Analogue dreams: Thai director looks to digital, Hollywood & beyond

By Lee Hyo-won

HONG KONG — Apichatpong Weerasethakul may have visited Korea last year to judge digital movies but the Cannes-winning director still yearns for analogue when it comes to capturing memories and emotions.

“I feel I’m in the old world — stubborn — to hold onto this medium. But it reflects my vision better. It depends on film to film, but most of my films are about memory and for me, film is the medium for that,” Weerasethakul said in an interview, last week after winning Best Film at the Asian Film Awards.

It was another addition to his collection of trophies for “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives,” which won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival last year. A lush audiovisual musing on themes of death and the afterlife as well as a tribute to old cinema, the project was shot on retro 16-milimeter film. “Everyone is surprised when I say my film is shot on film because everyone is going digital,” said the Thai filmmaker.

Does he plan to adapt to the trend? “I’m contemplating it,” he said, explaining how the digital medium saves budget and is environmentally friendly.

Moreover, from an aesthetic point of view, he said attending Cinema Digital Seoul (CinDi) last year expanded his views about the possibilities of digital cinema. “Seoul was really amazing. I found many, many ways you can approach digital. With the diversity and experimentation that I found in that festival, I appreciate it more. The young generation introduced me to the future.”

But in the meantime, the director, though young at only 40, finds inspiration from the past. “Experiment is the word. ‘Uncle Boonmee’ can be different from all my other works because it’s a tribute to old cinema,” he said.

“M Hotel,” Weerasethakul’s contribution to the Hong Kong International Film Festival’s opening omnibus film “Quattro Hong Kong 2,” is also a tribute to classics such as Francis Ford Coppola’s 1974 “The Conversation.”

But whether the director is pining for the past or dreaming about the future, the essence of cinema remains the same.

“For me, the core is about storytelling and emotion; it’s about balance between the two and I tend to focus on emotional feelings. Cinema is young, about 100-something-years-old... and we’re still stuck on the tradition of other arts, especially literature, but movies can be more than that. Filmmakers from the French New Wave and others have tried to push the boundaries of cinema. I’m in the same territory, and believe that cinema is something you cannot express into words.”

Cinema, moreover, is a language that Weerasethakul chose for storytelling after experimenting with other forms, including studying fine art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

“(Cinema is) one of the very few things I know how to do,” he said. “I’m quite introverted. ...But when I’m behind a camera it becomes my eyes to look. Cinema is magic — in each film you discover something new, and it’s almost an excuse to connect to the world.”

It also broadened his horizons as an individual. “I discovered that I didn’t have much freedom at home (in Thailand), and I didn’t know that. When I studied in the States I learned that there was more to life. I also discovered that there is more to cinema— it can be personal and it can have a big effect on society.”

Winning at Cannes led to more globe-trotting for the director. “It’s been interesting,” he said about travelling extensively. He recently saw the opening of his films in New York and Los Angeles, where the reception was very enthusiastic, he said. Traveling also paved the way to develop new working relationships. “There are several offers I need to consider, possibly Europe or even Hollywood. It’s a new territory for me.”

He also got involved with other aspects of filmmaking, and debuted as a producer with “Concrete Clouds.” The film was directed by Lee Chatamentikool, who has long collaborated with Weerasethakul including editing “Uncle Boonmee.”

“Concrete Clouds” is also a co-production between Thailand and Hong Kong that involved working with Thai superstars for the first time. Whether mainstream or independent, Weerasethakul said, Thai films should look to branch out through co-productions.

Weerasethakul himself captured his foreign experience through “M Hotel.” The short film draws intriguing spatial and audio designs, as two young men goof around with a camera in a hotel room that overlooks a plaza in Hong Kong.

“When you shoot a film in a foreign country, it’s hard for me because I don’t know Hong Kong, I don’t live here. What I know when I travel is the hotel room. So it’s about the inside and outside, about spatial relationship, so I focused on that. Also about information and misinformation you get in a foreign country. It’s like a game as well, between the two guys, who are making portraits. Hong Kong is about images, about how you capture it.”

And so the director’s experimentation with images and sounds for storytelling continues. Does he have any messages for aspiring filmmakers?

“The most important thing is to find your voice,” he said, whether it be mainstream or independent cinema. “It’s very easy to be swayed when you’re young, to watch something in a theater and think I wish I could do that. For technical things, anyone can do it, a monkey can do it, a machine can do it — but it needs to be something from your heart and not a copy.”