Survivance

Ann, director, moved to a peaceful cottage in the Thai countryside with Taew, a writer and politician of the 1970s. Together she began interviewing Taew's life for a film project. Nong oscillates between various odd jobs, seeking a way in different places of contemporary Thailand, between prosaism and sacred. Two actors - Tak and Peter - intersect in life and on screen.

director statement

Dao Khanong (By the Time It Gets Dark) is my attempt to deal with the impossibility of making a historical film in the place where there is no history. What begins as a single narrative soon becomes fragmented, and ultimately devours itself. There are no beginning or ending points. Time is both transfixed and moving. The four main characters in the film (played by seven actors) relate to one another spatially, as well as temporally. They drift in and out of reality and dreams, suspended at the point where art intersects life – where cinema is born. It is my intention to create in Dao Khanong the fertile time for remembering. It is also an ode to cinema, the recording machine for memory and history. 

When I was learning English in primary school, one of the most memorable lessons was the present perfect progressive tense – ‘I have been’, ‘you have been’, ‘she has been’. For native English speakers, it’s evident what this tense is. But as a speaker of Thai, one of many non-tense languages, including Chinese, it was hugely interesting. The present perfect progressive is used for something that is ongoing; for something that happened in the past and continues through the present. I remember how good I felt to be able to add a new tense to the three tenses that I had already mastered: past, present, and future.

festivals

Compétition officielle Festival de Locarno 2016, Toronto International Film Festival 2016, Festival International du Film de Busan.

biography

Anocha Suwichakornpong is a film director and producer from Thailand. Her first feature, ‘Mundane History' won the Tiger Award at Rotterdam. She is currently working on her second feature, ‘By the Time It Gets Dark', which won the Prince Claus Fund from CineMart and received financial support from Ministry of Culture (Thailand), as well as Hubert Bals Fund and Doha Film Institute. She has also produced “In April the Following Year, There Was a Fire” (IFFR 2012), “Concrete Clouds” (IFFR 2014), and “How to Win at Checkers (Every Time) screened at Berlinale 2015.

filmography

2012 : Overseas (CM) : Sélection officielle festival de Locarno 2012
2010 : Lunch (CM) : Festival de Rotterdam 2011
2009 : Mundane History (LM) : Festival international de Rotterdam 2010 // Tiger Award - Transilvania International Film Festival 2010 // Premier Prix  - Mumbai Film Festival 2010 // Meilleur Réalisatrice - New Horizons, Festival de Breslau 2010 // Grand Prix - Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival // Netpac Award - Pusan International Film International // New Currents Competition - Paris Cinéma // Sélection Officielle, en competition - Festival des 3 Continents, Nantes /// Sélection Officielle, hors competition - Festival du Film de La Rochelle // Sélection Ici et Ailleurs - Black Movie Festival, Genève // Sélection officielle -World Film Festival of Bangkok // Film d’ouverture - San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival – Seattle International Film Festival // Sélection - Edinburgh International Film Festival…

2008 : Like. Real. Love (CM)
2008 : Tree – Zero (CM)
2007 : Jai (CM)
2006 : Graceland (CM) : Festival de Cannes 2006, sélection officielle

Team