Short Films by Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Program #2- October 14 at 8:00pm

Films Include:

Trailer for CinDi, 2011, DCP, colour, sound, 2 min

Ashes, 2012, DCP, colour, sound, 20:18 min

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 united like multiple King Kongs with no sound. Every heartbeat a baby was born with her mouth shut tight like a touch of two stones. With pleasure we lived in hope, and hoped to never wake up.

A land of Nothing.

We slept.

We smiled.

We ran.

Vampire, 2008, DCP, colour, sound, 19 min

SOMEWHERE ALONG THE BORDER OF THAILAND AND BURMA LIVES A CREATURE CALLED NOK PHII (GHOST BIRD). OR THERE USED TO LIVE ONE.

If exists, apart from the Vampire Finch of the Galápagos Islands, Nok Phii would be the only species of bird that feeds on other animals’ blood. In several of the local tales, Nok Phii is portrayed as an aggressive nocturnal predator. In some stories, it even attacks human. In 2007, a sighting of a male and female Nok Phii in a remote mountain was reported by the villagers in the north of Thailand. There was a speculation that this was the only pair left in the world. This supposedly small with large eyes bird has never been captured, dead or alive. There are no remains. Without concrete evidence, this rare bird might only be an imaginary animal associated with alluring danger and mythical aura. VAMPIRE is a dream of the strange avian and its habitat, an impression of a voyage to capture this unusual treasure on film.

Haunted Houses, 2001, DCP, colour, sound, 60 min

Haunted Houses is one of the four works that Apichatpong deals with various forms of media addiction in the Thai cultural landscape. In this particular work, the narrative was directly scripted from two episodes of a popular Thai military television channel called Tong Prakaisad. The series mainly deals with love and the problems of the wealthy. The filmmaker then traveled to the villages near his home and asked villagers to participate by acting, according to the script.

All 66 villagers from six villages participated resuming roles. The story was continuous, but the actors who played the characters were constantly changed as the filming location moved from one village to another.