Apichatpong Weerasethakul: An Interview

Apichatpong Weerasethakul is a venerated Thai artist and moving image maker who has directed many short works, and several feature films. In this interview, Apichatpong and Daniel Eisenberg — a Chicago-based artist and professor of film and video at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago — discuss Apichatpong’s films along with his perspective on the contemporary film industry and art world.

"Apichatpong’s films always hum with subversive tension that exists just beneath their calm appearances — the Thai-Burmese border disquiet in Blissfully Yours (2001), the foreboding gay love in Tropical Malady (2004), the Northeast’s communist past in Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010) — and this friction between tranquility and anxiety, between bliss and pain, is a textural element that gives his work a rarified beauty."

— Kong Rithdee, Cinema Scope, 2015