Kick the Machine

Apichatpong Weerasethakul's submission to 30/30 Vision.

After hearing a loud ‘bang’ at daybreak, a Scottish woman begins experiencing a mysterious sensory syndrome while traversing the jungles of Colombia.

A recreation of an event to commemorate the presence of the dead and the decayed memories of the living, of filmmaking

A Thai band, Modern Dog, was invited to Nabua for the making of a music video for one of their songs, I’m Still Breathing. The teens are together in the village street and start to run, some of them kicking the smoking balls and throwing them into the moving crowd. The video is a celebration of exaltation and the release of tension, echoing Thailand’s political atmosphere.

Suffering from acute kidney failure, Boonmee has chosen to spend his final days surrounded by his loved ones in the countryside. Surprisingly, the ghost of his deceased wife appears to care for him, and his long lost son returns home in a non-human form. Contemplating the reasons for his illness, Boonmee treks through the jungle with his family to a mysterious hilltop cave—the birthplace of his first life.

Featuring seven stories from seven auteurs from around the world, the film chronicles this unprecedented moment in time, and is a true love letter to the power of cinema and its storytellers.

Min is an illegal Burmese immigrant living in Thailand who has contracted a mysterious painful rash covering his upper body. His girlfriend, Roong, and a middle-aged woman, Orn, take him to see a doctor. Min pretends that he cannot speak because he is not fluent in Thai and speaking would reveal him to be an illegal immigrant.

The passionate relationship between two men with unusual consequences. The film is divided in two parts. The first half charts the modest attraction between two men in the sunny, relaxing countryside and the second half charts the confusion and terror of an unknown menace lurking deep within the jungle shadows.

In a hospital, ten soldiers are being treated for a mysterious sleeping sickness. In a story in which dreams can be experienced by others, and in which goddesses can sit casually with mortals, a nurse learns the reason why the patients will never be cured, and forms a telepathic bond with one of them.

A story about director Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s parents who were both doctors, and his memories of growing up in a hospital environment.

In collaboration with Lomo, an Austrian camera company, and Mubi, a global film website, Weerasethakul was invited to make a work to launch the new LomoKino, a portable motion picture camera. Ashes juxtaposes the intimacy of his daily routine with the destruction of memories and his observations of the dark side of Thailand’s social realities.

Amidst the post-economic crash, a man must return from abroad after his father committed suicide. After return home, he must confront his past and struggle to hold on to his present.

Shifting between fact and fiction in a hotel situated along the Mekong River, a filmmaker rehearses a movie expressing the bonds between a vampire-like mother and daughter.

Jenjira, a Thai widow, travels to the ancient Buddhist temple Sigiriya in Sri Lanka to scatter her husband’s ashes. As her visions blur time and space, she is swept into a journey through across dimensions.

Taking the recent tsunami in Asia as its starting point, the filmmakers have used the idea of a ghost seen wandering along the rocky coastline of a Thai island and, in a life-affirming gesture, they have invited some local children to direct the film for them, suggesting and filming the movements of the actor-ghost.

A family of 9 takes their grandmother on a merit-making trip to 9 temples in 1 day, hoping to prolong her life. But the trip takes an unexpected turn.

One of three films commissioned by the Jeonju International Film Festival in 2005. A couple escaped their family to look for a spiritual tree in the jungle. There is a song at night, a song that spoke about an innocent idea of love and a quest for happiness. Worldly Desires is an experimental project where I invited a filmmaker friend, Pimpaka Towira, to shoot the love story by day and the song by night. The story, Deep Red Bloody Night, was written by my assistant who wanted to reprise a forbidden love story in a more romantic time in the past. I picked a pop song, Will I be Lucky? to convey a sense of guiltless freedom one feels when being hit by love. The video is a little simulation of manners, dedicated to the memories of filmmaking in the jungle during the year 2001-2005. -Apichatpong Weerasethakul

The first railway line in Thailand was inaugurated in 1893 – a sign of progress and prosperity. Shot over eight years on every active line of the country's railway system, this wondrous documentary offers an unprecedented immersion into the country's past and present.

Short for his website, kickthemachine.

The clouds descend onto a village and engulf it for a day. They touch the roof tiles, the beds, the chairs, the carpets, the grass, and the bodies, infecting everything with the fever of white stupor.