Philippines

Both the shortest Lav Diaz film, and the longest Viennale trailer:

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VIENNALE TRAILER 2018
THE BOY WHO CHOSE THE EARTH by Lav Diaz

The Viennale is pleased to announce that this year’s trailer was created by the multiple award-winning Filipino director Lav Diaz. Many of his films, outstanding also due to their length, have been shown at previous Viennale festivals. In 2014 he won the Golden Leopard at the Locarno International Film Festival and two years ago the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival for THE WOMAN WHO LEFT.Read More »

(from Cinemarehiyon)
The picaresque adventures of a young, naive country bumpkin named Kulas (de Leon) and his whimsical encounters with denizens of various nationalities – Spanish, American, Chinese, indio – is a metaphor for the Filipino quest for identity at a time when nationhood was still an imagined concept. Set during the liminal period when the Philippines was in transition from Spanish to American colonial rule, this masterwork shows Romero at his best and most exuberant as a filmmaker. It swept most of the awards at the 1976 Metro Manila Film Festival, and was subsequntly voted best picture at the very first Urian Awards in 1977.Read More »

Synopsis
The search for the body of Andres Bonifacio.Read More »

Synopsis
A bunch of 10-year-old kids rob pedestrians and kill without mercy. But after a failed bank robbery, the dangerous game comes to an end with twenty years of imprisonment. After two decades, they are released but soon begin to disappear one by one.Read More »

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Sid Lucero, a 26-year old pre-Med student is an aspiring neophyte of the Alpha Kappa Omega fraternity. Over a six-month initiation period, he and six other neophytes are subjected to severe physical and psychological torture in and outside the fraternity house. The neophytes come to accept the senseless violence as a requisite of their acceptance into the brotherhood. Only five of them survive the brutal, fascistic ordeal, due to the fraternity rumble with Sigma Omicron Sigma headed by Arvisu.

De Leon treats the fraternity as a microcosm of Philippine society to spotlight issues relating to human rights and autocratic rule at the height of Marcos’ martial rule. The significance of the film derives from the parallelism it draws between authoritarian society and the fraternity, and between the fraternity and Philippine society under Marcos.
(L. Pareja, CCP Encyclopedia of Philippine Art, v. VIII: Philippine Film)Read More »

Poldo, a lowly security in a publishing firm, dreams to be rich. He becomes the personal bodyguard to his employer’s son, Sonny, when he impresses the latter with his courage and skills during a quarrel where Poldo defended Sonny. Poldo gets a taste of his boss’ carefree and extravagant lifestyle and thinks that he accepts him as a friend. In one of the nightclubs they frequent, Sonny is smitten by dancer Cristy and aggressively pursues her despite a warning from San Pedro, the movie director with whom Cristy has an affair. When they chance upon each other, Sonny and San Pedro fight. Poldo comes to his boss’ rescue and guns down San Pedro. In subsequent circumstances, Poldo would soon arrive at a bitter realization. As he could not see in Sonny the benefactor that he pictured him to be, Poldo finds himself alone, abandoned and betrayed. Read More »

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What makes Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos (Three Years without God), about the Japanese Occupation of the Philippines during World War II, such a great film? O’Hara’s style is thrillingly simple: each scene begins and ends like any other scene in a well-shaped drama. But there’s a quiet undercurrent that builds, sequence upon sequence, with the smoothness and power of a rising tsunami, until it pulls your feet out from under you, breaking high over your head, overwhelming you.Read More »

Himala is a landmark 1982 film directed by Ishmael Bernal. It tells the story of a young woman in a small town in the Philippines who claims to have seen an apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary and suddenly begins to exhibit healing powers. More than a movie about faith-healing, the film is an excellent commentary on Third World poverty and backward and contradictory rural customs. The lead role is superbly played by one of the country’s premier dramatic actresses, Nora Aunor.Read More »

Doña Pina (Mona Lisa), a rich hacienda owner, is a despotic mother who favors her younger son Ellis (Christopher de Leon) over her other son Lorenzo (Phillip Salvador), thus promoting sibling rivalry between the two brothers. While Ellis studies in Ma­nila, Lorenzo is only allowed to work at the farm… And Doña Pina cares much about Ellis’ bastard son had with their maid, while she is stern with Lorenzo’s children. Ellis’ desire is to inherit the farm and the wealth, and he comes home from Manila with his fiancée, sexy Cita (Carmi Martin). Asked by the mother to leave way to Ellis, resentful Lorenzo leaves the farm with his family and stays with friends. But Lorenzo’s indignant wife, Becky (Baby Delgado), confronts her mother in law about the unfairness towards Lorenzo, and the violent ensuing struggle leads to her miscarriage and death… Upon that, Cita is caught by Lorenzo’s drinking gang friends, and dies after being raped. Urged by friends, the conflict between the two enemy brothers runs into a violent armed conflict, with very little hope to be solved peacefully…Read More »