in conversation with apichatpong weerasethakul
a record of our Q&A with the Thai director on September 19, 2024
Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Bangkok, 1970), director of such films as Uncle Boonmee (2010), Memoria (2021) and Tropical Malady (2004), came to Brussels at the invitation of the Bozar museum. To our great delight, he agreed to screen a number of his short films in Cinema RITCS, to be followed by an aftertalk led by myself and two of my classmates at LUCA film school – Arshvir Dhillon and Bono De Feyter.
We fidgeted nervously in our seats at the terrace of De Markten in central Brussels, awaiting the appearance of this celebrated Thai director whose work we all admired so. The sun was coming down hard. Apichatpong arrived late, strolling onto the scene unassumingly, a man of small stature and precious few pretensions in his appearance. As he sat down next to me, Bono joked that Apichatpong had brought nice weather along with him from Thailand. “You’re welcome,” Apichatpong smiled.
An exceedingly amicable person, Apichatpong’s presence did not overwhelm our group, in spite of his famous name and impressive body of work. I found it easy to let go of my own nervousness in front of him as we chatted about our hometowns, our film schools and the language situation in Brussels. After lunch, we came to Cinema RITCS together and sat in the same row to watch nine short films: The Anthem (2006), Sakda (Rousseau) (2012), Emerald (2007), Monsoon (2011), Luminous People (2007), Footprints (2014), Worldly Desires (2005), On Blue (2022) and Ablaze (2016).
The following text is a condensed record of our conversation in Cinema RITCS afterwards. It has been edited for clarity.
Flora: I’ve seen your work characterized as “resistance”, because your films seem to resist time and space by questioning written history and concepts such as borders. Also, your production company is called Kick the Machine.
Apichatpong: Well, “kick the machine” can mean many things. Kicking the establishment, or turning on the projector.
Growing up in Thailand, you have so many layers of oppression. There are rules about conduct. They control how you speak. For me, my work is not so much a critique of oppression as it is a reflection of it. Just put it in, you know.
”Kick the Machine” is also about film-making in general. I was in love with all kinds of films, especially experimental ones. The ones that are super abstract and look at film as material. I don’t think there is a tradition for this in Thailand.
This hybrid form of film, questioning genres, mixing them – why not, you know? Worldly Desires is about people shooting a film in the jungle. I like the Thai way of producing videos, producing melodramas. So I thought: how about a film that just reflects that? Documents that?
Flora: You made a conscious choice to return to Thailand after finishing film school in Chicago, knowing you would have to deal with Thai censorship. What made you decide to go back and stay?
Apichatpong: It’s hard, because I always wanted to escape Thailand. I would imagine myself living somewhere else. But now I know that everywhere I go, I will always complain about something.
Thailand motivates me because of that quality of instability and unpredictability. It’s a source of a lot of ideas.
When I’m making film, I ask myself: what is taboo? What thing can you not represent in cinema? And then I try to do it. There’s a limit, of course, with the law or whatever. Sometimes me and my family would be in jail if I really went through with it. But think about it. Be aware that you’re censoring yourself.
This applies also to the language of cinema. Why do you move your camera this way? Why do you frame something like this? I think a lot of things come from influences like YouTube and Netflix. Sometimes you don’t even know why you do something. You just do it like a robot. So I think you need to go back to the really original kid in yourself. Look at it with that kind of language. Real world color, form and shape.
Flora: You decided to shoot Memoria in Colombia. In a New Yorker interview in 2022, you mentioned that you were hoping it would make you less “judgmental.” What did you mean by that?
Apichatpong: It’s because in Thailand, I have so many preconditioned images. When you are confronting the world, that language is really trapping you. When you look at a tree, there are details that words cannot capture. It’s really precious to be able to look without conditioning or words or memory. It will put you in a state of purity, like a baby. It will make you very attentive. It will ground you in the present.
Arshvir: How did it click for you that Colombia would be the place to film Memoria?
Apichatpong: I was able to stay there for three months in an art residency. I did nothing but walk and listen. Then I tried to link myself with the location, because all the films I make are always from my memories of Thailand. In Colombia, I did it another way. I tried to receive other people’s memories. I tried to re-frame my own images of Colombia. The political situation, the violence, the drugs – everything in Colombia is so out there, no? How can we look past those kind of images?
