FILMS MADE FOR A SINGLE VIEWING?

This is my comment in Girish Shambu's blog:
http://www.girishshambu.com/blog/2009/01/favorite-cinema-discoveries-in-08.html

--Miguel, I really want to read your full list of 2008. I hope you will publish it soon.

--Andre Dias' phrase "films made for a single viewing" intrigues me. I think there are some certain films which I love but I don't want to watch them again soon. I think about THE CHEST TO BEQUEATH (2007, Ly Hoang Ly, Vietnamese video installation) and YOU HAVE TO WAIT ANYWAY (2007, Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit, 22-minute Thai film). In THE CHEST TO BEQUEATH, you watch fake and real roses congealing in a chest for about 40 minutes. Most of this beautiful video is literally like watching paint dry. In YOU HAVE TO WAIT ANYWAY, you watch a girl for 22 minutes in a nearly empty landscape in extreme long shot. Nothing happens. There's no story, no obvious aestheticization of the image, almost no camera movement, and no hidden information. It is like a mockery on a kind of arthouse films. Though I was not bored watching the filmed sky during my first viewing of this film, I think I prefer not to repeat this experience soon. This is partly because I doubt if the filmmaker really loves his image in this film or not, or if he just wants to make fun of it or has fun forcing the audience to watch it for a long time. My doubt about the filmmaker's intention is the main reason why I react to this film very differently from, say, the last scene of NEWS FROM HOME (1977, Chantal Akerman), or from NO ONE AT THE SEA. (2005, Tossapol Boonsinsukh), which also presents a nearly empty view. I think YOU HAVE TO WAIT ANYWAY is like a conceptual film. Once you, the viewers, assume that you understand the concept of the film, you are not sure what more you can get from the film if you watch it for the second time. But NO ONE AT THE SEA is not a conceptual film. It is a film of feelings.

Actually, I watched the early scenes of THE CHEST TO BEQUEATH for the second time, because I wanted to observe how the fake and real roses were shown to be different in the early scenes of this video.

Information about YOU HAVE TO WAIT ANYWAY:
http://www.filmfestivalrotterdam.com/en/IFFR-2009/programme-schedule/film.aspx?ID=63a85f86-a0a5-45a9-97b8-f03749a23c7a

You can watch NO ONE AT THE SEA here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vB7yCQURj8