More on Apichatpong's Uncle Boonmee and Primitive

Apichatpong Weerasethakul's next project is Uncle Boonmee: A Man Who Can Recall His Past Lives, which is the feature-film component of his much-anticipated multi-platform Primitive.

In Berlin, Primitive and Uncle Boonmee are being talked up at the European Film Market and at the Berlin Film Festival. Screen Daily has more (cache):

The origins of Uncle Boonmee lie in a research trip the filmmaker took to Nabua, a village in northeast Thailand. While there, Weerasethakul met farmers who had lived through periods of intense oppression and violence when the Thai government tried to suppress the spread of communism.

The installation focuses on the teenagers of Nabua and their relationship with their past. The feature film, meanwhile, is about a man who is dying and whose long-lost son re-appears as a "monkey ghost".

The plan is to shoot at the end of the rainy season in October with a view to completing the film in 2010.

"Perhaps no Asian film director has so sensitively -- and so mysteriously -- captured the enchantments of daily living and envisioned the continuing vitality of magical and spiritual presences of daily life, as has Apichatpong Weerasethakul," commented Illuminations' Keith Griffiths of the company's ongoing relationship with the filmmaker.

Primitive has been commissioned by the Haus der Kunst, FACT and Animate Projects, and is being produced by Kick the Machine with Illuminations Films. The installation will be presented at Munich's Haus der Kunst from February 20 to May 17 and then at FACT in Liverpool from September 25 to November 29, followed by other international presentations in 2010.