A WORD FROM OUR PROGRAMMER 5/25/22

Greetings Cinema friends,

For one week beginning this Friday, May 27th, Ragtag Cinema will be the only location within 2000 miles screening Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Memoria. This special engagement of 22 screenings is one piece of a never-ending worldwide moving-image tour. Never to be released on home media—virtual or physical—Memoria will only exist in the theatrical space and the memories of those who experience it.

Memoria opens on Tilda Swinton’s Jessica, a Scottish orchid farmer far from home in the jungles and mountains of Bogota, Colombia. Awaking to a loud noise — “like a rumble from the core of the earth” — she begins to suffer a strange, pervasive sensory syndrome. The sound rises and recedes, only audible to Jessica and the audience, as Jessica sets off into the unknown to uncover its source.

Weerasethakul, the Palme d’Or-winning director of Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives challenges the perception of what cinema can be and how it can affect the viewer. Slyly saying that he makes films that people can fall asleep to, Weerasethakul lulls the audience to the fleeting space between waking reality and dreams and then miraculously holds us there on that unique threshold. The screen becomes an open window and we give ourselves over to it. That spell is near impossible to perform in the comfort of one’s home, and lucky for us, Memoria will never have to. 

Forever,

Ted