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Probably the only country whose cinema can rival the Japanese freedom of expression is the Philippines, where art, however, seems to come from completely different sources than the Japanese one; from financial and political instability, from the different stages of colonialism, from the intense impact of Catholicism, all of which create a rather chaotic setting that always benefitted art of any kind. It is due to this concept, as much as the richness of its cinematic past and present, that we have decided to focus so intently on the country’s cinema this year. Granted, our knowledge of the past is not so intent, since Amp took a turn of covering a more wider part of Asia after 2019, which is why the particular list is the biggest among the ones focusing on the various decades of Filipino cinema.

Without further ado, here are 35 great Filipino films of the 00s, with...

Full Circle Lab, the Southeast Asian project and talent development program co-led by Matthieu Darras and Izabela Igel alongside the Film Development Council of the Philippines, is poised for a third edition. There will also be a particular emphasis on training for the role of producer, with the addition of a Creative Producers Lab.

The Labs will take place online with workshops from Sept. 20 to Oct. 1, 2021 and be preceded by the Fdcp’s Film Industry Conference, open to a larger audience.

The objective is to identify, nurture and support creative projects from the Philippines and Southeast Asia, across features and series, and at different stages (development and post-production).

Leading creative names from the Philippines and the Southeast Asia region including producers Jeremy Chua, John Badalu, producer-director Antoinette Jadaone (“Fan Girl”), directors Sheron Dayoc (“Women of the Weeping River”) and Bui Thac Chuyen (“Adrift”) will join with their latest projects.

Mentors...

Auraeus Solito, also known as Kanakan-Balintagos, is a Palawán-Filipino filmmaker. On the occasion of “Boy” screening at the 13th Slovak Queer Film Festival, he answered a few curious questions on him as a filmmaker and some of his choices in regards to Lgbtqia+ cinema.

You are credited as Auraeus Solito and Kanakan-Balintagos, respectively. What is in the name?

Auraeus was a name I created from my full Christian name which is Arturo Aristotle Jr. Auraeus is an old word for Aura Solito is my actual surname. At the peak of my creativity, I can only see colours around people, not seeing them as is, but as essences of pure color.

While Kanakan-Balintagos was the name that my Uncle Shaman dreamt. It’s a phrase which means the Hunter of the Balintagos bird, which is the bird of Truth. Like a Hunter of Truth.

You chose a gay coming of age...

This the third year that the Slovak Queer Film Festival introduces a sidebar section focusing on Far East cinemas Queer Asia. In its 13th edition, the festival brings a retrospective dedicated to the Philippines.

It is the diversity of the stories that caught the attention of the festival. Moreover, the Philippine Lgbtq+ films stretch across the spectrum from arthouse to mainstream. This also applies to the 3rd Queer Asia section. Consisting of five features, it presents a sample from the last decennial.

Among them, “Boy” (2009) by Auraeus Solito is the oldest. A macho dancer film in its best, it plays out a story of a search for joy and fulfillment in a relationship with a hired erotic dancer. Subtle in its execution, strong in its character, “Boy” unashamedly exposes the male body to the gaze. “Those Long Haired Nights” (2017) by Gerardo Calagui heads out from the night clubs and interiors of homes.

Since 2013 Berlinale comprises a section – special series “dedicated to the cinematic storytelling of Indigenous peoples from around the world with a focus on a different region every two years […]” NATIVe – A Journey Into Indigenous Cinema. This year, the selection presented 16 films from the Pacific region. Among them, a Directors` Fortnight 2011 premiered “Busong” by Auraeus Solito (Kanakan-Balintagos).

Busong screened at Berlin Film Festival

Based on three Palawan folk tales passed to Solito by his mother, “Busong“ comprises of four losely linked stories. Busong means fate or karma in its absolute as well as very personal meaning (that is why “Palawan Fate” as an alternative international title), and it is not difficult to grasp that it, indeed, links the stories and its characters. Moreover, “Busong” manages to keep the distribution of voices/narrators so that it evokes a collection of memories.

The Myth of Angkadang and Punay, The Secret Name of the Stonefish,...

Iffi to screen festival favorites Blue is the Warmest Colour, Ilo Ilo, The Past among others

A still from The Coffin Maker

Two Indian Films; Apu’s Song by Kaushik Ganguly and The Coffin Maker by Veena Bakshi have been selected in the International Competition section at the International Film Festival of India (Iffi) to be held in Goa from November 20-30, 2013.

Apu’s Song is a real-life story inspired by Subir Banerjee, the child actor who played the iconic role of Apu in Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali. The film released theatrically in August 1955 and it has been 58 long years hence. But ironically Subir never became a part of any film again in his entire life. On his way to receive an award in a film festival in Germany, he reminisces about his life.

The Coffin Maker by Veena Bakshi (India) is set in a small village in Goa.

