Dear Joe, please do your fans - myself very much included - a very large favor and gather the film components of your various art installation projects together for a DVD release so that those of us not near the galleries that display them can have the chance to see them. Thank you.
Yes, we are rather fond of Apichatpong 'Joe' Weerasethakul around these parts, considering the director of Syndromes and a Century and Tropical Malady to be one of the very finest arthouse directors in the world today. Hell, with The Adventures of iron Pussy he proved he can be one mean cult film guy, too. But being a fan of Joe also involves a certain amount of frustration because he does a good percentage of his work for use in video installations and commissioned art projects, meaning that most of us will never get the chance to see it. Such is the case with his upcoming Primitive, a multi platform - it involves installation, a short film and apparently a cinematic release - project set in the borderland between Thailand and Laos.
Primitive will be shot in the border town, Nabua, where the Mekong River divides Thailand and Laos, an area with a long history of racial migration and slaughter. It was also a 'red zone' where the Mao-influenced Communist party moved into the mountain range and the Thai government targeted local communities as communist sympathisers. Nabua has an ancient legend about a widow ghost who would abduct any man who enters her empire.The Primitive project re-imagines Nabua, the ‘widow town’, as a town of men, freed from the widow ghost’s empire, and features the male descendants of the farmer communists - teenagers that will lead a journey, fabricate memories, and build a dreamscape in the jungle.
Pray that this one makes it out on the festival circuit because that's likely the only way most of us will ever get to see it ...
Great to see support for Apichatpong Weerasethakul on Twitch.
Just to let you know, that as part of Weereasethakul's commission there will be an online version of Primitive streaming on our website (http://www.animateprojects.org) from 16 February 2009 to coincide with the opening of the Primitive installation at Haus der Kunst, Munich.
There's more information about the project here:
http://www.animateprojects.org/films/by_project/primitive/primitive
http://animateprojects.blogspot.com/2008/12/primitive.html
http://www.illuminationsmedia.co.uk/blog/index.cfm?start=1&news_id=169
All the best
Abigail at Animate Projects