2011-2020

Quote:
Taking leave from their jobs at a gold mine, three workers journey to their home village on foot through the spectacular yet unforgiving wilderness of the mythical island of Hugaw. As time passes and their conversations intensify, buried histories emerge and a sense of psychosis invades the scene. As ever, Lav Diaz’s exquisitely subdued black-and-white images and patient rhythm lend a Brechtian register to the drama; almost always filmed from the same fixed distance, each scene is an immaculate tableau vivant. Behind the film’s folkloric façade, Diaz once again taps into the collective memory of defiant struggles against the tyranny of both contemporary Filipino society and colonial brutality, centred on the timeless image of men walking – one of the key traits of Pan.Read More »

Synopsis:
It is the first round of the national high school baseball tournament but we’re less concerned with what goes on in the baseball diamond, rather, it is the people in the stands who we watch. A former baseball team player named Fujino and two members of the theater group, Yasuda and Tamiya, have come to cheer the team. Miyashita, once the smartest person in the grade, has just lost her position to the captain of the brass band and is on her own. As these characters interact while watching a baseball game, their hidden thoughts also become apparent – “On The Edge of Their Seats” is based on an award-winning stage play created by a theatre group from a high school in Hyogo Prefecture. —Jason MAHER, OAFFRead More »

Quote:
Erwin Romulo, the best friend of the late film critic Alexis Tioseco, recalls the events after the critic and his girlfriend Nika Bohinc’s murder during a burglary in their home in Quezon City. Lav Diaz makes use of one long take to allow Romulo an uninterrupted narration of the events.Read More »

Quote:
How the US government created a myth that took over the world. ET visitors… crashed UFOs… back-engineered alien technology… the government cover-up of a secret that would change the world as we know it… These are the core elements of the modern UFO mythology, a story that has captivated farmers, princes and generals for generations, and shows no sign of loosening its grip on the popular imagination. But what if, instead of covering up the UFO story, elements in the US military had actively encouraged it as part of their Cold War counterintelligence arsenal – manufacturing the myth of the UFO as a powerful weapon of mass deception and the perfect cover for all manner of clandestine technologies and operations. Now, for the first time, some of those whose actions have directly shaped the UFO mythology, and some of their victims, tell their stories, revealing a surreal disturbing and sometimes tragic sequence of events that is part Manchurian Candidate and part Close Encounters …Read More »

Plot:
4 young pianists Aya Eiden (Mayu Matsuoka), Akashi Takashima (Tori Matsuzaka), Masaru C Revy Anatoru (Win Morisaki) and Jin Kazama (Oji Suzuka) compete in the preliminary round of an international piano competition.

Aya Eiden was known as a child prodigy for playing the piano, but her mother, who understood her the most, passed away. Aya Eiden then stopped playing the piano at the age of 13. Now, at the age of 20, Aya Eiden decides to take part in the international piano competition.Read More »

PLOT:
A receptionist at a suicide hotel in Taipei, Taiwan forms a fleeting friendship over the course of one night with a guest who can’t decide if she wants to live or die.Read More »

Maleficarum (2011) directed by Jac Avila is a good screen play by an independent Bolivian film company. It is good historical fiction loosely based on María Francisca Ana de Castro, a Spanish immigrant to Alta Peru, who was renowned for her beauty and wealth. She was arrested and accused of “judaizing”. After many days of torture she confessed and was burned at the stake in 1726. This event was a major spectacle in Lima, but it raised questions about possible irregular procedures and about the corruption within the Inquisition, this lead to the end of The Holy Office (The Inquisition) in Peru. The director and actors do an admirable recreating the actual realistic suffering in great detail of what the victims of the Spanish Inquisition had to endure. The best was the director’s use of the actors’ facial and body language, it was very cerebral and visual at the same time. This viewer marveled at the simplicity of that movie and how it got its complex message across, the script and the story plot was very well thought out. The dialogue of the accusers and witnesses did well in showing the bias and superstitions of that time.Read More »

A short film made for “Venezia 70 – Future Reloaded.”

The day will come

We shall set sail from the mysteries of mythologies
And i shall be singing hymns to set you free
All of the effort I put into 70 Hours Of Diaz and I somehow forgot that he had a short in Venice 70: Future Reloaded…

Outside of experimental affair like Let Your Light Shine or Brakhage’s hand painted affair where the film is 100% dedicated to an aesthetic and that’s what the film must be judged on alone it’s hard to muster the same enthusiasm on a narrative level you would for a 77 second short that you would for say, a 9 hour film for example.
GrimsChild (letterboxd)Read More »

Daughters of Dolma takes you on a journey revealing a distinctively female experience of Tibetan Buddhism in the Kathmandu Valley. This feature-length documentary will bring to the screen not just Buddhist spirituality and qualities like compassion and kindness, but Tibetan Buddhist nuns as full individuals beyond their monastic vows and religious practices. Daughters of Dolma aims to reveal how gender and modernity are moulding contemporary spiritual practices in Nepal…Read More »