Skeptical critics always think that the time to sing the death of the Filipino new wave cinema has arrived. But just as they're warming up you get four new Filipino works at the latest Cannes Film Festival and you realize that the game has just started and the best is yet to come. It's not all about Brillante Mendoza (who has just finished his latest movie, Sapi), Adolfo Alix Jr., Auraeus Solito or the Rotterdam darlings Khavn De La Cruz, Raya Martin and John Torres - all accomplished auteurs who already have their festival milieu and aficionados. The truth is that Filipino cinema continues to be one of the most interesting in the world, a very prolific environment where every day it seems there are...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

The 16th International Film Festival of Kerala has announced the slate of films that will be screened at the festival from December 9-16, 2011.

National Award winner for Best Film and India’s entry for Oscars—Malayalam film Adaminte Makan Abu (Abu, Son of Adam) directed by Salim Ahamed will be presented in International Competition section at the festival.

Complete lineup:

International Competition

1. A Stone’s Throw Away/A Tiro de Piedra

Dir: Sebastian Hiriat/Mexico/118min/2010

2. Aadimadhyantham

Dir: Sherrey/Malayalam/104min/2011

3. Adaminte Makan Abu/Abu Son of Adam

Dir: Salim Ahmed/Malayalam/101min/2010

4. At the end of it all/Abosheshey

Dir: Aditi Roy/Bengali/118min/2011

5. Black Blood

Dir: Miaoyan Zhang/China|France/123min/2011

6. Body/Vucut (debut)

Dir: Mustafa Nuri/Turkey/104min/2011

7. Delhi in a Day

Dir: Prashanth Nair/Hindi|English/88min/2011

8. Flamingo No.13/Flamingo Shomareh 13

Dir: Hamid Ahmadi Tofighi/Iran/82min/2010

9. Ndoto za Elibidi

Dir: Kamau Wa Ndung’u|Nick...

Toronto is a hub of film festivals here in Canada. Apart from Tiff, After Dark, Hot Docs and Tjff, we also cover the imagineNATIVE Festival each year. The fest recently announced their line up which includes World Premieres, International Award-Winners & Buffy Sainte-Marie. Here is the press release.

Visit www.imagineNATIVE.org for the full Festival line-up.

The Festival officially kicks off at 12:00pm on Wednesday, October 19 with its Welcome Gathering presented by the Thunderbird Centre at the Native Canadian Centre of Toronto (16 Spadina Road). Free and open to the public, the reception features traditional Indigenous performances, including Tribal Vision, a family dance troupe from Six Nations, a welcoming song from Rosary Spence, craft vendors, food, and a welcome address from imagineNATIVE in a casual, fun atmosphere.

imagineNATIVE’s Opening Night screening presented by Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (Aptn) features the Canadian Premiere of Andrew Okpeaha MacLean’s internationally-celebrated dramatic...

Busong (Palawan Fate) is the summation of Auraeus Solito's artistic life, so far. Its devotion to folklore and its insistence on it being told through the usage of practical effects as opposed to sleeker and more popular digital effects is owed to the dazzling stop animation that was the source of absolute wonder in Ang Maikling Buhay ng Apoy, Act 2 Scene 2, Suring at ang Kuk-ok (The Brief Lifespan of Fire, Act 2 Scene 2, Suring and the Kuk-ok, 1995). Its reliance on romanticizing the struggle of the marginalized and the underrepresented is owed to the famous love story of the young gay boy and a police officer in Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros (The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros, 2005) and the struggles...

Updated through 5/9.

Along with the trailer for Hong Sang-soo's The Day He Arrives, another's just appeared for Kim Ki-duk's Arirang. Both will be screening in Un Certain Regard and, if you're checking the entry rounding up all the current news on the lineup of the Official Selection, you'll see, first, that it's being continuously updated (as are the entries on Critics' Week and Directors' Fortnight), and second, another trailer: the one for Na Hong-jin's Yellow Sea. And of course, you've seen the trailers for Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life and Lars von Trier's Melancholia. Let's have a look at a few more.

Here's one for Joseph Cedar's Footnote:

And here's another and another.

Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's The Kid with a Bike:

Update, 5/9: The Playlist has two clips.

Julie Leigh's Sleeping Beauty:

Nanni Moretti's We Have a Pope, with Michel Piccoli...

Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon and Bruno Romy's La Fee (The Fairy) will open this year's Directors' Fortnight on May 12 and Bouli Lanners's Les Géants (The Giants) will close it on May 22. Here's how the full lineup of 25 films pans out.

The Fairy. From MK2: "Dom works the night shift in a small hotel near the industrial sea port of Le Havre. One night, a woman arrives with no luggage and no shoes. Her name is Fiona. She tells Dom she is a fairy and grants him three wishes. Fiona makes two wishes come true, then mysteriously disappears. Dom, who by then has fallen in love with Fiona searches for her everywhere and eventually finds her. In the psychiatric hospital where she has been interned. The filmmakers behind the critically acclaimed Iceberg and Rumba are back to enchant the world."

