Apichatpong Weerasethakul‘s result when tasked by MUBI to film something on a special lomography camera, LomoKino, is Ashes (2012), an experimental short film on the fading and fragmentary nature of dreams, memory, and our relation to our (literal and social) environments.

The film stock ranges from seemingly 2 frames per second to 30, and what I find interesting about that presentation are two things: first, how pacing increases the less frames you show, simply by virtue of the subjects having moved more extremely between frames. And secondly, the rhythmicality of repeated frames becomes so much more obvious, which was also emphasized later in the short with clicking sounds whenever the image changed. This repetition is also reflected in the way some „scenes“ were repeated and some images became a throughline, although it is hard — and not entirely the point, I think — to discern too much meaning here, despite some references to contemporary social and political issues (i.e. the opposition to the lèse-majesté section of the Thai law).

This is a technically intriguing short and its vibe is certainly not overstaying its welcome with its 20-minute runtime, so I feel this to be a solid first impression of his œuvre.