Sources
Apichatpong Weerasethakul: Contemplation and Resistance
by Duncan Caillard
2025
Published by Edinburgh University Press
eBook ISBN: 978-1-3995-3271-6
232 pages
A study of the films and other screen works of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, from slow, contemplative cinema and folkloric storytelling to resistance to authoritarian politics. It analyses his major works shot by shot, traces how his style has changed over time, and draws on archival research, artist statements and interviews. Six chapters (Silence, Pillows, Ghosts in Empty Houses, Strays, Intimate Boredom, Sleep Cinema) are framed by an introduction and a conclusion.
Link:
https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-apichatpong-weerasethakul.html
Homes
French
Edited by Antoine Thirion
2024
Published by Éditions de l’Œil
ISBN: 978-2-35137-378-1
Paperback, 23 x 19 cm, 480 pages
Published to accompany the exhibition focus Des lumières et des ombres at the Centre Pompidou, Paris (2 October 2024 – 6 January 2025), part of the Festival d’Automne. It brings together an interview with Apichatpong Weerasethakul by Christelle Lheureux, Cyril Neyrat, Mathieu Potte-Bonneville and Antoine Thirion; essays by May Adadol Ingawanij, Charlène Dinhut, Leo Goldsmith, Marcella Lista, Eva Markovits, Mathieu Potte-Bonneville, Judith Revault d’Allonnes and Kong Rithdee; and texts by the artist.
Link:
https://www.livres-cinema.info/en/livre/23511/homes
Fantasmas da Terra: A Poética de Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Portuguese
Manoela Caldas
2024
Published by Editora Machado
Catalogue of the film programme of the same name at CAIXA Cultural Rio de Janeiro (17–27 September 2024), launched there on 24 September 2024. It gathers texts by Brazilian and international authors on Apichatpong’s work, including Cecília Mello, Juliana Fausto and Ruy Gardnier.
The Films of Apichatpong Weerasethakul
English
by Anik Sarkar and Jayjit Sarkar
2024
Published by Liverpool University Press
6.14 x 0.62 x 9.21 inches, 296 pages.
Delving into Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s films, this book uncovers a plethora of conceptual paradigms. Apichatpong’s films frequently utilize rural Thailand as a backdrop, showcasing daily life, interactions, rituals, and customs, all infused with a Southeast Asian essence. This utilization of local imagery provides a national quality to his works, allowing a global audience to explore both urban and rural aspects of Thai society, along with discourses on history, culture, politics, and practices. Beyond the surface, the films also address universal and intricate themes, transcending cultural boundaries. The book delves into a range of lesser-explored aspects regarding the films and filmmaking of Apichatpong, developing fresh perspectives on the representation of nonhumans, hybrid forms, transmedia plot, technique, production among others. With meticulous analyses of his key works this interdisciplinary study unveils the threads that bind Apichatpong’s creative practice, innovative techniques, and philosophical insights. An essential read for cinephiles, scholars, and seekers of cinematic depth, this book uncovers the vibrant tapestry of meaning within Apichatpong’s enigmatic film-worlds.
Link:
https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/book/10.3828/9781837645138
A Conversation with the Sun
English
2022
Published by BANGKOK CITYCITY GALLERY
Printed by Parbpim Printing
Bangkok, Thailand
15 x 12 cm, 196 pages, offset, otabind, softcover
Edition of 1,000
Designed by Setapa Prommolmard
A conversation between Apichatpong Weerasethakul and the Sun, joined by artists, writers, and thinkers, that is generated by the artificial intelligence platform GPT-3.
This book is published to coincide with A Conversation with the Sun exhibition by Apichatpong Weerasethakul in collaboration with DuckUnit and Pat Pataranutaporn at BANGKOK CITYCITY GALLERY, May 28—July 10, 2022.
