36

Directed by Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit

Discoveries / Thailand / 2012 / experimental / 68 mins / Thai with English subtitles / DCP

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Watch Trailer

36

Digiplex Mission Valley
November 8, 2013 6:10 pm

Description

New Currents Award, FIPRESCI Award, 2012 Busan International Film Festival
New Talent Award, 2012 Hong Kong Asian Film Festival
Official Selection, 2013 International Film Festival Rotterdam

Sai, a movie location scout, juggles multiple hard drives to catalog the thousands of photographs she shoots every year. Alongside her co-worker Oom, Sai explores abandoned environments rich with texture and feeling. The two lose touch after several years, but her lingering feelings for Oom suddenly put her in a panic when a malfunctioning hard drive loses the only photographs she had of their time together. Her struggle to remember Oom and their unresolved relationship sends her on a mission to retrieve her lost photographs and fading memories.

Minimalist but full of life, 36 is made up of 36 carefully-composed static shots that slowly reveal the story through architecture and small gestures. Characters weave in and out of the frame, unconstrained, creating the kind of intimacy one might find in candid photographs. It should come as no surprise that director Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit has a background in photography, and that the film, his debut feature, is a meditation on images, preservation, and the heart behind every image. –Rizzhel Javier