Quick take: Weerasethakul shorts

Thai director Apichatpong "Joe" Weerasethakul seems to be on a one-man crusade to free our minds. He constantly challenges assumptions about cinematic tone, setting, storytelling and more. That practice was on glorious display in Mysterious Objects, the program of shorts presented at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on Sunday.

Surprising audiences is an art filmmaker's job. But Weerasethakul does it in such gentle, lighthearted ways that there's never a sense he's throwing something out there and leaving it up to us to figure it out. There are hard things to figure out in some of his films, but his work is always accessible at some level. Most important, there's an underlying sense of play that lightens the whole experience. Some of these shorts would be perfect tools for teaching students to think outside the box.

The Anthem (2006) is most stunning in this respect. Like the feature Tropical Malady, it consists of two parts, in this case a conversation followed by ... an indoor sporting event? The idea of the short, apparently, is some imaginary alternative to playing the national anthem before movies, which is traditionally done in Thailand. Weerasethakul creates a strange combination of many elements with such flair and energy that we're easily taken along for the ride.

Another highlight was Ghost of Asia (2004), a co-production by Weerasethakul and Christelle Lheureux as a tribute to the creative spirits of people lost in the 2004 Asian tsunami. Children "direct" an actor/ghost in frantic beach activities. It's not what you'd expect a post-mortem tribute to look like. My Mother's Garden (2007) is a dreamy combination of animation and eye-popping organically inspired jewelry. Worldly Desires (2005) is a meditation on filmmaking (specifically, the making of Tropical Malady) and wilderness. It was the longest work in the program and also the most challenging. Is the jungle the world's most elaborate backlot, or are humans a species that hunts images instead of prey?

It was a rare chance to check out little-known work by someone I think is on the leading edge of film. If not for Michael Guillen of The Evening Class, I wouldn't have known it was happening. Sunday's was actually the second of two sets, but according to Guillen and others who attended both, it was the better of the two.