Cebuana filmmaker Joanna Arong to screen docu in Cinemanila

CEBU, Philippines - Award-winning documentary filmmaker Joanna Vasquez Arong will screen her latest work “Sunday School” at the 12th Cinemanila International Film Festival this Dec. 3, 1:30 p.m., at Robinson’s Galleria. 

Her film is competing under the Young Cinema category, together with “Dekasegi (The Migrants)” of Rey Ventura; “Diujung” of Tony Trimarsanto (Indonesia); “Kano” of Monster Jimenez; “Memories of a Burning Tree” of Sherman Ong (Netherlands, Singapore, Malaysia); and “Ang Panagtagbo sa Akong mga Apohan” of Malaya Camporedondo.

“Sunday School” was among the 12 non-African projects commissioned by the International Film Festival Rotterdam in Netherlands for its provocative “Forget Africa” series that premiered early this year.

According to the Rotterdam filmfest brief in “Sunday School,” Joanna creates a portrait of an esteemed Zambian filmmaker juxtaposed by her impoverished yet fascinating homeland. Musola Catherine Kaseketi became handicapped as a child, a condition made worse by a tough childhood in the hands of an unkind stepmother. Yet despite such trials and tribulations early on in life, she grew up to become one of this African nation’s most important filmmakers.

By retracing Musola’s school years, the film also explores how the “pains of everyday life are intricately linked with faith and the church in Zambia… Amid recurring themes of death and renewal, we rediscover religion as a force to heal wounds that the modern world has long left behind.”

Prior to “Sunday School,” Joanna has had produced a number of award-winning documentaries, including her first full-length feature in 2007, entitled “Neo-Lounge”—an immersive look at the pulsating night life of Beijing by interweaving the lives of two expatriates. Joanna was one, having lived and worked in Beijing for nearly a decade. “Neo-Lounge” went on to screen in 20 international film festivals and earned three awards in the process.

Another work of hers was the Chinese fable-based “Yugong Yishan (The Old Fool Who Moved the Mountains)” which won the Kyobo Award in last year’s Busan Film Festival in South Korea.

Joanna’s documentaries have been described by critics as “complex and meticulous and demonstrate a sharp eye for social processes and situations.”

Before she discovered her “calling” in filmmaking, the United States, Paris and London-educated Joanna (she has degrees in Political Science and International Studies from Boston College and masters in Development and Environmental Studies at the London School of Economics) worked in various fields around the world, from finance to economic development.

Joanna, whose roots are Cebuano, left for the US when she was in high school. The indie and self-taught filmmaker found her way back to Cebu sometime in 2008 to film a short story on the Amihan season in Bantayan Island. Interestingly, Joanna has made Cebu her base for the past six months now, taking up Cebuano Heritage Studies at the University of San Carlos and scouring for inspiration for her next directorial project, which she hopes will be her first-ever fiction film. (Photos taken from the International Film Festival Rotterdam website)