Water buffalo, catfish and monkey ghosts: the transmigratory materialities of Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

Abstract

This article analyses Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s 2010 film Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Loong Boonmee raleuk chat) in terms of its 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. This formal strategy is considered as both a corollary of the film’s central themes and a broader historiographic exploration of 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.