“The world knows Kidlat Tahimik for “Perfumed
Nightmare” and “Turumba.” But his oeuvre is vast and
varied but all encoded with his uncompromising
manifesto on filmmaking and Third World cinema. Here
is the primordial muck of independent cinema. Take a
deep, long dip.” (Dodo Dayao, “Piling-piling
Pelikula,” pelikula.blogspot. com)
You are invited to the OPENING NIGHT of the Kidlat
Tahimik Retrospective:
January 12, 2009, Monday, 6:00pm.
Opening Film: “Why Is Yellow The Middle Of The
Rainbow” aka “Bakit Yellow Ang Gitna Ng Bahaghari” aka “I Am Furious… Yellow” (1994)
Guest starring: Andrei Tarkovsky
VENUE: Ishmael Bernal Gallery
UP Film Center aka UP Cine Adarna
University of the Philippines Diliman, Quezon City
DATE & TIME:
January 12-15, 2009, Monday-Thursday. 5:30pm onwards.
TICKETS: P50 only
PRESENTED by UP Film Institute with .MOV International
Digital Film Festival, UP Silip, UP Cineaste, UP
Cinema, UP Cast, Mighty Bhutens, & Filmless Films
“Perfumed Nightmare” was unforgettable. And so is its
creator, Kidlat Tahimik. Born Eric Oteyza de Guia in
1942. Self-taught cineaste. Primitive filmmaker.
Fiercely anti-commercial. Advocate of what he calls
the Pinoy indio-genius. This we do by slaying the
cultural father that is Hollywood. Breaking out of the
colonial cocoon,as it were An indefatigable indie, he
churns out film after film after film to this day. His
praxis is to dig out his sariling duende, buried alive
by education, and setting it free. (Khavn De La Cruz)
BIOGRAPHY
Eric de Guia (born October 3, 1942 in Baguio City) better known as Kidlat Tahimik, is a filmmaker, writer, artist and actor whose films are commonly associated through their critiques of neocolonialism with the Third World Cinema movement.
Tahimik studied at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business, earned a Master in Business Administration, and worked as a researcher for the Organizaton for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris from 1968 to 1972 before "returning home to be a filmmaker and ending as a G-stringed (bahag) adopted son of Ifugao."
Tahimik grew up in Baguio City, Philippines, a sumer resort community established in the presence of several U.S. Military bases. This experience was a weighty influence on the themes of his films, most notably the semi-autobiographic al Perfumed Nightmare (1977) and Turumba (1981). The latter provides some insight into the circumstances that brought him to Europe and into the presence of filmmaker Werner Herzog, who along with director Francis Ford Coppola and his American Zoetrope Films was instrumental in helping released Perfumed Nightmare in America. This film went on to win the international film critics jury prize at the Berlin Film Festival, as well as the Catholic Jury Prize and the Ecumenical Jury Prize.
