Ashes

machine_elves

one of the most beautiful & poignant shorts i've ever had the pleasure of seeing. some absolutely brilliant touches, like the reprising of the man walking his dog next to the little girl on a bicycle, as well as the gorgeous and colorful staccato-like montages of 35mm film.

Guinness Rider

Rural-urban; politics-poetry; time-timelessness; nationalism-nature; no narrative??? Interesting experimentation with image and sound - not so different from his usual but it gives one moments to reflect, not dominating your conscious. Like looking at paintings without sacrificing integral components of moving images. Why read about it? Just watch it w/ an open mind. Limitations as directions not restrictions.

Duncan Gray

A beautiful glimpse at the passing of time and the subjectivity of memory.

Matthew_Lucas

Apichatpong Weerasethakul experiments with the new Lomokino 35mm camera in this avant-garde short film commissioned by MUBI. Beautiful and evocative, ASHES is an abstract mood piece made more kinetic that Weerasethakul's usual style by the handcranked Lomokino. A lovely and atmospheric exercise in cinematic style.

Kamran

What’s most interesting is how Weerasethakul crosses content and aesthetic...Taken individually, images from the turbulently framed portion of the film are far more beautiful than images from the ascetically framed portion, despite being rather more unsettling as a visual — cinematic — experience. Read Review: http://aestheticsofthemind.wordpress.com/2012/05/19/ashes/

Zac Weber

Apichatpong asks the audience to meddle in the minutiae of memory without providing any context. As a work of art, Ashes is intriguing. As a cinematic attraction, the short film feels tedious.

Derek Tvmala

More than just random frames of images, Ashes has brought those remote and unvisualized emotions into film. It's very rare that a filmmaker taps this region and it's purpose transcends into just telling a story but exploring that thought and brought us to realizations.

David R Williams

Fleeting images like fragments of faded memory. Watching this I wonder what the meaning is. Is the meaning in the images I see or is it in the images that I do not see? is it in the spaces outside the frame? In the end something is being celebrated but the spectators are not watching with their eyes but through the lenses of their cell phones and other optic devices. They are not making memories, they are recording.