Syndromes and a Century

Syndromes and a Century explores how we remember; how our sense of happiness can be triggered by seemingly insignificant things. It is a film in two parts which sometimes echo each other. The two central characters are inspired by the film-maker's parents, in the years before they became lovers. The first part focuses on a woman doctor, and is set in a space reminiscent of the world in which the filmmaker was born and raised. The second part focuses on a male doctor, and is set in a more contemporary space much like the world that we live in.

Perhaps no Asian director has so sensitively - and so mysteriously - captured the enchantments of daily living and envisioned the continuing vitality of magical and spirit presences in that daily life as has Apichatpong Weerasethakul. He revealed a close understanding of the almost musical rhythms of film and of story telling and of the magical as a presence in cinema.

New Crowned Hope Festiwal

When I was a child, I lived in a hospital area for twelve years. The room was my playground, my station to look at people. As a film-maker I have been fascinated by the spaces of a small town and its landscape. But I have never really looked at where my family had lived.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul

This film is part of the New Crowned Hope Festival produced by Wiener Festwochen Vienna Mozart Year 2006.