Close Up

26 September 2016: NANG Issue 1 Launch + Cemetery of Splendour

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We’re pleased to host the launch the first issue of NANG magazine with a special screening of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s recent, deeply meditative feature, Cemetery of Splendour.

Covering cinema cultures across the Asian world with passion and insight NANG aims to build a rich and profound collection of words and images on cinema, for knowledge, inspiration, and enjoyment. Each edition centres on a different theme, with Issue 1 dedicated to screenwriting – shedding light on an area of filmmaking that is both mysterious and marginalized, especially in regards to Asian cinema

Through a series of in-depth interviews with thirteen writers and directors from Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand and Iran, NANG presents a myriad of writing experiences, methods for developing stories, and ways in which screenwriters survive and endure within their film industries. Rarely seen pages from the screenplays of, among others, Laskar Pelangi, Tropical Malady, The Handmaiden, Shahrzad and Unlucky Plaza further enrich this unique exploration into writing for the screen.

Cemetery of Splendour
Apichatpong Weerasethakul
2015 | 122 min | Colour | DCP

Ruminating on the ever-present force of the past on the present, Cemetery of Splendour observes as nurses, families and volunteers tend to a group of soldiers stricken by a mysterious sleep epidemic. Doctors use coloured light therapy to ease the soldiers’ troubled dreams, which slowly reveal themselves to bear a connection to an ancient burial site lying beneath the clinic grounds. Following the relationship that emerges between Jen, a clinic volunteer, and Itt, the somnolent soldier she has been caring for, the film increasingly gives way to hallucination, phantoms and romance.

More info: http://www.nangmagazine.com