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PART OF Sabzian Events
Johan van der Keuken Retrospective Part I
The Cinema of Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul (1970) is known for, among other films, Tropical Malady (2004) and Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010), which shows, in Apichatpong’s words, “the relationship between man and animal and at the same time destroys the line dividing them”. His latest film, Memoria (2021), takes place in Columbia, where a deep historical context resonates, foreign to both the main character and the director himself. His films experiment with the dramatic plot structure of Thai television, radio programs, comics and films. He often uses improvised dialogues and non-professional actors, exploring the boundaries between documentary and fiction.
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This Week’s Agenda
This Friday, Sabzian’s Johan van der Keuken retrospective opens with two films, The Filmmaker’s Holiday and Time, both about family and the intertwining of past and present in a reflection on death. Alain Bergala observed: “there’s something of Ingmar Bergman in Van der Keuken’s photographs though there’s not the slightest trace of Bergman in his films.” Van der Keuken’s photograph of his sleeping girlfriend, taken from behind a window, made Bergala think of Bergman as the filmmaker who best captured the sudden strangeness of a hitherto familiar body.
In Bergman’s Cries and Whispers, screening at CINEMATEK, two sisters return to their childhood home to be with their sibling who’s dying of cancer. Memories of their past and their mother return with them. Opening with shots of a statue of Orpheus and ticking clocks, the film shares an investment in the tension between time and stillness with The Filmmaker’s Holiday, but also echoes another van der Keuken film only appearing in Part II of the retrospective, Last Words - My Sister Joke (1998), where the filmmaker speaks with his sister days before her passing from cancer.
Van der Keuken conceived Time from the perspective of duration, which for him also touched upon the non-genetic family one chooses during life. In Tsai Ming-liang’s Abiding Nowhere, the monk walking extremely slowly through today’s world is played by Lee Kang-sheng who’s appeared in every one of Tsai’s features. Ever since the filmmaker saw him outside a Taipei video arcade and cast him in Rebels of the Neon God (1992), they’ve become like family. This tenth collaboration in their Walker series, screening in its entirety at SMAK, is whispered to be the last and crystalizes Tsai’s lifelong observation of Lee’s body moving through time and space.
PART OF Sabzian Events
Johan van der Keuken Retrospective
Belgian Premieres and Festivals
Each month, Sabzian lists upcoming Belgian premieres, releases and festivals.