TIFF 2020 Reviews: Shadow in the Cloud, The Disciple, Quo Vadis, Aida?

 

Roseanne Liang's Shadow in the Cloud is a great fit for TIFF's Midnight Madness section: a wild, sometimes silly, sometimes hamfisted mishmash of genres that is entertaining as hell, as long as you suspend your disbelief.

Monsters of all kinds haunt WWII pilot Maude Garrett (Chloe Grace Moretz) as she undertakes a top secret mission, and if we are to follow the film's rather overt messaging, the worst monster of all is the patriarchy. The disbelief, skepticism and casual sexism Garrett has to endure over most of the film is reflected in the claustrophobic space of a bomber's turret where she is physically squeezed into the frame.

The proceedings evolve (or devolve, depending on your suspension of disbelief) into more familiar genre trappings by the film's third act, something that will either make or break one's appreciation of the film. But Liang makes it all supremely entertaining, and she knows exactly what kind of film this is and rolls with it.

An artist's journey to master his or her art is often fraught with difficulties, stemming from any number of personal, social and even spiritual factors. But while many take the journey, very few can truly reach the enlightenment at the end. The question that Chaitanya Tamhane's The Disciple then asks is, what happens to all those artists that are left behind?

Both languid and introspective, The Disciple takes us through one such journey. Aditya Modak plays Sharad Nerulkar, a practitioner of traditional Indian music, specializing in a specific type of improvisational performance called Raag. His journey begins through childhood, and is shaped through many mentors. But he begins to suspect that among those climbing the mountain of artistic enlightenment, he belongs to those who will never reach its peak.

This deep existential crisis constitutes most of the film and is compounded by a number of other socio-cultural problems: for an artistic field whose practitioners are drawn towards more modern, contemporary forms of art, the idea that one is unable to contribute directly (and meaningfully) to that field is particularly devastating.

During my initial viewing of the film, I found myself frustrated at the film's eventual solution, something that I figured could've been resolved in far less time. But it's a sunk cost fallacy, in a way: when engaging in a lifetime of work towards an unattainable goal, it might look easier to just keep going than to stop, take a step back, and take a new path.

An inevitable, horrifying force propels the viewer through Jasmila Žbanić's Quo Vadis, Aida?, a heartbreaking and harrowing account of the Srebrenica massacre through the eyes of a UN interpreter. This inertia towards an inevitable outcome makes the proceedings all the more heartbreaking. This is a film that stays with you.

There are a number of things that Žbanić manages to pull off; the film does not glorify or stylize the atrocities that occur, electing instead to put the focus on the victims, and it does not pull its punches when it shows the inaction and thus, the complicity of the UN forces to the events that occur.

Aida uses her unique situation to try to help her family, trying to game a system obsessed with following regulations to the letter. The UN forces, meanwhile, are naive at best, and foolish at worst to think that they can take a war criminal's word as truth.

And then, a masterfully written coda adds a further kink to the proceedings, showing us that the enemy are not aliens or invaders from another land, the perpetrators of this brutal violence were (and still are) countrymen, neighbors, co-workers, and students, most of whom have not been held liable for their crimes. There are no mustache twirling villains, only evil men following orders, an Arendtian waking nightmare for those who survive. But instead of despair the end is hopeful, echoing the film's title: a reference to an apocryphal story where Saint Peter, on the run from Roman authorities, meets the risen Jesus on the road. Jesus' words compel Saint Peter to be brave and return to Rome, to certain crucifixion. Sometimes, in the face of despair, with nothing to lose, the best thing to do is to be brave and live on.

TIFF 2020 Reviews: Gaza Mon Amour, Nomadland, Under the Open Sky

 The Toronto International Film Festival is currently ongoing. Here are reviews of some of the films from that fest.

The romance at the heart of Gaza Mon Amour is the kind that would be done in a 15 minute short film, had the movie taken place in an ideal world. But the film takes place in Palestine, where simple matters of the heart are made needlessly more complicated by bureaucracies, systematic oppression and other things. 

By a twist of fate, fisherman Issa (Salim Daw) finds himself in the possession of a bronze Greek Statue (and its disembodied phallus). The statue (and its phallus) become the target of the Hamas authorities; indeed, phalluses both figurative and literal become a sort of obsession for them. It becomes a symbol of supremacy or power that is desired, but not easily obtained. Near the end, there is a parade in the streets where a fake rocket (itself a phallic metaphor) is being raised up. One day we'll have a real rocket of our own, one man says.

But this movie is anything but bleak; the film is more a comedy than a drama, mining gold from the absurdity of the situation Issa finds himself in. Despite all the darkness, the characters of Gaza Mon Amour have found laughter and love in their situation.

The economic devastation brought upon by the recession of 2008 has led Fern (Frances McDormand) to live a life of a nomad, riding across the United States on her trusty van, working part time jobs and seasonal work at places like Amazon. It is not an easy life, but it's a life that she has embraced, perhaps partly out of a desire to grieve, but with no real outlet for that grief. It is also in its own way, an indictment of the economic policies that have lead to this scattering of peoples.

The first part of Chloe Zhao's latest film, Nomadland reads like a series of testimonials from real life nomads (the movie is actually adapted from a true life story) who have all hit the road for different reasons. Some are just looking for a place to settle down. Some are looking for a place to die. Some desire freedom, and some take the trip to find themselves. It's a bit of a paradox, actually: where people find community in shelters and trailer camps, but often only in short, transitory spurts.

The second half of the film becomes a character study, where our gaze is directed solely at Fern and the reasons behind her desire to become a Nomad. She's presented with another way out. But wounds don't heal as easily as we'd like to think, and the shadows of a former life sometimes cling to people too tightly. Home may be where the heart is, but what if the heart is itself lost?

