Concentrated Nonsense (cinema edition)

Something to look forward to…

“The Cinema of Manuel Conde” Book Launch

[Press Release]
The book “The Cinema of Manuel Conde” written by Nicanor G. Tiongson and designed by Cesar Hernando will be launched on July 16, Wednesday at 3:30pm at the Little Theater of the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) as a special feature of the Cinemalaya Independent Film Festival. The launching is part of “Juan Tamad Goes Indie,” a tribute to a great filmmaker and artist Manuel Conde which includes an exhibit on Manuel Conde and the screening of six of his surviving films, the famous “Genghis Khan” at 6:15 pm right after the book launch.

(more…)

Rogue Magazine’s March 2008 issue has a great feature on Ronnie Lazaro, one of the finest actors working in Philippine cinema today. Written by Lourd de Veyra with his typical mix of insight and humour, it is one of the rare articles that looks at the life and work of a local actor in serious detail. There are but few contemporary actors in the Philippines for whom this treatment seems appropriate. Ronnie, having played significant if not starring roles in Peque Gallaga’s Oro, Plata Mata (1982), Tikoy Aguiluz’s Boatman (1984), Raymond Red’s Anino (2000), and Lav Diaz’s Heremias (2006), is surely one of them.

Thankfully Rogue puts back issues online at issuu.com. The Ronnie Lazaro article, which features some beautiful photographs, can be read: here (pages 54-65).

May 23, 2008

(1: Dusan Makavejev)

(more…)

May 23, 2008

Slavoj Žižek

(1)

(more…)

Tomorrow May 22 at 14h00 on Théâtre Croisette (50 La Croisette) in Cannes is the premiere of a new film by a Filipino filmmaker for whom I’ve been both biggest critic and biggest fan. In a number of ways he and I grew up in cinema together (still growing) over the past several years, and so it is with a measure of pride that I look at what he has accomplished - regarding this acceptance, but even more so the maturity of the work - and with a measure of hope that I look forward to the future - for he is but 24 years of age this year, and there is much more cinema to come. A cinema that, I believe, is slowly helping to fulfill that which Avellana so desired, that: “On the screen, we’ll see the way we talk, the way we make love, the way we die.”

Question: How would you evaluate the development of cinema in our country in the same manner that the Europeans have developed a cinema distinctly their own?

Lamberto Avellana: I believe that there is a Filipino feeling for movies; a Filipino way of film making; and one day this will emerge, slower than usual, human, pathetic, touching the heart. On the screen, we’ll see the way we talk, the way we make love, the way we die. We are a unique people living in a unique place, and we deserve a uniquely Filipino cinema.

(extract of Portrait of a Director: Lamberto Avellana. Originally published in Filipino Film Review, January - Match, 1985)

1. What sort of hopes do you place in love?

Luis Buñuel: If I’m in love, all hopes. It not, none.

(From the French. Interview published in Le Revolution surrealiste, no.12, December 15, 1929. Reprinted in An Unspeakable Betrayal: The Selected Writings of Luis Buñuel).

Jonathan Rosenbaum’s official website has just been launched, containing over twenty years of his writing for the Chicago Readers as well as updates on the publishing of his writing and events he is involved with. It includes a search function - important given how much material has been available - which I immediately put to good to use.

I found a piece, Film on Film: Documenting the Director published on May 4, 1990, about a series of documentaries on filmmakers that screened in the Chicago Film Center. One of the films discussed was the Christian Blackwood documentary Signed, Lino Brocka (which Jonathan graciously lent me after we met), a very interesting film featuring an extremely candid Brocka near the height of his international fame, yet still struggling to make the films he wants to in the Philippines.

It’s especially alarming to note that the only significant documentary that has been made on Brocka, the Philippines most well known filmmaker, was made by a foreigner.