Karim Ainouz's O abismo prateado.

Urszula Antoniak's Code Blue.

The final Cannes sidebar of new feature films to unveil its lineup, the Directors' Fortnight (Quinzaine des Réalisateurs), announced 25 features this morning - 21 competing, and 4 special screenings. This year's edition is especially heavy on European films, which take up a whopping 17 of the 21 competing slots. Just like the Critic's Week selection, we've got a majority of debut films and films by little known directors, but also a handful of names that most cinephiles will already be familiar with. This is, of course, part of the pleasure of discovery in these sections: the ability to be taken completely by surprise (ie. last year's Two Gates of Sleep and Le Quattro Volte) that you don't get with finding a masterpiece in the Competition. The Fortnight runs parallel with the Official Competition, opening on May 12th and ending on the 21st. Looking at the lineup, there are a number of names that we saw coming,...

Soon to premiere as part of the Director's Fortnight program in Cannes is Auraeus Solito's Busong. Reportedly the first film ever made in the Palawanon language - the native peoples of the Philippines - the picture is a fantasy tinged fable about a young woman who cannot touch the ground without experiencing intense pain. Here's how the festival describes it:Busong is the indigenous Palawan concept of Fate or instant Karma. Nature reacts instantly to man's disrespect of nature and other men. Punay was born with wounds in her feet so that she cannot step on the earth. Her brother, Angkarang, carries her through a hammock, as he searches the changing landscape of Palawan in hoping to find a healer who can cure Punay. Different...

The lineup for the Cannes film festival has been finalized with the announcement of the Directors’ Fortnight lineup, which includes Guilty of Romance by one of my personal favourite directors, Sion Sono. The Directors’ Fortnight is an independent section held in parallel to the Cannes Film Festival. The section was created in 1969 after the events of May 1968, in which the Cannes festival was canceled in solidarity with striking workers.

The Directors’ Fortnight showcases a programme of shorts and feature films as well as documentaries from all over the world.

Here’s the complete list of titles:

Directors’ Fortnight Lineup

“Apres le sud,” France, Jean-Jacques Jauffret

“Blue Bird,” Belgium, Gust Van den Berghe

“Breathing,” Austria, Karl Markovics

“Code Blue,” Netherlands-Denmark, Urszula Antoniak

“Corpo celeste,” Italy-Switzerland-France, Alice Rohrwacher

“End of Silence,” France-Austria, Roland Edzard

“La Fee,” Belgium-France, Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon, Bruno Romy (opening film)

“Les Geants,” Belgium-France-Luxembourg, Bouli Lanners (closing film)

“Impardonnables,...

We got the first round of Cannes Film Festival line-up last week, then the Critics’ Week contenders yesterday. Today, the line-up for Director’s Fortnight and Short Film competition has been released. Check out the line-ups below via Deadline and Twitch. Twitch also provides images for Irish director Rebecca Daly‘s debut in the Director’s Fortnight film The Other Side Of Sleep.

It’s worth noting that jury president Michel Gondry will award the Short Film Palme d’Or on the last day of the fest, May 22nd. Bright Star director Jane Campion and Lynne Ramsay, who directed this year’s competition title We Need To Talk About Kevin, both got their start in this competition. Check out the line-ups below and come back for our coverage straight from the fest.

Short Film:

Completing the list of the Official Selection of the 64th Festival de Cannes, and composed this...

Vimukthi Jayasundara

An Indo-France co-production, Chhatrak (Mushrooms) directed by Sri Lankan filmmaker Vimukthi Jayasundara is a part of the official lineup of Cannes Directors Fortnight.

Co-produced by Bappaditya Bandopadhyay from India, Mushrooms is Vimukthi Jayasundara’s third feature film. His debut film The Forsaken Land had won the Camera d’Or for best debut feature at Cannes in 2005.

The complete lineup for Directors Fortnight includes 25 films out of which 6 are first films making them eligible to compete for Camera d’Or.

Directors’ Fortnight Lineup

Apres le sud, France, Jean-Jacques Jauffret

Blue Bird, Belgium, Gust Van den Berghe

Breathing, Austria, Karl Markovics

Code Blue, Netherlands-Denmark, Urszula Antoniak

Corpo celeste, Italy-Switzerland-France, Alice Rohrwacher

End of Silence, France-Austria, Roland Edzard

La Fee, Belgium-France, Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon, Bruno Romy (opening film)

Les Geants, Belgium-France-Luxembourg, Bouli Lanners (closing film)

Impardonnables, France, Andre Techine

The Island, Bulgaria-Sweden, Kamen Kalev

Iris in Bloom, France, Valerie Mrejen

Joan Captive,...

