12 Kalpas: a Beginning of Beginning

Film Info

Film Year: 2020

Film Duration: 8 min

Country: Thailand

Language: Thai

Director

Parinda Mai

Film Category

Best Foreign Film

Synopsis

In one moment prior to creation, at a familiar yet unknown space and time, binary, rationality, biology, and essences are complicated and intertwined. The artist re-imagines scenes from a Southeast Asian Buddhist myth-folktale, Twelve Sisters, which was told to her by her mother growing up in Thailand. This short is conceived as the beginning of an ongoing series in this cycle of work by the artist. The tale Twelve Sisters circulates in Southeast Asian countries, with variations in what actually happen in the tale. An iconic moment, a socially shared memory of the story, is where the 12 women, imprisoned in the cave and have their eyeballs gouged out, eat their babies for their own survival. The artist, treating myth as a sacred object passing through generations connecting humans across time-space, re-imagines the story with an attempt to investigate subjects of the body, human place in nature, technology and contemporary spirituality.