Miwa Nishikawa's films often depict people who use lies and deceit to live another life, but in her latest film, Under the Open Sky, Misao Mikami (Koji Yakusho) is a man whose candor regularly gets him in a lot of trouble. This is a man who wears his heart on his sleeve. The problem is in a society like Japan, speaking your mind isn't always the best recourse.

But to the people who do try to understand Mikami, they find someone who is genuinely trying his best to live out his newfound freedom. The film is littered with small acts of kindness from people who genuinely want Mikami to succeed.

In the end, however, Nishikawa throws us a curveball in the film's last minutes. It questions the meaning of living "under the open sky," and whether having freedom but merely surviving is any better than a life well lived, but behind prison. Paradoxically, for a man who tells the truth to anyone he comes across, the only lie is the lie he tells himself.

Cinemalaya 2020 Festival Report: Selected Reviews from Indie Nation Shorts, Special Premieres

 

The first few minutes of Joey Paras' Igib lets us know what kind of person its main antagonist is: opportunistic, selfish, the kind that doesn't take responsibility for her actions, the kind that takes a mile for every inch. Despite many calling it a blatant display of poor people doing poor things, I tended to see it more as a character study between a wayward mother and son, and an acting showcase for comedian/director Joey Paras, who gives an excellent performance here.

There's a very clever narrative trick at the end of Arby Laraño's Ang Meron Sa Wala that leads one to reconsider the entire film not just as an examination of a father's regrets, but as a genuine attempt to understand them. To say more would be a spoiler, so I'll just leave my recommendation here.

Dama de Noche's otherwise run of the mill plot is enhanced by its unique coffin-eye view, placing us in the shoes of its "protagonist," an OFW whose existence is reduced by many of those left behind to her ability to make money, even from beyond the grave. It gave me the feeling that I was being buried alive, and if it's "protagonist" were alive, I'm sure she'd feel something similar.

There's a lot to be gleaned in the silences of Cody Abad's Grand Gestures, a film about how some families tend to bypass said grand gestures when reconnecting and asking for forgiveness. In fact, its major character moments are seen in little things, without any accompanying histrionics (arguably the only grand gesture in the film is the incident that incited the events of the film in the first place.)  It's subdued but meaningful, making the most of its short timespan.

For every film like The Slums, we have films like Tarang. While Tarang boasts an impressive cast, I am personally getting tired of the same formula depicting poor people being subjected to near constant misery and misfortune, something that now feels as cliched as a mainstream romcom. 

Tahanan reminds me a bit of Brillante Mendoza's short Shiniuma; in both films the protagonist is displaced from a life that he's known for decades into a place that's alien and off-putting, a place where he doesn't belong to anymore. I like the character study, even though it's a riff on familiar material.

What makes Gulis (Lines) work for me is its depiction of familial love, the type of love that is given despite everything, without judgement. It's a fitting last (?) performance from Menggie Cobarrubias and I hope to see more from this director in the future.

The superimposed layers on top of the form of Displaced feels unnecessary, because its stories and accounts from people during and after the Marawi siege are powerful enough.  Still, even just for those stories it is worth watching.

***

Basurero is a great addition to the canon of films taking place during the government's war on drugs. It's also notable in that it also shines a light on why the poor are forced into the drug trade - because of limited opportunities for employment, selling drugs feels like easy money.

Like last year's PPP entry Pagbalik, Nang Em is heartfelt but very rough in its construction, with a tone that feels all over the place. But Gloria Sevilla's performance carries the film for me in any case. One's mileage may vary.

If there's any film that encapsulates the growing frustration of Filipinos during this latest crisis, it's probably Chuck Gutierrez's adaptation of the stage play Heneral Rizal. The titular Rizal doesn't refer to the National Hero, but rather his brother, Paciano (played by Nanding Josef), who laments the state of the nation after our country is passed on from one colonizer to another. Its ending scene seems to imply that we should not seek the guidance of a singular savior or the second coming of someone who has long passed away, but instead we should emulate a love of country and nation within our own selves, and that's something I can get behind.

Cinemalaya 2020 Festival Report: Main Competition Entries

Cinemalaya 2020 exists now in a different form than earlier planned: from a venue-based film festival, Cinemalaya has joined other festivals to the online space, with films old and new available for streaming for a very reasonable price.

Here are some short thoughts about the Main Competition entries for this year's edition of Cinemalaya:

SHORTS A

Ang Gasgas na Plaka ni Lolo Bert was part of last year's Cinema One Originals Film Festival, and its depiction of isolation and loneliness in old age rings even more poignantly today, considering the physical and emotional distances that have emerged between us during this pandemic.

Parts of Hubert Tibi's Pabasa Kan Pasyon reminds me of the Cinemalaya 2012 short Victor in its depiction of religiosity and the irony that arises when that religiosity conflicts with worldly desires. But beyond that, it explores the ironies of human behavior: how we sometimes treat the profane as sacred, and how we treat the sacred as profane. This facet of human nature is portrayed via various images: urinating next to holy symbols, posing for pictures next to Herod and not Jesus, storytelling for things both scandalous and holy.

Out of all the competition shorts in this festival, James Mayo's Fatigued is the short that takes the most advantage of the festival's shift to the online space (although hearing people chanting and stomping their feet in, say, the Tanghalang Nicanor Abelardo would be a hoot and a half.) Its aesthetic evokes a Japanese Visual Novel, both in its interactivity and its general visual feel. But the game itself is a facade, an illusion of choice - evoking the helplessness and hopelessness this pandemic has brought out of us.

