2022 is starting to look like a year for comebacks. While some of them are downright tragic, like the return to power of the family of an abusive kleptocrat, there are a few that are a welcome distraction during these dark times.

Cinemalaya returns to the CCP and select Ayala and SM cinemas on August 5-14 with 11 full-length films and 12 short features in competition.

Continue reading “Cinemalaya 2022 Complete List of Entries” →

Before the advent of sound, films were devoid of dialogs and diegesis as modern history painstakingly moved along. Intertitles were inserted long before they were followed as conventions. At most, every aspect of modern day inventions would become a learning journey toward the development of world cinema. In fact, in the earlier years, films from the post-invention had been far more superior than their more technologically equipped successors (Arnheim, 1932). They could be true in essence because of their inherent qualities and characteristics to fill what wasn’t there yet. There simply was more time and less impact of ascendancy to allow creating more spaces for expansive projects.

British filmmaker and actor, Charles Chaplin caught on earlier with the power of the language of film. Story becomes king and execution is everything. And in the more profound method of analyzing films, structural-linguistic theory is by its essence a more substantial philosophy to deliberate and consider. And by understanding the very foundation of film history and its nuclear core, there may be a conceivable inference to achieving a sort of objectivity in studying every element that a film presents as a whole.  Quite possibly, even if one or two components is missing, its effectiveness rests mostly on whether its desired effects reach it audience. A film may be subjectively incomplete, but it will always be inimitably a creation of its own.  

When one chooses to do away with conventions, a film remains a product of its reckoning when it strongly infuses creative visions and informed commentaries about life and the society and the entire human experience, regardless of what is perceived missing, or what elements are not supplied. When one decides to confront realities and their concealed meanings, the film is transformed into an interactive platform where the filmmaker and the audience carve out a better way to ponder on recreating ideas and retooling the mediums, henceforward, effectively orchestrating a well-rounded discourse in the process.

Films have now reached its highpoint – from magnetic and digital sounds, to visual and digital effects, to actually experiencing them wherever it is accessible and convenient. Even the age of modern pandemic cannot simply stifle their sustained growth – and films have become, more than ever, a powerful tool to live through documenting a much well-lived experience.

Continue reading “Cinemalaya 2020 Reviews” →

In an attempt to still deliver quality stories amidst a global pandemic, Cinemalaya goes digital this year with 10 short films slated for its main competition. These films can be accessed via VIMEO on August 7-16, 2020. Select titles will be available via iWant and TFC after the festival.

The main entries can be rented in bundles that cost only P75. The complete package that includes retrospective shorts and full-length features, talkbacks, and fringe events costs P350.

Continue reading “Cinemalaya 2020 streams online on Aug 7-16” →

Going against the popular trend where local television programs and movies are mostly targeted towards the younger market, a new Cinemalaya film revives a famous 80’s TV couple and puts them in the spotlight in 1st Ko si 3rd.

Nova Villa plays Cory, a sixty-something retiree who takes a leap of faith to reignite an old flame. Her Chicks to Chicks love-team, Freddie Webb, plays Third. For the first time in years the duo brings back to life their chemistry in cinemas. This time however the comic antics are tamed to a level of serious but light depiction of sensible situations.

1st Ko si 3rd is written and directed by Real Florido and will be showing at the Cultural Center of the Philippines and Ayala Cinemas on August 1 to 10, 2014.