Songs for Dying

Songs for Dying is one of two films that Korakrit Arunanondchai has screening at this year’s Rotterdam International Film Festival, the other being a complementary piece with Alex Gvojic called Songs for Living. Where the latter film is a more abstract revel in collective existence, Songs for Dying is anchored by the passing away of the director’s grandfather and uses this as the spark for an exploration of the physical, spiritual, and political dynamics at play in the process of death. While this might sound like the gloomier half of the diptych, nothing could be further from the truth.

Using the notion of reincarnation as inspiration, Arunanondchai draws parallels between the existence of a tree and the existence of a person. Uniting these two living things through the invocation of mystical rituals and belief, he frames the profundity of the connection through science: ‘The finiteness of earth unites us all against the infinity of time and space.’ Taking the metaphorical relationship to the tree even further, he sees echoes in the interconnected substrate of a forest and the cooperation of people standing against oppression.

In doing this, the film branches out from the personal into the political, combining archival imagery referring to the 1948 Jeju Massacre in Korea and the footage of the recent pro-democracy protests in Thailand to examine the interplay of oppression, the preservation of power by states, and death. The people standing tall against water cannons in Bangkok become, through the film’s poetic subtitle narration, the trees protecting a forest’s biodiversity. In this way Songs of Dying seems to link everything through natural rhythms and cycles, eternally returning – only adding ever more poignancy to a recurring shot of Arunanondchai’s hand gripping his grandfather’s in a hospital bed.

Director, producer: Korakrit Arunanondchai
Venue: Rotterdam International Film Festival
In Thai
30 minutes