YBCA: NEW FILIPINO CINEMA—AMOK (2011)

I'm reminded of Malaysian filmmaker-turned-publisher Amir Muhammad whenever I hear the word "amok", as he was the one who first informed me of its Malay origins. Wikipedia indicates that "amok" stems "from the Malay word mengamuk, which roughly defined means 'to make a furious and desperate charge.' "The term has since taken on contemporary and cross-cultural inflections, including "running amok", which refers "to the behavior of someone who, in the grip of strong emotion, obtains a weapon and begins attacking people indiscriminately, often with multiple fatalities. The slang term 'going po

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Amir Muhammad, Chard Bolisay, Dodo Dayao, Filipino Cinema, John Bedia, José Malcampo, Lawrence Fajardo, Luis Quirino, Oggs Cruz, YBCA,

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YBCA: NEW FILIPINO CINEMA—The Evening Class Interview With Carlo Obispo

Searingly succinct, Carlo Obispo's seven-minute short 123 (2011) is—along with Raya Martin's Boxing In the Philippine Islands (2011)—showcased in the "Sex, Drugs and the Avant-Garde: Filipino Shorts" program curated by Joel Shepard for his "New Filipino Cinema" series, screening at San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) June 7 through 10, and again on June 17, 2012. It is 123's U.S. premiere. Ticket info can be found here.123 counts out its steps from the seemingly innocent Fresh Steps dance rehearsal in the film's opening sequence to the door that opens onto one of the Phil

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Carlo Obispo, Filipino Cinema, Joel Shepard, Marvin Reyes, Pepe Manikan, Thop Nazareno, YBCA,

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YBCA: NEW FILIPINO CINEMA—The Evening Class Interview With Raya Martin (by Alex Hansen)

In the "New Filipino Cinema" series curated by Joel Shepard for San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA), Raya Martin's seven-minute short Boxing in the Philippine Islands (2011) has been grouped into a program entitled "Sex, Drugs and the Avant-Garde: Filipino Shorts." Shepard synopsizes this shorts program: "With a lurid title but a serious intent, this program of new shorts will give you a taste of the work of nine younger artists from all over the archipelago. Featuring a little bit of everything—doc, drama, experimental, and even some student work—this is a great intro to

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Alex Hansen, Filipino Cinema, Joel Shepard, Kidlat Tahimik, Manny Pacquiao, Raya Martin, YBCA,

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YBCA: NEW FILIPINO CINEMA—REMINGTON & THE CURSE OF THE ZOMBADINGS

Just in time for San Francisco's June Pride festivities, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) includes Jade Castro's Zombadings 1: Patayin sa Shokot si Remington (Remington and the Curse of the Zombadings, 2011) in their "New Filipino Cinema" program. As Joel Shepard synopsizes in his program note: "Bading is Filipino slang for 'gay,' referring specifically to flamboyant, effeminate homosexuals. A Zombading is the undead version, which the titular character has to deal with as he tries to lift a curse that is gradually turning him into a bading. This exuberant film satirizes the very

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Daniel Fernando, Dodo Dayao, Filipino Cinema, Jade Castro, John Regala, Kerbie Zamora, Leandro Baldemor, Mart Escudero, Miles Canapi, Oggs Cruz, Roderick Paulate, YBCA,

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YBCA: NEW FILIPINO CINEMA—KANO: AN AMERICAN AND HIS HAREM

As Monster Jimenez explains on the website for her documentary Kano: An American and His Harem, "kano" (pronounced kä•nô') is Tagalog slang for Amerikano; i.e., American. But, Jimenez qualifies that Filipinos usually refer to any caucasian, regardless of ethnicity, as kano. The kano in question is Victor Pearson, a decorated American Marine who arrived in the Philippines in 1969 after surviving a bomb blast while fighting in Vietnam, thereby earning himself a hefty disability pension of $3,500 a month for his post-traumatic stress disorder. Considering that at the time the average monthly

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Dodo Dayao, Filipino Cinema, Monster Jimenez, Oggs Cruz, Victor Pearson, YBCA,

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CANNES 2012: POST TENEBRAS LUX and COSMOPOLIS—By Ryan Lattanzio

Like a Freudian dream where logic is nil and cryptic symbols await us on every sinuous narrative turn, Post Tenebras Lux [IMDb] is Carlos Reygadas' most personal film to date. Themes of banal family life, boyhood, soured innocence, sin and self-sacrifice color this visually sublime cinematic experiment, all shot in the Academy ratio (a la Andrea Arnold). I mean "sublime" in the Romantic-era sense of the expression, as the film—with its dreary, waterlogged landscape sequences, its fuzzy POV shots and high levels of aesthetic artifice—captures nature's ability to exhilarate us, and to terrify

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Adolfo Jiménez Castro, Cannes 2012, Carlos Reygadas, David Cronenberg, Don DeLillo, Juliette Binoche, Mathieu Almaric, Nathalia Acevedo, Paul Giamatti, Robert Pattinson, Ryan Lattanzio, Samantha Morton,

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CANNES 2012: AQUÍ Y ALLÁ, SOFIA'S LAST AMBULANCE, HORS LES MURS—By Ryan Lattanzio

The 65th Cannes International Film Festival continues to yield numerous, and numinous, pleasures on my eighth day into the festival. In my last few days screening films at Critics' Week—for which I am a juror under the stewardship of Céline Sciamma (director of Water Lilies and Tomboy)—I've traveled to a peaceful mountain village in Mexico, to a weary city in Bulgaria and to a nightclub in Belgium.These are the respective settings of the films Aquí y Allá (Antonio Méndez Esparza), Sofia's Last Ambulance (Ilian Metev) and Hors Les Murs (David Lambert). Each is a standout from the Critics' Wee

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Antonio Méndez Esparza, Cannes 2012, Céline Sciamma, David Lambert, Guillaume Gouix, Ilian Metev, Matila Malliarakis, Pedro de los Santos Juárez, Ryan Lattanzio,

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YBCA: NEW FILIPINO CINEMA—NIÑO (2011)

The 2010 edition of the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival (SFIAAFF) introduced me to Filipino cinema. I took a festival studies approach to SFIAAFF's Filipino sidebar (Filipino Cinema and "Imagined Communities") and compiled a critical overview of Lino Brocka's Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang (You Have Been Weighed and Found Wanting, 1974) as a sampling of SFIAAFF's mini-retrospective honoring Brocka. Then I solicited and retained the cooperation of the three Philippine film critics championed by Alexis Tioseco in his piece "Wishful Thinking for Philippine Cinema"—Francis

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Chard Bolisay, Dodo Dayao, Fides Cuyugan-Asensio, Filipino Cinema, Joel Shepard, Lino Brocka, Loy Arcenas, Oggs Cruz, Rody Vera, YBCA,

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