The portion of the Rosenbaum article dealing with Signed, Lino Brocka below:

Signed, Lino Brocka (1987), the first film in the series, was made by Christian Blackwood, a German-born documentarist currently based in New York whose previous subjects have included Eartha Kitt, Zarah Leander (the German movie star of the 30s) and her contemporary fans, and the diverse and fascinating people in various motels, in Motel (1989), his latest feature. Brocka, who is the most talented and important director now working in the Philippines–and probably the most prolific, having directed more than 50 films in less than 20 years–specializes in low-budget melodramas, the most personal ones charged with social and political awareness. To date I’ve seen only a limited sample of his work, and this at film festivals, which are regrettably the main venue for his work in the U.S. so far–a common problem for even the best third world filmmakers, and I’m confident from the little I’ve seen that Brocka is one of the best. The raw emotional impact of his films makes them fully accessible, and I suspect that the absence of big budgets and white stars is the main reason Brocka lacks a bigger American audience.

Blackwood’s film focuses more on Brocka’s life than on his films, and considering the nature of Brocka’s career, this makes perfect sense. (This approach worked less well when I recently saw it applied to Raul Ruiz in a British TV documentary, because in that case the emphasis on how nice a guy Ruiz is didn’t leave much space for dealing with the more subversive aspects of his work.) The film opens with shots of Manila while we hear Brocka on the phone speaking in English to someone in France. Then he explains to Blackwood that he’s responding to a French survey about why he makes films, and he proceeds to read his reply–a lengthy statement that concludes “Film for me recaptures the spontaneous, pure, no-nonsensical relationship I had with the world as a child. That is why later, when I learned what was happening to my countrymen, I decided I also wanted to be part of those who tell the truth–I wanted to cry and I wanted to disturb. . . . Signed, Lino Brocka.”

We cut to Brocka directing a scene from a movie. We learn shortly that Brocka is making the film in exchange for the producer having paid his bail bond when Brocka was arrested in 1985 for his part as a negotiator in a transit strike. He goes on to describe his difficult childhood, his varied background (including work as a monk in a Hawaiian leper colony), his homosexuality (and the controversial impact of homosexual themes on a few of his films), the Philippines and its film industry, his unbridled hatred for Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, and his growing activism; and what impresses one the most through this extended and illustrated conversation with Blackwood are his courage, intelligence, and candor. When clips from his films are shown–apparently filmed directly off a screen or moviola–Brocka translates the dialogue, explains the plots, and offers self-critical comments to Blackwood while we see them. The film assumes as well as demonstrates a direct continuity between Brocka’s passion as a director and his passion as a human being, and while the results can’t completely take the place of seeing a Brocka film, they provide an absorbing and comprehensive introduction.

I received an e-mail with some distressing news recently from our friends in Slovenia, regarding the Ministry of Culture’s decision to completely cut all funding for their festival, Isola Cinema. The news became even more painful to take when after reading of the details leading up to the Ministry’s decision. I will post the letter below.

I had the pleasure of attending the festival last year and it is truly one of the most inspiring film festivals that I have been to: combining an atmosphere of warmth and community with a genuine and discerning love for cinema; something increasingly rare in the festival world these days. Every city should be so lucky to have a festival in its vein.

In support of Isola, and for the benefit of readers, I’ll post transcriptions of some Q&A sessions I recorded during Isola Cinema 2007 in the coming weeks. Discussions with Abderrahmane Sissako, Boris Lehman, Jacqueline Veuve, OM Productions, Nicholas Rey, as well as Slovenian filmmaker and festival co-founder Vlado Skafar’s introduction to his Silvan’s Sine School programme. For now, here is the letter:

Intercultural dialogue: »Cultural Policy« Slovenian Style

We would like to draw your attention to the last episode in what seems to be a systematic and persistent governmental policy of trying to root out film culture in Slovenia.

The proposal of the Slovenian Film Fund TO CUT ALL FUNDING for the Isola Cinema festival –with the argument that “its content is inappropriate for co-financing”– is not only a gross injustice, it is also an insult to film culture, to culture, to intercultural dialogue, as well as to the respect for the legal system of the EU presiding state.

Allow me to demonstrate:

Kino Otok/Isola Cinema is an annual international film festival, that in its four years of existence “has been building a formidable reputation”, as Kieron Corless wrote in Sight & Sound last year. He concluded his festival-report with calling Isola Cinema “a well nigh-perfect festival”.

