An award-winning Thai director treated Hackney Picturehouse filmgoers to a preview screening of his new film last Saturday. Aditya Assarat told audience members he modelled the film on his life, named Hi-So, when he stayed to answer questions after the screening.
Hi-So follows aspiring actor Ananda Everingham, who grew up moving between Thailand and the US, and his struggle to feel at home in either country.
Assarat’s previous film, Wonderful Town, depicted a Thai community in a beach town coming to terms with the aftermath of the 2004 Tsunami. Although it was Assarat’s first film, it won the prestigious Tiger Award at the Rotterdam Film Festival and the $90,000 prize at the Pusan International Film Festival in South Korea.
In Hi-So, Ananada’s two cultural identities are explored through his romantic relationships – in the first half of the film, his cosmopolitan American girlfriend visits him on set in rural Thailand; in the second half, a provincial Thai girl moves with him to the city.
“The main ideas in the film are about displacement and they’re represented by the two women,” says Assarat. “The film is broken into two halves – I chose the locations based on where the girls will most feel out of place.”
In the same way neither girl fits exactly into their location, neither relationship fits exactly into Ananda’s life. They seem to embody his alienation from each culture.
A solitary scene where Ananda is waiting in an airport sums up his constant limbo: “In Thailand if you had the chance to go to school abroad – speak English and be multi-lingual – it automatically makes you an outsider because a lot of people in that country don’t have that opportunity,” explains Assarat.
The film’s title, Hi-So, which is Thai slang for ‘posh’, was chosen with this in mind.
Assarat goes on to explain that the film was his most personal yet, and had originally been planned as his first.
“Usually a director’s first film is their most personal. It’s often the reason they wanted to make films in the first place, something they wanted to say,” he explained.
The Hackney Picturehouse put on the event with Chang beer, continuing their support of foreign or independent films and bringing Hackney alternative international cinema.
