QCinema has outdone us all again.
With the pandemic far from over and cinemas still closed, QCinema International Film Festival jump cuts the challenges and proceeds again with a hybrid festival.
In 2020, the festival pivoted to the new normal with a festival that featured socially distanced and by-invitation-only physical screenings coupled with online streaming.
This year, from November 26 to December 5, 2021, QCinema says it will again feature physical screenings and online screening. The latter will be in cooperation with KTX.
Festival director Ed Lejano says, “High profile film festivals from all around the world have embraced this format. Our experience last year also proves that a hybrid festival is the way to go.”
He states that the online component widened the festival’s reach with more viewers outside Metro Manila gaining access to the festival.
Here’s a comprehensive look at what will happen, what films will premiere and how to fit this schedule into wary audiences who **might** not be able to attend the physical screening at Gateway Mall in Cubao, QC.
QCinema partners with KTX for this year’s online streaming
KTX is the country’s foremost digital events platform hosting the biggest ticketed, virtual shows – concerts, movie exhibitions, festivals, among many other digital experiences.
“With the inevitable and imminent shift to the digital space for appreciation and exhibition of films due to the pandemic, KTX believes that it is an exciting time to expand the already huge following of QCinema, one of the country’s foremost film festival, to the entire Philippines, and even the world,” says the KTX top honcho, Enrico Santos.
Adds Gian Carlo Vizcarra, head of its business development and operations, “We are very honored to be a part of this year’s QCinema Film Festival and we are excited to bring and tell the timely stories of our filmmakers from all over the world.”
This year, KTX has showcased a number of titles for premiere on its platform, including the recently concluded Binisaya Film Festival, and the usual ABS-CBN Restoration premieres, and newly released titles.
Six short films will compete in this year’s #QCShorts section
Skylab by Chuck Escasa; Ampangabagat Nin Talakba Ha Likol by Maria Estela Paiso; i get so sad sometimes by Trishtan Perez; MIGHTY ROBO V by Miko Livelo and Mihk Vergara; Henry by Kaj Palanca; and City of Flowers by Xeph Suarez.
Asian Shorts Program
Bringing forth some new Asian short films from around the world, the Asian Shorts line-up features recent titles that have competed in major festivals abroad. It shines a spotlight on emerging Asian names in the festival circuit, including two Filipino shorts, for their Philippine premieres.
Dear to Me by Monica Vanesa Tedja, won a Special Mention award at this year’s Locarno Open Door Shorts. Tackling themes of repression and myth, the film centers on a vacationing young man in a remote Indonesian island who secretly hopes to discover a reincarnated deer as he ponders finding his soulmate.
Sunrise in My Mind is about a young beauty salon employee who gives into her restrained interest with a delivery man who spends his evenings driving Phnom Penh’s streets by motorbike. Danech San’s second short had its world premiere at Busan and had its European premiere at the 2021 Berlin Critics’ Week.
New Abnormal is a reflection on human life during the COVID-19 pandemic in Thailand and follows different characters from various scenarios who share the same awkward situation. Sorayos Prapapan’s new short is a follow-up to his previous festival favorite, Death of the Sound Man.
Live In Cloud-Cuckoo Land depicts the love story of a woman who works at a wedding dress shop and a local busker. Vietnamese co-directors Vũ Minh Nghĩa & Phạm Hoàng Minh Thy use a modern tale of Kafka to show colorful slices of life, including a wedding, a traffic jam, a theft, a miraculous incarnation, and a love story.
New Abnormal and Live In Cloud-Cuckoo Land were selected to compete at the Orizzonti Short Films Competition in the 2021 Venice Film Festival.
Elijah Canlas headlines How to Die Young in Manila where he trails a group of hustlers in the surreal streets of Manila, thinking one of them may be his hook-up for the night. Petersen Vargas’ return to short filmmakingwas an official selection in Busan last year.
Winner of a number of awards including the Silver Bear at this year’s Berlinale,Rafael Manuel’s Filipiñana is about Isabel, the new ‘tee-girl’ in an exclusive golf club who’s struggling for ways to subvert the system.
MEMORIA is this year’s Opening Film
Cannes award winner “Memoria” by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, which stars Tilda Swinton. In the film, Swinton plays Jessica, an expat orchid grower with a strange malady: she recurrently experiences a booming sound that no other character can hear. The quest for answers takes Jessica first to a recording studio, then to the Amazon jungle; in each location, she finds men who offer assistance, but no clear solutions.
QCinema Features Two Ryūsuke Hamaguchi Films
2021 is the year of Japanese auteur Ryūsuke Hamaguchi.
Touted as the most important Japanese director to emerge in recent years, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi marked this year with two feature films that have both been sensations on the festival circuit.
His film Wheel of Fortune And Fantasy won the Silver Bear at the Berlinale. Less than four months later, Drive My Car zoomed away with the award for Best Screenplay at Cannes.
Both films are featured in the Screen International section of this year’s QCinema International Film Festival, slated from November 26 to December 5. This is in partnership with The Japan Foundation, Manila.
“This year, as we jumpstart cinemas’ great rebound, we made sure the experience will be worth the wait so we only lined up the best,” says Festival Director Ed Lejano.
Wheel of Fortune And Fantasy is an anthology film covering the themes of love and betrayal. Told in three segments, the film explores an unexpected love triangle, a failed seduction trap and an encounter that results from a misunderstanding. It depicts three female characters and traces the trajectories between their choices and regrets.
Drive My Car is based on the short story of the same name by Haruki Murakami from his 2014 short story collection Men Without Women.
This road movie tells the story of a widower stage actor and director who was happily married to his playwright wife. When he’s invited to direct a play at a festival in Hiroshima, the director finds his chauffeur to be a stoic woman. The two share many rides, and as communication is initiated secrets and confessions are gradually exchanged.
Filipino actor Perry Dizon who appeared in Drive My Car described it as one of the most important films of the 21stcentury. He also shared that it has an “insanely awesome screenplay.”
He adds, “I believe that Drive My Car is a film that will be studied by film students, film schools, actors and drama schools for the next 100 years. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that I would be involved in this. I am humbled and honored to have worked with Director Ryusuke Hamaguchi, the producer Teruhisa Yamamoto, and equally amazing cast and crew members.”
Both films will be screened at Gateway Cineplex 10 together with nine other films which have also received much acclaim.
Aside from the QCinema’s Gateway Cineplex 10 screenings, it will also have streaming via KTX.ph, which will have a different lineup of films.
Here’s the official schedule of the event in any case you’re in the mood to plot it out on your schedule:
QCinema International Film Festival 2021 runs from November 26 to December 5 on both physical screenings at the Gateway Cinema 10 in Cubao, QC and via streaming on KTX.ph. For more info, visit qcinema.ph or send us a message on our socials for more.
Watch us talk to the QCShorts filmmakers on the opening day of QCShorts here:
