Director's Screen and Phuket head for CentralWorld

Extra Virgin's Director's Screen Project has a change of program and a change of venue this week.

A collection of three shorts by Wonderful Town director Aditya Assarat – Phuket, Boy Genius and The Sigh – closes the current leg of the screening series, which moves to the SF World Cinema at CentralWorld.

Initiated at SFW CentralWorld in 2008, the Director's Screen Project was relaunched this past August, with Anocha Suwichakornpong's Mundane History and Uruphong Raksasad's Agrarian Utopia each having one-month theatrical runs at SFX the Emporium.

Now the Director's Screen moves back to CentralWorld. The shopping center has been closed since the April-May "red-shirt" anti-government protests at the Rajprasong intersection. The protests ended on May 19 with a flurry of arson attacks in retaliation for the government's use of military force to stop the protests. Part of CentralWorld was destroyed by fire, and it's taken months to get the mall ready for its reopening.

Commissioned by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and tourism concerns, Phuket stars South Korean actress Lim Su-jeong as a famous Korean actress named Jin who is trying to take a vacation in Phuket, but is harried by phone calls and fans. She finds solace in a friendship with her hotel limo driver, played National Artist actor Sorapong Chatree, who shows her the traditional side of the resort island's culture.

Phuket premiered at last year's Pusan International Film Festival and was in competition at the Clermont-Ferrand festival earlier this year. It was the opening film of last month's 14th Thai Short Film & Video Festival, and is also playing in this week's Vancouver International Film Festival.

It's playing with two other shorts by Aditya, Boy Genius and The Sigh. From 2004, Boy Genius is about a young filmmaker trying to make a movie but his girlfriend keeps getting in the way. It's the first part of a trilogy that's followed by 2005's The Sigh, in which a soundman making a recording in an abandoned building discovers a mysterious woman’s sigh on the tape. He then tries to find the woman.

Meanwhile, more Aditya is on the way, with his new feature Hi-So premiering at the Pusan International Film Festival alongside Eternity (ที่รัก, Tee Rak), a New Currents-competition drama from young director Sivaroj Kongsakul and produced by Aditya's Pop Pictures.