Philippines

Different students from a high school cleaners group each deal with different pressures of being clean and pure while also discovering that the world is dirty and superficial to begin with.

Barit developed a distinct visual palette for the film that resembles highlighted photocopies (much like books and readings common in Philippine schools). To achieve this, they finalized the offline cut of the film, exported it at eight frames per second, then printed each of those frames out to look like photocopies. What followed was months of manual highlighting of each frame before these were batch-scanned and put in place of the original offline cut.Read More »

Kapit was well covered by media, as any competition film in Cannes is covered, except that the rave reviews were numerous. Festival reports had it that, of the critics, only a minority found the film’s “constant agit prop a little hard to digest, however much they sympathized personally with Brocka’s politics.” Le Quotidien’s Gerard Lefort felt that the famous Costa-Gavras could stand comparison with Lino Brocka! Brocka garnered enough inter­ national prestige in the 1984 Cannes event to put Philippine cinema an—foremost in Brocka’s priorities— Philippine politics in the limelight.Read More »

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. (Hyun Jin Cho, BFI)Read More »

J. Hoberman, The Village Voice:

Set in a tiny Philippine village, the inimitable Kidlat Tahimik’s film focuses on a family that makes papier-mache animals to sell during the traditional Turumba festivities. One year, a German department store buyer purchases all their stock. When she returns with an order for 500 more (this time with the word “Oktoberfest” painted on them), the family’s seasonal occupation becomes year-round alienated labor. Increased production, however creates inflated needs. Soon, virtually the whole village has gone to work on a jungle assembly line, turning out papier-mache mascots for the Munich Olympics. Long before the town band learns to play “Deutschland Uber Alles”, the fabric of village life has been torn asunder. Read More »

Peping, a criminology student, is recruited by his schoolmate, Abyong, to work as a part-time errand boy for a local syndicate that collects protection fees from various businesses in Manila. The easy money Peping earns is spent mostly on his girlfriend, Cecille, who’s also a student. Peping decides to marry her, but in order to do so he’ll need more money. Abyong contacts Peping to join a “special project” that pays more than normal…Read More »

Set in 1990s Manila, Paolo, a sheltered and obedient son is stifled by his overprotective mother— and his friend Mimaw, a tomboy who finds herself after having her heart broken for the first time.

A series of earthquakes leading up to Mt. Pinatubo’s historic volcanic eruption has been causing blackouts across the country, preventing kids from playing video games. After roaming the streets and getting beaten up, Paolo and his friends—Kachi and Gilligan—decide on traditional circumcision as the ultimate answer to their problems, but Paolo gets sidetracked when he falls in love with Shiara.Read More »

Tony Rayns, Time Out Film Guide wrote:
One-time Lino Brocka protégé O’Hara is not shy of traditional melodrama, still the lifeblood of most Filipino cinema, but Demons fits no established genre template. Part social history, part ghost horror story, part romance, part quasi-Marxist parable, it has no obvious antecedent except parts of Night of the Hunter. Set on Negros Island, the action spans nearly 20 years in the lives of Nena (De Leon), daughter of a fish-farmer, and Jose (Alano), the son of casual labourers. As they move through puberty and try to bridge the class gap, the island is riven by terrorist actions and military reprisals (echoing assassinations and political turmoil in faraway Manila), giving new meaning to the local mythology of jungle demons. O’Hara balances the narrative between drama and elegy, between occasionally shocking images and the poetry of Amado Hernandez and Florentino Collantes. Often wonderful.Read More »

Quote:
The Muthers is a 1976 women in prison film. It starred Jeannie Bell, Rosanne Katon, Trina Parks, Jayne Kennedy, Tony Carreon and John Montgomery. This black-oriented women’s prison film from Filipino director Cirio H. Santiago (T.N.T. Jackson) stars Playboy Playmates Rosanne Katon and Jeanne Bell as the leaders of a pirate gang who go undercover at a prison farm to save Bell’s sister. As the wicked Serena, Jayne Kennedy cracks a whip and acts nasty until finally leading the obligatory insurrection. The prisoners pick coffee beans and the pirate women know kung-fu, making this one of the quirkier entries in the subgenre. Former Bond-girl Trina Parks (Diamonds Are Forever) and Santiago regular Ken Metcalfe co-star.Read More »

Quote:
American sailor friends Tom Buckley (Bruce Fairbairn) and Terry Wayne (Trey Wilson) are looking for excitement during a shore leave. After fleeing a disco full of transvestites and two would-be alley muggers, a smooth-talking cabbie (Leo Martinez) takes them to a cemetery where a beautiful prostitute called Cherish (Karen Stride) resides. Little do the sailors know that Cherish is a vampire who recently killed their superior officer. In the cemetery is a lavish crypt where head vampire Richmond Reed (John Carradine) drinks blood cocktails with Cherish and two other lovely bloodsuckers (Lenka Novak and Katie Dolan). The sailors are able to escape death when daylight approaches, but no one back at the military base believes their chance encounter with the undead. Tom later makes his way back to the crypt and gets the ultimate in satisfaction when the vampiric female trio decides to act human for one night and conduct an orgy with him as the star.Read More »