Pen-Ek Ratanaruang

Pen-Ek Ratanaruang, June 2007

Pen-Ek Ratanaruang ( Thai : เป็น เอก รัตน เรือง ; born March 8, 1962 in Bangkok , Thailand ) is a Thai film director and screenwriter . Together with Apichatpong Weerasethakul, he is one of the most important contemporary filmmakers in Thailand.

biography

From 1977 to 1985 Pen-Ek Ratanaruang studied art history and philosophy at the Pratt Institute in New York and then worked for a New York design company for three years. In New York he got to know the works of directors such as Federico Fellini , Ingmar Bergman and Jim Jarmusch . Jarmusch's Stranger than Paradise in particular had a strong influence.

When he returned to Thailand, he initially worked as the artistic director of an advertising agency and in 1993 moved to the film production company The Film Factory , for which he shot several award-winning television commercials and for which Wisit Sasanatieng was also working at the time . In 1997 he made his first feature film with Fun Bar Karaoke . The focus is on a young woman who falls in love with her father's hit man.

His next film, Ruang Talok 69 - A Deadly Address, received awards at several international film festivals . With Monrak - Magische Liebe , a musical followed in 2000 about a young man who was drafted into the military but who deserted in order to realize his dream of becoming a singer.

In 2003, Pen-Ek, in collaboration with the writer Prabda Yoon and the cameraman Christopher Doyle, created the Thai-Japanese coproduction Last Life in the Universe , in which a depressed Japanese librarian (played by Tadanobu Asano ) observes the death of a girl shortly before a suicide attempt eventually starts a relationship with her older sister. A second collaboration with Asano and another co-production, this time with Hong Kong, the Netherlands and South Korea, came about in 2006 with Insible Waves . This film, about a Japanese chef at a Thai restaurant in Macau , was shown in competition at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2006 .

With Ploy - The Unknown in the Hotel appeared in 2007 again only a Thai production. This is about a couple who after seven years question their relationship.

Filmography

• 1997: Fun Bar Karaoke ( ฝัน บ้า คาราโอเกะ )
• 1999: Ruang Talok 69 - A deadly address ( เรื่อง ตลก 69 , Ruang talok 69 )
• 2001: Monrak - Magical Love ( มนต์ รัก ทรานซิสเตอร์ , Monrak Transistor )
• 2003: Last Life in the Universe ( เรื่อง รัก น้อย นิด มหาศาล , Ruang rak noi nid mahasan )
• 2006: Invisible Waves ( คำพิพากษา ของ มหาสมุทร )
• 2006: Total Bangkok
• 2007: Ploy - The unknown in the hotel ( พลอย )
• 2009: Nymph ( นาง ไม้ , Nang mai )
• 2011: Headshot (Thai: ฝน ตก ขึ้น ฟ้า - fon tok khuen fa )

Web links

• Pen-Ek Ratanaruang in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• “It's nice to torment the audience” , the daily newspaper , February 14, 2006, interview

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Fun Bar Karaoke at the International Forum of Young Films
2. ↑ Monrak - Magische Liebe at filmpodium.ch  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  

Note on Thai names : This article addresses people by their first name.