WALANG ALAALA ANG MGA PARUPARO

WALANG ALAALA ANG MGA PARUPARO
Pelikula ni LAV DIAZ

UP Film Institute invites you to a special screening of Lav Diaz’s BUTTERFLIES HAVE NO MEMORIES on January 13, Wednesday, 7pm at UPFI Cine AdarnaThe event will be preceded by his work-in-progress film, AGONISTES followed by a talk from KALIKASAN.

January 13, Wednesday, UP Film Institute Cine Adarna

4PM – Agonistes
6:30PM- Q & A With Kalikasan
7PM – Butterflies Have No Memories

Overview:

Lav Diaz’s BUTTERFLIES HAVE NO MEMORIES (Walang Alaala Ang Mga Paruparo)
On an island far from the main land of the Philippines, islanders who used to be wealthy go through economic difficulties when a goldmine company withdraws from the area. Ferding, Santos and Willy only drink in despair. One day, a Canadian woman’s visit changes everything.. .. Through the expression of the contradictory nature of the prosperity development brings and the environmental destruction it causes, the pain Philippine society experiences is fully captured.

KALIKASAN
Kalikasan-PNE is a network of people's organizations (POs), non-government organizations (NGOs) and environmental advocates. It aims to address environmental issues in such a way that primacy is given to the people- especially those in the grassroots level who constitute the overwhelming majority of the population. All environmental causes shall thus have the people's interest at their core.

MELANCHOLIA

Lav Diaz's Melancholia (Grand Prize, Orizzonti Section Venice Film Festival 2008) will be screened at UP Cine Adarna (Film Center), on Jan 24, Saturday, from 1-9pm.

Beyond the Time Barrier

Review by Christoph Huber

Hollywood may have taught us that It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, but Lav Diaz reminds us that the world is also sad sad sad sad. And if that repeptition sounds crushing to you (whereas the one in the title of Stanley Kramer's Hollywood film is just there to tickle), you are on the right track: Inaugurated by the epic masterpiece Evolution of a Filipino Family (Ebolusyon ng isang pamilyang pilipino, 2004), the Filipino's director recent cycle of black-and-white video works, with their seemingly unwieldy lengths - in-between seven and eleven hours - represent a unique achievement and offer unique experiences in the history of cinema. Their length is not an affectation, but a necessity, in reaching for heights of expression that the conventional (and commercial) "rules" of moviemaking deny. They demand (but also: allow, for their durational strategy is ultimately liberating) uncommon dedication and concentration by the viewer, whose patience is rewarded with a physical experience of time and a stunning, singularly concrete feeling about their spaces, emotions and characters unlike almost anything else. The film's world starts to feel lived-in (and in that sense, Diaz' penchant for unbroken marathon screenings of his work is all the more understandable: bringing food and other stuff to the cinema, you have to make the screening room something like your living room: a lived-in place as well).

Which in a roundabout way, brings us to the ingeniously titled Melancholia, (after all, already Hippocrates characterized as the symptoms of melancholia "all fears and despondencies, if they last a long time" - a perfect match for the director's temporal strategies.) For Diaz' most recent film, the highlight of the Orrizonti section at the 2008 Venice film festival, whose main prize it deservedly won, is on the one hand a deeply moving seven-and-a- half-hour lament about resistance against all odds following through on the now somewhat familiar strategies of the filmmakers' recent work. On the other hand, its remarkable structure and subtle revelations of layers, adopting a (self-)critical stance (both in respect to its characters as well as to itself - and both political as well as aesthetic) mark it as maybe the boldest experiment yet in Diaz's daring reconception of cinema-as-we- know it.

In the beginning Melancholia may seem linear and following the logic of a conventional narrative - a tale of a prostitute, a pimp and a nun in a small town in the Philippines, described with Diaz' characteristic attention to details and rhythms of life, of perception and thought. But in the first of two decisive breaks - roughly after a third, respectively two thirds into the film - these carefully rendered lives prove to be chimeras made up to deal with the pain of existence and the throwbacks in the fight for freedom equality. From then on, sounds and motives (not just visual ones) begin to dominate the flow: A woman wailing unforgettably in the jungle, her sad ballad haunting the proceedings, as the losses and crushed hopes of the protagonists become ever clearer. Ever the committed filmmaker, Diaz not only insists on the political dimension - for all its depression, Melancholia is nothing less than a cri de coeur for continuing revolution -, but also incorporates fascinating detours into the situation of Filipino filmmaking (reminding one, for instance, of the crucial Brocka subplot in Ebolusyon).

