Aditya's new high society

Borders are breaking down in indie filmmaker Aditya Assarat’s latest feature, “Hi-So”, which comes to Bangkok cinemas next month.
Inspired by Aditya’s own life – he was raised in Thailand but spent his high school and college years in the US – “Hi-So” is a bifurcated look at the life of a melancholy man who doesn’t fit in either place.
Ananda Everingham stars. He plays a Thai actor who’s recently moved back after years in the States. While making a movie, he’s visited on set by his American girlfriend and is having trouble connecting to her. Later he has a Thai girlfriend, and can’t relate to her either.
It’s a movie of halves, with the first in English and the second in Thai.
“By the nature of the structure, the two halves always reflect each other, and I always thought it would be like the same movie being played over again,” Aditya says. “Even some of the conversations are the same, except one is in English and the other in Thai.”
Ananda, a Lao-Australian who recently became a naturalised Thai citizen, was sought for the role by Aditya because his life closely mirrors Aditya’s and because he’s comfortable speaking English and Thai. “He was perfect for the role,” Aditya says.
The pair started talking about “Hi-So” back in 2002, before Ananda had become internationally famous in the 2004 horror film “Shutter”.
“Hi-So” was intended as Aditya’s first feature.
“When you’re starting out as a filmmaker, you don’t ever know if you’ll get to make another one, so a lot people will make their first film their most personal, and if it tanks, that’s it,” he says.
But scheduling and funding difficulties made things impossible, so “Hi-So” was put in a drawer and Aditya moved on to other projects. He eventually made his first feature in 2007, “Wonderful Town”, a romantic drama set in a Phang-nga town that had been hit by the tsunami. The same location provides the setting for the first half of “Hi-So”.
The critically acclaimed “Wonderful Town” won many awards and the success gave Aditya a second chance at “Hi-So”.
Ananda in the meantime had become a huge star, but he still wanted to take part in Aditya’s film.
“Ananda is a real cinephile – he’s just as interested in what goes on behind the camera as what he does in front of it,” Aditya says. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we see him behind the camera in the next few years.”
Ananda, he notes, has always been supportive of independent filmmakers and tends to mix smaller, more personal projects alongside the big studio efforts.
And in addition to starring in “Hi-So”, Ananda is also one of the movie’s producers, along with Aditya’s regular producing partner Soros “ThongDee” Sukhum. Executive producer Pichai Chirathivat, owner of the Spicy Disc music label, pitched in with the much-needed funding to make the movie possible.
It was on another of those smaller projects with Ananda, a short film called “Bangkok Blues” that co-starred Louis Scott, where they met their Thai actress for “Hi-So”, Sajee Apiwong, who played a dual role in “Bangkok Blues”.
The American actress was harder to find, but Aditya remembered a musician acquaintance of his from New York, with whom he’d done a TV commercial – Cerise Leang. He tracked Leang down and invited her to Thailand to make a movie.
“Hi-So” premiered a year ago at the Busan festival and has since played at fests in Tokyo, Berlin and elsewhere. It had a theatrical release earlier this month in New York.
“We thought we’d save the Thai release for last,” Aditya says, explaining that it follows the pattern of many Thai indie movies that are released first overseas and build up a big buzz before coming home.

THE LOWDOWN |ON 'HI-SO'
 

