Jenjira Pongpas

Taklee Genesis

A time-travel adventure that takes place during the Cold War when a US military base in Thailand was testing the Taklee Genesis, a warp-speed teleporter even though it had not yet been fully developed. After the war, the Taklee Genesis was left behind in Thailand and was being illegally used by someone.

On Blue

A short film directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul in collaboration with composer Rafiq Bhatia and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.

The Year of the Everlasting Storm

Featuring seven stories from seven auteurs from around the world, the film chronicles this unprecedented moment in time, and is a true love letter to the power of cinema and its storytellers.

Blue

A woman lies awake at night. Nearby, a set of theatre backdrops unspools itself, unveiling two alternate landscapes. Upon the woman’s blue sheet, a flicker of light reflects and illuminates her realm of insomnia.

A.W. A Portrait of Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Canadian actor and filmmaker Connor Jessup (Closet Monster, Falling Skies) profiles Apichatpong Weerasethakul, a maverick of Thai cinema who explores the slippery nature of time and consciousness with a sublimely idiosyncratic, often surreal approach to film form.

Ablaze

ABLAZE premiered at the 27th Singapore Film Festival, November 24, 2016

Fever Room

"Fever Room" features Jenjira (Jen) and Banlop (Itt), two of Apichatpong’s regular actors who also appear in his film, "Cemetery of Splendour". Like the film, this projection-performance presents the layers of reality and fantasy. Apichatpong fuses his memories with the actors’ and fictionalises the narrative. Here the people takes refuge in dreams while their land is on a brink of collapse, echoing Thailand’s present state of military dictatorship.

Cemetery of Splendor

In a hospital, ten soldiers are being treated for a mysterious sleeping sickness. In a story in which dreams can be experienced by others, and in which goddesses can sit casually with mortals, a nurse learns the reason why the patients will never be cured, and forms a telepathic bond with one of them.

Fireworks (Archives)

This film depicts Bunleua Sulilat’s temple/sculpture garden 'Sala Keoku', located in northern Thailand. Passages of blackness sporadically dissolve under the fitful internal illumination of sparklers, which light up to reveal Sulilat’s unorthodox temple populated with a fantastical concrete menagerie of beasts and figures; the sculptures range from the broad, whale-like contours of a frog’s face, to a cavalcade of dogs on mopeds, to a pair of skeletons partially embracing as if sitting for a double portrait. These images are interspersed with those of an older Thai couple mysteriously wandering around the temple like wraiths, the woman’s plodding progress hampered by the use of crutches.

Mekong Hotel

Shifting between fact and fiction in a hotel situated along the Mekong River, a filmmaker rehearses a movie expressing the bonds between a vampire-like mother and daughter.

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

Suffering from acute kidney failure, Boonmee has chosen to spend his final days surrounded by his loved ones in the countryside. Surprisingly, the ghost of his deceased wife appears to care for him, and his long lost son returns home in a non-human form. Contemplating the reasons for his illness, Boonmee treks through the jungle with his family to a mysterious hilltop cave—the birthplace of his first life.

Emerald

Like Kamanita, the unchanged Morakot is a star burdened with (or fueled by) memories. Apichatpong collaborated with his three regular actors, who recounted their dreams, hometown life, bad moments, and love poems, to re-supply the hotel with new memories.

The State of the World

An omnibus project examining, well, the state of the world.

Luminous People

A group of people is in a boat traveling along Mekong River that stretches along the Thai-Laos border. They are running against the wind, anticipating a farewell. In the middle of the river, the lady head of the family casts the ashes off into the stream. The white dust merges with the muddy water. The boat makes a u-turn at the bridge that links two countries. The passengers are tired and start to drift off into their own world. The film disintegrates. The crew and the cast wander off in the river of simulation. The border links the worlds of the dead and of the living. The memory of an anonymous dead father lingers. The boat still moves on as the dusk arrives. Apichatpong and his crew traveled to Nong Khai, a small town near Mekong River, and recruited local villagers to participate in the project. For two days, the crew and cast reconstructed a fake ceremony and find a narrative.

My Mother’s Garden

Glistening objects from a jewelry collection inspired by carnivorous plants are transformed into a colourful sea of garden creatures through hand-drawn animations of roots, insects and various other organisms. A loving tribute to Weerasethakul's mother's garden. Commissioned by Dior; first presented at Musée de l’Orangerie, Jardin des Tuileries, Paris, to mark the opening of a new set of jewellery designed by Victoire de Castellane, 27 February 2007.

The Anthem

One of the ingrained rituals in Thai society is the blessing automatically given before certain ceremonies and events such as the playing of the Royal Anthem in movie theaters before feature presentations. This short presents a "Cinema Anthem" which comically praises and blesses the feature to come.

Syndromes and a Century

A story about director Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s parents who were both doctors, and his memories of growing up in a hospital environment.

The Adventure of Iron Pussy

A gang of local thugs come in and start roughing up the customers and get abusive with the daughter. Suddenly, an elaborately coifed and tastefully dressed woman shows up and rescues the young woman and her father from further harm. This is Iron Pussy.

Blissfully Yours

Min is an illegal Burmese immigrant living in Thailand who has contracted a mysterious painful rash covering his upper body. His girlfriend, Roong, and a middle-aged woman, Orn, take him to see a doctor. Min pretends that he cannot speak because he is not fluent in Thai and speaking would reveal him to be an illegal immigrant.

999-9999

Rainbow has just moved to an international school in Phuket, in Southern Thailand. She soon becomes the center of attention, since so many of her new friends are curious to know about the recent death of a student at her old school in the North. She blames it on a mysterious phone number 999-9999 a number reputed to grant whoever calls it, one wish.

Jan Dara

Jan is a boy growing up in 1930s Siam in a wealthy, dysfunctional family where sex has a huge impact on everyone's lives. Jan is viewed by his father as cursed, since his mother died giving birth to him.

Crime Kings

In 1946, just after World War 2, bandits rule the countryside of Siam. The notorious Bai rises to become the king of bandits and police chief Yodying has been ordered to apprehend Bai dead or alive.

The Fountains of Paradise

Film inspired by two things: an article written by a Thai woman who went Sri Lanka on a religious pilgrimage by climbing a holy mountain, and sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke's 'The Fountain of Paradise' which is set in a fictional land based on a Sri Lankan landscape.