A High Society Closure

February 14th is the day of love . . .or so they say . . .it says a lot about our own personal love lives that a group of people should find themselves on a movie set on Valentine's day (and Chinese New Year) where instead of Tigers and fireworks or candlelit dinner, we went to a Christmas party, for the last day of filming for Aditya Assarat's High Society.  

P'Juke and Ananda

The director, Aditya Assarat (P'Juke) said to me that he wanted me to see the inner-workings of a film set, well, thank you to p'Juke and Ananda, I spent an afternoon and a night, thoroughly entertained and fascinated.  It is the inverse of fashion and all that I know, as on film, the life (life in the movie) comes to life . . . a paradox in terms no? 

My involvement here, as was Jolanda's, Louis', James', Potsy's etc etc were that we played Ananda's friends so in actual fact, played ourselves, and he played a movie star (himself) - he was hanging with his friends, all international kids back home in Bkk for the holidays.  Well, there is a very fine line of where art imitates life and life imitates art . . . it was blurred that night and I imagine in the film, where I imagine that line went backwards and forwards like a pendulum. . . 

Hardly, reality but if it looks on celluiloid like we were having fun, chances were that we actually were having fun.

Jolanda and I

James

High Society is a movie by Aditya starring Ananda about a "dek nok" a specific type of Thai who is Thai yet not due to his years abroad exists as an outsider yet an  insider, this is explored through his instant stardom as an actor upon his return from abroad and his relationships with his foreign girlfriend who comes to visit him and later his very Thai girlfriend . . .well, how much of that is actually reality? He has the freedom to leave it all - that I can relate to rather well.  Again, it begs the question of where does real-life start.  I was on a fate forest (feng-shui reasons) clearing mission that took me to Khao Yai - I was supposed to spend the weekend away but justified an early return as a film set is not reality . .yet the Christmas party did after midnight turn into a real party and the water shots turned to vodka . . .so I did drive home in the early morning of the 15th from a parallel universe after all. 

cigarettes, beer and vodka - product placement dream

Potsy and his doppelganger doll

Ananda

MCOT (I have for the last 6 months ended my days of listless joy to consult the President of the organisation on intellectual property and special projects) will be supporting this movie, in a way in which the Thai film industry has yet to see and hopefully it will finally give a small industry with a lot of soul that has always sustained itself, the appreciation and support that it deserves.  

It is something to be proud of that our independent films go to Cannes and other festivals(our commercial ones save for a few do not), our artists are at the Guggenheim, and we are funded by foreign funds but it is a perhaps a tad bit shameful (or to be quite frank, completely and utterly embarrassing) that we do not have institutional support for this little diaspora of creatives.  This of course is a vast generalisation and I am fully aware that there are a few individuals, great individuals, who give support and patron, yet, these men are far and few between. . .just a thought.

Hey, we had fun though . . . can't wait to see the film.

Primitive

There are certain news that one hears that makes them beam from ear to ear and shine with pride, the news that Apichatpong Weerasethakul is among the six finalists for the Hugo Boss Prize 2010 is one such piece of information for me.  The winner is granted some money by the Guggenheim Foundation, the amount of which the fashion house sponsors as well as a solo exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in NYC in the following year.  Amongst the other finalists, is Cao Fei, a photographer/video artist from China who I also love - her work is very lucid and effective.  However, to have Apichatpong in there with his work Primitive, a multi-platform installation is so fantastic I can hardly contain my excitement, nor can I hardly wait to see the work.

A quite a few years back, another Thai won the coveted prize, Rirkrit Tiravanija - for a complex, engaging and powerful installation about freedom of expression and information.

This is a review of the installation by Jessica Lack of the The Guardian . . .  

Soldiers in a derelict house take potshots at a young man walking across a paddy field. He clutches his chest and collapses – but before they have time to reload, the boy is up again. There is no soundtrack: we can see, but not hear, the gun as it jolts backwards. Once again the figure falls, with the same melodramatic twist of the body, but in seconds he rises and continues his journey with an easy nonchalance. This cyclical routine would be harrowing if the soldiers were not so comically impotent. Is he a superhero? The clue lies in another film playing on the opposite wall: a group of farmers are building a spaceship. If this is life, Jim, it is not as we know it.

This is Primitive, a multi-screen installation by the Thai film director Apichatpong Weerasethakul that opened at Liverpool's Fact gallery on 24 September. The work is divided up across three galleries: downstairs is a seven-screen video installation depicting different films of a group of teenage boys playing at soldiers, hanging out, letting off firecrackers and sleeping in a rudimentary spaceship. Upstairs are two movies, one called A Letter to Uncle Boonmee and the other A Music Video: I'm Still Breathing [featuring Moderndog]. In its entirety, Primitivemakes up a larger narrative about a sleepy farming community in north-east Thailand called Nabua ... where in the 1960s villagers were raped, tortured and murdered by the authorities after being accused of communist sympathies.

One can only imagine what with his aesthetics and ability to move and convey emotions in the most subtle and naturalistic way - what this monumental piece of work will do.

The piece is currently at the Musee d'art Moderne de la Ville Paris . . .(one of my favourite museums) until January 2010.

Best of luck to Apichatpong . . . Thai culture thus, Thai art is unique and it is probably about time that such talent and vision is better appreciated, especially in Thailand.  It is ironic that Primitive is commissioned by Haus de Kunst and FACT Liverpool, and produced by Illumination Films, London and Kick the Machine, Bangkok - a piece of work that showcases, critiques and is the creative fruit of a Thai director, not commissioned by Thailand. . . perhaps this will change very soon.  I support 100% global and international collaborations, but it is perhaps high time, that what is so quintessentially Thai (Apichatpong's Tropical Maladie, Wisit Sasanatieng's Tears of a Black Tiger), even though not so "commercial" and "easy", should be celebrated, what is seen as primitive, challenging and complex, especially when it is about our culture, should be cherished and encouraged (and definitely not replaced by the highly camp, simplistic and commercial).  Interesting times it is.

A piece which compliments Primitive project called A Letter to Uncle Boonmee will screen here in Bangkok during the World Film Festival which starts on November 6th.