Featuring seven stories from seven auteurs from around the world, the film chronicles this unprecedented moment in time, and is a true love letter to the power of cinema and its storytellers.
It (segment "Song of the City")
A collection of short films by five Thai directors imagining their country ten years into the future.
ABLAZE premiered at the 27th Singapore Film Festival, November 24, 2016
Itt
"Fever Room" features Jenjira (Jen) and Banlop (Itt), two of Apichatpong’s regular actors who also appear in his film, "Cemetery of Splendour". Like the film, this projection-performance presents the layers of reality and fantasy. Apichatpong fuses his memories with the actors’ and fictionalises the narrative. Here the people takes refuge in dreams while their land is on a brink of collapse, echoing Thailand’s present state of military dictatorship.
Itt
In a hospital, ten soldiers are being treated for a mysterious sleeping sickness. In a story in which dreams can be experienced by others, and in which goddesses can sit casually with mortals, a nurse learns the reason why the patients will never be cured, and forms a telepathic bond with one of them.
This film depicts Bunleua Sulilat’s temple/sculpture garden 'Sala Keoku', located in northern Thailand. Passages of blackness sporadically dissolve under the fitful internal illumination of sparklers, which light up to reveal Sulilat’s unorthodox temple populated with a fantastical concrete menagerie of beasts and figures; the sculptures range from the broad, whale-like contours of a frog’s face, to a cavalcade of dogs on mopeds, to a pair of skeletons partially embracing as if sitting for a double portrait. These images are interspersed with those of an older Thai couple mysteriously wandering around the temple like wraiths, the woman’s plodding progress hampered by the use of crutches.
Supayong
Setia, an Indonesian maid, and Supayong, a construction worker from Thailand, are two illegal foreign laborers who drift between Taipei and Taoyuan while looking for job opportunities. The two foreigners rely on each other and share the burden of their loneliness among the hustle and bustle of a glittering city. They strive for survival while developing a gentle relationship full of humor, using a language that both are still awkward with: Chinese, the language of their host country.
Director
Cursed Hair" tells about the production of a reality program in a mystery house that makes all participants and crew members experience unexplainable frights. The ex-owner was a lady who has a weird craving for hair. As days pass by, her craving for hair worsens, now she craves the flesh of the scalp. Her intolerable husband decides to kill her and follow by commiting suicide. However, after her death, her soul is still in the house. After realizing the truth, everyone wants to get out of this house, but how many of them can escape alive?
Keng
The passionate relationship between two men with unusual consequences. The film is divided in two parts. The first half charts the modest attraction between two men in the sunny, relaxing countryside and the second half charts the confusion and terror of an unknown menace lurking deep within the jungle shadows.