There's something magical about Tokwifi, a spell of a film that shatters the rigid tenets of Western thinking and colonialist mindsets in the context of our society. On one hand, we have Limmayug, the indigenous man, whose culture and humanity has been dismissed by the white man as savagery and incivility, and Laura, the woman, whose image is molded in the white man's eye, her personality dictated to her by those same men. During the climax of this short film, those chains are broken. When Limmayug shows Laura the beauty of his culture by showing her something those colonizers could only dream of building, Laura, albeit temporarily, is liberated (figuratively or not), the film's way of urging us to consider the stories of our people in a different light, through our own eyes.

Quing Lalam Ning Aldo is a relatively straightforward tale of homecoming, but like many of the other entries in this festival, it takes on a whole different meaning when there are families all over the Philippines that are separated thanks to this plague, and not by choice either. Its ending represents the dream of a world that has returned to normal, a world that feels increasingly out of reach as days go by.

SHORTS B

There are two disasters in Ang Pagpakalma sa Unos: the first is the disaster caused by Typhoon Yolanda when it struck Leyte and Samar (as well as many other provinces.) The second disaster is what happened next, thanks to the ineptitude and callousness of the Aquino administration and the local government. It's a hard watch, but it's a necessary one, as it shows us that what's happening to us now is merely the latest iteration of a systemic problem that's been around for a very long time. We can prepare for disasters, but how do we prepare for disastrous leadership? The film is not completely dark, however, as it also shows the capacity of people to cope and survive in the face of unfathomable tragedy. Perhaps the biggest tragedy of the film is that some of these people didn't need to reach that point in the first place.

There's an almost Murakami-like surreal quality to Living Things, when a subtle shift in a relationship between two people is made tangible and literal. But the nonchalance of the response to that shift is also a testament to how we are pliable, elastic; willing to bend and mold ourselves in response to great changes in our lives. Its last sequence, a shot of people undergoing the same process, feels prophetic (if it was made before the pandemic). 

Utwas is perhaps the most gorgeously shot of all the shorts in this entire lineup; the S.O. remarked that it felt like a wedding videographer shot the whole thing, which is meant as a compliment. That said, the slice of life that Utwas presents us is cut short prematurely in my opinion, offering a tantalizing but incomplete look at the lives of these fishermen.

There's a shot in former QCinema 2019's Excuse Me, Miss, Miss, Miss that sticks to memory even more in these times - that shot of workers, all having completed a day's work, waiting hours to catch a ride home. It's gained more poignancy in the age of the pandemic, in an environment where Filipino workers are oppressed even more than usual. The absurdity of Excuse Me, Miss, Miss, Miss is the ironic point of the film, asking us why such illogical, inhumane labor systems exist, and why we treat such systems as normal.

And finally, we end this festival report with The Slums, a satirical take on how some depict the poor in media. It shows the artists' complicity as they profit off their subjects' misery. It is humorous and tragic in equal fashion, as we witness people carelessly creating works of art that ignore the humanity of its subjects while exploiting their misery for public display.

Transformers: War For Cybertron is what happens if you have bad leaders

This is gonna be short but I just wanna talk about this.

Transformers: War for Cybertron is a weird show. It's a heavily retooled retelling of the Generation 1 story that's darker and edgier in some ways than the original TV show. This first part of a planned three part series covers the battle between the Autobots and the Decepticons before their fated trip to Earth. It's nothing groundbreaking, but it's okay, and fans will surely get some sort of enjoyment out of it.

What really piqued my interest, however, was the backstory of the whole conflict, which sounds like a far more interesting story than the main story of War For Cybertron. I don't have much of a background in Transformers except for the G1 TV show and some scattered episodes of later series, so let me know if this has happened in other series too.

In some side dialogue, the Decepticons mention that they staged a revolution because they were abused and used as labor for a very long time. Thus, the conflict between Autobot and Decepticon is basically a class war, and the Decepticon uprising is basically a worker's revolt against the aristocratic Autobots, who fight for nebulous concepts like freedom (from what, exactly?) and miss a world with arts and culture (mentioned specifically during dialogue.) The Autobots were the oppressors, and they got overthrown.

What happens next after the Decepticon victory reminds me a lot of Pablo Freire's 1968 book Pedagogy of the Oppressed, when he talks about how oppression dehumanizes both oppressor and oppressed, and how the onus for uplifting society lies mostly on the oppressed. Screw up that process, and all people will be doing is switching sides. That's kind of what Megatron ended up doing - instead of equality for both Autobot and Decepticon, he decides to take revenge. Other than that, he establishes authoritarian rule and a cult of personality around his leadership. Usurping the desire for change, he uses blind loyalty and all too human desires to create a new oppressor class.

How ironic (or fitting) for a series about fighting robots.

Japan Film Week 2020 Festival Report

Since Eiga Sai was cancelled, cinephiles from all over the Philippines have been looking for something to whet their appetites in terms of Japanese film. Well, look no further; Solar Pictures and the Japan Foundation have teamed up to screen a number of films for free on streaming service Vimeo. Here are some short thoughts on what I saw.

For a film about a family dealing with a cancer diagnosis, Hana's Miso Soup is surprisingly light and sometimes even funny. Based on the real-life story of the Yasutake family, the film's outlook is generally positive, even though the very real possibility of death lurks at every turn. 

The film isn't in too much of a hurry, and it curiously opts not to dwell to much on the treatment, the actual disease itself or even the mourning process. It is different compared to other films in this regard, but it functions as a reminder to the audience that life doesn't have to be solely defined by a sickness; it doesn't have to always be mired in darkness. We move on with our lives whether we like it or not, and sometimes the best people to lean on during trying times are just beside you. 

There's a certain level of importance that's placed in the film with leaving legacies behind, embodied by the titular miso soup: we're not always going to be there for our loved ones forever, so it's good to leave something for them whether it be wisdom, life lessons or just pure and simple love.

