in person (@ MOCA Grand Avenue)
Nov 17 and 20 - Small-Gauge Films from Helga Fanderl in person (@ Echo Park Film Center & Spielberg Theater at the Egyptian)
Dec 4 - The Prison in Twelve Landscapes - Brett Story in person (@ Spielberg Theater at the Egyptian)
Memberships available, $70 single, $115 dual, or $50 single student
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