Ithaca College

Entitled ‘Water Buffalo, Catfish and Monkey Ghosts: The Transmigratory Materialities of Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives,’ Utterson’s article analyzes Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s 2010 film Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives as a way of exploring the broader status of cinema in the context of contemporary technological shifts. 

Specifically, it considers the film’s representations of transmigration and reincarnation, with a particular focus on its use of Super 16 mm film at a time in cinema history when photochemical film is experiencing its own existential transformation of sorts. This formal strategy is analyzed as both a corollary of the film’s central themes and a way of understanding the very nature of cinema at the point of its evolving film-to-digital representational base and a broader ‘life cycle’ of birth, death and beyond.  

The article can be accessed online:  http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17400309.2017.1311088