Phantoms of Nabua - a new film by Apichatpong Weerasethakul

From: Gary Thomas (email suppressed)
Date: Wed Feb 18 2009 - 06:38:30 PST


We are very pleased to announce the premiere - right this minute - of
a new short film by Thai artist and filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul.

Phantoms of Nabua (2009, 9’45”) was made specifically for online,
and can be seen at animateprojects.org - Phantoms

Weerasethakul describes the film as “a portrait of home... it
portrays a communication of lights, the lights that exude, on the one
hand, the comfort of home and, on the other, of destruction.”

Phantoms of Nabua is part of Primitive, a multi-platform project
commissioned by Haus der Kunst Munich, FACT Liverpool, and Animate
Projects. And produced by Illuminations Films, London with Kick the
Machine, Bangkok.

The premiere of Phantoms of Nabua co-incides with the opening of the
Primitive installation at Haus der Kunst, Munich on 20 February. A
short film for cinema - A Letter to Uncle Boonmee - has its world
premiere in Munich at the same time. The installation will receive
its UK premiere at FACT, Liverpool in September 2009.

Primitive was 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.
  

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For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.