All of the directors who have attended the festival have spoken fondly and enthusiastically of Isola Cinema. Everybody –to name just a few of them: Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Abderrahmane Sissako, Lav Diaz, Abolfazl Jalili, Mika Kaurismäki, Christopher Coppola, Shaji Karun, Pablo Trapero, Lisandro Alonso, Girish Kasaravalli, Peter Mettler, Roger Gnoam M’Bala, Valeska Grisebach– have expressed their sincere wish to return to the “Island of Cinema”. There is ample evidence to prove that the Isola Cinema festival has an impeccable reputation when it comes to both public appreciation and critical acclaim.

For the past four years the municipality of Izola and the Slovenian Film Fund have underlined the significance of this festival by financially supporting it.

On January 16th 2008 the acting director of the Slovenian Film Fund, Mr. Igor Prodnik, sent the festival a letter informing it about the results of its application for financial support for the 5th edition of Isola Cinema. The commission who assessed the festival’s application gave the project 99 out of 100 points. The commission concluded that “with the Isola Cinema festival the applicant has kept on demonstrating that it is a strong and on programme-quality-based festival-event, making it one of the important film events in Slovenia. In evidence of this we state the exceptional popularity of the festival with the film experts, as well as with the numerous foreign guests of the festival, and with the Slovene and foreign public, which responds to it with an ever-increasing interest. The commission unanimously proposes that the Isola Cinema festival should be supported as much as possible”.

Based on the commission’s report, the available funds and the order of precedence by which the application had been received Mr. Prodnik proposed to co-finance the 5th edition with an amount of 10.000 EUR.

Since this represented a cut of nearly 50% (in 2007, the Film Fund decided in the end October to support the festival –that took place in May-June earlier that year—with an amount of 19.800 EUR) the festival wrote a letter of protest within the procedurally approved term of three days, asking the commission to reconsider their decision.

We did not receive any reply to our letter of protest.

Instead another commission was appointed (this time presided by Mr. Jambrek, current head of the Programme Dept. of Slovenska kinoteka/Slovenian Cinematheque) who reassessed our application and came to an entirely different conclusion.

On April 8th, the –very same– acting director of the Slovenian Film Fund, Mr. Igor Prodnik, wrote the festival another letter with as heading: “This letter replaces the letter of January 16th 2008”. It informed us that the new score given by the new commission was considerably lower. Instead of 99, the new commission gave the same application a score of 74,34 on 100. The conclusion read: “The members of the commission have the opinion that despite its relative media recognition, the content of the project is inappropriate for co-financing”.

Cutting all national funding of Isola Cinema severely jeopardizes the future of one of the most important international film festivals in Slovenia.

Since Isola Cinema is a film festival that has “intercultural dialogue” on top of its agenda, we consider this decision to be an insult to the mere idea of intercultural dialogue. This is all the more painful, considering that 2008 is the “European Year of Intercultural Dialogue”, and considering that this is happening in the country currently presiding the European Union.

As the procedure described above illustrates (including –to call it euphemistically— “highly irregular” practices, such as changing a selection commission in mid-procedure; sending out two different commission-reports with very different results in response to the very same call; not responding for nearly 3 months to procedurally approved terms of protest), we also believe that this is an insult to the mere idea of legality. It is the exact opposite of transparency of cultural policy.

As with the previous letter by the Slovenian Film Fund, we have –of course– also this time immediately sent a letter of protest to Mr. Prodnik and CC-ed it to the Minister of Culture Vasko Simoniti.

We sincerely hope the decision will be reconsidered. However, based on the way Isola Cinema has been treated in this procedure, it looks like a lot of pressure will be needed to be able to reverse that decision.

