Set within the confines of a juice factory in Thailand, Tulapop Saenjaroen films the eponymous fruit’s journey through its many stages from tree to bottle, bestowing it with a strangely horrific appearance, its pulpy, fleshy, gloopy shape looking increasingly grotesque.
It hints a little at what lies ahead, but until that mid-point turn, the film is compellingly, playfully wayward, a documentary-leaning piece so sincere you might not entirely believe it to be a fictional construction until the credits roll. Following factory worker Earth, who returns to the area to reunite with his sister Ink, as told by a narrator who makes pointed references to Borges, the film wanders from factory goings-on to sudden, disturbingly graphic declarations of violence, and Ink’s desires to disappear in a fashion that recalls Han Kang’s The Vegetarian.
It could easily be wacky, but the film’s firm tonal balance of deadpan sincerity.
It hints a little at what lies ahead, but until that mid-point turn, the film is compellingly, playfully wayward, a documentary-leaning piece so sincere you might not entirely believe it to be a fictional construction until the credits roll. Following factory worker Earth, who returns to the area to reunite with his sister Ink, as told by a narrator who makes pointed references to Borges, the film wanders from factory goings-on to sudden, disturbingly graphic declarations of violence, and Ink’s desires to disappear in a fashion that recalls Han Kang’s The Vegetarian.
It could easily be wacky, but the film’s firm tonal balance of deadpan sincerity.
- 11/6/2023
- by Sunil Chauhan
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
![Image](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BODFjNzkwMzMtNGMwNy00YTllLWEwYWEtMjA1NmFiZDg0YTA3XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMTE0MzQwMjgz._V1_QL75_UX500_CR0,0,500,281_.jpg)
The Berlin Film Festival has revealed the 28 titles selected for its Forum strand and the 26 projects at the Forum Expanded platform.
In the Forum strand, documentaries stand alongside personal essay films, while the films and installations that make up the Forum Expanded program revolve around political and personal legacies.
The festival takes place Feb. 16-26.
Forum Titles
“Allensworth”
by James Benning
U.S.
“Anqa”
by Helin Çelik
Austria/Spain
“About Thirty”
by Martin Shanly | with Martin Shanly, Camila Dougall, Paul Dougall, Esmeralds Escalante, Maria Soldi
Argentina
“Being in a Place – A Portrait of Margaret Tait”
by Luke Fowler | with Margaret Tait
U.K.
“The Bride”
by Myriam U. Birara | with Sandra Umulisa, Aline Amike, Daniel Gaga, Fabiola Mukasekuru, Beatrice Mukandayishimiye
Rwanda
“Cidade Rabat”
by Susana Nobre | with Raquel Castro, Paula Bárcia, Paula Só, Sara de Castro, Laura Afonso
Portugal/France
“De Facto”
by Selma Doborac | with Christoph Bach, Cornelius Obonya...
In the Forum strand, documentaries stand alongside personal essay films, while the films and installations that make up the Forum Expanded program revolve around political and personal legacies.
The festival takes place Feb. 16-26.
Forum Titles
“Allensworth”
by James Benning
U.S.
“Anqa”
by Helin Çelik
Austria/Spain
“About Thirty”
by Martin Shanly | with Martin Shanly, Camila Dougall, Paul Dougall, Esmeralds Escalante, Maria Soldi
Argentina
“Being in a Place – A Portrait of Margaret Tait”
by Luke Fowler | with Margaret Tait
U.K.
“The Bride”
by Myriam U. Birara | with Sandra Umulisa, Aline Amike, Daniel Gaga, Fabiola Mukasekuru, Beatrice Mukandayishimiye
Rwanda
“Cidade Rabat”
by Susana Nobre | with Raquel Castro, Paula Bárcia, Paula Só, Sara de Castro, Laura Afonso
Portugal/France
“De Facto”
by Selma Doborac | with Christoph Bach, Cornelius Obonya...
- 1/16/2023
- by Naman Ramachandran
- Variety Film + TV
![Image](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMjU4NWJhOWUtYWM3ZC00MGVmLWEyNzktYTU5YmVkMDE3NTFlXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMTE0MzQwMjgz._V1_QL75_UX500_CR0,0,500,281_.jpg)
Five filmmakers from Cambodia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam have been selected to participate in the inaugural Seed Lab, operated by the non-profit Southeast Asia Fiction Film Lab.
The new program helps promising shorts filmmakers explore their directorial voices prior to the development of their first features. It is being operated in partnership with the Festival des 3 Continents’ Produire au Sud program.
The first session of Seed Lab will run online December 4-10, 2021, with a second in-person session in Phuket, Thailand, in early April 2022.
