Through the Looking Glass. The Ethno-Cinematographic Rhizomes of Anocha Suwichakornpong

Abstract

Based on Deleuze's concept of "rhizome", which understands knowledge in a non-hierarchical way, as an apprehension of multiplicity, we propose a conceptual framework for film analysis, the "ethno-cinematographic rhizome", as a parallel and convergent vehicle of audiovisual artistic creation and para-ethnographic observation. We present the example of two feature films by the Thai independent director Anocha Suwichakornpong, conceived as ethno-cinematographic rhizomes: By the time it gets dark (Dao Khanong, 2016), which deals with the historical memory of the massacre of students at Thammasat University in 1976 and Krabi 2562 (co-directed with Ben Rivers, 2019), which presents the sociocultural microcosm of the tourist town of Krabi. We highlight their fragmented rhizomatic structure that presents a multiplicity of narrative and chronological lines that are assembled in a complex way to make emerge a cinematographic apparatus of great aesthetic beauty and deep para-ethnographic knowledge of the past and present Thai social reality.