P

laton Theodoris, a Greek-Australian music video director with Indonesian roots, has released his debut film to positive acclaim.

Shot in Sydney, Kalgoorlie and Jakarta, Alvin'€™s Harmonious World of Opposites is a touching comedy-drama that shifts between magical and realist elements.

The story focuses on the life of Alvin, a pedantic translator played by New South Wales-based performance artist Teik-Kim Pok. Alvin falls into a supernatural world on his rooftop after a friend (Vashti Hughes) tries to check out what is thought to be a simple flea infestation.

The film will be screened in Indonesia over the weekend at Jakarta'€™s art-house cinema, Kineforum in Cikini.

For the director, the film'€™s magical flourishes do not mask the fact that it is a very personal tale.

Theodoris '€” who went to the Jakarta Arts Institute and has directed many music videos for local bands '€” said the film was inspired by meditation classes at his local Buddhist center in Sydney, an obsessive-collector partner, Fritjof Capra'€™s book The Tao of Physics and, in hindsight, by a very intense father.

'€œI didn'€™t set out to make such a personal film but now that it'€™s finished, it'€™s become more obvious that some of the themes and characters in the film do represent many aspects of my own life, or stuff I'€™ve struggled with in the past like anxiety and obsessive thoughts,'€ explains Theodoris, who lived in Indonesia for a few years after his studies at the Jakarta Arts Institute (IKJ).

'€œWe all have to accept our thoughts. Not that they necessarily tell us anything about ourselves, but that they exist and they are ours. They can be left at the pre-reflective stage where there is no interpretation or association with other things or we can become involved in thinking about them.'€

The film sets out to focus on the range of emotions generated by the intense focus on thought. Fear, attachment, craving and aversion shadow Alvin throughout the movie.

'€œThis continuous interplay between opposites is a defining feature of Alvin'€™s world. As much as he tries to remove himself from the experiences of the outside world and control things '€” control his world '€” the world comes banging or dripping back in.

'€œBeing mindful of these experiences and our emotions and thought patterns allows us to see them clearly,'€ explains Theodoris.

He believes that only after people have become aware of their thought processes can they have any effect in managing them.

'€œSuch awareness gives Alvin a choice. Suddenly good and bad, noisy and quiet, pleasure and pain, up and down are not absolute black and white experiences belonging to different categories but merely different sides of the same reality '€” extreme parts of a single whole,'€ he says.

'€œIn hindsight, the film explores all these themes and I guess it'€™s one man'€™s journey through his own mind. The journey brings with it fear, joy and peace. Only when you can accept yourself as you are '€” stains and all '€” and realize that black and white is just a construct can you really accept the world around you.'€

For Theodoris, the film is a '€œdrama-comedy with a distinctive magical realism/road movie thread'€.

'€œYou are going on a trip through Alvin'€™s headspace. The lines between Alvin in the real world and Alvin'€™s headspace are completely blurred, which might throw an audience off at the start, but I really wanted to show that when it comes to anxiety and obsessive thoughts, it'€™s all stuff that comes from within a person. It'€™s hard to establish distance and find your true self or your most authentic self anyway. The audience will experience Alvin as he is, in his world.'€

Though his explanations may make the film seem like a heavy art house experience, at the heart of it, Alvin'€™s Harmonious World of Opposites is a film filled with a very relatable sense of joy and wonder.

Empathetic and mesmerizing to look at, Theodoris concludes that '€œat its core, this film should make people smile and laugh.'€