Cast: Jacklyn Jose, Nathan Lopez, Jiro Manio, Coco Martin & Julio Diaz
Director: Brillante Mendoza
Screenwriter: Ralston Jover
Cinematographer: Jeffrey Dela Cruz, Gary Tria & Julius Villanueva
Editor: Charliebebs Gohetia
Music: Teresa Barrozo
Production Deisgn: Harley Alcasid Deans Habal
Details: 2007. 86 minutes
Release Date: December 3, 2007
Sreening / Festival / Awards:
2008 Berlin International Film Festival Winner Caligari Film Award
2007 Marrakech International Film Festival Winner Special Jury Award
2008 Singapore International Film Festival FIPRESCI/NETPAC & Silver Screen Award
Screening: December 3, 2007, at 7 p.m.
UP Film Institute
Cine Veritas Human Rights Film Festival
Poster:
Article: Tirador Philippine Gala Premiere
by Nonoy Lauzon at the UPFI yahoogroup
The UP Film Institute is most proud to hold the Philippine gala premiere of Brillante Mendoza's Tirador (international title: Slingshot, 86 minutes) this Monday, 3 December 2007, at 7 p.m. as the opening film of Cine Veritas Human Rights Film Festival.
The film is the sixth feature in just three years from Brillante as practically all of his previous works have bagged major international prizes. Tirador had its world premiere at Toronto (Canada, 6-15 September 2007); was exhibited for the Dragons and Tigers Out-of-Competition at Vancouver (Canada, 27 September-12 October, 2007) and got its Asian premiere no less at Pusan, South Korea (Window on Asian Cinema, 4-12 October 2007). It is slated to date for further showcase across the globe till middle of next year in prestigious filmfests foremost of which are the Marrakech (Morocco, 7-15 December 2007) where it vies in main competition for the Golden Star Grand Prize and the 58th Berlin (Germany, 7-17 February 2008) for the International Forum of New Cinema.
The RP premiere of another homegrown exemplar of world-class cinema, tackling the interwoven tales of petty thieves in Quiapo, is a UP Film Institute exclusive not to be missed. Another of Brillante Mendoza's body of work, Foster Child, the Director's Fortnight entry at this year's Cannes (France, 16-27 May 2007) on the state of foster care in the country, for its part screens on Dec 4 Tue at 5 p.m. to also comprise this year's full selection for Cine Veritas that runs until December 8 Saturday.
HAVE A PEEK AT TIRADOR IN THE VERY WORDS THE WORLD OVER OF FILM PEOPLE VASTLY IN THE KNOW:
A take-no-prisoners verite plunge into a Manila slum. Furiously filmed on mobile digicam and with perfs that make the line between drama and documentary seem nvisible.
---Richard Kuipers, Variety
What I loved the most at Toronto (is) "Slingshot" from the Philippines, a fast, harsh slice of life set among a group of Manila pickpockets. Brillante Mendoza directed it, and while his frantic, hand-held Paul Greengrass-inflected visual attack isn't groundbreaking, the film heralds a strong new talent…Don't knock documentary-style slices of life from Manila, especially when they're as excitingly inhabited as “Slingshot.
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Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune
Rapidly emerging as an important new talent, young Filipino director Brillante Mendoza delivers his second feature of the year, a wickedly energetic portrait of Manila street life shot on the fly with a digital camera.
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JA, Eye Weekly, Toronto
From the opening police raid to the closing political rally, director Mendoza takes his hand-held camera into the heart of Manila to create a remarkable, lively, intimate and realistic portrayal of life in a slum…Not one moment looks staged, and the cast performs flawlessly. Mendoza never plays to our sympathy or editorializes. He lets his stories tell themselves and weaves sharp social observation into his frantic and often funny action.
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Now Magazine
Superb drama "Slingshot" makes the streets, alleys and crushing deprivations of Manila come to wrenching life. Shot like a mini-"Bourne" film with lightweight high-def video cameras, it darts from one acutely observed vignette to another…Some of the details break your heart, without the trappings or musical cues of melodrama.
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Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune
(The) biggest discovery of the (Vancouver film) festival… Mendoza's most audacious inspiration is shooting the film on location during the election season, where the politicians have done his set dressing for him…(While) the title Slingshot…(is) a literal translation of the …street slang for thief, (it) is oddly appropriate for a film that moves with such whiplash momentum and (with) characters who rush and ricochet through their world.
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Sean Axmaker, Green Cine Daily Vancouver Dispatch
Mendoza's breathless account of desperate lives in the mean streets of Manila is a pummeling and visceral experience…A highly impressive technical exercise, yet at heart offers a penetrating glimpse into lives lived on instinct, predation, and reaction alone.
--- Doug Cummings, Film Journey
Not so much a movie as a moving portrait—complex and complete, hopeless and honest –into the underbelly of a society that could be as at home beneath a city as within it…The feat of (the) film lies…with its ability to deftly deliver us to a world we haven't seen before and demonstrate that the lowest denominators in society are common the globe over. The film delivers slogans, substantiated by our own daily news, that democracies are definitely not infallible.
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Elliot V. Kotek, Moving Pictures
(Reminding one) of Los Olvidados, both in its unsentimental treatment of the poor and its political critique…The final shot, showing an anonymous petty crime accompanied by a crowd singing “How Great Is Our God,†would have had Buñuel smiling.
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David Bordwell,
davidbordwell.net
(Director) Brillante Mendoza…has come a long way in a few years…The many vignettes in the film have an additive effect, contributing to a larger picture. Like City of God, (the film) is relentless.
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Bruce, Chlotrudis Society for Independent Film
The film finds Mendoza once again taking his camera into the teeming streets to capture life as it flows right now. This is a fiction film, but Mendoza's impressive skill is to impose a calculated narrative onto Manila's constant unpredictability, shaping its ground-level chaos into art…It shows Mendoza's rapidly maturing abilities with digital cinema. What is more (is his) novelist's eye for the full range of human behaviour, especially the ironies of greed and vanity.
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Cameron Bailey, Toronto International Film Festival
No disrespect to the late Robert Altman (well, not much), but you ain't seen multi-strand plotting or heard overlapping dialogue until you've watched Slingshot. From the opening scene of a night-time police raid on the building, the film plunges us into a world of non-stop noise and chaos…(The film provides an) angry but heart-breaking picture of a corner of society with no obvious way forward.
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Tony Rayns, Vancouver International Film Festival
The most stunning film at the Vancouver (filmfest) was Slingshot, by the prolific Filipino Brillante Mendoza. With its skin-tight realism, the movie positions us right in (a) Filipino slum where the everyday existence of the characters is as squalid as the sludge-filled gutters of their ghetto…Urgent, powerful and devoid of sensationalism, this is one of the year's best films to come out of anywhere.
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Kong Rithdee, Bangkok Post
