Phantoms Of Nabua

Phantoms Of Nabua is a new short film by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, for Animate Projects (as is Jane and Louise Wilson's Unfolding The Aryan Papers). Apichatpong's film is part of an art installation titled Primitive, which also includes another short film, A Letter To Uncle Boonmee. Phantoms Of Nabua was filmed at night in the Thai town of Nabua, illuminated by a series of ethereal light sources including flashes of lightning, a burning football, and a film projector. Recently, another new film by Apichatpong, Mobile Men, was also distributed online, and his Prosperity For 2008 was given an online release last year. He is best known as the director of Syndromes & A Century.

Mobile Men

Mobile Men is a new short film by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, his contribution to a series titled Stories On Human Rights. The film features a group of Burmese migrant labourers in a pickup truck, and shows them asserting their masculinity by flexing their muscles and displaying their tattoos. Mobile Men is available online; Apichatpong has also distributed other works online, including Prosperity For 2008 and several forthcoming Animate Projects films.

Hong Kong Avenue of Stars

Hong Kong's Avenue of Stars, the Asian equivalent of Hollywood's Walk of Fame, features a bronze statue of iconic actor Bruce Lee, which was unveiled in November 2005.

Art Of Animation

Disneyland in Hong Kong includes a permanent exhibition of Disney concept art, including sketches and maquettes from films such as Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs, Bambi, Toy Story II, and Cars. The exhibition, titled Art Of Animation, opened last year.

Hemat

The editor of Hemat, a weekly Iranian satirical magazine, has been arrested. The magazine had published a spoof film poster featuring images of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his potential electoral rivals.

Filmvirus

An exhibition at Jamjuree Art Gallery, Bangkok, to celebrate the thirteenth anniversary of Filmvirus (DK Filmhouse), includes short films selected by two Thai bloggers, Jit Phokaew (Madeline de Scudery) and Wiwat Lertwiwatwongsa (Filmsick). Sompot Chidgasornpongse's film Diseases & A Hundred Year Period (inspired by Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Syndromes & A Century, and first shown at the 12th Thai Short Film & Video Festival last year) will be screened on 6th February.

Unfolding The Aryan Papers

In the early 1990s, Stanley Kubrick was planning to make a film about the Holocaust, titled Aryan Papers. Kubrick wrote the screenplay, adapted from Louis Begley's novel Wartime Lies, and cast Johanna Ter Steege in the lead role. However, when Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List went into production, Aryan Papers was abandoned, as Kubrick and/or the studio feared that audiences would have Holocaust-fatigue after Spielberg's film. (The same situation occurred in the early 1970s, when Kubrick could not secure funding for his Napoleon biopic after the release of Waterloo, and he suffered at the box-office in 1987 when Platoon was released before his own Vietnam war film, Full Metal Jacket.)

A new short film, Unfolding The Aryan Papers by Jane and Louise Wilson, features pre-production photographs of Johanna Ter Steege (costume tests, photographed by Kubrick, from the Stanley Kubrick Archive) and new film footage of the actress shot by the Wilsons. The exhibition will be showing at the British Film Institute (in London) and online (Animate Projects), from 13th February to 19th April.