The silver screen experience, part 2
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 favorite in the festival was the emotionally-rich and stunningly-photographed film about friendship, Keiichi Kobayashi's "About the Pink Sky". I also particularly liked the highschool-set drama "The Kirishima Thing" by Daihachi Yoshida, whose final scene may actually suggest something homosexual.
The Moviemov: Italian Film Festival (July) showcased three great films from one of Italy's respected and awarded filmmakers, Ettore Scola: "The Pizza Triangle", which boasts the wonderful talents of Marcello Mastroianni, Monica Vitti and Giancarlo Giannini;"We All Loved Each Other So Much", which actually serves as a love letter to cinema;and "The Dinner", notable for being almost exclusively set inside a fine-dine restaurant (as "The Family" is set entirely inside the family ancestral home). I also had the opportunity of seeing in the festival Paolo Sorrentino's immensely rewarding "The Great Beauty", winner last year of the Oscar for Best Foreign-Language Film and Paolo Virzi's ingeniously structured, but ultimately defeatist "Human Capital", Italy's submission to that category for this year.
The first-ever World Premieres Film Festival (June-July) was the venue for the premiere of Lav Diaz's "Mula Sa Kung Ano Ang Noon", the very first time that the Filipino auteur had his work premiered in his native country (post-"Batang West Side", that is), before it eventually went on to receive accolades in various film festivals abroad. This nearly-six-hour black-and-white film may not have the "crossover appeal" of "Norte, Hangganan ng Kasaysayan", but it's still an uncompromising, exacting and beautifully-realized masterwork, which once more deals with a dark chapter in our country's past.
The International Silent Film Festival (August) is certainly a one-of-a-kind film event being held in the country. It's being accompanied by live musical acts of various genres, in a way that a silent movie screening was originally envisioned in its heyday. For the event's edition last year, two rarely-seen short comedies from the silent era's well-loved icon, Charlie Chaplin, were featured: "One A.M." (1916, 34 mins) and "The Pawnshop" (1916, 20 mins). My favorite in the festival was the haunting "Destiny", a truly unforgettable life-and-death parable from Fritz Lang, another inimitable auteur from cinema's lost golden age of silent movies.
Cine Europa (September) likewise had a considerably strong line-up last year, which included, among others, the Golden Bear-winner "Child's Pose" by Calin Peter Netzer, a quintessentially slow-burn specimen of the Romanian New Wave and "The Hunt" by co-Dogme '95 founder Thomas Vinterberg, a riveting study of how a seemingly innocent child's lie can put one man's life into a downward spiral. But one of my favorites in the European film festival was Edgar Reitz's "Home from Home", a nearly-four-hour meditation on family, history, literature and the pursuit of one's dreams.
The Korean Film Festival (October) introduced the Filipino audience to the kind of unflinching and untamed filmmaking that cineastes have come to love in Korean cinema. This festival was definitely one of the incredible cinematic events last year, showcasing feature films characterized by brutal, harsh and bleak aesthetics that brought to the fore man's capacity for cruelty: notably, Yeon Sang-ho's "The King of Pigs", Huh Jung's "Hide and Seek", Im Sang-yoon's "A Company Man" and Jang Joon-hwan's "Hwayi: A Monster Boy" (my favorite).
I was only able to see two films at Pelicula: Spanish Film Festival (October), but both of these were nevertheless exceptional: Ramon Salazar's "10,000 Nights Nowhere", a semi-abstract rumination on love, passion, interconnected lives and fate, something in the mold of Kieslowski and Malick, and Manuel Martin Cuenca's "Cannibal", a slow-burn yet deeply disturbing probe into the psyche of a man with a dangerous obsession.
A major change and attraction in last year's second edition of QCinema (November) was its handsome selection of foreign-language films, majority of which were first screened at Cannes and vying for Oscar nominations. I was certainly on cloud nine at the time of the festival's week-long run, basking in the cinematic delight offered by such films as Lisandro Alonso's "Jauja", Pawel Pawlikowski's "Ida", Sophie Hyde's "52 Tuesdays", Xavier Dolan's "Mommy", Andrei Zvyagintsev's "Leviathan", and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's "Two Days, One Night". Another standout in the festival was its rare showcase of Park Chan-wook's "Revenge" trilogy: "Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance", "Oldboy" and "Lady Vengeance". This one really made me drool over like a mad dog.
Making its debut - or comeback - last year was the International Pink Film Festival (December), a one-of-its-kind event that showcased LGBT-themed films, something that, more often than not, still remains on the side-line of our mainstream movie-going experience. Without a doubt, the line-up was nothing short of being provocative, arresting, harrowing, or even moving, with such films as Stephen Lacant's "Free Fall", PJ Raval's "Before You Know It", Malika Worall and Katherine Fairfax's "Call Me Kuchu", Thi Tham Nguyen's "Madam Phung's Last Journey", Koichi Imaizumi's "The Secret to My Silky Skin", Alain Guiraudie's "Stranger by the Lake" and Abdellatif Kechiche's Palme d'Or-winner "Blue is the Warmest Color". The festival could very well have its claim to being an envelope-pushing affair.
By all means, it was a truly unforgettable experience savoring all these films on the big screen.
(Next: Cinemalaya and Cinema One Originals.)