Bono: What do you think you’re doing with your films? Posing questions, offering answers?
Apichatpong: Living! I don’t know what else to do but to make films. I don’t have an agenda for making film. It’s really craft.
Arshvir: The ending of Memoria is quite comforting. It poses a kind of solution to the question asked by the film. Do you agree?
Apichatpong: I didn’t know about this solution before making the film. When I make a film, I know some story and some form, but other things will come up and we will try things out. I try to shoot chronologically most of the time. At the end of the shooting period, in that room, Tilda and I said: okay, we found it, we know what it is.
The crew members also understood. When the characters of Jessica and Hernán touched hands, people cried on set. It was like the accumulation of all this work, all this looking for something.
But it’s not a simple matter of “what was Memoria about.” Growing up in a third world country, when you make art they ask you: “What is the purpose of this? What are you trying to say?” I say that I don’t know. I just want to look.
Arshvir: Many of your films focus on people who live on the margins of society. What does this outsider perspective mean to you?
Apichatpong: It’s hard to theorize or make it intellectual. For me, it’s just what I experienced. That’s why I keep a lot of notes. Just notes. I don’t think about what to do it with them. It’s a way to make sense of yourself and how you react to things.
There’s also a beauty in it. Discrimination, outsiders, homosexuality. All these things. Sometimes it’s kind of beautiful. It’s life. It’s suffering. It’s something we share.
Flora: At some point in your career, you had a “spiritual awakening” and discovered Buddhist meditation. How would you describe the relationship between buddhism and your films?
Apichatpong: That was after I finished making Tropical Malady. During the making of that film, I was a monster on set. Maybe because that movie is so transparent and reflective of myself.
I studied some Buddhist texts and tried out meditation. I discovered it in a non-religious setting. Really scientific. It was a revelation. It’s almost like you see yourself. You see how this machine operates.
It also raises questions about why you make film. I don’t think we need film. In the end, I make it because of all this living that I do. At the same time, I make it in order not to make it in the future.
We open the floor to questions from the audience.
A student in the audience: Sometimes your films have been characterized as too “elite”, too disconnected from the audience. What’s your opinion on that?
Apichatpong: The last thing I care about is audience. You cannot please everyone. It’s really hard to please yourself already. So you need to throw away that double thinking. Film is an expression of time. You need to ask yourself: what is my time? How do I present that? That’s already difficult enough, so why think about your audience too?
A student in the audience: Music and singing are a big theme in your short films. Do you get a lot of inspiration from music?
Apichatpong: It’s something that comes with the process of film-making. We are driving to the set and someone puts in a CD. Then it becomes part of the memory of film-making in this place, so okay, let’s use that music in the film.
Five to ten years ago, I stopped listening to music as much. It’s the same as with coffee. I like it a lot, but sometimes I deliberately stop drinking it. Then when I come back to it, two cups a week are like heaven again. If you deprive yourself of music and come back to it, wow – you can hear. It’s a reminder not to forget about the abundance of awareness.
Student in the audience: You talked about not knowing the purpose of your film in the beginning. That seems super scary to me. How can you build this faith that you will find it in the end?
Apichatpong: Listen to the film itself. It will tell you what it needs. Memoria was super hard. How to present a work, how long should it be? I edit my short films myself, but for feature films it’s too complex. The editor, the sound designer and I go back and change everything all the time. You need to understand that it’s okay to cut a shot. You spent a lot of money on it, but it doesn’t belong. Maybe it’s too beautiful, maybe it’s too… hmm.
After the Q&A wraps up, I ask Apichatpong if I can give him a present. Perhaps naively, I was hoping to present him with some homemade jam, because I read somewhere that he likes to give edible gifts himself.
“I can’t take it,” he says, smiling politely, “because of airport customs.” He adds a little “mm” sound which I have found to be quite typical of him.
He stays with me for another 5 minutes on the corner of Rue Antoine Dansaert, talking about nostalgia and my ideas for conveying it on film. He wishes me good luck with my film. “Come back,” I tell him, “and maybe I can show it to you.”
If it’s not too beautiful.