Ashes
Apichatpong Weerasethakul
20:18 min, 35 mm (color, red scale, black and white), digital, sound, silent
Thailand 2012
Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s short Ashes was shot almost entirely with the LomoKino, except for the very last couple of minutes of the film which were shot with a digital camera. Weerasethakul used approximately 100 rolls of standard 35 mm photographic film to shoot the movie and even included those frames from the very beginning and the very end of a film roll where light leaks become common when using the LomoKino camera. Rather than discarding them as “unsuccessful” frames or mistakes, Weerasethakul embraced “the beauty and naturalness of imperfection” (http://vimeo.com/42505347, Weerasethakul’s speech before the projection of the film at the Cannes Festival in 2012). Furthermore, he experimented with the given specificities of the medium, whether in the analog phase of production (multiple exposure) or digital phase of post-production (different projection speeds, horizontally split screen).
Sound – or the lack of it – is another important element in this film. Films shot with the LomoKino are always silent, but sound can be added digitally. Weerasethakul included field recordings of landscape sounds and noises, speech and music, but also purely silent scenes and sequences with no image, only sound. Interestingly, there is also a part demonstrating what Andy Birtwistle would call “the sound of technology” (2010) – the distinctive sound of the LomoKino hand crank turning.
Finally, the very last minute of the movie, showing a funeral scene, was shot with a digital camera. For the first time in the film, sound and image are synchronized, coming from the same source. This scene provides a striking contrast to the previous material of very low frame-rate and analog image quality. (Ju.Ju.Li.)
Apichatpong Weerasethakul, born 1970 in Bangkok, Thailand.
Reference
Andy Birtwistle, Cinesonica. Sounding Film and Video (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010).