If Mag:net Katipunan has Cinekatipunan (Mondays, Fridays and Saturdays) Mag:net High Street will have its own regular film screenings starting January of the new year. Called Cinebonifacio, the screenings start at 4:30PM and will initially be held every Saturday. To set the tone for Cinebonifacio, a series of films by national artists have been lined up for the whole month of January. Screening this Saturday, 3 January is Gerry de Leon's "Blood Drinkers" AKA "Kulay Dugo ang Gabi ".
A visually outlandish film made by the national artist in 1966, the film is about a bunch of vampires that terrorized a rural community in the Philippines. Unlike de Leon's later B-Movies for American International Pictures, this film was originally made for the local market but was picked up by Hemisphere Pictures for distribution in the US. That was where the Quentin Tarantinos of this world saw it in a re-cut and dubbed version in drive-ins and on late-night television which they could not stop raving about ever since. One reason apart from de Leon's style that could be best described as "Tropical Gothic" complete with Orson-Welles-Style deep focused shots and expressionist lighting is most certainly the color scheme that the national artist devised for this film. Some scenes are almost monochromatic and some in lush Cinematoscope-style.
The Gerry de Leon film has been made possible through the personal archive of Dr. Tilman Baumgärtel of the UP Film Institute and UP College of Mass Communications. Cinebonifacio's National Artists Series in January will surely be of interest to a lot of people in the film community as well as the film lovers living in the Makati and Taguig areas. Admission is free.
See you all at Mag:net High Street's Cinebonifacio. Happy New Year!
