Tag Archives: Philippines

Kent Donguines’ Kalinga Digs into a Strange Social Problem

8 May

KalingaPlaying at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival at the 2220 Arts + Archive venue on May 10, 2022, 7:00 pm (BUY TICKETS)

Kalinga (Care) is a very emotional documentary with a local connection. It examines a group of Filipino women who left their families to become nannies abroad. Some arrived in the ironically named Terminal City (Vancouver, BC) to help non-Asian parents who don’t fully have the time to always spend with their children when managing a successful business. They’re going to need help. These people pay well, and those hires tend to mail those funds home to help their families.

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Enter the Sublime at the 2022 Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival Shorts Program

8 May

2022 Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival Shorts ProgramThis year’s set of cinematic shorts programs playing at the Los Angeles Asian Film Festival continues to enlighten and educate. My tip is that anyone curious about SouthEast Asia should check these curated selections out! Each nation has a uniquemess that not everyone is aware of, and I’m constantly amazed at what the filmmakers from here can produce. Even if you can’t make it to this event, most of them can be found streaming online.

From the program guide on one of these programs:

Through various frames and points of view, we are brought closer to encountering an ancient Pacific past. Once again Pacific Cinewaves pushes the importance of āina, ancestry and belonging, challenging how Pacific people have been imagined throughout history. In these films, seven filmmakers become modern-day navigators using their hands and creative vision to steer each story.

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To Calm the Pig Inside, Coming to the IDFA Today!

21 Nov

null 15By Ed Sum
(The Vintage Tempest)

IDFA Festival

European Premiere
Nov 21, 2020

Shorts: Temporal Fragments program

Joanna Vasquez Arong’s short To Calm the Pig Inside is making waves worldwide. The International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam Festival (IDFA) features documentaries that move the viewer. To see her work travel from the Los Angeles Asia Pacific Film Festival to this event’s official selection is not only a big step towards recognition but also in showing to the world how survivors from 2013’s Super Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) attempt to reconcile with nature when it razed through the Philippines. Life is not easy in this country, which also has several active volcanoes!

The enormous devastation wrought upon Tacloban City left many people homeless and hopeless. The frustration only grew since the corrupt government wasn’t any help. This Filipino filmmaker lived nearby but delivers the content as though she was a local. The many photographs, artwork, news footage and clips used tell a very emotional tale of how difficult life became. The stories she collected showed not everyone is brave enough to stare back at the returning gaze of a tiger.

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LAAPFF 2020 From Adolescence to Adulthood in The Death of Nintendo

30 Sep

null 32 e1601447552705By Ed Sum
(The Vintage Tempest)

Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival

Sept 24 to 27th, 2020

Please check local film festival schedules for a screening near you.

The Filipino coming of age film, Death of Nintendo, is deceptive because of the title. I wondered how video games factored into a story about three boys going through puberty and trying to understand the life they have under the shadow of Mount Pinatubo, a very active volcano. Plenty of level ups are going to be required to deal with school bullies and to win a certain princess’s heart.

Paolo (Noel Comia Jr.) is crushing hard on Shiara (Elijah Alejo). His friends Kachi (John Vincent Servilla) and Gilligan (Jigger Sementilla) are not as grown up and have their video games, a Famicom, to fall back to. We also see in Paolo’s room a lot of posters representing everything that’s considered manly. The Wolverine poster says it all.

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