Night Colonies

(Apichatpong Weerasethakul, USA/Thailand, 2021)

In the expanded cinema of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, nature and technology are never set into opposition. Lights, camera, electricity, sound mixing: all these constitutive elements of the film/video medium interweave with the given materials of the world.

Across 14 minutes, Night Colonies studies the actions of hundreds of bugs on a white bed. There is no probing micro-photography, and no attempt to mimic the insect point-of-view.

Voices from political demonstrations in Bangkok are occasionally filtered in.

An indirect response to the pandemic (from the 2021 anthology project The Year of the Everlasting Storm which also includes episodes by Dominga Sotomayor, Jafar Panahi and Laura Poitras), it pictures a strangely peaceful community.

MORE Weerasethakul: Syndromes and a Century, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

© Adrian Martin September 2021