Curated by Teddy Co
April 5-9, 2021
Art Fair Philippines
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Featuring the films of the festival directors and curators on Daang Dokyu Documentary Festival. It runs at vimeo.com/artfairph.
There is a talkback on April 8 featuring the documentarists: Adjani Arumpac, Teddy Co, Sari Dalena, Monster Jimenez, Jewel Maranan and Babyruth Villarama. This is moderated by Boots Herrera, director of Ateneo Art Gallery.
The Films
Beyond the Mainstream: A Salute to Philippine Independent Cinema (1986)
Directed by Josephine Atienza, Teddy Co, Nick Deocampo
47mins
With interviews with National Artists Lamberto Avellana and Lino Brocka and myriad talents from the Mowelfund community such as Nick Deocampo and Raymond Red, Beyond Mainstream documents the robust energy of nascent independent filmmaking in the country in the 80s. Based on Nick Deocampo’s first book Short Film: The Emergence of a New Philippine Cinema (1985), it features the first Independent Film and Video Festival held in the Wave Cinema in Cubao, Quezon City, the first video theater in the country.
Jamming on an Old Saya (1995)
Directed by Sari Dalena
85mins
A documentary on Gilda Cordero-Fernando’s fashion theater show that was staged at the Cultural Center of the Philippines in 1995.
“Is it a play? Yes, but more than. Is it a drama? Of course, but more than. A fashion show, I was told. Not quite,” Cordero-Fernando wrote in “My love affair with the ‘saya.’” Jamming on an Old Saya, staged in 1995 at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, was all those things and more. Designers, couturiers, and artists reinterpreted the traditional dress for an anything-but-traditional event that included “dancers and an almost-nude man painted gold climbing a rope.”
Kano: An American and His Harem (2010)
Directed by Monster Jimenez
80mins
This full-length documentary is about Victor Pearson, a Vietnam War hero who spent three decades in the Philippines. He had sex with hundreds of women. In 2001, he was charged with over 80 counts of rape. Pearson is now in jail but many of the women remained by his side.
Jazz in Love (2013)
Directed by Baby Ruth Villarama
75mins
Jazz in Love tells the story of Jazz, a young man from Davao whose dream wedding is within reach, his German boyfriend of eleven months has proposed. Because no law allows him to get married in the Philippines, he must fly to Germany and tie the knot there. One of the things that stand in his way is his inability to speak Deutsch, and to address that he must temporarily relocate to Manila for language lessons. Meanwhile, his parents remain completely unaware of the radical changes that his life is about to undergo.
Produced & Edited by Chuck Gutierrez
Cinematography by Dexter Dela Peña
Original Music by Nani Naguit
Sound by Mike Idioma
Voyage Studios
War is A Tender Thing (2013)
Directed by Adjani Arumpac
70mins
War is a Tender Thing retells the blood-soaked story of war-torn Southern Philippines. Portrayed by the media as a locus of unbridgeable conflicts between and among different cultures living side by side, this documentary gently unravels the war as an endless attempt at survival and adaptation of the Southern Philippine citizens to state policies that disregard the most basic concept of home. How does one account for the many lives played upon by these political maneuvers that have not taken into consideration the faceless and nameless? One listens to their stories, however imperfect, however partial. These memories make up a narrative of the war that is as cogent as the factual telling.
Sa Palad ng Dantaong Kulang (2017)
Directed by Jewel Maranan
120mins
Four families live in the seams of Manila’s busiest international port. In the hours of their ordinary days, they hear and see the wealth of different nations passing them by, leaving and entering Manila’s shores. Soon, the port expands and panic starts. Sa Palad ng Dantaong Kulang is a filmic symphony of increasing everyday violence in the aspiration for city fit for globalization.
Production: Cinema Is Incomplete
Cinematography by Jewel Maranan
Editing by Lawrence Ang
Sound by Mikko Quizon
“No Final Arbiter Film Fest” is in partnership with Art Fair Philippines, National Commission for Culture and the Arts, Film Development Council of the Philippines, Ateneo Art Gallery, and Benilde Arts Management
