I appreciate your positive responses, Doug and Andrew. Let me identify the speakers. In the first six lines the director Apichatpong Weerasethakul is talking to a man named Boonmee, who had approached the abbot of a Buddhist temple, claiming that he could remember his past lives while meditating. This abbot was so dazzled by Boonmee's ability that he wrote a book about it, published in 1983. But Boonmee had died by the time the director read the book. So the director addresses his ghost, or the actor chosen to represent him, within his first film on the subject, the 17 minute A LETTER TO UNCLE BOONMEE. The next four lines are spoken by the actor playing the lead role in the feature film UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES. That same actor describes Uncle Boonmee's son in the next 6 lines, though I think I can detect a bit of the director in the narrative. At that point, formally, I had a "sixteener", but I wanted more stability in my closing. So I added a coda, spoken by the director to the ghost of Uncle Boonmee. Overall, then, an expanded sonnet, perhaps a variation on the caudate sonnet.
Barry
On Thu, 31 Mar 2011 11:33:38 +0800, andrew burke <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>Well, I went with it and let it unspool in my mind, and it was great:
>pictures, sounds, and thoughts spliced in together. I enjoyed the ellipsis
>and the jumps of point of view. Thanks, Barry!
>
>Andrew
>
>On 31 March 2011 01:51, Douglas Barbour <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> As Stephen says, Barry, a fascinating series of takes...; not least the
>> shifting pronouns & thus the 'projected' speakers. I look forward to the
>> followups (& eventually watching the films perhaps).
>>
>> Doug
>>
>>
>> On 2011-03-30, at 11:03 AM, Barry Alpert wrote:
>>
A LETTER TO UNCLE BOONMEE & HIS RESPONSE
via Apichatpong Weerasethakul
I want to see a movie about your life so
I propose a project about your reincarnations.
What was your view like?
Was it like this?
Make yourself clear!
Tell a story of that “crazy guy”.
My past lives as an animal rise up before me,
replayed through my dying consciousness.
I have no concept of . . . any longer.
I’m preserved this way.
He practiced with your Pentax camera.
He searched for that “thing” in the photo.
He has never shown anyone the proof of his discovery.
His film never developed.
He’s talking about the Monkey Ghost.
He mated with a Monkey Ghost and became one.
What I imagined in my script (so different than yours) . . .
Who has been able to recall his past reincarnations?
Barry Alpert / Silver Spring MD US / 3-30-11 (12:59 PM)
I did a double take when a feature film by a Thai director whom I had associated with very experimental short films appeared among the offerings of the 19th annual Environmental Film Festival in Wash DC. Even more startling: it had won the top prize at Cannes from a jury headed by Tim Burton. I cancelled my previous plans in order to attend what I believed would be its one and only screening in the Wash DC area, at the American Film Institute in downtown Silver Spring MD. Perhaps 350 people attended. Few walked out. I enjoyed it, and thought that I could revise what I had written down in the dark into a presentable text, but I wasn't composed enough to be interviewed on camera outside the theatre for Thai television (turned out to be Voice of America, so perhaps I made the right decision after all). In any case, I started researching the director and the film and discovered that UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES was the third part of a visual art project, PRIMITIVE. The director (who jokingly has adopted the name "Joe") studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and exhibits film installations in art spaces and film centers. Fortunately, the first two parts of Joe's project are available online--a 17-minute film A LETTER TO UNCLE BOONMEE and a 10 minute film (the most formally innovative of the 3 films) PHANTOMS OF NABUA. I combined my experience watching those two shorts with my earlier writing performance within the feature to produce the cine-poem above. Currently, I'm working on a second cine-poem via Apichatpong Weerasethakul, since the same Environmental Film Festival also screened an earlier feature, TROPICAL MALADY.
AFI-Silver Spring decided on a week's run for UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES, and it has been playing in other cities this month in the U.S. and perhaps around the world. A DVD is out, and you can find the trailer and scattered bits online, though I recommend watching this film in a theatre.
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