Aditya Assarat's Motorcycle hits DVD

Aditya Assarat's award-winning debut short film Motorcycle has been included as an extra feature with the U.S. DVD release of Noise, an Australian crime drama.

Motorcycle is a drama about a father in rural Thai village who learns that his son has been killed in a motorcycle wreck. He then struggles with bringing the body back for a proper funeral.

Aditya's master's thesis film at the University of Southern California, Motorcycle won the Gold Hugo at the Chicago International Film Festival, the Golden Gate Award at the San Francisco International Film Festival and Best Short Film in the student competition at the Shorts International Film Festival in 2000 and a special jury award from Aspen Shortsfest in 2001.

"Actually, I had no idea about this," Aditya wrote in an e-mail after learning of the DVD release. "Motorcycle and my other shorts have a sales agent. They are called Objectifs Films and are based in Singapore. They sell many Southeast Asian shorts on DVD and are a good resource if you need to watch some old stuff. Anyway, they probably made the sale and the info hasn't come to me yet."

"It's a very old film," Aditya continued. "My first short, made in 2000 when I was still studying. For some reason, people keep on showing it over and over. I suppose because it's one of the very first Thai shorts that ever got shown at festivals ... not that it's groundbreaking or anything, but before that, there were so few shorts being produced, unlike now. "

Aditya's debut feature film, Wonderful Town is playing for one more week at SF World Cinema in Bangkok as part of the Director's Screen series. The second season of his documentary series, Dreamchaser, following the motorcycle-borne journeys of musician Sukie Sukosol Clapp through Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, just started airing on Monday at midnight on Channel 3.

(Via Hartford Courant)