Therefore we would like to ask you to spread this information to the Minister of Culture of your country, or to everyone who –and every institution that– could possibly put pressure on those who could reverse that unfair decision:

Igor Prodnik – igor.prodnik@gov.si – acting director of the Slovenian Film Fund of the Republic of Slovenia & Director-General of the Directorate for Media at the Ministry of Culture
Dr. Vasko Simoniti – vasko.simoniti@gov.si – Minister of Culture
Janez Janša – gv.kpv@gov.si – Prime Minister of the Republic of Slovenia

Sincerely,

Koen Van Daele
Director Isola Cinema
PS: we would appreciate if you could also CC any letters of protest to: isolacinema@gmail.com

***

Isola Cinema has a special relationship with the Philippines, having had as guests in 2006 the trio of Lav Diaz (screened: Heremias, Hesus Rebolusyonaryo), Raya Martin (screened: A Short Film About the Indio Nacional, The Island at the End of the World), and Khavn De la Cruz (performing a live piano score for the screening of Indio, which brought some members of the audience to tears), and having screened last year Brillante Mendoza’s Manoro, and in 2005 Joyce Bernal’s Mr. Sauve (in a programme done in cooperation with Udine Far East Film Festival).

***

On this page are collected letters from the international film community regarding the situation.

[Click here to listen to or download the audio file discussed below, the February 10, 1938 "The March of Time" radio newsreel, which features the re-enactment of a story concerning a Filipina "washerwoman" turned golfer, Dominga Capati. The voice talent playing Capati speaks in a curious Spanish-accented English. On another note, the file also includes Orson Welles providing the voice of Hitler, which begins at minute 20:25. Thank you to Wellesnet for providing the link and I believe uploading the file.]

***

Narrator:
“Tonight LIFE, the weekly magazine of pictures, joins TIME, the weekly news magazine, in presenting by radio the re-enactment of memorable scene from the news of the week! From the March of Time!”

[cue score]

“The Philippine Island! This week in Manila comes the climax of a story which begins on a corner of the Calamba Sugar Estate, bordering the Manila Golf Course, where Filipino washerwoman Dominga Capati is scrubbing clothes as a caddy approaches her.”

- “Hey! Hey! Did you see a golf ball come out this way?”
- “What? What that little white ball they hit around over there?”

- “Yes. Did you see it?”
- “No I did not. And if you ask me, a sensible people ought to find something better to do with their time, then a walk around in the hot sun, hit a ball, go and look for it. Hit it again. Foolishness.”

- “Ah, easy to talk when you’ve never tried it.”
- “Try it?! Huh! If I did, I would hit it harder than those big fat men! Those women with their little thin arms.”

- “Ah, you could not even hit the ball.”
- “Oh, you think so huh? Alright. Just put a ball down on the ground there. Go ahead, put the ball down on the ground. Now give me one of those esticks… now, stand back out of my way… THERE! … now get along and don’t bother me, I have got work to do.”

- “Hey, wait. Let me see you do that again.”
-“Okay.” [swings again]

- “Two hundred and fifty yards! Here, try another.”
[swings again; then cue music]

Narrator:
“Two years ago, husky Dominga Capati swung her first golf club, hit her first golf ball. This week in the roster of entries in the Manila Women’s Open Golf Tournament … Capati, Dominga. Age 25. Nationality: Philippine. Club Affiliation: None. Occupation: Washerwoman.” [cue music]

“The opening day of the tournament. Up to the first tee steps Dominga Capati, only native Philippine entry in the match. She tees up her ball, looks once down the fairway; Swings! [cue audience "ohhhh", followed by applause]“

“The Second Day. A Cheering crowd is following Dominga Capati. Two strokes ahead of the field as she tees up for her 35th hole.”

[swinging sound; audience applause]

“The Final Day. Dominga Capati is four strokes ahead of her nearest competitor– Socialite Jean Morgan– as she prepares to put on the seventy second and final hole of the tournament.”

“Quiet please! Quiet for Senorita Capati.”

[sound of sinking ball in hole. audience cheers]

Narrator:
“This week, New Open Golf champions the Philippine Islands as washerwoman Dominga Capati finishing five strokes ahead of her nearest rival. The first Filipino ever to win a golf championship. And at weeks end, back at her washboard, says champion Capati:

- ” I get driving muscles…scrubbing up and down like this. And my wrists? Ringing out the clothes– like this. And the putting? Well that just a seems to come naturally.”

Narrator:
“1938– Marches On!”