Waste is inevitable in a consumerist society, especially in the materials that serve as containers of the things we consume. People usually throw these containers away, but for artists like Fuyuki Shimazu, the subject of the documentary From All Corners, these containers are a treasure trove.

The movie delves into Shimazu's obsession with cardboard boxes, the process of their creation, and segues into the Japanese penchant for mascots and iconography even in innocuous things like packaging. The idea of upcycling is mentioned, and even though in some ways it is integral to the story From All Corners is trying to tell, its inclusion mostly at the very end feels like an afterthought.

But perhaps the most illuminating part of the documentary is how it shows us the strange connection people have with things, and how our connection to those things help connect us with each other in surprising and sometimes even emotional ways.

It's pretty obvious that Bittersweet is an adaptation of a manga series (in this case a webmanga), as it liberally employs the tropes from the genre all throughout. Based on Yumiwo Kobayashi's work of the same name, Bittersweet is a film about a twentysomething ad creative (Haruna Kawaguchi) who befriends Nagisa, a handsome vegetarian who happens to be a teacher as well. The thing is, Nagisa is gay.

That said, it's refreshing to see the relationship continue as a friendship without it devolving into a romance. The film is lighthearted and funny, and in line with most of the offerings in this year's festival, is about stopping to look at the little things in life, contrasting the simple rural lifestyle with the city life in places like Tokyo.

Granted, the film might have glossed over several story arcs of the manga to focus on the central relationship, but that's an unfortunate side effect of the adaptation process. Perhaps the most crowdpleasing of all the entries in this lineup, Bittersweet is a well-acted, fun time.

Taiwan has a complicated relationship with Japan. When I went to Taiwan for the first time last year, I learned that some of the older generation knew how to speak Japanese, as the place had been a Japanese colony from the late 1800s to the second world war.

That said, the autobiographical What's For Dinner, Mom? is a personal chronicle, a series of vignettes from a family history, instead of an exploration of cultural identity. And both cultures are seen mostly through the food that the characters cook and eat all throughout the movie, never quite clashing, just coexisting (a viewpoint that, as a person of two cultures, I understand as well).

As the narrative strands in this film are loosely tied together, this is more a film of reminiscences and regrets than anything else, seeking more to contemplate rather than probe into forgotten histories. It's an opportunity that could have led to interesting ideas, since the main character's father was a dissident who identified himself as Japanese. But the film stands as it is, with all the melodrama and delicious food it can muster.

There's a lot to admire in Makoto Nakamura's Chieri and Cherry: the fact that it's a rare Japanese stop motion animation, that despite it being a kid's animation, it doesn't shy away from difficult topics like death and mourning, and that for the most part it's thoughtful about the issues it wants to address.

On the other hand, the film feels like the last episode to a series that doesn't exist. We're introduced to the titular two characters having gone through a lot of adventures themselves, but we haven't seen those adventures. That makes certain events in the climax of the film not stick.

Still, the film shows us the many ways children cope with the loss of a parent, and we are shown that the ways that they cope are often filtered through their imaginations. In a present day world where such losses are felt even more deeply, this might be a good reminder for former kids everywhere.

***

We end our little sojourn into Japanese film with The Takatsu River, a quiet slice of life story about a town with the cleanest river in Japan. Like many rural towns in Japan, the young people are moving out for opportunities in the city and the population is getting older. But ironically many of the young people in the film are very much interested in staying; one came from the city and loved the simple (albeit laborious) life after going on a field trip, and another is very much aware of the place's culture, willing to preserve it for future generations.

Most of the anxiety in the film comes from the middle aged people, the parents and fisherfolk who are apprehensive about seeing their little town converted into something else for the sake of, say tourism. There's an obvious divide between those who leave and those who are left behind, and those who prefer individual growth over duty and family.

There's a certain charm in showing the rhythms of simple life, from festival preparations to small events to quiet nights drinking together. There's a little bit of melancholy to balance it out, as the third act of the film involves the closing of the local elementary school, as there are no more kids to sustain it. But that's balanced out with a bit of hope as well, in a father's proud admission of his son's achievements, or in a son's return to filial piety. Watching The Takatsu River made me want to live there, and if the movie wanted to do that in the first place, mission accomplished.

Aswang

This country, the 2019 film Aswang says, is a land of fear.

It is a film seen through the eyes of our countrymen, and not through the eyes of an outsider or a passive observer. There are no monoliths, no personalities set up to be martyrs, just people and their pain. And there is so much pain to be had.

This is a kingdom where the rulers are boogeymen, their presence deeply felt even though, in this film, they are not seen at all, their names unsaid. The film isn't about them; this is a film about the war that they have waged upon society's most vulnerable. To them, it is an easy war, perhaps even in their warped minds, a just one.

This is a kingdom of corpses, both living and dead, forgotten in morgues or left to rot behind secret doors, all trapped in dark prisons, the result of laws and non-laws that value extermination over rehabilitation. The monster's words kill indiscriminately, but these words are a remedy that kills the infection but neglects the abscess that fuels it. 

This is a kingdom of silence, where people no longer hear, a land of the bereaved. Their grief is lost in this silence, except to those who still bear to listen.

This is the land of the blind, where indiscriminate death has become a fact of life. This blindness is sometimes willful, a refusal to see out of blind faith. But there is light in the darkness. Even in the land of the blind, there are some that dare to open their eyes.

Udine Far East Film Festival Dispatches

Another international film festival recently ended its online edition this month: Udine, Italy's Far East Film Festival. Boasting a lineup from the giants of Asian Cinema (including a few entries from the Philippines!) the festival has made available some films from their selection available for worldwide audiences. 