Linda Cardellini plays a soldier who returns home from a tour of duty and has trouble adjusting in artist-turned-director Liza Johnson’s debut feature Return. John Slattery and Michael Shannon co-star. Return is the only U.S. movie selected to play in the prestigious Cannes sidebar Directors' Fortnight, announced this morning in Paris. Johnson is one of several female directors injecting a dose of estrogen into this year’s 25-film lineup. Other women directors include Ireland's Rebecca Daly, whose first film The Other Side of Sleep tells the story of a sleepwalker in a rural town searching for her mother’s killer; Polish filmmaker Urszula Antoniak (Code Blue); Canada’s Isabelle Lavigne and Stephane Thibault (At Night They Dance); and Morocco’s Leila Kilani (Sur La Planche). Directors’ Fortnight runs May 12-22. The lineup: -- Apres le sud (France) - Jean-Jacques Jauffret -- Blue Bird (Belgium) - Gust Van den Berghe...

Filipino filmmaker Auraeus Solito, best known for his 2006 Teddy Award-winning The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros, will be at the Turin Glbt Film Festival, which runs April 23-30, as a member of the international jury and to present the world premiere of his new feature, Boy, recently banned in Singapore. In Boy, a young poet sells his comic books to afford a one-night stand with a macho rent-boy on New Year’s Eve. However, their relationship will not end that night as the boy in question will learn to accept his sexuality. Tuli (2005) and Philippine Science (2007); the latter follows eight students at the elite Philippine Science High School during the tumultuous 1980s. In addition to the competition sections (features, shorts, documentaries), the 24th Torino Glbt Film Festival will also offer the following: a retrospective of Italian director Giuseppe Patroni Griffi; Italian director Ferzan [...]...

NEW YORK -- Four features and two short films from American Indian and Indigenous filmmakers will be showcased at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival's 13th annual Native Forum, featuring artist panels, workshops and networking events.

This year's discussions include "The Burden of Representation", which examines minority filmmakers' struggle to represent their communities while also staying true to their personal visions, and "Art & Technology Blended Worldwide," which explores new platforms for wider film distribution.

The four feature selections are the New Zealand romance "Eagle vs. Shark", from Taika Waititi (Te Whanau a Apanui); the drama "Four Sheets to the Wind", from Sterlin Harjo (Creek and Seminole Nations); the beauty pageant docu "Miss Navajo", by Billy Luther (Navajo/Hopi/Laguna Pueblo); and the Philippino tale of an abused girl, "Tuli", from Auraeus Solito (Palaw'an).

"Shark" appears in the dramatic World Cinema Competition and "Wind" is in the dramatic Independent Film Competition, while "Navajo" and "Tuli" are part of the Spectrum presentation.

The two shorts are the Christian missionary drama "Conversion", from Nanobah Becker (Dine), and the family drama "Move Me", from Jonathan Pulley (Laguna Pueblo), which also appears in the Short Film Competition.

NEW YORK -- The Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art's New Directors/New Films series will celebrate its 35th anniversary with an international collection of projects, a roundtable of featured helmers and a documentary retrospective. Twenty-five features and 17 shorts will appear at the fest, which opens Mar. 22 with two Sundance Film Festival hits and directorial debuts: Ryan Fleck's Half Nelson, a drama about a drug-addicted junior high school teacher, and Auraeus Solito's gay-themed coming-of-age tale The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros. All films will be shown through April 2 at the Walter Reade Theater in Lincoln Center and at the Titus Theater at MoMA. Fleck will appear with his Half Nelson co-writer Anna Boden, Man Push Cart director Ramin Bahrani and Look Both Ways helmer Sarah Watt at "From Script to Screen," a directors' roundtable presented by HBO Films on March 26 at the Walter Reade Theater.

• This year Ioncinema.com is covering the 2006 edition of the Sundance Film Festival Live from Park City, Utah. Weâ€.ll be on hand to cover the festival, and while we wonâ€.t be able to cover everything from A to Z: here is a comprehensive beforehand look at the selections in each of the festivalâ€.s sections. (Note: To access individual preview pages, simply click on the links below) January 19th to the 28th, 2006Counting Down: updateCountdownClock('January 19, 2006'); World Cinema - Dramatic Competition         "13 (Tzameti)" (France), writer-director Gela Babluani's intense drama about the dire consequences suffered by a man who follows instructions left for someone else. "Allegro,"(Denmark), directed by Christoffer Boe and written by Boe and Mikael Wulff, a look at an amnesiac pianist who reconnects with his forgotten past upon returning to Copenhagen. "The Aura," (Argentina), writer-director Fabian Bielinsky's twisty drama about a taxidermist's dream of pulling off the perfect robbery.

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