"Why is there so much sadness and too much madness in this world? Is happiness just a concept? Is living just a process to measure man's pain?", asked Diaz in his director's note accompanying the film's description in the Venice Festival catalogue. The answers to the last to questions seemingly remain ambivalent: the wounded world of Melancholia may suggest desperation at times, but the effort of the characters to struggle on - and the efforts of Diaz himself, who from what are nearly no-budget filmmaking circumstances, wrestles a richness, both philosophical and artistic, that all those pricier films daren't even dream of - also touches deeply, with a renewed sense of hope and commitment that remains incorruptible even under the most adverse of circumstances. Beyond the time barrier, Diaz' filmmaking manages to open reservoirs mostly untapped by cinematic (or "visual") art. There is a long sequence of guerillas in the jungle near the end, whose radical means and spiritual dimension begin to suggest what Steven Soderbergh recently presumably tried for, and miserably failed to achieve in his two-part epic about Che (Guevara). One of Diaz' fighters write in his notebook: "I now realized the lyrical madness to this struggle. It is all about sadness. It is about my sadness. It is all about the sorrow of my people. I cannot romanticize the futility of it all. Even the majestic beauty of this island could not provide an answer to this hell. There is no cure to this sadness." By bearing witness to this sadness, without simply succumbing to it, by speaking out about to the woes of the world and our times, Diaz offers a poetic approach that may be somewhat disillusioned, yet is clearly driven by an unrelenting urge and a refusal to give in, whether to the (mostly unwritten) laws of the market, to the (obvious, but mostly circumscribed) failure of politics, or to the (downplayed) worldwide decline of ideology, solidarity and humanist values. As Robert Burton noted in "The Anatomy of Melancholy" back in 1621: "All poets are mad." Lav Diaz may be one of the maddest of them all.

Christoph Huber

AURORA

"AURORA", the controversial independent film of Rosanna Roces, will have a special one-time screening at the U.P. Cine Adarna this January 19th, 7:30 p.m.

The film, directed by Adolfo Alix, Jr., was slapped with 2 "X" ratings from the Movie Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB) declaring it "unfit for public viewing."

"AURORA" is Roces' first film after La Vida Rosa (2001) which gave her the URIAN Best Actress award. In Aurora, she co-stars with Sid Lucero, who won Best Actor for Selda in the URIAN and the Thessaloniki International Film Festival; Kristofer King, who made waves with his acclaimed performances in Babae Sa Breakwater, Tirador, Serbis and Angeli Bayani who was adjudged Best Actress in the 10th CineManila International Film Festival for Melancholia.

SYNOPSIS:

The film is an intimate portrait of a captor and a captive as they both struggle to survive in the depths of a jungle.

A social worker named Aurora (Rosanna Roces) is kidnapped by members of the Lost Command. After a military raid in the middle of the night, she gets lost in the forest. She walks aimlessly in the thick forest, hoping to find her way out to freedom. She is found by Fadi (Sid Lucero), one of her captors. Aurora tries every way in order to run away. Will she see the break of dawn alive?


For ticket inquiries, please call the UP Film Institute at 926-3640.

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Osang film gets 2nd X rating

By Bayani San Diego Jr.

Philippine Daily Inquirer

First Posted 18:48:00 12/27/2008

MANILA, Philippines—The Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB) gave a second X rating early this week to Rosanna Roces' comeback movie "Aurora," directed by Adolfo Alix Jr.

The independent film got its first X following its initial review by the board, which declared it unfit for public viewing.

Roces plays a social worker abducted and molested by members of a "lost command" (Sid Lucero and Kristofer King).

In a previous interview, Roces told Inquirer that the film's first X rating was "unbelievable, noting that what "Aurora" showed was "nothing compared to what I did in my old sexy movies."

Kid stuff

Compared to those, she said, "Aurora" was kid stuff. "Why does the board make it difficult for indie movies to be shown in theaters [by rating them X]?" she asked. "Independent movies bring honor to the country [when they win in festivals abroad]."

Co-star Lucero added that "art will never be given much leeway in a Catholic country like ours."

The second review committee consisted of Fr. Nick Cruz, Mario Hernando, Noel del Prado, Jojo Alejar and Marra Lanot.

Board chair Marissa Laguardia said the film's producers have the option to refer the matter to Malacañang's appeals committee. Alix said he plans to do that.

'Too explicit'

According to Laguardia, the committee reported that the "controversial" scenes had been retained. In its first review, the board had found those scenes "too explicit."

Lanot said the "mashing of Rosanna's breast and the pumping scene ... [were] prolonged and gratuitous."

Hernando said he wanted to give the movie an R-18 rating without cuts.

Alix plans to screen the uncut "Aurora" at the Cultural Center of the Philippines or the UP Film Institute, both censorship-free zones.

http://showbizandst yle.inquire r.net/breakingnews/ breakingnew s/view/20081227- 180216/Osang- film-gets-2nd- X-rating