The airport (in this case, Incheon Airport in Seoul) is the perfect setting for Alec Figuracion's The Eternity Between Seconds - while it serves as the nexus for people and planes coming and going, it stays where it is, forever in place. It is never a home, only a temporary shelter for people in transit from one part of their lives to the next. And here is where we find our two protagonists, Sam (Yeng Constantino), a wandering young adult, and Andres (TJ Trinidad), a self-help author. Both their lives are at the cusp of undergoing major changes, and both are understandably nervous at the prospect.
Their interaction is sparked by the theft of Andres' watch - time is literally taken from him. Andres and Sam are strangers in a strange land, displaced from the things they deem familiar and comfortable. In this liminal state, they try to grapple with what has come before and what will come after. It's well tread ground, the most well known cinematic example being Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation (2003). Nevertheless, there's something endlessly appealing about watching two strangers meeting each other and creating a special bond that is itself a nebulous state between love and friendship.
It's a relatively light movie that thrives on the virtue of standing still. In a world that seems to be endlessly in motion, there is merit in just stopping a while to take a breather, putting a chaotic world into some sort of order or context. But as the film goes on, we see ever more frequent shots of clocks, time slowly returning to the personal realities of Andres and Sam. The loss of temporality is thus precious and itself fleeting. Their time together may have been finite, but you are what you take with you, and in the end they do take something from the experience. As important as it is to stop and hold our breaths once in a while, to exhale is inevitable, because what exists after that state between breaths is the rest of our lives.
***
Cinefilipino 2018 Shorts C Short Shorts Reviews
Palabas (A Country in Moving Pictures) is shot entirely through a video chat between a young woman and an old foreigner. The woman is obviously baiting the foreigner for cash, a scam. The rest of the film tries to show what the Philippines really looks like behind the colorful vistas that foreigners usually see. This is normal to us, but foreign to the foreigner. There's some extra added commentary about certain current events at the end of the short that works in some ways but feels a little too burdened by the gimmick.
If I told you I completely understood Happy Birthday, Mylene! 2023 Ka Na. I would be a dirty liar. I'd want to find out what it really says about crime, the plight of soldiers, indifference towards others, and the fact that it's set in 2023, one year after the end of the current administration. But since the author is dead and all (gee thanks, Barthes) it's all up in the air.
I'm a fan of films that epitomize kagaguhan in all its forms, and that's why I liked Santa Nena! a film about a living saint (not the way you think, probably) and a guy with lightsaber genitals. It's not the most highbrow of humor, but it's totally my thing.
And finally, there's Mark and Lenny, about a man dissecting the emotional landscapes of his two relationships, both with student activists, both lured by the revolution in the mountains. It can get a bit didactic at times, but it finds its stride later on, when things get more personal.
That ends this year's coverage of Cinefilipino. All in all it was a great festival, a huge improvement over the previous edition in terms of logistics, coverage and film selection. So kudos to the organizers, and I look forward to future iterations of Cinefilipino. See you guys at the movies.
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