Wednesday, October 10, 2007

MEMORY OF WATER, JORG SASSE, TOSSAPOL BOONSINSUKH

THIS IS MY COMMENT IN FILMSICK’S BLOG
http://filmsick.exteen.com/20071008/entry

ยังเก็บตำราเรียนสมัยมัธยมเอาไว้อยู่หรือนี่

พูดถึงเขตแดนในปวศ.ไทยแล้ว “ฟ้าเดียวกัน” เล่มใหม่มีบทความน่าสนใจดีเกี่ยวกับการที่ไทยพยายามเรียกร้องดินแดนคืนจากฝรั่งเศสในช่วงสงครามโลกครั้งที่สอง เราไม่เคยรู้เรื่องนี้มาก่อนเลย

เห็นแผนที่แล้วนึกถึง INDIA SONG, เห็นรอยแตกบนพื้นแล้วนึกถึง THE STONE RAFT (2002, George Sluizer)

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THIS IS MY COMMENT IN BIOSCOPE WEBBOARD:
http://www.bioscopemagazine.com/smf/index.php?topic=583.0

--I’m very glad you like these photos, Merveillesxx. I also like this kind of photos very much. I still remember that in 1994 or so, I took a microbus home from the university. Then it rained heavily, but inside the microbus I thought I saw one of the beautiful images. It was the image of huge amount of rainwater pouring down successively on the outside of the very large glass window pane of the microbus. It made me feel as if I was inside a cave behind a waterfall. Do you still remember the microbus, the small bus with large glass window pane? I think the image would not have been this beautiful if I sat inside a normal bus, with small ugly window panes. Are there any microbus still running in Bangkok? I think I haven’t seen it for many years.

I asked myself why I still remember that it happened around 1994. The event is nothing important at all. It was just raining. Why do I still remember this image of huge amount of rainfall outside a microbus after it happened 13 years ago? I don’t know. My memory is very selective, and I can’t control it.

The first reason why I still remember it is because the image was very beautiful. The reason why I still remember that it happened around 1994 is because during those years I rarely took a microbus home because it took a long time before it could reach my neighbourhood. But in 1994 I nearly finished studying in the university. I had a lot of free time. So I didn’t mind taking a microbus in the early afternoon to go back home, because I was not in a hurry during that time of my life. Well, maybe I remember everything wrongly. I don’t have any proof that it actually happened that year. But that is not important, isn’t it? I just wonder why I remember such an unimportant event so well, and try to figure out the reasons of it.

Sorry if I bother you with my autobiography. I just would like to write whatever came into my mind.

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--If I remember it correctly, another film with very beautiful images of waterdrops on car windows is TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN (2007, Wakai Makiko, A+). You also saw this short lesbian film in the Thai Short Film Festival. In this film, we hear a character talking about her love for a foreign woman, but we rarely see anything in this film except car windows full of water drops, or steam, I’m not sure.

Though the images in TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN and in the ending of LIFE IS SHORT 2 might look similar, I think the uses of this same image is very different. In LIFE IS SHORT 2, the image is the center of the film at that moment. There is no voiceover, no story. Everything relies on that image. All the feelings the audience feel come from that image. LIFE IS SHORT 2 uses the whole power of that image.

But in the case of TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN, I think the image is not as powerful as in LIFE IS SHORT 2, but maybe that’s the intention of the director. I guess the director just uses this lonely image to “support” the story. The director may want the audience to focus his/her attention to the voiceover, and want the audience to create the story/the images of the story by himself/herself inside the audience’s minds. The audience will perceive two images at the same time—the mental eye sees the images of a lesbian relationship, the physical eyes see the images of a blurred car window. The images which appear before the physical eyes must not be too strong or too powerful, or else it will distract the viewers from the voiceover and the story about the lesbian relationship.

So I think it is interesting that the same kind of image is used differently in these two experimental films. LIFE IS SHORT 2 gives the whole power to the image, while TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN suppresses some power of the image and uses this lonely image to support the images in the imagination of the audience.

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--Apart from Naoto Hatakeyama, another photographer whose works remind me of Tossapol Boonsinsukh’s films is Jorg Sasse.

Jorg Sasse’s website is at:
http://www.c42.de/

The photos below come from the website of Jorg Sasse. Each photo reminds me of a specific film of Tossapol Boonsinsukh. The photos are not at all similar to the images in Tossapol’s films, but somehow the feelings derived from the photos remind me of the feelings I experienced while watching Tossapol’s films.


This photo reminds me of ARE YOU GONNA MISS ME?
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2325/1533205441_0daa8d9799_o.jpg

This photo reminds me of CHICKEN SMILE.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2057/1533205383_b8f02fbee9_o.jpg

This photo reminds me of LIFE IS SHORT 2: EPISODE – HIDE, though in the film Tossapol used an extreme close-up of his hair to create an illusion of swaying grass.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2025/1533205387_33bd738f4c_o.jpg

This photo reminds me of NICE TO MEET YOU.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2419/1533205447_2424d8e9df_o.jpg

This photo reminds me of NO ONE AT THE SEA.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2236/1533205373_0422f301d8_o.jpg

This photo doesn’t remind me of Tossapol Boonsinsukh’s film, but reminds me of the film FIREFLIES (2005, Chawit Waewsawangwong).
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2303/1533205429_e9ecb6dcc2_o.jpg



















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