Infinite Football & Krabi 2562 on Digital from Anti-worlds in May
23 April 2020
Anti-worlds have two films out this May – Corneliu Porumboui’s Infinite Football on 8 May via Curzon Home Cinema (when there is no way to watch football people may as well enjoy a film debating the rules of football!) and Ben Rivers & Anoucha Suwichakornping’s Krabi 2562 on 29 May via Mubi (this, the press release assures us, is a really beautiful film and strangely relaxing to watch, a plus in these unsettling times).
INFINITE FOOTBALL [FOTBAL INFINIT] (Romania 2018) | Curzon Home Cinema | 8 May 2020
From director Corneliu Porumboiu comes an hilarious and poignant documentary feature about one man's search to redefine the beautiful game and his own philosophy of life, one that is both funny and profound. What happens when we try to alter the rules of the game of life?
“Last fall, a good childhood friend of mine, Florin, told me that his brother, Laurentui, invented a new sport by changing the rules of the football game. One month later I went to my hometown, Vaslui, with a small film crew, to learn more about the new sport…” – Corneliu Porumboui
Corneliu Porumboiu was born in Vaslui, Romania and is the son of a former football referee. His first feature 12:08 East of Bucharest (2006) won a number of prizes including the Camera d’Or award at Cannes and the Transilvania trophy at TIFF. Since then his films have continued to win awards around the world and confirmed his talent as a storyteller and director, these include Police, Adjective (2009), The Second Game(2014) and The Treasure(2015).
Since completing Infinite Football, Porumboiu has gone on to make The Whistlers – the films premiered at the Cannes Film Festival a year apart. Both films will be available on Curzon Home Cinema from 8 May 2020 – more details should be coming soon.
In the town of Krabi, a popular tourist destination in southern Thailand, the pre-historic, the recent past and the contemporary capitalist world awkwardly collide. The town’s local folklore and histories are promoted as attractions to foreigners, while the town’s traditional labour force is muted and hidden from the tourists’ eyes. A nameless character, whose identity continually changes, takes us around town to explore various sites that capture Krabi in its current state. These sites uniquely illustrate how Krabi’s folklore are propagated and commodified to fill the need of tourism industry.
Co-sirector Ben Rivers is an artist and filmmaker represented by Kate MacGarry Gallery in London. Rivers won the second EYE Art Film Prize 2016, as well as the FIPRESCI International Critics Prize, 68th Venice Film Festival for his first feature film Two Years At Sea; he received the Baloise Art Prize, Art Basel 42, for Sack Barrow; and the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Artists in 2010. Recent solo shows include Phantoms, Triennale, Milan; Urth, The Renaissance Society, Chicago; Islands, Kunstverein of Hamburg; Earth Needs More Magicians, Camden Arts Centre, London; The Two Eyes Are Not Brothers, Artangel, London and Whitworth Museum, Manchester. His most recent feature film, The Sky Trembles and the Earth is Afraid and The Two Eyes Are Not Brothers, premiered in the main competition at Locarno International Film Festival.
Born in Thailand, co-durector Anocha Suwichakornpong graduated from an MFA film program at Columbia University. Her thesis film, Graceland, became the first Thai short film to be officially selected by Cannes Film Festival. Mundane History, her first feature, won numerous awards including the Tiger Award at Rotterdam. Anocha’s second feature, By the Time It Gets Dark, premiered in Locarno and screened in festivals including Toronto, BFI London, Viennale, and Rotterdam. The film won three Thailand National Film Awards including Best Picture and Best Director. By the Time It Gets Dark was chosen as Thailand’s Oscar entry for Best Foreign Language Film. Anocha co-founded Purin Pictures, a film fund that supports independent cinema in Southeast Asia. She is currently a visiting lecturer at Harvard University.