Link:
https://bookshoplibrary.com/product/a-conversation-with-the-sun/
Memoria
Apichatpong Weerasethakul
September 2021
Published by Fireflies Press
ISBN: 978-3-9819186-6-3
Hardcover, 20.5 x 28 cm, 190 pages
A book on the making of Memoria, the film shot in Colombia, Apichatpong’s first feature outside Thailand. It combines his own photographs, diary, sketches, research notes and emails with production material: set photographs, a shoot diary, annotated script pages, storyboards and contributions from the cast and crew.
Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Editors: Jaap Guldemond and Marente Bloemheuvel with a contribution by Dana Linssen
Publication Date: 29 September 2017
ISBN: 978-94-6208-415-5
Publisher: nai010, EYE Filmmuseum
Language: English
Illustrated (125 full color)
Paperback, 17 x 24 cm / 96 pages
Special Catalog designed by Irma Boom, in conjunction with an exhibition LOCUS: Apichatpong Weerasethakul - Cao Guimarães, at the EYE Amsterdam. 16 September - 3 December 2017.
Nocturnal Fabulations: Ecology, Vitality and Opacity in the Cinema of Apichatpong Weerasethakul
By Érik Bordeleau, Toni Pape, Ronald Rose-Antoinette and Adam Szymanski
Publication date: 31 March 2017
ISBN: 978-1-78542-040-5
Introduction by Erin Manning
Publisher: Open Humanities Press
Language: English/ French
Paperback, 15.2 x 1.5 x 22.9 cm / 270 pages
Nocturnal Fabulations is an essay in intercessing. This is not a book that is simply ‘about’ Apichatpong Weerasethakul, though it does engage his work in detail. It is a book that deeply questions what else might be at stake in setting up the conditions for collaboration across two genres: cinema and writing.
This collective project is animated by a shared curiosity in the pragmatics of fabulation and its speculative gesture of bringing forth a people to come. In an encounter with Apichatpong’s cinematic dreamscape, the concepts of ecology, vitality and opacity emerge to articulate an ethos of fabulation that deframes experience, recomposes subjectivity and unfixes time.
Author Bios
Érik Bordeleau is a philosopher and researcher at the Senselab (Concordia University)/Érik Bordeleau est philosophe et chercheur au SenseLab (Université Concordia).
Toni Pape is assistant professor of Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam./Toni Pape est professeur adjoint des études médiatiques à l’Université d’Amsterdam.
Ronald Rose-Antoinette is a writer currently living in Montreal./Ronald Rose-Antoinette est un écrivain basé à Montréal.
Adam Szymanski is a PhD student in the Film and Moving Image Studies program at Concordia University./Adam Szymanski est doctorant dans le programme de cinéma et les images en mouvement à l’université Concordia.
Erin Manning is research chair in Philosophy and Relational Art in the Faculty of Fine Arts at Concordia University./Erin Manning is research chair in Philosophy and Relational Art in the Faculty of Fine Arts at Concordia University.
Link:
http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/nocturnal-fabulations/
アピチャットポン
·ウィーラセタクン：光と記憶のアーティスト
Apichatpong Weerasethakul: Hikari to Kioku no Ahtisuto［An Artist of Light and Memory］
Editors: Fuyuki Natsume and Yu Kaneko
Publication date: 23 December 2016
ISBN: 978-4-8459-1617-7
Publisher: Film-Art sha. (Tokyo)
Language: Japanese
Contributors: Toranosuke Aizawa, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Norimizu Amea, Masao Ayabe, Toshiharu Ito, Kyoko Iwaki, Karen Newman, Takashi Kitakoji, Kinchome, Atsushi Sasaki, Hideyuki Takano, Chayanin Tiangpitayagorn, Tony Rayns, Norihiko Namamura, Filmsick (Wiwat Lertwiwatwongsa), Masato Fukushima, Sho Fukutomi, Kenji Fukuma, Chihiro Minato, Inuhiko Yomota, Daisuke Watanabe
Apichatpong Weerasethakul is a film director who has attracted enthusiastic attention not only from the aficionados and cinema critics of his works, but also literally from the whole world. The year 2016 marked the special occasion for collectively presenting his works in Japan: the special features started from the screening of his entire long films that involved his newest one, Cemetery of Splendor in March; this was followed by the exhibitions of his art works and short films both in the Saitama Triennial as well as in Tokyo Photographic Art Museum in December.