Here are some films that I watched during the festival period:

Andrew Lau's 2019 film The Captain is based on a true story - a routine flight to Tibet that took an alarming turn when the forward cockpit shattered. Like many big Chinese productions, The Captain tries to mimic the tropes and structure of Hollywood blockbusters, but something ultimately feels missing from the final product. Don't get me wrong, there are thrills to be had in this movie, but they only exist in the middle of the film. It starts out introducing several passengers whose personal lives are inconsequential to the larger plot, and it doesn't know when to stop, continuing a good 20 minutes after the movie should've ended.

Certain promotion materials for The Captain compare it to Clint Eastwood's Sully (2016), but that film was more a character study than a mere hagiography - in Lau's film. with all its hand-holdy, patriotic corniness, the hagiographic qualities are more than evident.

I still cannot fully wrap my head around Johnny To's 2019 film Chasing Dream - a strange, gaudy mishmash of martial arts film, rom (com?) and musical. The genre mixing doesn't feel right - it reminds me of Joven Tan's 2019 film Damaso in that it has a lot of great ideas that don't quite gel.

That said, I also have the nagging suspicion that this is a deconstruction of the love-conquers-all crowdpleaser, by making both its lead characters unlikeable (props to Jacky Heung for making me root for his opponent at times), by introducing several problematic elements and by ramping up the cheese factor to eleven. The world of Chasing Dream isn't even pretending to hide its falseness, it's all out in the open. Whether that deconstructive approach was intentional or not, only To can say for sure, and I don't exactly have his number on speed-dial.

Layla Ji's debut film Victim(s) feels like an apt companion piece to contemporaries such as Derek Tsang's Better Days (2019) and Arden Rod Condez's John Denver Trending (2019) in that all three films explore different aspects of bullying, with Better Days framing the bullying in the context of a brutal school system, and JDT framing its depiction of bullying in the context of the social media age.

The film begins with misdirection - the aftermath of a seemingly senseless killing is shown, and it seems like an open and shut case. But things are hardly as they seem, and the entire second half of the film makes things a lot more complicated. Innocuous scenes from the first part of the film feel like an alternate reality once the entirety of the film is seen - but the difference between the same characters in the film's first and second halves depends more on perception, highlighting a generation gap and the disconnection that sort of gap inevitably brings with it.

While at times technically shaky and hard to watch because of sensitive content, the film ends with an absolutely astonishing ending, which to me ranks among one of the best movie endings of the year. No one comes out on top within a culture of violence - the system makes victims of us all.

We Are One: A Global Film Festival Dispatches #3

24 Frames per Century is part tribute to Jean Luc Godard's Le Mepris (1963). While that film tried to wrestle with the transition between the classical and modernist eras of cinema, this film, tackles the modern and the postmodern eras, and beyond. There's a particular kind of optimism that it espouses, that in the future, films may be experienced in different ways, perhaps even in the palm of one's hand. Time will only tell when the reel will be changed anew.

Mad Ladders juxtaposes two manifestations of fervent belief; the fanaticism of fundamentalist cults and the capitalistic idolatry made evident in contemporary pop culture. Both seem different, but are tied together closer than is apparent.

Indefinite Pitch, with its monologue about silent films and reality and New Hampshire, feels disjointed and alien. It makes sense only if you engage in the clever intellectual exercise it tries to get you to join, but it made me feel strangely cold.

***

Dantza is tone poem, musical, cultural exhibit and dance film all in one. It perhaps requires more background on the cultural context behind its dances and music (all from a certain region of Spain), but even without the context it is a mesmerizing experience.

Macau in transition serves as the backdrop of Tracy Choi's 2016 film Sisterhood. It tells the story of two women - Sei and Ling, who befriend each other while working at one of Macau's many massage parlors. Years pass after their friendship is forever changed by a single event. Sei, now a middle-aged wife based in Taiwan, learns that Ling has tragically passed away. 

While one country breaks free of its colonial roots into a hazy, uncertain future, the women of this film create their own spaces, with the presence of men pushed to the periphery. In the process of creating that space, Sei and Ling form a bond that neither can articulate, a bond undefined and unnamed, a bond that feels out of place in a society still bound to colonial and societal traditions.

The film's third act feels a bit rushed, but the melodramatic payoffs prove more than effective nevertheless - reducing this reviewer to a blubbering mess on more than one occasion.

Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit's Mary is Happy, Mary is Happy sees the Thai director veer deep into experimental territory and explorations of form. The entire film is structured after a stream of tweets from twitter user @marylony. At one level, we see how strange social media storytelling can be - stripped of all context, tweets strung together sound like soundbites and snippets of a nonsensical story. Instead of trying to mold those tweets into some sort of sense, Nawapol leans into that absurdity, often taking these snippets and soundbites literally while writing his script, reverse-engineering a story out of tweets that have different contexts entirely.

And yet, something magical happens as the film goes on, as Mary is Happy, Mary is Happy transforms into a surprisingly poignant meditation on loneliness and mental health, as it depicts the helplessness we sometimes feel when we lose control over our own lives. It serves as an astonishing portrait of uncertainty and youth served in a contemporary package, its themes unraveling like a sculpture that only reveals its true form once you step back and see the whole thing.

Daigo Matsui's follow up to 2016's Haruko Azumi is Missing (aka Japanese Girls Never Die) is formally inventive, far more personal and a bit more optimistic than its predecessor. A youth theater troupe is commissioned to perform a version of Simon Stephens' play Morning, but the play is canceled before it even gets a chance to be staged, leading to the actors rehearsing the play anyway. One would think that the movie would match the depressing tone of Stephens' play, about the youth committing casual, horrible acts. But Ice Cream and the Sound of Raindrops feels like a rebuttal to that play, one filled with anxiety, yes, but also unbridled hope.