***

On March 11-13, 2008, the 41st Dominga Capati Memorial Tournament was held at Canlubang Golf & Country Club (South Course).

Domninga Capati
(image source)

link: “Backstairs Golfer”: brief New York Times article on Capati dated February 14, 1938.
-
(This is the fourth in an ongoing series of posts that will chronicle, as objectively as possible, curious references to Filipinos or the Philippines in internationally produced art or writing. The reason for doing this, I am of yet unaware. But there is an impulse. They are filed under the category Philippine Chronicle.)

Harry Kreisler: A couple of your films are more political than others. In one you use some old footage on the Philippines to make a point. Talk a little about that film and how this format for your art is tied to a real historical experience.

Ken Jacobs: Well, the work is called The Philippines Adventure, and I hit upon a little film purporting to be the history of America’s relationship to the Philippines. It was just a little propaganda piece and I used it almost intact, essentially to mock it. To bring out things that were there. The work is essentially my horror at what this piece of imperialism has been.

[...]

HK: What is the potential of film to shape our moral imagination?

KJ: Moral imagination?

HK: Yes.

KJ: Well, that sounds like propaganda.

HK: Why is it like propaganda?

KJ: Well you know, somebody’s morals …

HK: So “moral” is the bad word there?

KJ: I’m very involved with morality, and of course I think we are struggling, a lot of us, towards doing right. Being able to live with ourselves, being able to respect ourselves. But essentially, as I said before, I think that the deeper opportunity, the greater opportunity film can offer us is as an exercise of the mind. But an exercise, I hate to use the word, I won’t say “soul,” I won’t say “soul” and I won’t say “spirit,” but that it can really put our deepest psychological existence through stuff. It can be a powerful exercise. It can make us think, but I don’t mean think about this and think about that. The very, very process of powerful thinking, in a way that it can afford, is I think very, very valuable. I basically think that the mind is not complete yet, that we are working on creating the mind. Okay. And that the higher function of art for me is its contribution to the making of mind.

HK: And making mind, on the one hand, by disorienting it so it sort of has a sense of itself. And beyond that, what else?

KJ: Well in some cases also mindfulness. Mindfulness, in the case of The Philippines Adventure of American imperialism, you know, American self glorification, self-mythologizing. So there are things where you also want to create mindfulness, but it’s of lesser value than this primary thing of keeping the mind alive. And there’s lots against keeping the mind alive. We are surrounded, inundated, with bullshit. Okay. From almost everywhere. Advertising, which is a euphemism for lying. This government of lawyers who are working for people who pay them to go out and be on television and be ingratiating and get votes. They go to the lawyers, and they lie. And all of this just eats up the mind and makes us stupid. And stupid is also moving away from existence. We lose a hold on existence.

(Source: Ken Jacobs; Film Artist: “Film and the Creation of Mind,” 10/14/99)

Making Light of History: The Philippines Adventures, 1983, (90 min.)

Has anyone seen this film? Or know what footage Jacobs used?

I wonder if it some it may be this:
U.S. Troops and Red Cross in the Trenches Before Caloocan
Advance of Kansas Volunteers at Caloocan
Colonel Funstan Swimming the Baglag River
Filipinos Retreat from Trenches
Capture of Trenches at Candaba

(source)

…and I also wonder if it has ever been shown in the Philippines?

***

On that same source page linked above are the three actualities used to such silencing, chilling effect by Raya Martin at the close of Autohystoria:
25th Infantry
Aguinaldo’s Navy
An Historic Feat

***

A number of the same Edison clips are seen in still another extremely interesting work. Though produced in 1995, I was only introduced to it this year (thanks to brilliant programming at Cinema du Reel) and it has moved and affected me more than any other film I have seen for the first time in 2008. This is Marlon Fuentes’ Bontoc Eulogy, and I have a feeling I will be writing much, much more about it in the near future.

(1) Peter Lorre

(2) Vic Diaz

Two attempts at censorship in Southeast Asia: one directly (a film), another indirectly (a festival).

