Shadows / Mysterious Object at Noon Q&A Session

When Raymond Red, director of special invitation film Shadows, actor Ronnie Lazaro and Competition film Mysterious Object at Noon director Apichatpong Weerasethakul stepped onto the stage, the subtitle of this film festival, "New Asian Auteurship," became strikingly concrete and familiar. Asked if they would like to shoot a film in Japan, both directors answered that the roots of their films lie in their respective countries, and emphasized that they started from ideas supported by their homelands. A filmmaker's joy is to have his or her film seen by the people of the world, they added. There were many questions about Weerasethakul's narrative film filled with exciting mysteries, one of which asked whether the film is a challenge to western film methodology. The director answered that rather, he wanted to present a concept of his own, and talked about how he set a 3 year time limit and went through villages with different religious and linguistic heritages in Thailand filming as if the villagers themselves were the directors. He also mentioned the difficulties he had in raising funds. "Various versions are possible by editing, but in any case I think I managed to extract the essence of Thai people's lives" said Weerasethakul with a youthful smile. Red, who beautifully and masterfully wove Philippine society into a 13-minute film, spoke of his film in a way suggesting that his own life overlapped with the lives of all its characters.