Cinema One Originals 2014 Festival unveils 10 finalists

CEBU, Philippines - Now celebrating its 20th anniversary of constantly supporting the growth of the local film industry, Cinema One has finally announced its selection of ten films for the upcoming Cinema One Originals Festival.

On this special year, Cinema One has chosen to allocate a budget of P2-million for the production of these ten selected films, all carefully chosen out of numerous submissions upon its call for entries during the festival’s previous year.

The ten films chosen were those by directors Jay Abello, Nash Ang, Kanakan Balintagos, Sigrid Andrea Bernardo, Eduardo Dayao, Alec Figuracion, Antoinette Jadaone, Malay Javier, Paolo O’Hara, and Remton Siega Zuasola.

Jay Abello’s “Red” is an action film of  how mere gossip rocked a town’s circuit of local drug dealers, junkies, and vagabonds in Bacolod. Red, a legendary fixer in the underground world of  Visayas, is called to patch things up – but he soon finds himself framed for the very thing he was asked to repair, forced into decisions that put his life at stake.

Nash Ang brings the film “Seoul Mates” to this year’s festival. “ It is a sweet comedy of a man and woman who fatefully meet on a bridge just at the moment that they attempt to jump from it. They arrange and schedule their deaths with each other, but something goes wrong. They fall in love – a situation further complicated because the two are not exactly the traditional man and woman tandem.

“Abel/Cain” is what director Kanakan Balintagos is bringing to the table this year. An adaptation of Auraeus Solito’s play titled “Esprit de Corps” in the 1980’s about the game of seduction and ranks in the ROTC, “Abel/Cain” is a queer story of two cadets and their pursuit to outwit a corrupt Major Marcus for his position.

Sigrid Andrea Bernardo presents the film “Lorna,” a midlife comedy drama of a woman’s romantic life—a story of being alone, growing old, looking for love, and moving on. Lorna, already in her 60’s, finds an online lover and an old flame that will turn her life upside down. But at her age, is love too late for a woman like Lorna?

The film “Violator” is a psycho-horror set in the brink of an apocalypse by director Eduardo Dayao. In it, three policemen with nowhere to go and everything to lose meet a mysterious stranger in their precinct that will force them to confront a darker secret amidst them.

Alec Figuracion brings “Bitukang Manok” to life. A horror in the tradition of  Twilight Zone, the film shows four cars stranded in the EME road to Bicol. A group of  travelers soon realize that they are driving in circles and decide to work together to break free – but slowly, they find out that stranger forces are at work.

“That Thing Called Tadhana,” a romance-comedy in the tradition of  “Before Sunrise” is what Antoinette Jadaone has created. The film asks the questions “Where do broken hearts go?” and tells the story of a woman struggling to meet airline baggage requirements who meets a man who comes to her aid. Both in despair out of love, they form a charming friendship that will take them to Sagada in their attempts to mend each other’s hearts.

Malay Javier will be presenting “Di Sila Tatanda,” a sci-fi teen flick about the Pangasinan U.F.O. sightings in the 90’s, where three childhood friends enter a love trapezoid with an alien. This is how an alien shows what it means to be truly human-in-love, in its pursuit to mate with a girl whose heart belongs to two human friends.

“The Housekeepers” by Paolo O’Hara is a comedy of errors of a couple instructed to babysit a kidnapped child. However, when the kidnappers order them to kill the baby, they flee instead and raise him as their own.

Remton Siega Zuasola brings “Soap O Pera,” the story of a modus gone wrong, wherein a couple seduces foreigners to visit the Philippines with the promise of marriage to con them for their money. This is a comic drama about how a local soap opera brings the scheming couple and their foreign victim closer as they play family to support their sick son whose only relief is the fantasy world of Ramini, his favorite television hero.

The Cinema One Originals is an annual independent film festival produced by the ABS-CBN-owned cable channel, Cinema One. To date, the festival has produced international award-winning films like Jerrold Tarog’s “Confessional” (2007), Sherad Anthony Sanchez’s “Imburnal” (2008) and Antoinette Jadaone’s “Six Degrees of Separation from Lilia Cuntapay” (2011) and other internationally acclaimed films such as “Shift” (2013), “The Dream of Eleuteria” (2010), and “Ang Paglalakbay sa Gabing Madilim” (2012) among others. (PR)