- Movie Guide
Indie Films
by Philbert Ortiz Dy posted on Friday, October 23, 2009 
The Fort is known as a real destination for Metro Manila’s foodies. It offers a plethora of options for the discerning diner, featuring cuisines from all around the world, and dishes that require more care and skill than your average lump of meat on a plate. So for the duration the festival, one would imagine that the moviegoers would be eating pretty well. One place in the Fort has been doing particularly strong business this week, but it’s not quite what you’d expect.
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by Philbert Ortiz Dy posted on Monday, October 19, 2009 
As I was watching the Young Cinema shorts in exhibition in the middle of Bonifacio High Street, I couldn’t help thinking about the problems of the set up. Outdoor screenings are great in theory, but like anything else, they come with their drawbacks. I had envisioned the outdoor screenings to be somewhere out in one of the empty fields that the Fort still has. The middle of High Street is a problematic location for several reasons. First of all, they don’t turn off the street lamps for the screenings, which makes it difficult to see the darker films. Michael Angelo Dagñalan’s Karoler, with its dark corridors and unlit streetscapes, could barely be seen. Secondly, there’s a nearby Seattle’s best that plays its coffeehouse muzak a little too loudly. When you have a bunch of short with minimalist soundtracks, it just becomes difficult to immerse yourself in the mood of the pictures when some light jazz is playing in the background.
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by Philbert Ortiz Dy posted on Sunday, October 18, 2009 
This year’s festival, being held in the vast openness that is the Fort, took the opportunity to hold outdoor screenings at Bonifacio High Street. The first outdoor screening was the young cinema program, featuring short films by young Filipino filmmakers from all over. Considering how cold it is in the Market Market cinemas, it was kind of a nice to be able to avoid air conditioning for a while. Outdoor screenings do have their drawbacks, though. Some of the entries to the program were shot on film, and logistics pretty much dictated that we were going to see everything on video.
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by Philbert Ortiz Dy posted on Saturday, October 17, 2009 
Cinemanila’s new home is Market Market in the Fort. On any given day, three Market Market theaters are assigned for the festival, with extra screenings held at Fully Booked U-View. For those who’ve never seen it, it’s a small multi-purpose viewing room equipped with an HD projector found in the basement of Fully Booked Bonifacio High Street, just behind the Manga section. Outdoor screenings will also be held at the Bear Area of Bonifacio High Street, marked B3. The weather’s been pretty good lately, and those screenings ought to go off without a hitch.
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by Philbert Ortiz Dy posted on Monday, October 12, 2009 
Cinemanila is upon us once again, this time springing from the heart of the rapidly growing city of Taguig. As we get closer to opening night, we’ll be looking at some of the things to look forward to in this year’s iteration.
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posted on Tuesday, July 28, 2009 
The UP Cineastes' Studio will be holding a screening of the Cinemalaya Cinco, the most prestigious independent film festival in the country this year. The event will run from July 27-August 4, 2009 at the UP
Film Institute in UP Diliman.
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posted on Monday, July 27, 2009 
Veronica Velasco and Jinky Laurel’s Last Supper No. 3 won Best Film in the Full Length feature category of the all digital 2009 Cinemalaya Independent Film Festival and Competition while Special Jury Prize in the same category was shared by two films---Colorum by Jon Steffan Ballesteros and Ang Panggahasa Kay Fe by Alvin Yapan. This was announced in the Cinemalaya awarding rites on July 26, 2009 at the Cultural Center of the Philippines’ Tanghalang Nicanor Abelardo.
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by Philbert Ortiz Dy posted on Saturday, July 25, 2009 
Of all the films in the competition, Mike Sandejas’ Dinig Sana Kita probably has the biggest chance at gaining a mainstream audience. This little love story between a rebellious young girl and a deaf boy she meets at a retreat in Baguio is quite lovely all in all, reveling in sweetness and optimism, warming hearts all around. It takes quite a few narrative shortcuts to get where it wants to go, but the story is still by far more affecting than your average romantic film. The way this movie uses (and doesn’t use) sound is exemplary, saying a whole in silence and pushing all sorts of buttons with a single note. Editing could be better, but the film is technically sound all in all. But what really sells the film is its cast, particularly lead actor Romalito Mallari, whose tenaciously charming performance makes everything in this film just that much better. The film could be a whole lot tighter, and the ending tries too desperately to tug at those heartstrings, almost reaching parodic levels of sugary sweetness, but overall, it works for what it is, and I look forward to seeing its success outside the CCP.
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by Philbert Ortiz Dy posted on Friday, July 24, 2009 
Milo Sugueco’s Sanglaan feels like the prototypical indie film, the sort of quirky, poignant dramedy revolving around a set of characters who operate within a limited area, in this case a pawnshop. Olivia (Tessie Tomas) is the owner of said pawnshop, and she’s clinging desperately to the business as the crisis slows things down and criminals make life more difficult. She’s got a son in the States who has petitioned for her citizenship, but Olivia doesn’t want to leave. Meanwhile, her timid adoptive niece Amy (Ina Feleo) has her world turned around when an old crush arrives at the pawnshop to rent a room above it. And then there’s Kanor the security guard, who resorts to desperate measures to find money for his wife, who’s in the hospital with pneumonia. The movie is gorgeously shot and generally well acted, but it feels pretty unremarkable. It feels like the movie doesn’t make good use of its unique setting, using it mostly as a way to progress the plot, never really dwelling on the character of the place. It’s an agreeable film, definitely, and there’s obviously a lot both in front of and behind the camera. But all that talent is used in ways we’re all too familiar with, and while Sanglaan is good, it’s difficult to say if it will stand out from the rest of the pack.
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by Philbert Ortiz Dy posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Cinemalaya, just by virtue of its location, is an inherently more difficult festival to cover. There’s too much going on in too small a space, in a far more isolated location than your average shopping mall. As much as I’d like to give it the day-by-day coverage that I’ve given to other festivals, it just isn’t possible. But it is important to cover Cinemalaya, if only to shine some attention on the films in this year’s competition. I’m not sure if I can find the time to do it, but I’m going to try to catch all ten of this year’s competition films and write short reviews for each of them.
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