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 favorite in the festival was the emotionally-rich and stunningly-photographed film about friendship, Keiichi Kobayashi's "About the Pink Sky". I also particularly liked the highschool-set drama "The Kirishima Thing" by Daihachi Yoshida, whose final scene may actually suggest something homosexual.
The Moviemov: Italian Film Festival (July) showcased three great films from one of Italy's respected and awarded filmmakers, Ettore Scola: "The Pizza Triangle", which boasts the wonderful talents of Marcello Mastroianni, Monica Vitti and Giancarlo Giannini;"We All Loved Each Other So Much", which actually serves as a love letter to cinema;and "The Dinner", notable for being almost exclusively set inside a fine-dine restaurant (as "The Family" is set entirely inside the family ancestral home). I also had the opportunity of seeing in the festival Paolo Sorrentino's immensely rewarding "The Great Beauty", winner last year of the Oscar for Best Foreign-Language Film and Paolo Virzi's ingeniously structured, but ultimately defeatist "Human Capital", Italy's submission to that category for this year.
The first-ever World Premieres Film Festival (June-July) was the venue for the premiere of Lav Diaz's "Mula Sa Kung Ano Ang Noon", the very first time that the Filipino auteur had his work premiered in his native country (post-"Batang West Side", that is), before it eventually went on to receive accolades in various film festivals abroad. This nearly-six-hour black-and-white film may not have the "crossover appeal" of "Norte, Hangganan ng Kasaysayan", but it's still an uncompromising, exacting and beautifully-realized masterwork, which once more deals with a dark chapter in our country's past.
The International Silent Film Festival (August) is certainly a one-of-a-kind film event being held in the country. It's being accompanied by live musical acts of various genres, in a way that a silent movie screening was originally envisioned in its heyday. For the event's edition last year, two rarely-seen short comedies from the silent era's well-loved icon, Charlie Chaplin, were featured: "One A.M." (1916, 34 mins) and "The Pawnshop" (1916, 20 mins). My favorite in the festival was the haunting "Destiny", a truly unforgettable life-and-death parable from Fritz Lang, another inimitable auteur from cinema's lost golden age of silent movies.
Cine Europa (September) likewise had a considerably strong line-up last year, which included, among others, the Golden Bear-winner "Child's Pose" by Calin Peter Netzer, a quintessentially slow-burn specimen of the Romanian New Wave and "The Hunt" by co-Dogme '95 founder Thomas Vinterberg, a riveting study of how a seemingly innocent child's lie can put one man's life into a downward spiral. But one of my favorites in the European film festival was Edgar Reitz's "Home from Home", a nearly-four-hour meditation on family, history, literature and the pursuit of one's dreams.
The Korean Film Festival (October) introduced the Filipino audience to the kind of unflinching and untamed filmmaking that cineastes have come to love in Korean cinema. This festival was definitely one of the incredible cinematic events last year, showcasing feature films characterized by brutal, harsh and bleak aesthetics that brought to the fore man's capacity for cruelty: notably, Yeon Sang-ho's "The King of Pigs", Huh Jung's "Hide and Seek", Im Sang-yoon's "A Company Man" and Jang Joon-hwan's "Hwayi: A Monster Boy" (my favorite).
I was only able to see two films at Pelicula: Spanish Film Festival (October), but both of these were nevertheless exceptional: Ramon Salazar's "10,000 Nights Nowhere", a semi-abstract rumination on love, passion, interconnected lives and fate, something in the mold of Kieslowski and Malick, and Manuel Martin Cuenca's "Cannibal", a slow-burn yet deeply disturbing probe into the psyche of a man with a dangerous obsession.
A major change and attraction in last year's second edition of QCinema (November) was its handsome selection of foreign-language films, majority of which were first screened at Cannes and vying for Oscar nominations. I was certainly on cloud nine at the time of the festival's week-long run, basking in the cinematic delight offered by such films as Lisandro Alonso's "Jauja", Pawel Pawlikowski's "Ida", Sophie Hyde's "52 Tuesdays", Xavier Dolan's "Mommy", Andrei Zvyagintsev's "Leviathan", and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's "Two Days, One Night". Another standout in the festival was its rare showcase of Park Chan-wook's "Revenge" trilogy: "Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance", "Oldboy" and "Lady Vengeance". This one really made me drool over like a mad dog.
Making its debut - or comeback - last year was the International Pink Film Festival (December), a one-of-its-kind event that showcased LGBT-themed films, something that, more often than not, still remains on the side-line of our mainstream movie-going experience. Without a doubt, the line-up was nothing short of being provocative, arresting, harrowing, or even moving, with such films as Stephen Lacant's "Free Fall", PJ Raval's "Before You Know It", Malika Worall and Katherine Fairfax's "Call Me Kuchu", Thi Tham Nguyen's "Madam Phung's Last Journey", Koichi Imaizumi's "The Secret to My Silky Skin", Alain Guiraudie's "Stranger by the Lake" and Abdellatif Kechiche's Palme d'Or-winner "Blue is the Warmest Color". The festival could very well have its claim to being an envelope-pushing affair.
By all means, it was a truly unforgettable experience savoring all these films on the big screen.
(Next: Cinemalaya and Cinema One Originals.)
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