The World of Apichatpong Weerasethakul

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Among the 21st century’s most essential artists, Apichatpong Weerasethakul has amassed a richly original and transcendently mesmerizing body of work that few filmmakers can match. Weerasethakul’s formally daring oeuvre is marked by a meticulously controlled sense of cinematic sensuality and a powerful, understated gift for locating the political within the everyday. A towering figure in both world cinema and the art world, Weerasethakul continues to work in short- and feature-length filmmaking, always manifesting an experimental desire to rethink the possibilities of the medium. A singular cinephile in his own right, Weerasethakul has engaged with film history in profound ways.

In addition to four programs of Weerasethakul’s shorts and seven of his features, his selection of films include I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE (introduction by Weerasethakul on May 4), Jacques Tourneur’s second collaboration with producer Val Lewton (and perhaps his most poetic film) in which a Canadian nurse working on an island in the West Indies turns to voodoo with the hope of curing her patient; A MAN VANISHES (introduction by Weerasethakul on May 5), an essential work of cinematic nonfiction that pushes the envelope of what is possible in documentary filmmaking, in which Shōhei Imamura and his crew follow a vanished businessman’s fiancee as she searches high and low for her missing partner; Chantal Akerman’s LA CAPTIVE, a hypnotic exploration of erotic obsession that circles around the very-strange-indeed relationship between the seemingly pliant Ariane (Sylvie Testud) and the disturbingly jealous Simon (Stanislas Merhar); Russ Meyer’s Faster, PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL!, an enduringly influential, black-and-white cult classic in which three go-go dancers tear across the California desert on a nihilistic crime spree, presented in 35mm; John Cassavetes’ OPENING NIGHT, a masterful psychodrama with Gena Rowlands in one of her finest performances, playing an aging stage star in the midst of preparing for a new role whose sense of self begins to crumble after she witnesses the car-accident death of an obsessive fan; and PRIMATE, Frederick Wiseman’s 10th feature, chronicling the daily activities and experimental research undertaken by scientists at Atlanta’s Yerkes National Primate Research Center, presented in 16mm.