Politics of Time: The Films of Anocha Suwichakornpong

Producer, teacher, and writer-director Anocha Suwichakornpong, a native of Pattaya, Thailand, has, since her Columbia thesis film Graceland premiered at the 59th Cannes Film Festival, regularly ranked among the most unpredictable of contemporary filmmakers. While consistent in her preoccupations, chief among these the social and political history of her homeland, she employs an eclectic array of formal and narrative devices in her work that frustrate any attempt at passive viewing—see, for instance, her shapeshifting By the Time it Gets Dark, with its multipronged approach to making a “historical film,” this one specifically concerned with the 1976 Thammasat University massacre. We present a survey of an artist who relentlessly interrogates and subverts established forms, suggesting fresh relations between lived experience and its cinematic representation. In addition to her vital work as a filmmaker, she is also co-founder of Purin Film Fund, whose output is the subject of its own parallel series at Metrograph, Currents of Southeast Asian Cinema.

Anocha Suwichakornpong in person for select screenings.