Links roundup: Apichatpong-a-rama

A few recent items having to do with everyone's favourite Thai independent director, Apichatpong Weerasethakul.

• Seen on the back of a T-shirt at the 2nd Bangkok International Children's Film Festival, a now-infamous quote from Cultural Surveillance Department head Ladda Tangsupachai: "Nobody goes to see films by Apichatpong. Thai people want to see comedy. We like a laugh." They weren't selling them there, though. (Via Thaifilm.com)
• State of the World (O Estado Do Mundo) is an omnibus featuring work by Aiysha Abraham, Chantal Akerman, Wang Bing, Pedro Costa, Vincente Ferraz and Apichatpong. It had its US premiere recently in San Francisco at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Apichatpong's contribution, Luminous People, is set on the Mekong, and depicts a bereaved family scattering the ashes of a late husband and father. (Via Twitch)
• "People lined up around the block at the Anthology Film Archives to watch the avant-garde shorts of a Thai filmmaker whose last film made $16,000 in the US." (Via Tisch Film Review)
• Syndromes and a Century on another top ten, though some people don't get the allure of his earlier works: "Trendy Thai director Apichatpong finally emerged from the haze of hipster obscurantism to make this wittily mysterious meditation on what we lose in human interaction as technological 'progress' overtakes us." (Via Northwest Asian Weekly)
• In case you missed it, all of Apichatpong's works on YouTube are collected on one page: Trailers for Syndromes and a Century, Tropical Malady and Blissfully Yours and six minutes of The Adventure of Iron Pussy, as well as Prosperity for 2008, which "is not much, but there are worse ways to spend sixty seconds on YouTube." (Via Movie City Indie, Criterion Forum)

(Photo credit: A screenshot from Luminous People, via O Estado Do Mundo at LX Filmes)