The last two weeks featured two remarkably different programs of short films by Apichatpong (friends, and people interested in keeping their tongues untied, call him "Joe") Weerasethakul at Northwest Film Forum, my second home. After the first program, of muted colors, meandering narratives and a deliberate mix of the happenstance and the mythical, I thought I knew more or less what to expect. Joe's work in the second program, however, full of vivid hues and irrepressible Thai pop music, not to mention a dose of gorgeous animation, pleasantly surprised me. Don't get me wrong - I liked the first round - but the second has planted itself in my brain like a dream I might have had myself.
What all the films have in common is a playfulness with storytelling. Joe has a tendency to flip back and forth between verite-style street (or jungle!) scenes and highly constructed parables. Throw in a dash of music video, and you're in for a fun evening of thinking about theories of communication. Strikingly, the most accessible short was the one without subtitles (0116643225059), in which several still images and static shots are mixed to match the audio track of a conversation. I guess synesthesia has no borders...
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