Memoria
Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2021, 136 min
Introduced by Giovanni Marchini Camia

Followed by a recorded zoom interview between Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Giovanni Marchini Camia.

Winner of the Jury Prize at Cannes in 2021, the latest feature from director Apichatpong Weerasethakul stars Tilda Swinton as a woman left isolated and traumatised by unexplained sounds and noises that it appears only she can hear.  Jessica (Swinton) is an expatriate Briton living a quiet life in Colombia when she is suddenly beset by inexplicable noises – real or imagined, heard or hallucinated. As she tries to trace the sources of the sounds that are tormenting her, she’s brought into contact with lost memories and hidden histories – but are they hers? Mystical and metaphysical, Weerasethakul’s work is an extraordinary musing on the nature of memory and identity – with Swinton a predictably perfect foil.

This screening coincide with Fireflies Press' Memoria book launch, which chronicles the film's genesis and creation.

After visiting Colombia in 2017, Apichatpong chose the country as the location for his first feature shot outside of his native Thailand. In the following two years, he returned for several visits and travelled extensively, listening to the stories of the people he met along the way. 

The book gathers the memories he collected, in the form of photographs, a personal diary and sketchbook, research notes, treatment excerpts, and email correspondence. These are placed alongside exclusive materials from the film’s production: set photographs, a diary of the shoot, annotated pages from the shooting script and storyboard, contributions from the cast and crew, and more. The result is an extraordinary immersion into the creative processes and work methods of one of contemporary cinema’s true visionaries.

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Fireflies Press is an independent publisher of books on contemporary cinema, run by Annabel Brady-Brown and Giovanni Marchini Camia. As with the magazine, their books champion under-represented and stylistically diverse films and film writing.

More info: https://firefliespress.com