This book analyses the diverse aspects and connotations of the works of the author who represents both Asian and global cinema world, from the multiple viewpoints that involve cinema reviews, art criticism and cultural anthropology, through the contributions by the Japanese authors as well as the translation of various essays written in Thai and English.
This book ventures into unveiling his tacit motifs within the totality of his art world, through the detailed analyses of various scenes in his films, both with the anthropological gaze that focuses on his world of spirits, ghosts, and traditional kings, and with the similarly close examination of the artistic aspects of his video works and installations that he has poured his passion in tandem with his major film direction.
This book also contains a long interview with Apichatpong himself who reflects upon his major works, along with the detailed filmography.
Link: http://filmart.co.jp/books/filmmaker/apichatpong/
Apichatpong Weerasethakul Sourcebook: The Serenity of Madness
Edited by Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Publication date: November 2016
ISBN: 9780916365912
Introduction by Alaina Claire Feldman and Kate Fowle. Interviews with Withit Chandawong, Gridthiya Gaweewong, Andrea Lissoni. Text by Amara D. Angelica, Mo Costandi, Robert Destatte and Jeannie Schiff on Limasite85.us. Federico Garcia Lorca, Elizabeth Armstrong Moore, Jenjira Pongpas, Maddie Stone, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
Publisher: ICI and MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum
Designer: Scott Ponik
Hardcover, 8.5 x 11 in. / 271 pages
Edited by Weerasethakul himself, this publication offers a collection of perspectives on the multi-faceted practice of one of the leading artists and filmmakers of his generation. Encompassing the full complexity of the artist’s practice across media, The Serenity of Madness compiles a wide range of source materials and texts that have informed his work over the last two decades, including personal photographs, email conversations among friends, excerpts of websites and scientific studies, and poetry. The publication also features interviews by the film curator Andrea Lissoni, the art curator Gridthiya Gaweewong, and the Thai political activist Withit Chandawong.
Link:
http://curatorsintl.org/shop/apichatpong
Ghostly Desires: Queer Sexuality and Vernacular Buddhism in Contemporary Thai Cinema
Author: Arnika Fuhrmann
Publication date: 13 June 2016
Publisher: Duke University Press Books
Hardcover, 0.5 x 9 x 6 inches / 272 pages
Cloth, ISBN: 978-0-8223-6119-0
Paperback, ISBN: 978-0-8223-6155-8
Description
Through an examination of post-1997 Thai cinema and video art Arnika Fuhrmann shows how vernacular Buddhist tenets, stories, and images combine with sexual politics in figuring current struggles over notions of personhood, sexuality, and collective life. The drama, horror, heritage, and experimental art films she analyzes draw on Buddhist-informed conceptions of impermanence and prominently feature the motif of the female ghost. In these films the characters’ eroticization in the spheres of loss and death represents an improvisation on the Buddhist disavowal of attachment and highlights under-recognized female and queer desire and persistence. Her feminist and queer readings reveal the entangled relationships between film, sexuality, Buddhist ideas, and the Thai state’s regulation of heteronormative sexuality. Fuhrmann thereby provides insights into the configuration of contemporary Thailand while opening up new possibilities for thinking about queer personhood and femininity.
About The Author(s)
Arnika Fuhrmann is Assistant Professor of Southeast Asian Studies at Cornell University.
Link: https://www.dukeupress.edu/ghostly-desires
(De) construyendo a Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Coordinadora: Gloria Fernández
Colaboradores: Luis Miñarro, Enrique Garcelán
Festival Internacional de Cine de Gijón & CineAsia. Gijón, 2015
” está dividido en dos bloques: un análisis de la obra fílmica del director y un acercamiento a su obra artística, que recoge sus instalaciones para museos y su faceta de vídeo-artista. El libro, además, aporta varias miradas sobre su universo y una entrevista al realizador tailandés.”
