Antenne Books and MUBI Present: Rachapoom Bum Bunchachoke's A Useful Ghost

Nadia: It really is like a difficult genre-defying film to explain, but I think sometimes genre-defying films are the best ones. I wanted to start off just really simply, so could you just introduce your work and what you do.

Elida: I'm one of the editors of Montez Press. We are an experimental publisher focusing on artist writing specifically through a queer and feminist lens. We've been publishing since 2012. We also have a sister organisation, Montez Press Radio, where we have conversations with artists, musicians, filmmakers, and the like. We also specifically work with kind of gender-defying and genre-defying works that kind of teeter on this edge of playful and satirical and political, which I think really ties in really well with this film.

Nadia: I thought it was really nice to start off with how the director of A Useful Ghost really embraces what I found to be quite a refreshing idea around audience reception. He layers his films with a lot of specific references to Thai folklore, like I was referring to, and political moments from throughout Thai history, but his films still feel really universal. He says that he treats his movies like a supermarket where you don't have to buy everything on the shelves to enjoy your trip, which I really liked. So as a publisher of experimental work that's deeply rooted in a variety of different communities, how do you approach the idea that readers might miss certain references but still sort of connect with this broader emotional core?

Elida: I think a lot of the work that we do really focuses on this sense of a lived-in experience because as a viewer or as a reader, when you connect with something emotional, even if you don't understand maybe the broader themes or the broader ideas, it makes you want to go research and it makes you want to kind of dive in further. And I think it also comes from this idea that we as readers, and as artists, because it's an artist-led press, also wanted that kind of work, wanted to not be told everything. We wanted to be able to experience something further and go uncover something that maybe wasn’t given to us at face value. 

Nadia: I think there's something universal, like the more specific something is sometimes that can have even more emotional resonance. I wanted to bring Jaw Filler in specifically, which was a text that you mentioned Montez publishes. As an example of your work, but also sort of to create some connective tissue with the film at hand. First, can you tell us what Jaw Filler is about a little bit?

Elida: Yeah, so Jaw Filler is a trans neo-noir detective novel. A series of wonderful and playful characters go through what's called the first trans commune in SimWorld, which kind of does what it says on the tin. It essentially is a novel that plays with this idea that in the US a lot of trans people have to kind of fight tooth and nail to be able to get healthcare and then when they get it, it's incredibly expensive. It's co-authored by Charlie Markbreiter and Maz Murray, which is an incredible feat in and of itself. But the novel uses the idea of the SimWorld, which is really tied to the trans community from early on in the internet to the pandemic as well, because that was a space where a lot of people were kind of able to come together and to soothe a lot of the effects of loneliness and the effects of dysmorphia that people were experiencing in such an isolating time. And so it takes this space that is recognisable and it kind of plays with it a little bit, and it becomes this like commune where people are able to just exist as they want to, but it is run by a company that essentially hides what they're really doing.

Nadia: And not to give too much away in the film, but there's a definite link there in these different layers of society that sort of interplay on each other, but also this kind of tension in the book and also in the film between the physical world and lived experience. And then in the case of A Useful Ghost, the living and the dead. So ghosts as the title suggests, come up quite a bit in the film. And in the film, it sort of tends to dredge up these sort of unspoken histories, political truths, collective traumas that the state or the ruling class would maybe rather erase, as you're sort of alluding to in the book as well. So I'm curious, why do you think we sort of turn to ghosts and avatars and fantasy worlds when real life might feel oppressive or overwhelming in that way.

Elida: I think ghosts and almost these online selves are a lot of the time associated with a past that we yearn for, that we can't access anymore. And there's a deep association with memory and with this connective tissue that reminds us that we're part of something. So I think both the film and the novel have this yearning for a thing that is inaccessible and a desire to remember or to create something that allows for progression to happen.

Nadia: Yeah, and also playing with time in that really interesting way of past and present and future sort of conflating in a sense. Often when we talk about collective memory, we can think about it formally - that it's nonlinear and fragmented, very messy, and jumps around in the way that we sort of remember things. In your work as an editor or even just a viewer of this film, how do you think that more experimental formats like internet lore or ghost stories or autofiction have the ability, or not, to mirror the way that we actually process trauma and real-life events?

Elida: Yeah, I think it's what you're alluding to, the fact that it is fragmented and messy and it might surface as one thing and then resolve as another. And it surprises us at times. I'm thinking specifically about how in Jaw Filler, the SimWorld at first becomes this space where you physically are with other people, but then it becomes something else as the novel progresses. And it uncovers, I suppose, ideas or things that you maybe didn't quite have the right words for, but it puts those words there for you, in images or in language. And I think there's something we crave as people in that, we want to be able to feel that other people feel the way we do. And so I think these stories or this kind of storytelling, which often I would say comes from people on the outskirts, whether it's because they're minorities or because they're queer or because they've been oppressed in some way politically or personally. And this is our way of saying, hey, look, this is how I can connect with you. We remember this. So I love the idea of collective memory, which is tied to history, but is so far from it in the sense that it's lived in and it's emotional and it's human.

Nadia: I wanted to also talk about humour in that sense too, because I would say a lot of the work that Montez publishes is really humorous. And A Useful Ghost, surprisingly so too, despite us just having thrown in all these like big and scary words around the film, but you know, A Useful Ghost talks about things like corporate extraction and state censorship and things like that, but does it in this way, like you're laughing a lot throughout the film. And yeah, the book as well really leans into satire and the absurd quite heavily. What do you make of that? Like, why is satire such a vital sort of political armour in that sense?

Elida: I think in one way it's safer to talk about these things if you're making fun of them. And it's not like, oh, I'm an authority on this, it's an academic thing that I'm saying. It's more playful. It makes me think of the jester with like a king and how jesters would be able to be the only one to say, oh, you're doing this wrong, or you're doing this right, or, you know, do it this way without getting murdered because they were funny, because they were like, you know, playful. And so I think satire is a really good way for these communities specifically to bring up these issues and say, hey, this is why we feel this way. But also we're a bit horny and funny and playful and jokerish because that democratises that knowledge, and I think that's incredibly important. It removes it from this world of verbose language and puts it right in a me and you space, which I think is incredibly important and really lands. That's why it lands. We laugh because we feel it, which I think both Jaw Filler and A Useful Ghost do really well.

Nadia: So I think that's a nice point to end it on. But before we wrap up, I'm conscious that you're also writing a novel right now, which is gonna be out next year. What are you able to share about it?

Elida: Yeah, it's also coming out with Montez Press, so keep an eye out. But it's about time and specifically looking at America, because I'm American, but also I'm looking at American artists and kind of this false promise that we've been given of an American dream. And how for immigrants in particular, it isn't there and it's a lie. But we create and we make art and through that we're able to connect with people across time. And there is a lot of that like collective memory, I hope, who knows. But there's that sense that like we're here together, whether it's 1940s, 1970s, or 2026. There's something there that anchors us all together. And hopefully it works for people, or connects with people outside of America as well.

Nadia: In specificity there's universality.