KRABI, 2562: London Film Festival – 3rd and 13th October
Selected for the Experimenta Special Presentation at the London Film Festival, this collaboration between award-winning directors Anocha Suwichakornpong and Ben Rivers is a multidimensional exploration of the outskirts of Krabi in Thailand. The film extends freely to the local communities, inviting them to join in the crafting of a story that slithers mischievously between the appearance and disappearance of a stranger, before and after, fiction and reality, documentary and camp, mass tourism and the birth of the Holocene.
Co-conceived and directed by festival favourites Anocha Suwichakornpong and Ben Rivers, two distinctive voices from different cultures and traditions who nevertheless share a similarly generous vision of the world, Krabi, 2562 is an elaboration of themes and ideas investigated in the duo’s 2018 installation for the first Thai Biennale. In the film’s narrative and visual space the Holocene, the recent past, and present day (2562 being the current year in the Thai Buddhist calendar) coexist in southern Thailand’s Krabi region and its quietly beautiful landscapes — paradises soon to be lost forever in the contamination of rampant consumerism and invasive tourism.
Shot on Super 16 by Rivers and cinematographer Leung Ming Kai, the film lingers on the quiet pace of omnipresent nature, ever-changing light, and the inhabitants who strangely, though also naturally, are suspended within a vast time continuum — including that of memory.