What is Cinema?

The  Cinemalaya Philippine Independent Film Festival and the  Cinema One Originals Digital Film Festival are two major film events being held in the country annually that showcase the latest, if not the best, in Filipino independent filmmaking. In 2014, both of these festivals celebrated their 10th year in the festival circuit. Rather than giving out what I consider to be the best films in the festivals (as this is being done by the others already), let me share my favorites instead.  In Cinemalaya (August): " Bwaya " by Francis Xavier Pasion While the title may suggest a creature horror film ( it is in fact shown in the film), the director is concerned with a different kind of horror: that of dealing with grief and loss that follow a tragedy and of dealing with the opportunism and sensationalism that could possibly hound it when exposed through mass media. A deliberately-told story that suggests something sinister and dangerous lurking beneath and around the tr...

Aside from the films that had their  (more or less)  week-long regular run, my movie-going experience for 2014 was also marked by the various film festivals held in the country, which showcased homegrown and international films and most of which have already become an annual cinematic event. These film festivals had further whetted the movie-going appetite of avid cineastes and made them to be always up and running, ensuring to be in regular attendance to catch these events' exciting line-ups. The (should-have-been) 16-year-old  Cinemanila International Film Festival may have "inexplicably" vanished from the scene in the past year, but the film festivals more than made up for its absence.  The Eiga Sai: Japanese Film Festival (held in July) featured, among a lot of really notable films, Hirokazu Kore-Eda's 2013 Cannes Jury Prize-winner " Like Father, Like Son ", a funny and heartwarming story of child-swapping and what it means to be a parent. But my favo...

In this day and age of online video streaming and torrent websites, the movie-going wisdom "Films are made to be seen inside the theater" has become inconsequential and optional more than ever. I won't attempt to posture myself as a holier-than-thou cineaste, for watching films online (like at YouTube or at movie2k) or having them downloaded is something that I also find myself doing a hundred times (and without a guilty conscience to boot!). This piece, however, isn't about elucidating the reasons why many of us would rather watch films in our private little niche than bother to pay a ticket to experience viewing them inside the cold and dark theater. I'd leave that to the social or behavioral psychologists. Rather, the slant of this piece would be more subjective and personal, that is, it concerns something that I found out in myself in regards my film-watching habit and inclination this past year.  For 2014, I found myself visiting the movie-houses considera...