'The Plastic House' / Allison Chhorn
As my family are getting older, I constantly fear the death of my parents and what it would be like if they weren’t here anymore. I think about their absence and how I would live emotionally and practically without them. I experience their absence from time to time, when they go back to Cambodia – the absence of my mother’s voice, the absence of my father’s laboured work. Thinking – who would take over the farm if they were gone?
I fear the roof of my house collapsing on me. It seems irrational, yet the signs of cracks in the roof and pieces of ceiling that have fallen have made this possibility all too real. What if I didn’t do anything to fix it, but rather let it happen and carried on with what I knew? Imagining these two fears was the idea for the story of the film.
“It’s natural for me to imagine the worst happening – coming from a lack of information.You hear a fraction of information that’s really scary, that creates an imagination of fear.”
Is it possible to make a film alone? Working this way, especially the filming and editing, took me a very long time. Like making paintings, it’s a very solitary but rewarding process. Out of necessity and accessibility I’m in front of the camera, which makes it difficult to position my self. You can tell this was filmed alone by the choice of framing, using a tripod when I’m in the shot, using long shots, etc. I tried to set up the camera very simply, usually squaring up the greenhouse as the internal frame, and moving within that.
The Plastic House
A young woman constructs a solitary reality by imagining what life would be like after the passing of her parents. Absorbed in the slow process of working alone in the family’s green house, she relives shadow memories of her Cambodian mother and father. The healing ritual of physical labour gradually reveals itself over time. As the plastic roof bears the weight of natural elements, the increasingly precarious weather threatens this new life alone.
The Plastic House can be viewed in MIFF 68½ this year, streaming from 6 August at https://2020.miff.com.au/film/the-plastic-house/.
Allison Chhorn (b. 1992) is a Cambodian-Australian film-maker and multidisciplinary artist whose work explores themes of migrant displacement, trauma and the repetition of memory.
Words and images by Allison Chhorn.
Article by Georgia Ketels.
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