Back in 2020, the future of Present Confusion was in serious doubt. Though I resumed things after the pandemic, things were never the same as before. If you've been following this blog you'd know that output has slowed over the past year, though I've been (mostly) keeping up on Letterboxd. This would have been okay, but recently Letterboxd deleted a number of pages with my reviews on them. In the middle of the year, I decided to sunset this blog, and that was one of the catalysts for that decision. My plan was I would finish the year with the usual year end speech, end the blog on Present Confusion's 20th anniversary in April 2025 and ride off into the sunset. This idea was met with a bit of pushback from people who wanted me to keep writing. Ultimately, my wife convinced me to continue, and that's exactly what I'm going to do from now on. I'm no longer announcing my retirement - I will keep writing until I don't. I've spent 20 years lurking in the shadows, mostly set aside or ignored, and that's fine. Regardless of what happens to me from here on, I'm gonna give something back as my contribution to local film.
In 2022, I also decided to write a book compiling almost 20 years' worth of essays and reviews from this blog, Present Confusion. As the writing for this book went on, swelling to two hundred pages, then to four, then to a whopping six hundred pages, I found the project spiraling out of control. Even at this point I decided I would no longer add stuff to the book and just write whatever I had already laid out. Friend and film critic Richard Bolisay said as much to me last year when the book was still in this state, and I took that advice to heart. Still, in its final state, the book would have been 800 pages long, which was too long.
That is why I am no longer writing that book anymore - I am writing three books. Basically I've split that monstrosity into three, arranging things into discrete parts. Here's a short description of these books:
Etymologies is the first book, which will be coming out in the first half of this year. This book consists of multiple essays about Philippine cinema, a near-comprehensive review section covering Cinemalaya films from 2005 to 2023, and something like a memoir of my time watching all of these films. There's a section here that I personally like called People I Have Watched Movies With, because I'm a huge sap and I love sentimentality lol. I hope y'all like it too.
The second book is Ecosystem Poetics/To All My Dead Friends, a collaboration with fellow Third World Cinema Club/Film Police Reviews member Princess Kinoc. This book will consist of interviews and profiles of people from all sorts of niches in the Philippine Cinema ecosystem, a gallery of all the times I did a "picture review" (friends will know what that is), and (non) reviews of some real stinkers such as Kamandag ng Droga. This is probably going to be the most experimental of the three books I've been writing, and the book is mostly done aside from a number of interviews. It will likely come out in the latter half of the year or in early 2026, depending on when Princess and I get those remaining interviews.
The third and final book of this little trilogy is called Fade/Out, which includes a lengthy Vivamax section, some reevaluations of films I watched in the past, longer articles, and an extensive catalog of reviews of non-festival films, international films and others. No release date yet for this one though it's also mostly done.
And that's not all! I am compiling ALL of my reviews of local full length and mid length films for the year of 2024 into an anthology book, which I will be releasing as a pdf for FREE, sometime in January 2025. This includes all reviews that were originally posted here or on Letterboxd, expanded versions of shorter reviews, and even reviews I haven't posted anywhere yet. A total of 206 films were released this year and I am on track to watching 204-205 of them, depending on how well the SFFR is at getting screeners (lol). It will also include my top local films of 2024 and an overview of the year that was, including detailed info and statistics of all releases. I'm still thinking of releasing an additional supplement to this dedicated to short films, but that depends on how many I can watch.
That's basically it. Even though I haven't fulfilled all my promises in the past, I don't want to break them as much as possible. Although I don't know until when I can continue writing this blog, I will do it. Is there a reason why? Do I honestly need one? I can only hope I finish this before I stop completely.
To all the people who still read this blog, I'll see you next year. And maybe, just maybe, I'll see y'all at the movies.
No comments:
Post a Comment