| The documentary
leisurely examines the shifting focus of image
and sound. It was a hot day in a small town
where a mystic radio filled the air. Lives
were trapped in the time of the radio play,
of the photograph, and of the film. The narrative
form is broken, sometimes improvised, and
sometimes structured. The radio wave is transmitted
from one place to many others, delivering
a melodramatic play, the Sea Goddess. The
film juxtaposes the time and the memory worlds.
The transportation (the car, the ship, the
passing plane) in this film is the vehicle
that runs through both worlds.
Selected Reviews/ Texts:
“…the radio sound and the discussions
between the people who listen to the radio
is a mixture of fiction and reality and
sometimes it is not possible to say if the
spoken words belong to the real or the fictional
world. It seems that the subtitles can be
linked to both text levels. And repeatedly
the machine, the source of the sound, is
shown. The film is not about the contrast
between every day life and illusion, but
rather Apichatpong's idea is to delete the
difference between the hierarchies that
exist between the (re)production of a film
and the film itself.
Like the Relentless Fury of the Pounding
Waves ends with takes in a film studio,
where a film shoot is prepared in front
of wallpaper showing exotic landscapes.
In this way the production of the film images
is disclosed as a cut between illusion,
or fiction, and facts. At the same time
it is an act of creating production levels.
This method is an integral part of and
preeminent in all the films by Apichatpong
Weerasethakul. His film productions are
always discourses about the possibilities
of film making, through the use of different
narrative perspectives and image production
strategies...”
------Excerpts from Leveled Narratives,
by Ulrike Kremeire, Artistic director, Plattform
/ Berlin
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