Shot in one take, the film follows these young actors as they try to prepare for a play that will never get shown. To further blur reality and fiction, their real names and the names of their characters in both the movie and the play within the movie are all the same. The aspect ratio changes as the film shifts from rehearsal to real life, but sometimes even that distinction makes it hard to tell which is which. And that formal experimentation works - the scenes play out like a distant memory, half-remembered, of disjoined sights and smells (like in the film's title), of memories of friends and colleagues that have perhaps moved on to other things.

The film's mantra, spoken repeatedly near the end, is "we are the cosmos made conscious." As it refers to the youth at large, it is both elegant and riddled with paradoxes - pointing both to the insignificance of our lives compared to the vastness of the world, and the unique place we have in it despite that smallness.

We Are One: A Global Film Festival Dispatches #2

There's a particular part in Los Gatos that will cause some people to tune off from the movie completely, and that's understandable. But that scene is at the heart of what the movie is trying to say: people sometimes seek out toxic relationships even though they are aware of the harm involved, because all these people want is to be loved.

The rows of meat seen in the opening moments of Dekel Berenson's Anna reminds me of similar visual references in Jay Altarejos' Jino to Mari, in that in both films, people are seen as objects and not as people. Anna is a lonely middle aged woman who just wants to date, but she finds herself entangled with a foreign bride business whose operators only want to sell these women as subservient maids with fancy names.

In Koji Fukada's Inabe, a solemn reminiscence doubles as a sort of existential meditation. The film tackles the dread of ceasing to exist without leaving an impression on the world. Such impressions do exist, seen literally as dug up memories in the life history of someone else, but for the person whose existence has just ended, such realizations will never come. 

Blood Rider, a documentary about blood deliverymen in Nigeria, is informative, tense and uplifting all in the span of seventeen minutes. In a time where the value of such essential workers is more important than ever, it's a fitting film for this festival.

In Stories of Destroyed Cities: Shengal, we are mostly shown destroyed, empty landscapes, overlaid with normal day to day conversations. This eerie juxtaposition gives the feeling that this is a city that once held life, and hopefully will hold life once again. It also highlights the human cost of such a tragedy, as a city's lifeblood is its citizens.

In the wake of increasingly polarizing conversations about whatever is the political hot button topic of the day, Ingen Lyssnar (Who Talks) shows us that in the face of increasingly extreme rhetoric from both sides, moderate, honest opinions are the ones that suffer the most.

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The 1928 silent film Shiraz made its way to the We Are One film festival, thanks to the efforts of the British Film Institute. As the second entry in a trilogy of Franz Osten - Himansu Rai silent film collabs (the other two being Light of Asia (1925) and A Throw of Dice(1929))  it still holds up even today. It's a very ambitious film in many ways; it is a co-production of three countries, it boasts impressive production design and cinematography (in any era), and it features a large cast of characters and extras.

For this version of the film, the soundtrack was performed by Anoushka Shankar, famed sitar player, accompanied by an expert orchestra. It mixes traditional Indian tunes and beats with a touch of more modern orchestration.

As for the story, it's a fictionalized retelling of one of the greatest love stories in Indian history (and all history, for that matter). It goes straight for the feels and it stays there especially during the last act. If you haven't seen a silent film before and want to start, this is a good place to do so.

Cesar Arechiga spent 45 days in a maximum security prison to teach painting, sculpture and art to several inmates. In this solemn documentary, we look at these inmates (mostly convicted of drug related crimes) intimately. We are made to know of their atrocities, and while some of them don't exactly regret what they did, others are people that seem to be genuinely striving to reform themselves. Art creates a space of vulnerability where these people can express themselves candidly.

Should we empathize with them? Should we judge them immediately for their crimes, or should we also look at the social inequalities and systemic flaws that helped bring them to prison in the first place? At the very least the film makes us think about those things and more.

We Are One: A Global Film Festival Dispatches #1

I never thought I'd be reporting a film festival in these times, but people find ways. We Are One: A Global Film festival is a one of a kind event, a free global online festival featuring content from some of the world's best regarded film festivals. Here's what I've watched so far.

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The short films make up a good bulk of the festival, starting out with a trio of films co-produced by Dreamworks Animation. Two of those films, Bilby and Marooned, are potent allusions to parenthood, or at the very least love letters to it. They're also very cute films.

There's also the sensual The Distance Between The Sky and Us, a perfect encapsulation of what happens when something just clicks with a total stranger, finding connections in unlikely places.

A lot of feminine energy comes from films such as Chloe Sevigny's White Echo, a film that tends more towards abstract, artsy horror. It doesn't congeal thematically as I would have liked, but this one warrants a rewatch. On the other hand, Britt Lower's Circus Person feels like its quirkier, more whimsical sister, though the whole circus part feels out of place. (Framing the story as a letter to an ex's new lover is peak film festival material, though.)

Then there are films like Raw, which in the words of an anonymous Youtube commenter is "like Whiplash, but cooking." I'd say that's pretty accurate, and I'd also like to note that I'm lukewarm on that film.

The Tribeca short films have some great entries. Toto made me not want to have kids, but that's not exactly a bad thing. It's a sweet film about a lonely old lady who just wants to connect with someone. (Are there no cloud saves in the near future!?) The Light Side's story of a reformed old Sith Lord is just as uplifting, though it does rely a bit on Star Wars knowledge. But perhaps my favorite Tribeca short from the first few days of the festival is Michael J. Goldberg's Egg, a film that takes the phrase "know how the sausage is made" to a whole new level. It's also a love letter to at least half a dozen classic films and it is absolutely hilarious.

