Month: September 2019

Maybe I just have too much faith in hugot culture, but I thought LSS would be a blockbuster hit. It has become almost a rite of passage for young Filipinos to cry to at least one Ben&Ben song (I’ve personally bawled at two), so having a feature film to commemorate our collective catharsis, scored by… Continue reading Pista ng Pelikulang Pilipino 2019: ‘LSS’ – Love? In This Economy?

Doña Atang (Anita Linda) is turning 100 years old. Her one wish: to celebrate it with the people she worked with in her earlier years of producing films, a task her aspiring filmmaker grandson (Enchong Dee) has taken the liberty of granting. As his quest to find members to populate the party begins, so does… Continue reading Pista ng Pelikulang Pilipino 2019: ‘Circa’ – 100 Years of Life and Philippine Cinema

The film begins mysteriously. We are introduced to a man, maybe in his late 40s or early 50s, seated in a dimly lit room, talking to an unseen person. The latter is a "principled" killer, he says, and so he trusts them as he offers them a handsome amount of money to end his unfinished… Continue reading Pista ng Pelikulang Pilipino 2019: ‘Watch Me Kill’ – Of Fractured Identities and Moralities

For the longest time, regional filmmakers have decried imperial Manila's hegemony in the local film industry. The media focuses heavily on Tagalog-language films, in effect neglecting films in other local languages even if the latter have been important to Philippine cinema since its inception. With the advent of digital filmmaking, however, regional filmmakers have found… Continue reading Pista ng Pelikulang Pilipino 2019: ‘Pagbalik’ – Dull and Unpolished