24/05/2010
Source: Bangkok Post
CANNES : Film-maker Apichatpong Weerasethakul has made history by winning the Palme d'Or at the 63rd Cannes Film Festival with his film Loong Boonmee Raluek Chat (Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives).
The film is the first from Southeast Asia to win the world's most prestigious film award.
The nine-member jury led by Tim Burton, director of this year's Alice in Wonderland, handed the top prize to Uncle Boonmee amid loud cheers from international journalists who rooted for the dark horse from Thailand.
"This is surreal," Mr Apichatpong, 40, said in his acceptance speech. "I thank all the ghosts and spirits in Thailand that made this possible."
Uncle Boonmee, the most narrative-driven of Mr Apichatpong's films, shows the possible coexistence between humans, ghosts, spirits and animals.
In the story about a northeastern beekeeper who is dying from kidney disease and who is visited by the spirit of his dead wife, the film alludes to the troubled history of the Northeast, the communist uprising, the reincarnation of body and soul, and also provides a meta-thesis on the death and rebirth of cinema through a subtly comical and mystical narrative.
The news came at the end of a tumultuous week in Bangkok. The director said: "Thailand needs some kind of hope in other ways. We're very depressed about the confrontation of different ideologies.
"I hope, more or less, the news of the prize in the culture sector will help cool down the situation."
In an interview with the Bangkok Post, Mr Apichatpong said it was not clear if, or when, he would release the movie in Bangkok.
"To release a film, I need to go through many processes. But maybe I'll show it in one theatre."
Mr Apichatpong's previous film, Syndromes and a Century, ran into trouble with the censorship board who ordered him to cut four scenes, which the director refused to do.
Uncle Boonmee contains a scene showing a monk engaged in an activity to which the authority might object. However, the film's credits show that it has received support from the Culture Ministry.
Uncle Boonmee was screened late in the festival. It won praise from journalists after the press screening, with a long queue of requested interviews.
The jury shared the same passion for Uncle Boonmee. The Thai film won over two French favourites, Of Gods and Men, which won the second prize, and Tournee, which won best director for Mathieu Amalric.
"Cinema is a personal pursuit," Mr Apichatpong said. "To present my point of view is to present a different kind of cinema, to push the boundary and to see what cinema can do.
"Everywhere in the world now, even in Cambodia or Laos, we've become something like a monoculture. We have the same logic about narrative, and minority culture has been prevented from being expressed.
"Cinema is one of the components that can foster the understanding in the culture."
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