Date: February 13th 2010

Hello everyone. Not the usual format this week. I am away on business and can't get to my PC, so I am having to produce a simpler newsletter for you. Bells and whistles from our next film "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada", which will be the start of our festival week at the Steam Mill.

SYNDROMES AND A CENTURY
Tuesday 16th February at the Little Theatre starting 7.45pm

Syndromes and a Century is a 2006 Thai drama film written and directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul. The film was among the works commissioned for Peter Sellars' New Crowned Hope festival in Vienna to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the birth of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. It premiered on August 30, 2006 at the 63rd Venice Film Festival.

The film is a tribute to the director's parents and is divided into two parts, with the characters and dialogue in the second half essentially the same as the first, but the settings and outcome of the stories are different. The first part is set in a hospital in rural Thailand, while the second half is set in a Bangkok medical center. "The film is about transformation, about how people transform themselves for the better," Apichatpong said in an interview.

In Thailand, Syndromes and a Century became controversial after the Board of Censors demanded that four scenes be cut in order for the film to be shown commercially. The director refused to cut the film and withdrew it from domestic release. Since then, the director had agreed to a limited showing in Thailand where the cut scenes were replaced with a black screen to protest and inform the public about the issues of censorship.

The work is described as a comedy to start out, but ends as a science-fiction story.

"It's a film about heart," the director told the Bangkok Post. "It's not necessarily about love, it's more about memory. It's about feelings that have been forever etched in the heart."

It was originally entitled Intimacy and Turbulence and was to be an autobiographical look at his mother and father, who were both physicians working in a hospital in Khon Kaen, Thailand. But the director revised that concept when he cast the actors and began filming. The story still focuses on a male and female doctor, and is dedicated to the director's parents, but is set in two hospitals 40 years apart and explores both the memories and current lives of the protagonists.

"I began with my parents’ story, but it has sprung to other things," Apitchatpong said in an interview. "When I met the actors, when I found the location, there were other stories combined and added in. I try not to limit it. I allow it to flow whichever way it goes. It is very exciting."

Trivia - The Thai title "Sang sattawat" roughly translates as "Century's Light" with "Sang" meaning light and "Sattawat" meaning century.

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Finally, thanks to everyone for coming along to our Social Night last week. We sincerely hope you had a great night. If you didn't come along ask your fellow CFS members what you missed.

Regards
Mike