Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Cinema of Now

March 10–May 12, 2023

Apichatpong Weerasethakul presents several programs and the Townsend Center for the Humanities’s Una’s Lecture during this retrospective of the artist’s haunting, beautiful, and resonant works.

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Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
Syndromes and a Century
Tropical Malady
Memoria
Cemetery of Splendor

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Past Films

Cemetery of Splendor
- Friday, May 12 7 PM
Apichatpong Weerasethakul
France, United Kingdom, Germany, Malaysia, Thailand, 2015
A strange sleeping sickness befalls a group of soldiers in Weerasethakul’s mesmeric treatise on dreams, history, and magical thinking. “Cinema as the stuff dreams are made of” (Slant Magazine). With The Anthem.
Mekong Hotel
- Wednesday, May 10 7 PM
Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Thailand, United Kingdom, France, 2012
The Cannes-winning director of Tropical Malady returns with another mystical, magical blend of documentary, narrative, and fable, set in the crumbling Mekong Hotel, near the Thai/Laos border. With Ashes, Blue, La Punta, and Night Colonies.
Memoria
- Friday, May 5 7 PM
Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Colombia, Mexico, France, United Kingdom, Thailand, Germany, China, Switzerland, 2021
BAMPFA Student Committee Pick
Memoria also screens Thursday, April 6 (with Apichatpong Weerasethakul in person).

Set in Colombia and starring Tilda Swinton, Weerasethakul’s first feature film made outside of Thailand covers familiar thematic terrain for the veteran director in its exploration of the blurred boundaries between the natural world and spirit realm, and the way that collective traumas reemerge as memories and dreams.
The Adventure of Iron Pussy
- Saturday, April 29 7 PM
Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Michael Shaowanasai
Thailand, 2003
Weerasethakul teamed up with performance artist (and San Francisco Art Institute graduate) Michael Shaowanasai for this outrageous genre-and gender-bending musical Western, which follows the exploits of a glamorous transvestite secret agent.
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
- Wednesday, April 26 7 PM
Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Thailand, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, Netherlands, 2010
This Palme d’Or winner melds the last dying encounters of a farmer, Boonmee, with a gorgeously rendered landscape enlivened by the presence of ghostly apparitions. This is not magical realism, but realistic magic.
Apichatpong Weerasethakul: Una’s Lecture
- Tuesday, April 11 5:10 PM
For the Townsend Center for the Humanities’s Una’s Lecture, Apichatpong Weerasethakul appears in conversation with Hilton Als, who inquires into his career arc, filmmaking practice, and the particular political challenges involved in making film in his native Thailand. With Len Lye’s Free Radicals, Bruce Baillie’s Valentin de las Sierras, and Weerasethakul’s Ablaze.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Hilton Als in Conversation
Blissfully Yours
- Sunday, April 9 3 PM
Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Sayombhu Mukdeeprom
Thailand, 2002
Young lovers travel to the verdant jungle seeking respite from everyday anguish in “a delicate, ethereal dream of a film” (New York Times).

Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Jean Ma in Conversation
Syndromes and a Century
- Saturday, April 8 7 PM
Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Thailand, France, Austria, 2006
Inspired by the recollections of his doctor parents, Weerasethakul fashioned this gorgeous portrait of love and remembrance, mirrored in both the countryside and the city. “Profoundly mysterious, erotic, funny, gentle, playful, and utterly distinctive” (Guardian).

Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Arnika Fuhrmann in Conversation
Apichatpong Weerasethakul Masterclass
- Friday, April 7 3 PM
Apichatpong Weerasethakul addresses his approach to making moving images for both the cinema and installations and alternative screening spaces.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Leila Weefur in Conversation
Memoria
- Thursday, April 6 7 PM
Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Colombia, Mexico, France, United Kingdom, Thailand, Germany, China, Switzerland, 2021
BAMPFA Student Committee Pick
Memoria also screens Friday, May 5 (without Apichatpong Weerasethakul in person).

Set in Colombia and starring Tilda Swinton, Weerasethakul’s first feature film made outside of Thailand covers familiar thematic terrain for the veteran director in its exploration of the blurred boundaries between the natural world and spirit realm, and the way that collective traumas reemerge as memories and dreams.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul in Person
Tropical Malady
- Thursday, March 30 7 PM
Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Thailand, France, Germany, Italy, 2004
This shape-shifting blend of modern romance and mystic parable ventures deep into the Thai jungle of myth. “A work of outstanding originality and power” (Sight & Sound).
Mysterious Object at Noon
- Thursday, March 23 7 PM
Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Thailand, 2000
A film crew heads from Bangkok to the hinterlands of Thailand, asking people to continue improvising a story in this bewitching relocation of the surrealist exquisite corpse game. “Rarely has a first feature been more aptly titled” (Dennis Lim). With Worldly Desires.
Cemetery of Splendor
- Friday, March 10 7 PM
Apichatpong Weerasethakul
France, United Kingdom, Germany, Malaysia, Thailand, 2015
A strange sleeping sickness befalls a group of soldiers in Weerasethakul’s mesmeric treatise on dreams, history, and magical thinking. “Cinema as the stuff dreams are made of” (Slant Magazine). With The Anthem.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Cinema of Now

March 10–May 12, 2023

In a speculative essay in Filmkrant in May 2020, Apichatpong Weerasethakul imagined how the pandemic might transform film viewers whose physical isolation and uncertainty about the future could foster an appreciation of the present and, by considering the same view every day, a mastery of the art of looking. Returning now to theaters, might we demand “a cinema that is closer to real life, in real time . . . [a] cinema of Now”?

Weerasethakul understands cinema as the natural extension of the biological need for humans to dream—our ancient impulse to illuminate dark spaces and to play with light and shadow, finding new expressions as technology changes. Schooled in architecture in Khon Kaen before studying film at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, since the 1990s Weerasethakul has been honing his own cinema of Now. His stories unfold unhurriedly, encouraging viewers to transcend narrative expectations and become attentive to time and space, the beauty and mystery of the moments depicted, and the environments in which they take place. Drawing on stories of his subjects, actors, and friends; childhood memories; and folklore, dreams, and science fiction, the films are attentive to the spiritual resonance of the details of daily life, often depicting journeys from town to wilderness and encounters with the spirit world. Set in former conflict zones, or in the shadow of oppressive political regimes, primarily in rural northeastern Thailand, where he grew up, Weerasethakul’s films obliquely chronicle endurance and resistance to oppression, and the haunting effects of trauma on the lives of ordinary people.

BAMPFA presents a retrospective of Weerasethakul’s films and his installation, Morakot (Emerald), and we are honored to partner with the Townsend Center for the Humanities to welcome Weerasethakul to present several film programs in person, as well as the 2023 Una’s Lecture.

—Kate Mackay, Associate Film Curator

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Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Cinema of Now is copresented with the Townsend Center for the Humanities.

Thanks to Stephen Best, Rebecca Egger, Townsend Center For the Humanities; Jean Ma, Stanford University; Marcus Hu, William Gruenberg, Strand Releasing; Emma Suits, Jodi Gwydir, Guoda Ungulaityte, NEON; Brian Belovarac, Janus Films; Bonlaya Jaruthien, GMM Grammy Public Company Limited; Max Tersch, White Light Post; and Kick the Machine Films.