Contact: https://sede.gijon.es/es/publicaciones/libro-deconstruyendo-apichatpong-weerasethakul
APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL (Em Portuguese do Brasil)
by Alcione Cunha Silveira
Publication Date: 2015
Language: Portuguese Brazilian
ISBN-10: 8573214430
ISBN-13: 978-8573214437
Publisher: Iluminuras
Format: Paperback, 9.9 x 7.6 x 0.5 inches
Há cerca de 20 anos o diretor tailandês Apichatpong Weerasethakul vem contribuindo para a arte do cinema ao realizar curtas, instalações audiovisuais e filmes de longa-metragem. Uma carreira marcada por sua originalidade, premiada e exibida tanto nos principais festivais de cinema quanto no circuito de arte
PHOTOPHOBIA
Edited by Brynjar Bjerkem
Publication Date: 2013
Publisher: TRANSNATIONAL ARTS PRODUCTION
Format: Hardcover, 6.5 X 9.25 IN. / 128 pages
Texts by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Nach Widner, Chaisiri Jiwarangsan
ISBN: 9788299720595
The book Photophobia was launched 4 October 2013, with TrAP as publisher. The book is already sold out in Norway, but is distributed in USA through Artbooks. Photophobia attempts to capture the artist’s creative process in his work with multiple exhibitions, and in the initial phase of his next feature film. Editor Brynjar Bjerkem writes in the introduction to the book:
“Designer João Doria has crafted a book based on his impressions of Apichatpong’s tensions between the manifest and the hidden, the real and the dreamlike, the seen and the remembered, exploring also Apichatpong’s use of light as a narrative element.”
Brynjar Bjerkem
editor
FOR TOMORROW FOR TONIGHT
Edited by Maeve Butler and Eimear O’ Raw.
Publication Date: 2011
Texts by Enrique Juncosa, Tony Rayns, Eungie Joo, Chris Dercon
ISBN: 978-1-907020-67-4
Description:Working outside the strict confines of the Thai film studio system, renowned Thai film director Apichatpong Weerasethakul (born 1970) has directed several acclaimed features and dozens of short films, including Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, winner of the prestigious 2010 Palme d’Or prize at Cannes, and Tropical Malady, winner of a 2004 Cannes jury prize. For Tomorrow For Tonight features new work exploring the theme of night through video, photographs and installation.
LINK:
https://www.artbook.com/9781907020674.html
APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL
Edited by Gary Carrion-Murayari and Massimiliano Gioni
Publication Date: October 31, 2011
New Museum; 2011; Softcover; 5.5” x 8”; 71 pp; 25 images;
ISBN 9780915557950
Primitive is the publication accompanying Apichatpong Weerasethakul first New York exhibition, devoted to the work of the Thai filmmaker (born 1970). The complex spatial and temporal relationships that his narrative films suggest are explored most boldly in the Primitive project (2009), which received its American debut at the New Museum. Primitive is Weerasethakul’s most ambitious project to date: a multi-platform work consisting of an installation of seven videos and one related short film that capture the social and historical reality of the rural village of Nabua, which was devastated by decades of violence between the Thai military and Communist-sympathizing farmers. This catalogue reproduces stills from the Primitive project alongside an interview with Weerasethakul and critical essays.
Apichatpong Weerasethakul
(Austrian Film Museum Books)
Edited by James Quandt
Publication Date: July 28, 2009
ISBN-10: 3901644318
ISBN-13: 978-3901644313
Thai filmmaker Apichatpong “Joe” Weerasethakul is widely praised as a central figure in contemporary cinema. Trained in the United States as a visual artist, Weerasethakul stunned the film world with five innovative and dreamlike features made since 2000, including such award-winning films as Blissfully Yours, Tropical Malady, and Syndromes and a Century. James Quandt, one of the foremost film critics and curators working in North America today, has edited the first English-language book on Weerasethakul. Along with his essays, contributors include Benedict Anderson, Tony Rayns, Kong Rithdee, and the British actress Tilda Swinton.