By Vadim Rizov

Woah. When I posted some thoughts on the recent programs of Apichatpong “Joe” Weerasethakul’s shorts at the Anthology Film Archives — a touring program, by the way, that you should really try to catch if it comes near you — I had no idea that I’d be contributing, apparently, the internet’s sole report on the event, nor that we were going to be called on it so stringently. I would’ve taken notes at the very least instead of making a supplementary post to a primary text that never came.

In an effort to make amends, here’s a far more detailed breakdown of the programs — the first of which I saw on a crowded Friday night, with a capacity crowd, and the second in a far less intense Saturday screening. As for Joe’s appearance — the event started 25 minutes late, with the Anthology staff valiantly struggling to process all comers as quickly as possible — there’s little to say from the intro (I didn’t stick around for the Q&A). Joe betrayed his art school background by seeming genuinely humbled to play at the Anthology, which he said had frequently come up in his studies, and made the mandatory apology for his earlier studies, begging our patience.

The Anthem (2006): As Joe explained, the Royal Anthem plays before every film screening in Thailand. Perhaps sincerely paying tribute to this tradition, perhaps out of puckish rebelliousness (Joe’s problems with the Thai government are no secret), this 5-minute short proposes itself as an acceptable pre-screening staple. Just to drive the point home, this was screened before both programs, and I have to say I’m all for it. It’s recognizably Essence Of Joe: in the first half, a group of women sits around an outdoor table, discussing with indiscriminate candor everything from their taste in food to dissolving their marriages. Through it all, a new song by Thai artist James is playing, as the women speculate whether the song could serve to bless, for example, the gym across the river. (Joe is either deliberately screwing with Western hipsters by using a song by an artist whose name is the same as, in this case, the Britpop band best known for “Laid” - just as he did in Tropical Malady where lovers exchanges tapes by The Clash, which is a Thai band with no relation to Joe Strummer; either that, or Thai bands just have no imagination when it comes to names.) The predictably bifurcated structure cuts across with no warning to the gym: the camera does two full laps around dancing teams, ladies arguing over flowers, and god knows who else. The gym has become a free-floating creative zone where no one steps on anyone else’s toes - the perfect creative space, in short. It’s a short that definitely got stronger on repeat viewing (there’s simply too much to take in the first time) and is perhaps the strongest 5 minutes of Joe’s career.

Windows (1999): Without sound, a camera slowly re-orients its relationship to windows reflected off a TV screen, the light from which plays all kinds of flare havoc with the lens - first barely perceptible as a compositional element, slowly increasing until waves of flashing light create their own rhythm, at times creating their own wormhole-type visions. It’s a phenomenon you can only get with video, and this is definitely an experiment with that medium rather than a lo-fi sketch for a later-realized film. For this decidedly un-avant-trained viewer, it’s also kind of breathtaking: at first it seems like a Chantal Akerman-esque challenge to construct something out of very little visual information (we never get a clear look at the physical space this is taking place in: it’s a one-on-one interaction between camera and light, with people and places bypassed entirely), but Joe’s trademark sensuality takes over. Stroboscopic to a degree that Ken Jacobs might appreciate, it’s the only unqualified gem besides Anthem to come out of this series.

Malee And The Boy (1999): Not to say that the other shorts were unqualified failures either. Malee starts strong, with Joe forcing us through a story told entirely through scrolling on-screen text; the reason it’s not in straight-up literary form, presumably, is that Joe can control your reading pace, making sure you never leave the story to grab a drink or break for lunch. The story’s an outlandish, engrossing compendium of demons, shopping malls and other incongruous elements of religion and secularism mixed seemingly at random (it’s actually from a Thai comic book); what follows, however, is a fairly befuddling mixture of static observational shots, culminating in the revelation that all the sound has come from a boy wandering at will. Boy removes mic; end sound, end movie shortly thereafter. Someone else will have to do the interpretive work on this one.

Like The Relentless Fury Of The Pounding Waves (1995) and Thirdworld (1997): I was really tired at this point (the last two shorts of the first program), so I can’t really report in any great detail. It’s a blur of palpable heat, people sitting in tense languor, et cetera. Not a bad summary of Joe’s work, honestly, but (with the exception of Windows) it definitely feels like he needs the textural depth of film (or at least hi-def) to achieve what he wants; these are moods in search of equally memorable images.

0016643225059 (1994): The earliest work on the program. Back to stroboscopics, as a phone conversation (the words seemingly unimportant, hence unsubtitled) is chopped up into its component syllabic elements, one syllable alternately assigned to images that overlap with each other. If you haven’t seen this kind of work, that always tends to create unexpected tensions and seemingly 3D images, and the ones here are predictably hypnotic, even if the short is alternately rote and hypnotic. It’s an art-school project. Surprised?

Ghost Of Asia (2005): As with Malee, control is once again ceded to kids (two boys and a girl), who use an obliging actor as their puppet: “Drink water,” “Go poo,” “Take a nap” — whatever they command, he does with a smile. The title is typically inscrutable, the results great fun — a “Sesame Street” short that stops just short of instructional, with slightly greater formal rigor than usual. Like Joe’s best work, it feels buoyant for reasons that are hard to articulate.

My Mother’s Garden (2007): Animated doodles emerge organically from a collection of jewelry so close-up as to be unrecognizable. The result makes cold, inanimate objects friendly, which is kind of what Joe’s been doing his whole career.

Worldly Desires (2005): More than any piece besides The Anthem, this comes closest to the aesthetic and feel of Joe’s feature work. The split isn’t halfway through the film, but constant — we toggle back and forth between the filming of a romantic drama during the day and the constant re-shooting of a musical number at night. The jungle setting is one Joe made definitely his own with Blissfully Yours; the effect of seeing a choreographed, lip-synced routine in the middle of it is the friendly flipside to Mulholland Drive’s “Club Silencio.” There are moments of magic here — a spontaneous dance in the middle of an empty road by an inexplicably peppy film crew member, the numbers themselves — interspersed with the usual sluggish feel, which is both enervating and oddly ingratiating, which is pretty much the reaction I always have. That’s the crux, and why I can’t yet embrace Joe as rapturously as most of my colleagues: there’s moments of epiphany buried within an undeniably pleasant texture where I have trouble telling one moment from the next. He may be retraining me as a viewer yet, but I have no clue.

Emerald (2007) — CGI flakes float through a deserted room, seemingly the ashes of the lovers whose voice-overs dominate the space, occasionally popping up in ghostly flashes equally endearing and spooky. We’re deep in a new direction here, where CGI plays a role as prominent — and as texturally rich — as the jungle/urban spaces Joe delineates so richly. Much of the value of these two programs comes from seeing how Joe’s avant-garde experiments and background has been integrated (arguably barely) into the narrative realm; if he ever figures out how to integrate this into a narrative feature, he’s even more of a marvel than generally thought.