I could watch a month’s worth of indie films straight on Amazon and Netflix. The best part, I can skip frames and swop out titles if I can’t deal with too experimental film techniques. Like the tedious ‘Let The Corpses Tan’ (2017) written and directed by Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani, which was adapted from a novel 'Laissez bronzer les cadavres' (1971) written by Jean-Patrick Manchette and Jean-Pierre Bastid. Grimaced my way through it.
I wisely avoided the arthouse indie films billed under ‘Singular Screens’ at the Singapore International Festival of the Arts (SIFA), except for ‘Nakorn-Sawan’ (2018, นคร-สวรรค์) written and directed by Puangsoi ‘Rose’ Aksornsawang. Well, I really wanted to check out the brand new Oldham Theatre at the refurbished National Archives, and this Thai film is also the only one I was interested in to be stuck in a theatre seat for 76 minutes. I was curious about the critical acclaim it received last year at the Busan International Film Festival and Taipei's Golden Horse Film Festival (台北金馬國際影展).
Part fiction and part documentary, the film follows the journey of Aoey who after five years away, returns home to Nakhon Sawan province to her mother's funeral. Sacred river Pak Nam Po is mentioned. The rivers Ping and Nan in Nakhon Sawan province meet, and that's called Pak Nam Pho, where the mighty Chao Phraya begins and flows 372km south to Bangkok and the Gulf of Thailand. Pak Nam Po is where Aoey boarded the boat to send her mother on her final journey to the afterlife. In addition to two monks, her father and Aunt and cousin were also present.
At the same time, we see videos interspersed about the director's parents, of her father who is a rubber tapper, and of her mother, who was ill with presumably a terminal disease. To understand why there's a parallel documentary about the director's parents, I'm thankful for the internet. In an October 2018 interview with Thai newspaper, The Nation, Puangsoi ‘Rose’ Aksornsawang tells of how she was studying film in Germany, and was in the middle of a project when her mother passed away. She abandoned the project to return home, then she headed back to Germany. This project was to be a documentary about herself, and her family, and now, she could weave it into 'Nakorn-Sawan'. It was pretty well framed.
I wisely avoided the arthouse indie films billed under ‘Singular Screens’ at the Singapore International Festival of the Arts (SIFA), except for ‘Nakorn-Sawan’ (2018, นคร-สวรรค์) written and directed by Puangsoi ‘Rose’ Aksornsawang. Well, I really wanted to check out the brand new Oldham Theatre at the refurbished National Archives, and this Thai film is also the only one I was interested in to be stuck in a theatre seat for 76 minutes. I was curious about the critical acclaim it received last year at the Busan International Film Festival and Taipei's Golden Horse Film Festival (台北金馬國際影展).
Part fiction and part documentary, the film follows the journey of Aoey who after five years away, returns home to Nakhon Sawan province to her mother's funeral. Sacred river Pak Nam Po is mentioned. The rivers Ping and Nan in Nakhon Sawan province meet, and that's called Pak Nam Pho, where the mighty Chao Phraya begins and flows 372km south to Bangkok and the Gulf of Thailand. Pak Nam Po is where Aoey boarded the boat to send her mother on her final journey to the afterlife. In addition to two monks, her father and Aunt and cousin were also present.
At the same time, we see videos interspersed about the director's parents, of her father who is a rubber tapper, and of her mother, who was ill with presumably a terminal disease. To understand why there's a parallel documentary about the director's parents, I'm thankful for the internet. In an October 2018 interview with Thai newspaper, The Nation, Puangsoi ‘Rose’ Aksornsawang tells of how she was studying film in Germany, and was in the middle of a project when her mother passed away. She abandoned the project to return home, then she headed back to Germany. This project was to be a documentary about herself, and her family, and now, she could weave it into 'Nakorn-Sawan'. It was pretty well framed.
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