The award-winning feature film Memoria’s satellite video “Durmiente” constitutes a diptych with “Async – first light”. “Durmiente” features an intimate scene that does not appear in Memoria: the moment when the lead character, Jessica (Tilda Swinton) falls asleep, signifying the end of her journey. “Async – first light”, on the other hand, is a collaboration between Apichatpong and composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, serving as an homage to the act of crossing borders. The two interwoven films lead us from daylight into the night, wakefulness to dreaming, representing a yearning for interconnectedness through light, cinema, and dreams.
 

Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Apichatpong Weerasethakul was born in 1970 in Bangkok and raised in Khon Kaen. He studied architecture at Khon Kaen University and later received an MFA in filmmaking from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He started making films and videos in 1994 and has become an independent film producer in Thailand.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s films and artworks are essentially the same. Political and the social issues are always alluded to, playing integral parts in his mysterious and poetic artistic language. By working chiefly with time and light, and by working meticulously with actors, Weerasethakul builds a delicate bridge for the audience. He allows them to travel through the real and the mythical, the individual and the collective, the spiritual and the somatic, entering a rich consciousness via unorthodox narratives, where they can find the artist’s memories, mythologies, dreams and desires.
 

Lender: Kiang Malingue, Hong Kong