The reception for “Hi-So” has so far been “good”, Aditya says.
But while “Wonderful Town” was generally well received wherever it played, the audiences for “Hi-So” have been more selective. “It tends to play better for Asian audiences than audiences in Europe or the US,” Aditya says.
“It’s a contemporary Asian film. It’s about what it’s like to live in Thailand now and what it feels like to live in Asia now, where there’s a breakdown of culture and borders. We’re all becoming one Asian culture.
“A hundred years ago, to be born in Thailand meant something. It meant that you spoke Thai and you never left the country and you were Thai. Now it could mean anything. You can speak English or Japanese and you don’t eat Thai food. You watch Korean TV shows or French movies and you wear your hair the way people wear it in Brazil.”
Despite being back in Thailand now for around 10 years and having lots of friends who know him by his nickname Juke, he still feels like an outsider, so much so that it feels normal.
“I go abroad to a film festival and I’ll meet somebody I have more in common with than the person who lives down the street from me in Bangkok,” Aditya says.
“And that’s what the movie is about – a world where we don’t define ourselves by the borders in which we live but by the way we were educated, the way we were raised. It’s not that definite anymore – it’s a lot more fluid.”
 On the outside looking in with new short-film project
 His 2007 debut feature “Wonderful Town” was about a Bangkok man falling in love with a woman in a small southern town, and his latest movie “Hi-So” (see Page 1B) is about a US-educated Thai who doesn’t fit in either place.
And in a new project, filmmaker Aditya Assarat continues to scrutinise the lives of outsiders.
“Southeast Loves”, an anthology of shorts about “the end of the world”, has Aditya collaborating with four other directors from across the region.
The others are Sri Lanka’s Vimukthi Jayasundara, Vietnam’s Phan Dang Di, Indonesia’s Ifa Isfansyah and Bangladesh’s Ishtique Zico. With their Singaporean and Japanese producers, they’ll be making their pitch for funding at next month’s Asian Project Market as part of the Busan International Film Festival.
Thai director Nonzee Nimibutr will also be at the market, pitching his own project, “Distortion”, a psycho-thriller.
Unlike previous omnibus projects in which the segments don’t really fit together, Aditya says that there will be “a lot of integration” in “Southeast Loves”.
“For example, I must shoot with a Sri Lankan actor in Thailand,” he says, and the other directors will follow the same pattern. “So it becomes a story about immigrants who are under pressure because the world is ending in five days.”
Production on the short will take place next year.
Aside from directing, Aditya’s also active as a producer. The first film he produced that wasn’t his own is playing now at Bangkok’s CentralWorld – “Eternity” (“Tee Rak”) – a drama by Sivaroj Kongsakul, who had previously been among the crew of Aditya’s films.
The debut feature by Sivaroj, “Eternity”, has been met with similar worldwide acclaim to Aditya’s “Wonderful Town”, winning awards in Busan and Rotterdam.
While he’s proud of the accomplishments of “Eternity”, Aditya’s not sure he’s cut out to be a producer.
“I don’t think I’m very good at the job, frankly. You have to be very giving to be producer, and maybe I’m too selfish. You’re working for somebody else’s work, and you take a back seat to the director, creatively, and that’s been difficult for me. I’m always used to getting my own way creatively, and your main job as a producer is to facilitate somebody else’s creative vision.”
Nonetheless, he’s committed to helping independent filmmakers like himself, and has signed on to produce “Interior”, the feature debut by another budding filmmaker, Nawapol thamrongrattanarit, who’s made several award-winning short films. He recently received script-development funds from the Asian Cinema Fund of the Busan festival.
“One of the most difficult things to do is to make an independent film – to find the financing, to put it together, to bring together the people and have them work for very little money,” Aditya says.
Eventually, Aditya says he’d like to make a big-budget film, and he’s working on a script that’s intended for a larger audience.
“I think that would be something new,” he says. “I’ve spent the last five years making art-house films, so how to move forward? That’s always the difficult question for an artist. I think you should always try to push yourself.”
He can’t say much about the project, only that it’ll be similar to “Wonderful Town” and “Hi-So” in that it’ll be about an outsider.
“It’ll be about you,” he tells The Nation’s expat journalist. “It’s about a foreigner living in Thailand.”
 

BE A JOINER
“Hi-So”, part of the Extra Virgin Director’s Screen Project, will open on October 13 in three Bangkok cinemas: SF World at CentralWorld, SFX Lad Phrao and SF Cinema City at the new Terminal 21 mall at the Asoke intersection.
Find out more by searching on Facebook for “Hi-So” and “a film by Aditya Assarat”.