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Trojan Records is a UK label roughly described as "Mowtown, but with Jamaican music." Their story is a story of immigrants making art in the new spaces that they've carved out for themselves. But like most contemporary immigrant stories, there's pushback from a populace wary of the new people moving in. The label's early days were rough, because these immigrants were looked down upon, with the British reluctant to embrace the changing diversity of the times. That said, it only takes one catalyst to make such cultural works enter the bigger social consciousness.

It's always a treat to watch films like these. I would have appreciated if the film gave more details on how the company was sold off and what remains of it today, but as it is, it remains a relatively engaging documentary.

In the world of Prateek Vats' Eeb Allay Ooo!, there's always a bigger fish. Humans dominate other  humans. Monkeys harass the human population, and since they are sacred, options to drive them away are limited. Langurs are the monkeys' natural enemy; and thus they dominate the monkeys. 

Hired by the government to drive away the monkeys using specific sounds, Anjani (Shardul Bharadwaj) is not very good at his job. He tries to innovate in rather silly fashion, but his attempts do not fare well with his bosses or with certain segments of the population. There are attempts to become something greater, and chances exist in the form of a costume (embodying a figurative transformation) and an unwanted firearm, but power structures exist to keep things as they are and make animals of us all.

No industry in the world has captured the sheer exuberance of filmmaking as well as Uganda's homegrown Wakaliwood. Its latest international release, the 2014 production Crazy World, is every bit as crazy as its title suggests. A pastiche of macho American action films, Chinese Kung-fu films and even Ugandan oral storytelling tradition, the film is best experienced communally. The YouTube live chat served that purpose to an extent, perhaps made even more poignant considering that it's an audience composed of members from all over the world watching together.

And yet, buried within the film somewhere is a message against child kidnapping, a very serious problem in African countries (the film's director  apparently made the film in the first place to dissuade people from kidnapping his children!) It's certainly a very relevant message wrapped up in a very unconventional package.

If only for its earnestness it's one of my favorite films of the year.

May Lockdown Diaries 2: Cinema Pandemica

In the absence of a physical theater, filmmakers will find a way to explore their craft in creative ways. Moviegoing is a communal experience, and in this strange period of transition our communal spaces have moved to the virtual realm.

Gabi ng Himala, a live show honoring the legacy of Ishmael Bernal's most well-known film, is a fascinating experience. It deconstructs, reimagines and recontextualizes the film, examining its timeless lessons and reshaping it in interesting ways. Contemporary actors reinterpret some of the film's most pivotal scenes, the original cast and crew come together to talk about the film, and so on. But out of all the works of art presented on that night, Lav Diaz's Himala: Isang Dayalektika ng Ating Panahon stands out.

In Bernal's Himala, Elsa's confession to the multitude - that there are no miracles, that miracles come from our own selves - is an admission of hard truths. This truth is universal, applicable even in these dark times, and that's one of the points Diaz seems to be making. But with truth-telling comes truth-finding, and Diaz turns his camera's gaze outward, looking at us looking at the truth. A dialectic is the process of gleaning truth from noise; we are given ideas about the world at large and with those ideas, the responsibility to find out if they are true or not. Our reactions to finding out about these truths - stoicism, alarm, even disdain - are also reflections of our society in current times.

And the medium? Tablets, phones, laptop screens. As with many of his other films, Diaz posits the power of cinema as a vehicle of truth-telling, even without the constraints of time and place.

Antoinette Jadaone's Instagram live experiment (simply entitled, Love Team) reminded me of a most unusual thing: professional wrestling. In pro wrestling there is a concept called Kayfabe, described as the 'portrayal of staged events as true'. Life, pro wrestling and cinema share the same DNA, where the former is the real deal, and the latter two are sometimes fuzzy reinterpretations of that reality. In the end, all three embody the concept where, in true Shakespearean, dramaturgical fashion, "all the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players."

Love Team takes advantage of the showbiz love team of John Lloyd Cruz and Bea Alonzo and several interactions the two of them had on each others' Instagram accounts before the show proper. We, the audience, are conditioned to think that this may actually be a real thing, even though if you look closely, it's obvious that this isn't quite real. The suspension of disbelief works in the same way (in my opinion) as when two wrestlers beat each other up, even though they're pulling their punches.

The actual performance, done as a seemingly impromptu Instagram live, feels like a genuine conversation because in many ways it is, delivered excellently by two actors who know each other in and out and whose chemistry is indelible. It's also a battle between pragmatism and optimism, between anxiety and hope, both relatable and emblematic of our hopes and fears.

It's interesting to see the reactions to this film, especially reactions from people who say that it seriously impacts their ability to discern the truth from these two from now on. In wrestling, that's called breaking kayfabe, and its a rare but notable occurrence. But personally, this film probably won't change what I think. This love team in itself was a creation, a Star Cinema fabrication, so why would I start or stop believing now? I once believed the Undertaker had supernatural powers, and learning that he's just a really tall guy didn't change my perception that much - because the illusion is alluring enough that I don't really care.

In my opinion it is essential to see Lolo Doc, the previous "monovlog" starring veteran actor Nanding Josef, before seeing its more popular sequel, Tanghalang Pilipino's Lola Doc, starring the one and only Nora Aunor. To be fair, the second fills in a lot of details, but a lot of additional information, mostly only implied by Aunor's conversation, is made more clear by the first presentation.

This is the story of two frontliners, perhaps previously in retirement, now forced to grapple with an uncertain feature and the increasing palpability of their own mortality. The usage of the online form - a Facebook Live in the first, a Zoom conversation in the second - is in itself a representation of the physical distance that separates health workers from the ones that they love, a separation that is necessary for the good of all.

