10 · 29 · 21

Memoria by Apichatpong Weerasethakul Presented at the 19th FICM

Berenice Andrade @MelcochaBarata

Memoria, the most recent film by Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul, had its Mexican premiere in Mexico at the 19th Morelia International Film Festival (FICM).

The film was presented by producers Julio Chavezmontes and Mónica Moreno, from Piano, a Mexican production company involved in the making of the film. In this presentation, Chavezmontes described the Thai director as "the great master of contemporary cinema," while Moreno said that in Memoria, Apichatpong Weerasethakul captured the essence of not only Colombia but much of what Latin American countries shares.

At the end of the performance, a previously recorded conversation between the director and film critic Alonso Díaz de la Vega was screened, in which they discussed the motivations and processes behind the film, the first Apichatpong Weerasethakul's has filmed outside of Thailand and in a language that he does not master.

In Memoria, Jessica, played by Tilda Swinton, has been unable to sleep since she was startled awake with a loud bang at dawn. While she is in Bogotá visiting her sister, she befriends Agnès, an archaeologist who studies human remains discovered in a tunnel. When Jessica travels to visit her at the excavation site, she meets Hernán, a fish scaler with whom she shares memories by the river. At the end of the day, a sense of clarity fills her.

"It started many years ago when I had this symptom. I heard a sound very early in the morning, and in 2017 I had the opportunity to visit Colombia for a film festival and then I traveled around for two or three months in different cities with the sound and I began to think about the experience of audio and how this personal sound can be linked with the social: the personal is linked with other countries. The film began there, based on this experience with sound," said Apichatpong Weerasethakul in an interview with Alonso Díaz de la Vega.

On the relationship that the director makes between cinema and dreams, and its healing quality, he said: "I believe that cinema has a relationship with sleep and I believe that when we sleep the body literally heals, the brain and cells. And I believe that is why we make movies. At the movies you walk into the room with other people to see this light and be semi-conscious: it's like when you dream. So there is definitely a healing quality."

"It doesn't bother me that people fall asleep in my films because it shows that they feel comfortable and trust that space and that light. I myself have fallen asleep in many films, in my films! And Béla Tarr's. It's like if you mixed your dreams with movies and narratives. It could be another way to watch movies, so it doesn't bother me," he concluded.