(1)
In Thailand, following a protracted fight against the censorship of his film Syndromes and a Century, Apichatpong Weerasethakul relents and agrees to the demanded cuts, but not without making his disgust heard: the excised scenes will be replaced by silent scratched black leader. This will total 15 minutes of the films 105 minute running time.

Apichatpong:

“It’s cynical, but actually it’s a statement for the audience to make them aware that they are being blinded from getting information in this society,”

“Maybe there will be a small group of people who want to see my film, and this is the version they can see through the system,”

Syndromes producer Keith Griffith explains in Filmmaker magazine.
Bangkok’s new freesheet Daily Xpress reports.
*thanks to Wise Kwai

(2)
In Singapore the government, despite seeming abundance, continues to provide peanut-sized funding to the most important film festival in Southeast Asia, the Singapore International Film Festival, now on its 21st year.

Tan Pin Pin, director of the much lauded Singapore Gaga and Invisible City, was among a group of 25 respected members of the film community that attempted to rally support for the festival by writing a letter to the Singapore Film Commission and Media Development Authority late last year. Their words and request for a meeting fell on deaf ears.

Pin Pin:

Last year, SIFF’s finances were in dire straits and whether it could make it to the 21st edition was in doubt. When we knew SIFF was having difficulty fundraising, a group of us media professionals came together to help. One of the initiatives was to write a letter to the Singapore Film Commission (SFC) and the Media Development Authority (MDA) to persuade them to increase the funding for SIFF.

Our letter didn’t have much of an effect. Our request to meet them was alas not taken up because it “was not necessary”. The SFC/MDA has made very clear that it is not interested in an independently curated film festival like SIFF. For the 2008 edition, the Singapore Film Commission (SFC) gave SIFF $65,000 (US$40,000).

The show goes on as scheduled, April 4-14, but the festival remains in a difficult position financially. Pin Pin posts the letter, complete with notes from those who signed, and provides an address where monetary support for SIFF may be sent on her blog.

Update: April 9, 2008
Kong Rithdee writes about the release of Syndromes in an April 4 article for the Bangkok Post. Excerpts:

The film will be shown twice a day at Paragon Cineplex for two weeks, starting next Thursday. With every ticket purchased, the audience will receive a limited edition set of postcards bearing still photos of the censored scenes.

Along with the surprise release of this highly-praised Thai movie, which is as fascinating for its odd style as the ruckus that has built up around it, the Thai Film Foundation will organise an exhibition entitled “History of Thai Censorhip” in the theatre hall. Partly a chronicle of Saeng Satawat’s turbulent journey from its world premiere in Venice in September 2006 to the release of the cut version in its homeland 19 months later (see box), the exhibit will also trace the history of movie censorship in Thailand and its connection to the country’s politics since the time of King Rama VII.

“I would like the public to become aware of the problem of censorship and to stimulate a discussion in society,” says Apichatpong. “Even though the Film Act of 1930 has been replaced by a new one, passed last December, the new law, which introduced a rating system, still permits censorship and the provision to ban a movie. That is not an improvement to people’s freedom of expression.”

[...]

“I’d like the audience to feel that they’re forced to be in the dark, while the scratches signify an agent of destruction,” he says. “If censorship is still with us, then maybe this is how we should watch the movies.”

[...]

Chalida Uabumrungjit of Thai Film Foundation, organiser of the screening and exhibition, says she’s aware of the tricky process of promoting the release of this much-awaited film and at the same time informing the public that it’s a censored edition.

“To show this movie in a big downtown theatre is a statement,” she says. “And I believe that to choose to watch it is also a form of statement from the viewers.” In the exhibit, visitors can revisit the first incident of film censorship in pre-constitution Siam, when Amnad Mued (Dark Power) was originally banned for featuring scenes of a criminal den, but was later allowed to screen by King Rama VII.

The polarised attitudes for and against censorship, Chalida says, have been a constant since the time of the original Film Act in 1930. Back then, there was even a poster campaign condemning cinema as a “lesson on how to become a crook”, with reference to crime movies of the day. But there was also the argument, as posited in a letter to a journal, that “cinema is also a lesson for policemen - on how to catch a crook.”