Exploring the Next Phase of Transnational Co-Production: South-South Collaboration in Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Memoria (2021)
Event Date & Time
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Join us on Friday April 18th for the next session of the Media Studies Workshop, where we will discuss Dr. Palita Chunsaengchan's paper, “Exploring the Next Phase of Transnational Co-Production: South-South Collaboration in Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Memoria (2021)." A pre-circulated paper will be shared upon RSVP.
Memoria (2021), directed by Palme d’Or awarded director, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, is the first film taking place outside of the director’s homeland, Thailand. Produced and shot entirely in Colombia, the film also marks a transnational collaboration between Weerasethakul’s long-term crew from Thailand, his newly recruited local team and cast from Colombia and internationally well-known European stars. Before Memoria, Weerasethakul’s feature-length films since Tropical Malady (2004) benefited formally only from the European cultural fundings and were therefore listed as co-produced. The result of European sponsorship also resulted in the films being frequently included in the international film festivals, most of which were primarily held in Europe and East Asia. Despite the transnational, or more specifically European institutional involvements and potential interventions, Weerasethakul’s films were informed mostly by stories and contexts regarding Thailand.
This chapter examines Memoria as introducing a new mode of co-production in Weerasethakul and Thailand’s history of filmmaking. The chapter pays attention to an emergent node of co-production: the one between a Global South country (Thailand) with another Global South country (Colombia). I argue that despite the ongoing support and resources from European and other Global North’s fundings and institutional networks, Weerasethakul’s auteurship and his long exposure to and knowledge of the transactions and logistics of filmmaking in the global context pave the way to a new potential phase of transnational co-production in contemporary Thai cinema. I read Memoria, first, as a collaborative project that questions the unevenness of opportunities in the traditional antipode of co-productions (North-South); and secondly, as material evidence that outlines the necessity of labor of research, translation, and negotiation between the Global South contexts at a catastrophic time of the global pandemic of Covid19. The latter reaffirms Memoria as a film that evinces efforts in transnational solidarity in the area of Global South filmmaking.
Palita Chunsaengchan is an assistant professor of Southeast Asian cinema and media cultures at the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Minnesota. Her first book, Chimeric Cinema: The Formation of Thai Film Culture, traces the history of Thai cinema, from its debut in 1897 in the royal court through its uses in the aftermath of the Siamese Revolution of 1932. Her publications appear in Asian Cinema, SOJOURN, JMPS and JAS. She is also one of the contributors of The Films of Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Liverpool UP, 2024) and the upcoming anthology Contemporary Thai Cinema: New Movements and Social Change (Edinburgh UP).
For more information on upcoming sessions, consult the spring semester schedule.