World Film Festival of Bangkok braces for "Arabian Nights"

 

The man who earned so many admirers in the cinema world with “Blissfully Yours” (2002 Un Certain Regard winner at Cannes), “Tropical Malady” (2005 jury prize) and “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives” (2010 Palme d’Or prize winner) has even more fans since wowing the crowd in the south of France.

The other movie grabbing attention at the world’s most prestigious film festival this year was “Arabian Nights”, directed by Portugal’s Miguel Gomes.

And, in one of the most charming scenes witnessed in recent memory, Gomes made an appearance wearing an “Uncle Boonmee” T-shirt, while Apichatpong showed up in an “Arabian Nights” shirt. It was a show of solidarity unlike anything the world of alternative cinema has ever seen. In interviews, both directors were also relentlessly complimentary about each other’s work. Everyone was taken aback by their mutual-admiration club, coming from a scene typically awash with back-stabbing and jealousy.

The big question now is whether Apichatpong and Gomes will meet again in Thailand during the World Film Festival of Bangkok, which runs from November 13 to 22 at SF World Cinema at CentralWorld.

The festival, which previously screened Gomes’ weird and wonderful black-and-white romance “Tabu”, will welcome the director and his producer Luis Urbano for the Thai premiere of “Arabian Nights”, with support from the Portuguese Embassy.

A gorgeous retelling of the some of the “Thousand and One Nights” stories from the Islamic Golden Age, “Arabian Nights” runs more than more than six hours in total. It will screen in Bangkok in three “volumes”, and each one is expected to be among the festival’s most sought-after tickets.

Perhaps Apichatpong will be on hand, along with his perennial director of photography, Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, whose cinematography is never less than ravishing and adds much to the lush look of “Cemetery of Splendour”. He’s another Thai talent of whom we can be proud. 

“Cemetery of Splendour” serves as a metaphor for personal and social issues in examining an epidemic of sleeping sickness that spreads across the land, with spirits appearing to the people stricken and hallucinations becoming indistinguishable from reality. 

Screened in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes, “Splendour” was shown in the Masters section of the Toronto International Film Festival, had its US premiere at the New York Film Festival and was shown at the just-wrapped Busan fest along with a new Apichatpong short film, “Vapour”.