Cinemanila focuses on Asian cinema

MANILA, Philippines - Tikoy Aguiluz’s Cinemanila International Film Festival (CIFF) 2011 is off to a running start this year principally because it has acquired the patronage of a city with enough wealth at its disposal, and a mayor with a heart for the arts. At a media conference last week, the young and pretty Taguig City Mayor Lani Cayetano spoke of her particular interest in developing arts and culture particularly that of cinema.

The mayor is committed to support Cinemanila not only this year, but throughout her term, and not only during festival season but with film activities throughout the year. The CIFF will exhibit 80 foreign and local films starting today until Nov. 17 at the Market! Market!, Fully Booked and Bonifacio High Street. A look at its foreign film entries show films from Italy, Australia, US, Iran, Japan, Spain, Brazil, Argentina, Portugal, Poland, Uganda, South Africa and French-German-UK PINA as opening film, and the American Life in a Day as closing film. 

There is, however, a predominance of Asian films, understandable with this year’s Focus on Korea, a Southeast Asian (SEA) competition, a JeonJu Digital collection by Asian Masters, the Digital Lokal and Young Cinema of Filipino entries and a Tribute to Nora Aunor with films by Lino Brocka, Ishmael Bernal, Mario O’Hara and Lupita Kashiwahara starring the Filipino superstar.

In the main competition of seven feature films, there is also an entry from South Korea, China and Lav Diaz from the Philippines. In the SEA competition, we found a film called Boundary interesting. It was produced, written, and directed by a relatively new name in film Benito Bautista which won the recent CineMalaya Netpac Award. As of this writing, he has also been invited to the Berliner Festival next year, although he is now more concerned with putting finishing touches on his latest film Harana, a tribute to the lost art of courting a girl through music. He, to us, was our special find, someone who comes across like a Lav Diaz. I would love to see a collaboration between them, just like that of Adolf Alix Jr. and Raya Martin in Piolo Pascual’s Manila that screened at Cannes in 2009. Benito himself, however, is less of a talker, making his films instead speak for themselves.

Boundary brings together Ronnie Lazaro, Raymond Bagatsing with Edwin Nombre. “It’s a crime within a crime. I play the taxi driver who is part of a sinister plan in cohorts with Edwin to kidnap Raymond,” says Ronnie. “Benito was planning to do a film The Funeral Trafficker. From San Francisco he called me and from there we were emailing until he came and did this one first.”

The film Boundary is Edwin Nombre’s biggest break ever, having started as an extra in films in 2002 until Sabungero, an indie by two first timers came along. In this film, Edwin got to work with Robert Arevalo, Noni Buencamino, Ricky Davao, Maritoni Fernandez, Leo Martinez, Sid Lucero, all of them big names in cinema, and Joel Torre in the lead. It was this film that Edwin says Benito saw and became his passport to bagging the lead role of a gang leader of holduppers.

Boundary is inspired by true experiences of taxi drivers in Metro Manila modified into a supense/drama format. Taxi driver Ronnie Lazaro picks up mild-mannered businessman Raymond Bagatsing as his last passenger for the night to deliver him to holdupper Edwin’s lair. But this is not exactly what happens.

Ronnie takes a detour picking up three more passengers with bladed weapons. Raymond senses it was obviously a hold-up and Ronnie was part of it. “They took me to an ATM, but it was closed. A checkpoint happened on the way. The cops recognized me and gave a salute. They all addressed me ‘sir.’ This baffled the robbers. From this point on, the story took a drastic turn that reveals that the robbers may just well be the victims and I, the perpetrator.”

At this point, we were completely sold. This was going to be an interesting film I would watch. The director was no less interesting. Ronnie, who is working with Benito for the first time. says, “I wanted to find out what kind of film Benito will come up with, because the guy is a very interesting character. He’s a surfer, Economics graduate with honors, painter.... and we communicate very well!”

Raymond seems to know him better. “This is my second film with Benito Bautista. The first was a short American film shot in San Francisco where I played a schizo. This film is No. 4, the symbol for poison in Japanese culture. I accepted Boundary because I believe in the director. He spent 30 years or so in the US, mostly in San Francisco. I believe in his skills as a Filipino-American director that fuses the Filipino sensitivities with Western cinema. I love his dark directing style. His pacing is quite different from what I have experienced before. It is unpredictable. He is a visionary who wants to bring recognition to the Filipino people in the competitive global cinema.”

A new division in Cinemanila is The Beautiful Game featuring the world’s most popular sport of football or soccer. Followers of the newly-discovered sport in the Philippines through the Azkals would be happy to watch Happyland in this division directed by Jim Libiran about street kids forming a soccer team. Azkals Phil Younghusband has a guest role. But the most awarded entry in the category seems to be the American documentary The Two Escobars, directed by brothers Jeff and Michael Zimbalist. Their documentary tells the gripping tale of drug lord Pablo Escobar and Colombian football star Andres Escobar who was killed when his goal in the 1994 FIFA (football association) World Cup purportedly would have caused gambling losses to powerful drug lords. It shows how sports mirrors society and the inextricable relationship of crime, sports and politics.

In the Asian Cinema section from Japan, Thailand, Indonesia, China some in cooperation with European partners, we found a participant called Quattro Hongkong 2 commissioned by the Hong Kong International Film Festival featuring four short stories by acclaimed Asian directors centered around the city of Hong Kong. They are Purple of Brillante Mendoza; Open Verdict by Yuhang Ho; M Hotel by Apichatpong Weerasethakul; and 13 Minutes in the Lives of… by Stanley Kwan.

Brillante’s 16-minute Purple begins as an observation of the ways of Hong Kong people going about their daily activities, and ends up as an ode to beauty as he and his team spent days in Hong Kong’s flower market and the fishing village Tai O on Lantao Island. Inspired by the color of the bauhinia, Purple is mysterious and regal, much like Hong Kong the city. It is more than just a travelogue, rather a homage to the city, and the almost transcendental beauty of life itself.

Open Verdict, directed by Ho Yuhang of Malaysia, is a 21-minute comedy-drama of two Hong Kong narcotics agents tipped off by their Malaysian counterparts who go after a Malaysian kingpin hauling some serious goods to Hong Kong for some serious business.

 M Hotel, directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul of Thailand, tells in 12 minutes what happens to two men on the 17th floor of a hotel taking lazy afternoon portraits, and another man in the park below with his sound recorder. They are there to shoot a film for the Hong Kong International Film Festival and what results is a place of sound and mystery.

 Riding on a bus from Airport Station to Kowloon in late November, 2010, two gleeful middle-aged women returning from a festival exhibition, a mainland couple in for a holiday with their young friend, a touring Japanese musician and a local intellectual type engage in small talk and lovers’ discourses. These make up director Stanley Kwan of Hong Kong’s 13 Minutes in the Lives of..., a 16-minute film trip in real time and a slice of life in today’s Hong Kong.

There are much more to look for in the Cinemanila festival. We would like to watch This is not a Film by Jafar Panahi, who has been stuck in jail in Iran awaiting a verdict by the appeals court. He shoots a day in his life to portray the deprivations looming in contemporary Iranian cinema. According to Tikoy, he made his film through a cellphone and had it smuggled out. We are also looking forward to Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives by Apichatpong Weerasethakul from Thailand, who tells of the last days of Uncle Boonmee who can see ghosts.

For schedules of films, visit cinemanila.org.ph.

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