• Mekong Hotel

  • Mekong Hotel

  • Ashes

  • Blue

  • La Punta

  • Night Colonies



Mekong Hotel

Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Thailand, United Kingdom, France, 2012
featuring

Jenjira Pongpas, Maiyatan Techaparn, Sakda Kaewbuadee, Chai Bhatana,

The Mekong Hotel, near the Thailand/Laos border, provides the setting for Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s 2012 reverie; two characters ponder life, death, and love in one “existence,” while a mother’s ghost haunts a room in another, occasionally even feasting on entrails. And in yet a third existence, the actor playing the ghost recounts her real-life memories of armed conflict in the region during the 1960s and 1970s. Merging documentary and fiction, and the everyday and supernatural, with onscreen characters shifting between their “otherworldly” and “real” selves, Mekong Hotel is an enigmatic, magical portrait of a hotel, a region, and a nation.

—Curran Gault

Event Accessibility

If you have any questions about accessibility or require accommodations to participate in this event, please contact us at bampfa@berkeley.edu or call us at (510) 642-1412 (during open hours) with as much advance notice as possible. More information on accessibility services.

FILM DETAILS 
Screenwriter
  • Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Cinematographer
  • Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Language
  • Thai
  • with English subtitles
Print Info
  • Color
  • DCP
  • 59 mins
Source
  • Strand Releasing
Preceded By

Blue

Apichatpong Weerasethakul, France, Thailand, 2018

FEATURING
Jenjira Pongpas Widner

Between sleep and dreams, painted theatrical backdrops and the Thai forest at night, cinematic magic sparks a flame.

FILM DETAILS 
Print Info
  • Color
  • DCP
  • 10 mins
source
  • Kick the Machine Films

Ashes

Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand, 2012

Fleeting and intimate this exuberant diary film was shot with a hand cranked LomoKino 35mm camera.

FILM DETAILS 
Language
  • Thai
  • with English subtitles
Print Info
  • Color
  • DCP
  • 20 mins
source
  • Kick the Machine Films
Followed By

La Punta

Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand, 2013

A drive along a rural road becomes a moving impressionist painting seen through a rain washed windshield.

FILM DETAILS 
Print Info
  • Color
  • DCP
  • 2 mins
source
  • Kick the Machine Films

Night Colonies

Apichatpong Weerasethakul, United States, Thailand, 2021

Weerasethakul’s contribution to the pandemic omnibus The Year of Everlasting Storm. “A macro view of the microorganisms that flock to lamps in the darkness” (NEON).

FILM DETAILS 
Language
  • Thai
  • with English subtitles
Print Info
  • Color
  • DCP
  • 14 mins
source
  • NEON