Blissfully Yours
June 19th, 2019

Courtesy of website:

Roong longs for the day when she can be in the arms of her Burmese lover, Min, an illegal immigrant. She pays Orn, an older woman to take care of Min while she looks for a place for them to share their happiness.

One afternoon, Min takes Roong to have a picnic in the jungle where they feel free to express their love. Meanwhile, Orn has also gone to the jungle with Tommy, her husband’s co-worker.

Filmmaker’s Statement:

“I treasure some kinds of old Thai disaster movies. Many of such tell a forbidden love story between a man and a woman that the mother earth destroyed them. Similarly, Blissfully Yours contains innocent narrative and simple characters. The settings are open landscapes and the disaster plot is there, except that it is transformed into another kind of disaster.”

Tidbits:

• Cannes Film Festival – 2002 – Winner: Un Certain Regard
• Toronto International Film Festival – 2002
• AFI Fest – 2002

“I, as a filmmaker, treat my works as I do my own sons or daughters. I don’t care if people are fond of them or despise them, as long as I created them with my best intentions and efforts.”

Courtesy of website:

Apichatpong grew up in Khon Kaen in north-eastern Thailand. He began making film and video shorts in 1994, and completed his first feature in 2000. He has also mounted exhibitions and installations in many countries since 1998. Often non-linear, with a strong sense of dislocation, his works deal with memory, subtly addressed personal politics and social issues.

His art projects and feature films have won him widespread recognition and numerous festival prizes, including two prizes from the Cannes Film Festival. In 2005 he was presented with one of Thailand’s most prestigious awards, Silpatorn, by the Thai Ministry of Culture. In 2008, the French Minister of Culture bestowed on him the medal of Chevalier de l’ordre des arts et des letter (Knight of the Order of Arts and Literature). In 2011, he was given another honor for the same field with an Officer Medal, and later in 2017, Commandeurs medal.

His film, Syndromes and a Century, completed in late 2006, was the first Thai film to be selected for competition at the Venice Film Festival. Apichatpong is also one of 20 international artists and filmmakers commissioned to create a short film for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to mark the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In 2009, the Austrian Film Museum published a major English language monograph on his work.

His 2009 project, Primitive, consists of a large-scale video installation, an artist’s book, and a feature film, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. The film has won a Palme d’Or prize at the 63rd Cannes Film Festival in 2010, making it the first Southeast Asian film (and the 7th from Asia) to win the most prestigious award in the film world. In 2012, he is invited to participate in Documenta (13), one of the most well-known art exhibitions in Kassel, Germany. Apichatpong also received the Sharjah Biennial Prize at the 2013 Sharjah Biennial 11, UAE. He’s also a recipient of the Fukuoka Prize, Japan, 2013. In late 2014, he received the Yanghyun Art Prize, one of the most prestigious prizes in Korea. In 2016, a retrospective of his films was presented at Tate Britain, UK. Recently, he was the Principal Laureate of the 2016 Prince Claus Awards, the Netherlands. His current project includes Fever Room, a projection performance about displaced consciousness.

Apichatpong currently works and lives in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

Filmography:

• Memoria (2021)
• The Year of the Everlasting Storm (2021) (segment “Night Colonies”)
• 30/30 Vision: 3 Decades of Strand Releasing (2019)
• Ten Years Thailand (2018) (segment “Song of the City”)
• Cemetery of Splendor (2015)
• Short Plays (2014) (segment “Thailand”)
• Venice 70: Future Reloaded (2013)
• 3.11 Sense of Home (2011) (segment “Monsoon”)
• Quattro Hongkong 2 (2011) (segment “M Hotel”)
• Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010)
• Stories on Human Rights (2008) (segment “Mobile Men”)
• State of the World (2007) (segment “Luminous People”)
• Syndromes and a Century (2006)
• Tropical Malady (2004)
• The Adventures of Iron Pussy (2003)
• Blissfully Yours (2002)
• Haunted Houses (2001)
• Mysterious Object at Noon (2000)

Here is a curated selection of links shared on our Facebook page for additional insight/information:

• 6/12/19 – For those uninitiated in the sleepy (in the best way), sensual work of the great Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul, let Senses of Cinema give you a thorough overview of his career – link
• 6/18/19 – “The film, inflected with local folklore and history, was lauded for its slow, sensual cinema style, landing it the Un Certain Regard prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2002. When it premiered in Thailand, it was the recipient of censoring revisions for its explicit sex scenes and nudity, alongside its casting of a real-life illegal migrant to play the lead character. Inspired by Weerasethakul’s personal experience of seeing Thai police handcuffing two illegal Burmese migrants at a Bangkok zoo, the film examines how one’s relation to freedom and pleasure is shaped by acts of small indulgence. Before being arrested, how did a leisurely day at the zoo already position the women as resistors of oppression? Blissfully Yours, or Sud Sanaeha (“extreme passion” in Thai), follows this line of inquiry, prying into how those facing social oppression capture simple, defiant pleasures under limited conditions.” Katrya Bolger, cléo journal – link