Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives @ NW Film Forum

Thai artist, director, screenwriter and all-around visionary Apichatpong Weerasethakul brings his signature blend of the mystical and the everyday to “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives” (2010), a hypnotic Palme d’Or winner that slips between worlds with dreamlike ease.

The film follows the ailing Uncle Boonmee, who we see living in the rural countryside as he prepares for death. There, he’s joined not only by living family but the sudden gentle appearance of the ghost of his wife and a long-vanished son who returns in the form of a red-eyed jungle creature. As memories of past lives surface, Boonmee undertakes a final journey to a secret place where the boundaries between the living and the dead dissolve.

This special screening is a collaboration between Henry Art Gallery and Northwest Film Forum, and includes opening remarks from Adrian Alarilla, programming director of the Seattle Asian American Film Festival, and Em Chan, curatorial assistant at the Henry. It accompanies “Spirit House,” a Henry exhibition examining how artists of the Asian diaspora reimagine the thresholds between life and afterlife. Inspired by Thailand’s miniature shrines that shelter the supernatural, the exhibition — and this unforgettable film — invite viewers to consider how art can guide us through worlds seen and unseen.