The monologues feel like goodbyes, even if not explicitly stated, because the risk of death is real and the disease is relentless. Aunor's character tries to explain to her grandchildren how the disease works as only a doctor could, but such practical definitions are little to no consolation. These are sobering thoughts, but it is the doctor's vow to save lives, and save lives we shall, regardless of the cost.

The film impacts me in ways that are also personal - as a doctor myself, I've seen friends and colleagues catch the disease, and I've seen mentors and teachers succumb to it over the course of this pandemic. I grieve, as many of my colleagues grieve with me. The fight may be long and hard, but fight we must.

Lockdown Diaries May Digest

I miss old routines. The thing about them is, because you're so accustomed to them when they're there, you don't notice them until they stop being routines. No new movies out + time spent on work and on the podcast don't help matters here in the blog, either. But now that I've finished my short video essay series (an undertaking that I've enjoyed immensely) I finally have some time to sit back, relax, and write. It's time for a random post. I haven't done these since 2012!

I haven't written anything about Tokusatsu on this site since the early 2010s. That's an old routine that kinda faded away over time because I moved on to watching other stuff. Now that what's normal has changed, I've getting back into Tokusatsu lately, concentrating particularly on series made in the Showa era. Things were either really serious back then, or silly as hell. Enter Juspion.

If he looks familiar, that's because he's from the Metal Hero series, a franchise that includes the likes of Sky Ranger and Shaider. In fact, production wise, Juspion was the series that directly followed Shaider. Juspion isn't well known in the Philippines, but it was huge in Brazil. Something about Tokusatsu and Latin American/Spanish colonized countries seems to click for some reason.

In any case, Juspion started out as a space Tarzan planet of the week show before our crew landed on earth. The series is a little bit less surreal than its immediate predecessor, but there are some real weird episodes here, including that one time the bad guys wanted to train dolphins as mobile underwater missile launchers in order to rule the world.

have I ever lied to you guys?

So in order to enact this mammalian master plan, the bad guys recruit a dead samurai (!?) to raid the local aquarium to get dolphins. Maybe it would be better (and it would rouse less suspicion) if they sourced their dolphins from the open sea, but who thinks about those things in a children's show.

But what really takes the cake for me is episode 27, which is by far the most eighties episode I've ever seen in a Tokusatsu show from the Showa era. That, or the show's writer rewatched Saturday Night Fever and came up with this acid trip of an episode. It involves the bad guys wanting to extract the essence of youth from people and use them to raise Megabeasts (the show's version of the monster of the week). This description belies the sheer number of things going on in this one episode.

For one, the bad guys recruit three young ladies to act as idols (?) to help extract these young juices:

They're called the Cutie Girls.

The victimized young person of the week is an orphaned young boy and his sister who runs a gas station as their family business:

they seem to be the only two employees, which is weird and probably breaks all manner of child labor laws

The boy seems to be a former musician, as evidenced by his two very eighties-clothed friends, but became a corporate slave to the multinational oil cartel because he needs to raise his family. That said, his tenure as a pious son quickly ends when the Cutie Girls show up and give him an offer to go disco dancing on the bang bus:

to suit the tone of this episode, the offer is given IN DANCE FORM

Oh, and once drained of their youthful energy, the young teens TURN INTO WEREWOLVES:

I'm sure there's a metaphor for adulthood lurking in here somewhere

And the monster of the week looks like someone ejaculated a casino onto a rubber suit:

*whispers* RESORTS WORLD MANILAAAAAAA

Disco, fears of disco corrupting the youth, even commentary about the Japanese oil economy in the 1980's (Japan imported foreign oil a lot from companies such as the one above.) It certainly is a product of its time. I won't give you all the details, but rest assured our space tarzan police guy saves the day with his giant robot. Juspion. It's on youtube now for free, by the way.

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In an age where daily relief (of all sorts) is needed by most, relying on fast access to pleasure is a privilege. That said, a certain "Hub" for adult activities gave me the strangest of recommendations the other day:

shouldn't he get ALL of the hair from under that headrest? Is he even a barber 0/10 immersion broken

This is an almost one hour long video where a some guy washes the hair of a fully clothed lady... and that's it. He just washes her hair. I know people have weird kinks, and that's certainly nothing to be ashamed of, but the mere concept of it boggles my mind. I guess my perspective isn't broad enough. And it's not the only such video on the hub, either; DOZENS of videos like this exist on the site. I guess it's not unusual, you can get mathematics lessons on that site too. (Search for MathHelp and have fun).

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We end this peculiar diary entry by talking about a sequel to a beloved film. Shinichiro Ueda's One Cut of the Dead is a celebration of filmmaking and all the hiccups that come with it. This latest venture (titled One Cut of the Dead: Mission Remote) takes into account the pandemic and its effects on the filmmaking industry. Spoilers are present, so watch the film first (with English subs!) before coming back here.

The film reunites much of the original cast of the original film, back in their original roles. Our hapless director (Takayuki Hamatsu) is once again tasked with making a series, this time for a streaming service, but this time production is going to be tricky with the lockdown. But the director loves a good challenge and takes on the task with energy.

It's an interesting experiment in the emerging genre I'd like to call pandemic cinema: often framed in the unconventional mise-en-scene of a video call, at parts participative, at parts absurd and cheesy in the unique ways Japanese cinema can be.

It doesn't hold a candle to the original film, but a particular scene at the end of the film ends up making me a bit misty eyed. After their latest venture. Takayuki's daughter Mao (the plucky aspiring director from the first film) makes a speech, both hopeful and bittersweet, that embodies how I felt when a major part of what I love as a moviegoer was suddenly ripped from me, with no indication as to when I'll ever experience something like that again. It's a sobering thought.

Old routines are truly hard to shake off.