San Danech from Cambodia had previous shorts that won prizes at the Singapore Film Festival and was selected in Busan’s Wide Angle competition. The Philippines’ Sam Manacsa is an Asian Film Academy alumnus whose most recent short was in competition in Clermont-Ferrand. Singapore’s Shoki Lin, was in Cannes’ Cinefondation and won awards at festivals worldwide with “Adam.” CalArts graduate Tulapop Saenjaroen from...
The new program helps promising shorts filmmakers explore their directorial voices prior to the development of their first features. It is being operated in partnership with the Festival des 3 Continents’ Produire au Sud program.
The first session of Seed Lab will run online December 4-10, 2021, with a second in-person session in Phuket, Thailand, in early April 2022.
San Danech from Cambodia had previous shorts that won prizes at the Singapore Film Festival and was selected in Busan’s Wide Angle competition. The Philippines’ Sam Manacsa is an Asian Film Academy alumnus whose most recent short was in competition in Clermont-Ferrand. Singapore’s Shoki Lin, was in Cannes’ Cinefondation and won awards at festivals worldwide with “Adam.” CalArts graduate Tulapop Saenjaroen from...
- 11/10/2021
- by Patrick Frater
- Variety Film + TV
Dealing with experimental filmmaking is always a tricky business for a reviewer, regarding both describing and analyzing such efforts. In that regard, Tulapop Saenjaroen did not do us any favors with “A Room With a Coconut View”, a spectacle that lingers between the movie and the video installation.
A Room With a Coconut View screens as part of Locarno Shorts Weeks
The “video” begins with Kenya, a Thai beach resort virtual tour guide, showing the hotel and the area to Alex, another virtual presence, with both of them presented as Siri/Alexa like voices in the film, with their words being presented in color-filled captions in the bottom of the screen, in distinct, 8-bit style. The first images Alex is presented are the clichéd, tourist ones and eventually he asks from Kenya to show him more of the area, before he embarks on a tour by himself, that includes its history,...
A Room With a Coconut View screens as part of Locarno Shorts Weeks
The “video” begins with Kenya, a Thai beach resort virtual tour guide, showing the hotel and the area to Alex, another virtual presence, with both of them presented as Siri/Alexa like voices in the film, with their words being presented in color-filled captions in the bottom of the screen, in distinct, 8-bit style. The first images Alex is presented are the clichéd, tourist ones and eventually he asks from Kenya to show him more of the area, before he embarks on a tour by himself, that includes its history,...
- 2/10/2020
- by Panos Kotzathanasis
- AsianMoviePulse
The following essay was produced as part of the 2018 Locarno Critics Academy, a workshop for aspiring film critics that took place during the Locarno Film Festival.
Film festivals give one a very particular perspective on world geography. Attendants of this year’s Locarno Film Festival, for instance, have access to delicately rendered portraits of communities in Chile, Lebanon, and Turkey that are remote even to most inhabitants of their native countries. The festival circuit can feel like a microcosmic society unto itself, a loose alliance of city states – Venice, Berlin, Toronto being a few leading names – wholly detached from any particular sense of place. Accordingly, it’s easy to see the passion for the local communities in an increasingly globalized world.
International film culture enacts a tension between the global and the local – one by no means unique to cinema. The punning title of London-born, U.S.-raised experimental filmmaker...
Film festivals give one a very particular perspective on world geography. Attendants of this year’s Locarno Film Festival, for instance, have access to delicately rendered portraits of communities in Chile, Lebanon, and Turkey that are remote even to most inhabitants of their native countries. The festival circuit can feel like a microcosmic society unto itself, a loose alliance of city states – Venice, Berlin, Toronto being a few leading names – wholly detached from any particular sense of place. Accordingly, it’s easy to see the passion for the local communities in an increasingly globalized world.
International film culture enacts a tension between the global and the local – one by no means unique to cinema. The punning title of London-born, U.S.-raised experimental filmmaker...
- 8/18/2018
- by Daniel Witkin
- Indiewire
A Room with a Coconut ViewThe so-called ‘desktop movie,’ a film visually told predominantly or entirely through the setup of a computer screen, has had a couple of high-profile examples over the last few years. Among these are Nacho Vigalondo’s Open Windows (2014), Patrick Cederberg and Walter Woodman’s short Noah (2013), and, most notably in terms of mainstream success, Levan Gabriadze’s Unfriended (2014). 2018 would seem to be a major year for the genre, if you can call it a genre just yet, with the wide release of sequel Unfriended: Dark Web, Timur Bekmambetov’s Profile playing festivals, and now the release, through Sony, of Aneesh Chaganty’s Searching. It is worth noting that Bekmambetov also produced the two of those 2018 titles he didn’t direct, so there’s at least one benefactor devoted to making the form catch on. With the exception of something like Kevin B. Lee’s essay...
- 8/15/2018
- MUBI
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