CINEMALAYA 2020. I wrote the first part here in no particular order. By now you would have learned that Tokwifi wins Best Film and Martika Escobar wins Best Director for Living Things. By now as well (a Tuesday), my access to the festival screening on Vimeo would have expired.
This year’s theme bears “Streaming Consciousness” that adapts to many Cinephiles out there. Our conscious effort to pursue the festival at the comfort of our homes, and how — sans the backdrop of the CCP Main Theater — the inadmissible charm of the Cinemalaya and the CCP, would still resonate in the comfort viewing of it in a smartphone.
Like they say, be careful what you wish for. Last year, one of the highlights of the debacle between film enthusiasts is the emergence of streaming services. Is it really possible to encompass the charm of a movie theater, shrunk to a smart phone? I now have an answer to my lovely mother in law why gigantic television screens are more affordable these days. The comfort and the reassurance that we won’t catch the virus, while pursuing our interests in [Philippine] cinema.
If ever a resurgence of the following short films would occur anytime in the future, here’s the other half of films and there corresponding reviews.
Quing Lalam Ning Aldo or “Under The Sun” competed previously in the Cine Kabalen film festival. A transgender sampaguita farmer has decided to remodel her kitchen, when she receives news that her son will be coming home from working overseas.
The highlight of this film is its dialogue, riddled with olfactory stimulants that connect to tender memories of someone sweet and warm, something that Budang easily expresses in the film: from the description of the sampaguita fields, to Budang’s meager but sweet success, the tinola albeit failing to cook it. Quing Lalam Ning Aldo perfects the cinematography of clear and steady cam-work. It almost looks like a coming-of-age film filled with hope. Except this one is for those reaching the springtime of their lives.
I recommend you watch this in meager times of missing the countryside, or when you’re feeling hopeless about the state of the nation. This film looks as delicious as that soup Junjun made.
ANG PAGPAPAKALMA SA UNOS is Joanna Vasquez Arong’s reminder that we have never been more ill-prepared when disaster strikes our seas. This collection of news reels and of personal videos of the Yolanda/Typhoon Haiyan, backed by a young girl’s tender, monolithic monologue in Cebuano provides that perfect allegory that there was more than just a typhoon that struck it’s people, despite it being downplayed by some locals as a folklore of a pig that shakes the earth during the storm.
The use of newspaper reels isn’t at all bad, and the little kid’s voice reminds me of that girl in red running away from Nazi soldiers in the film Shindler’s list. Quite adept too, since Unos highlights the media’s attention to several scandals government officials have made during and after disaster relief operations. We have to hand it down to Lawrence Ang’s effective editing skills too for completing Ms. Arong’s vision of highlighting a powerful side of the Yolanda tragedy we have never seen before.
In Martika Ramirez Escobar’s LIVING THINGS, we see Kristine “Kints” Kintana and Charles Aaron Salazar play what couples normally do. They do mundane to outrageous things like hanging out or watch their neighbors to play with each other. But this cute and charming film looks mundane from the onset, up until Salazar changes into a cardboard cutout. Explicitly encompassing any other symbolism of change that the hipster generation could think of, Kints has neither explored how he turned out this way, but rather lives with it.
From here on out we see different interpretations of change occur between the couple. From denial to acceptance, the film is whimsical and never looses its charm all throughout. Escobar’s clever direction to Lawrence Ang’s stunning mimic and nitpicking of her mind, to concoct scene by scene like a dream of a sweet couple who’s woes are to coexist each other and this fast paced world.
UTWAS by Richard Salvadico & Arlie Sweet Sumagaysay is a short account of a father and son’s team-up of exploring the seas. Tatay is an experienced diver who teaches his son Toto how to dive. Like most local films about the sea, he reminds his son of the danger of getting caught in dynamite fishing. The film ends tragically, but the entire film is shot beautifully.
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I would love to watch Utwas again, but with a more improved script. Had there been less drone shots, the film might not have a chance for a second viewing. There is nothing else we know of Tatay and Toto except that we know at the onset that one of them will die — and that’s not even a compliment. There’s more to improve in their characters, even without the constraints of the time a short film should have (is there such a thing? I mean just ask Lav Diaz).
Jan Andrei Cobey’s THE SLUMS was ruined for me after seeing it for the first time in this festival. Simply because I had learned that the subtitles released here was different during its run from last year’s CinemaOne Originals Film Festival. The first one was original, this one was intended for international audiences who aren’t familiar with our humor of saying the opposite of things.
Despite that, I enjoyed The Slums – a mockumentary about a family living in The Slums, played out the same way as ABC’s Modern Family. From the trivial pursuits of pageantry successes by their gay son, to their parents trying to show a glamorous side of their family despite the discomfort of their privacy invaded, The Slums cleverly portraits the predicament of everyday Filipino Families, in humorous fashion of course.
BONUS ROUND
Indie Nation: Shorts
ANG MERON SA WALA by Arby and Christine Laraño is a chilling short about a man who unapologetically leaves his first son due to poverty and shame. Believing it was the right thing to do, we learn more about the life he led and the choices he made for the good of others.
It is uncanny that the premise is too simple, but Ang Meron Sa Wala (Beyond Nothing) is a compelling insight on inquisitive documentary, where the subject leads us to something deeper than a simple predicament. Of loss, and of grief, and of tiny triumphs. There are many ways to describe the potential family man, but what if he isn’t similar to what we read and what we see in movies? This film tugs right in the heart, without any hope or wishful thinking of reuniting him back to his first-born.
OCTOGOD by Shievar Olegario’s experimental film about a Karl and Humanoid is one of this year’s more interesting experimentals I’ve seen. I agree with some that there are challenges in critiquing an experimental short. There’s too many elements that can be considered a risk, a confusion, and a longing predicament one would rather put focus on other films.
I can’t say the same about Octogod. As the logline suggests, Karl is a graphic designer who alters stolen images from instagram, and into his website. Perhaps working for days end, he begins to morph his dreams and nightmares in his reality, until he ceases to identify which is which. Not really great for the photosensitive, it is swimming under the same pagod na ako universe that holds Fatigued and Excuse Me, Miss, Miss, Miss, but it is hard to dismiss Octogod as a weird film. This film connects to creatives who exert their influence — however little or small — on a project. But the pressures of life and society goes into the way, and maybe just like Karl, we get consumed by these difficulties and in the end, we might not win at all.
Part 3 will be released August 19.
