{"id":8827,"date":"2011-05-13T01:05:54","date_gmt":"2011-05-13T01:05:54","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-05-13T01:05:54","modified_gmt":"2011-05-13T01:05:54","slug":"A-Thai-Director-Dreams-of-History-","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/?p=8827","title":{"rendered":"A Thai Director Dreams of History"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul won the Cannes film festival&#8217;s Palme d&#8217;Or prize last year for the fantasy &#8220;Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives,&#8221; but for him the movie is an element of a larger art project.  On Thursday, he will bring that project, called &#8220;Primitive,&#8221; to New York&#8217;s New Museum as a seven-video installation, all filmed in a border town across from Laos called Nabua.<\/strong> <\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s in northeast Thailand, the region Mr. Apichatpong hails from. In the 1960s to early &#8217;80s, the government brutally persecuted villagers suspected of sympathizing with communist factions, and the videos are &#8220;a small collective memory,&#8221; he says, of the village&#8217;s painful past.  The local male teenagers featured in these videos know this trauma only secondhand\u2014something that inspired the installation&#8217;s trance-like state of escapism. <\/p>\n<p><strong>The installation includes science-fiction elements such as a spaceship that the teens build and later drink, hang out and sleep in.  Accompanying the installation is Mr. Apichatpong&#8217;s short film &#8220;Phantoms of Nabua,&#8221; in which the young men of the village emerge in the night to play soccer with a ball set on fire. This is Mr. Apichatpong&#8217;s first New York solo exhibition.<\/strong> <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB10001424052748703730804576317350583448410.html?mod=WSJASIA_hpp_MIDDLEThirdNews\" title=\"s\">SOURCE<\/a><br \/>\n<!--break--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul won the Cannes film festival&#8217;s Palme d&#8217;Or prize last year for the fantasy &#8220;Uncle Boonmee Who<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1213,"featured_media":72448,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"magazineBlocksPostFeaturedMedia":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x150.jpg","medium":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","medium_large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","1536x1536":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","2048x2048":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-highlighted-post":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-featured-post-medium":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-featured-post-small":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x90.jpg","colormag-featured-image":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-default-news":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x150.jpg","colormag-featured-image-large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-block-extra-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-small-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-medium-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg"},"magazineBlocksPostAuthor":{"name":"Joshua","avatar":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/62ee23f8f40307578d1f284ecd823d77f32da8ea35541e7dbdafeb5da1a4e877?s=96&d=mm&r=g"},"magazineBlocksPostCommentsNumber":"0","magazineBlocksPostExcerpt":"Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul won the Cannes film festival&#8217;s Palme d&#8217;Or prize last year for the fantasy &#8220;Uncle Boonmee Who","magazineBlocksPostCategories":[],"magazineBlocksPostViewCount":126,"magazineBlocksPostReadTime":1,"magazine_blocks_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg",113,170,false],"medium":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg",113,170,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x150.jpg",113,150,true]},"magazine_blocks_author":{"display_name":"Joshua","author_link":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/?author=1213"},"magazine_blocks_comment":0,"magazine_blocks_author_image":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/62ee23f8f40307578d1f284ecd823d77f32da8ea35541e7dbdafeb5da1a4e877?s=96&d=mm&r=g","magazine_blocks_category":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1213"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8827\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/72448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}