Now celebrating its fourth year, Qumra is a weeklong industry event run by the Doha Film Institute in Qatar. We’ll be bringing you coverage of the stellar lineup of Qumra 2018 Masterclasses, given by such luminaries as Tilda Swinton, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Andrey Zvyaginstev, Bennett Miller and Sandy Powell, in the coming days.
“Cinema is really primitive. And we should congratulate ourselves that we are still in the very early point of it, a romantic point if you will, when the possibilities are still immense.”
We should have learnt by now that although Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul has carved out one of the most singular filmographies of the modern era, and has developed a cinematic voice that is unmistakably and wholly his own, (here’s me having a quasi-religious experience during his last feature, “Cemetery of Splendour“) no matter how well we feel we know his work, he will still find a way to surprise us. The above statement seems to flow counter to the strong undertow of melancholy and wistful retrospection that runs through his filmography. And indeed it came, during his Qumra 2018 Masterclass, not so long after he’d also mentioned how his Palme d’Or winning “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives” was “not only about Boonmee dying, but also the cinema that I knew.” But during a lovely, insightful and curiously cleansing two hours, these seemingly oppositional opinions meshed entirely: In Apichatpong’s conception, the death of one type of cinema can only ever mean the birth of another, or more likely several others. He is a filmmaker who not only recalls past lives but sees multiple potential futures too.
The session was ably moderated by Columbia University and Film Society of Lincoln Center alum Richard Peña, but Apichatpong also treated attendees, largely made up of aspirant filmmakers from the Gulf region and beyond, to a pre-prepared presentation. This short, conversational monologue, accompanying a slide show of photographs from his childhood and his subsequent visits to his hometown, was a little piece of memoir artistry all of its own, yielding a delightful glimpse into the inspirations and preoccupations of one of world cinema’s greatest (and most modestly spoken) working directors. Here are just a few of the things we learned during the session.
His films may seem arcane, but some of Apichatpong’s early inspirations are anything but.
“I was born in 1970 and I was 12 when ‘E.T.‘ came out. Spielberg was God, for a small town in Thailand. The way that he dealt with the science fiction — which I really like — and the lighting, like in ‘Close Encounters,’ the smoke and the backlight! For me, this was a big escape.”
Later he showed a picture of an old, run-down hall in his hometown. “In the old days, we had a standalone movie theater. This photo was taken when it was already converted into a boxing ring. Today the whole building is gone. Cinema was more diverse back then, the films were from Hong Kong, India, and Hollywood and really good Thai films, actually. I was really into disaster films at that time, ‘The Towering Inferno,’ ‘The Poseidon Adventure,’ ‘Earthquake’ — the spectacles. And Thai films were also very prominent, especially ghost movies, they were another kind of spectacle.”
“But then there is this period when the little theaters died, and in my local town, all we got were the big movies from America. So you’d have to go to Bangkok to get strange European films or whatever,” he continued, as he flashed up a picture of some battered VHS tapes, labelled “Fellini’s ‘Roma‘,”Last Tango in Paris,” “Bonnie and Clyde,” “The Last Temptation of Christ,” “La Dolce Vita.”
“But also there were the magazines. In the 80s, because of Spielberg and everything, they reintroduced the translations of Bradbury and Asimov, that classic sci-fi. And then there were Buddhist books too. All these things seem like a mess of interests, but for me, they share the same universe.”
As improvisational and loose as his films often feel, Apichatpong writes standard screenplays, for very practical reasons.
“We need funding, so I have a very classical script. ‘Tropical Malady,’ even though there is no dialogue in the second half, the script is like this! [mimes an inch-thick screenplay] I try to explain everything.”
“You need to be open to changes with actors on set but you need a script, for people to know your world. So the final film is changed many times, but the heart, the spirit is the same. You have to find a producer who will really understand the project and be very protective.”
“I’m really lucky to have a team who understand what I want to do. For the last film, ‘Cemetery of Splendour‘ we had producers from 11 countries. Each one contributes — but it’s not big money. You have to realize that there are a lot of rich people in the world! And these amounts are really nothing to them. But of course, we have to find people who genuinely love the project and people for whom it’s not about money, not about the return.”
His approach to digital versus analogue formats is not dogmatic, but led by the nature of the project, though those options are dwindling now, because, like everyone, Apichatpong’s work is influenced by the Netflix-ization of cinema.
“[My choice of format] depends on the concept. Sometimes it’s so vague it doesn’t need HD. Sometimes it’s a reference to cinema or to other filmmakers, like Derek Jarman, so I use different mediums in that kind of conceptual way.”
“But now I’m forced [to use digital] with the new project. Because of Netflix. Netflix needs 4k, did you know? You can’t shoot 2k. Which is terrible because I love this camera which can only shoot 2k. And I’d love to work on film again. So I’m trying to convince my producer, but it’s harder now.”
“But even though I lament the disappearing of celluloid, we are in an exciting turning point, with analogue going and digital coming. When two dimensions is going and virtual reality is coming.”