CINEKATIPUNAN TO FEATURE REBEL DOCUMENTARIES BY CANADIAN DIRECTOR MARIE BOTI

Music, politics and film unite in Cinekatipunan's monday screenings by featuring Canadian documentary filmmaker and Production Multi-Monde founder Marie Boti.

Marie is currently directing Musique Rebelles, a collection of documentary films about activist musicians around the world. In Rebel Music Quebec, Marie and her team follow the personal and political struggles of four groups of musicians as they carry on the tradition of musique engagée in the la belle province.

Rappers Loco Locass sample Quebec nationalist icon Felix Leclerc. Anarchist Agit-Pop poet Norman Nawrocki (Rhythm Activism) fights for tenant's rights. Singer-songwriters Landriault and Lise Gregoire support punks and housing activists defending a squat. Montreal-based Acalanto use music to maintain their identity in exile after a US-sponsored coup in their native Chile. Rebel Music Quebec, the first in the Rebel Music series - pumps-up the volume as all four unite against the Free Trade Area of the Americas in Quebec City, April 2001.

Marie has also directed a trilogy of films on women and Filipino labour migration including Brown Women Blond Babies (1991), When Strangers Re-Unite (1999) and Modern Heroes Modern Slaves (1997), winner of the Canadian Association of Journalists award for Best Investigative Documentary.

Modern Heroes Modern Slaves is a behind the scenes look at the situation of Filipina overseas contract workers starts from the story of Flor Contemplacion, a Filipino maid in Singapore who was hanged in March 1995. Her plight and the campaign to stop the hanging, was a turning point in the national consciousness of the Philippines about the plight of migrant workers. Modern Heroes Modern Slaves shows the systemic trade in workers, with complicity of the states supplying them, and those receiving them. Best investigative documentary award by the Canadian Association of Journralists, 1997.

Marie Boti will be present during the screenings

MES DE GUZMAN is an independent film director/scriptwriter. He has won four Don Carlos Palanca awards for his scripts and a 2004 NCCA Grand Prize award for "Rancho Dyanggo", his first novel. His 35 mm short film Batang Trapo won the L'Etoile d'Or (Golden Star) Grand Prize for Short Film at the Festival International Du Film de Marrakech in Morocco. The film also won Best Short Film in the Urian awards and First Prize and Best Short Film for Children at the Gawad CCP for Film and Video and the Ishmael Bernal Award for Young Cinema, CineManila International Film Festival. His recent feature film "The Road to Kalimugtong" won the Altadis New Director's Prize, special mention at the 2006 San Sebastian Film Festival.

For Jinky and Potpot, life in Benguet is simply a trek to and from school. They travel daily along with other kids, through mountains, rivers, and hanging bridges to get to their destination. For their young minds, this is a normal part of their fate as Igorots (native of Mountain province, North of Philippines). Their elder brothers, Ramil and Ronaldo, take on odd jobs as vegetable packers, market porters, carpenters, all-around handymen, among others, to provide food and be able to send Jinky and Potpot to school. Having lost both their parents to a mysterious illness at an early age, the brothers had to support the family and fend for themselves. The brothers went on with their routine until they thought of working in a mining company. Jinky and Potpot were left under their ailing grandfather’s care. A portrait of a rural family in majestic Benguet, as seen through the journey of two siblings. This lyrical tale of faith and survival is performed with freshness and spontaneity by real Igorot children. With images heightened by subtlety, the film lends an empowering voice to the marginalized

SARI LLUCH DALENA is a fulbright scholar and independent filmmaker with a Master’s Degree in Film Production from New York University. Her feature documentary “Memories of a Forgotten War” (a documentary on the Philippine American War of 1899) was the closing film at the Documentary Fortnight in New York City’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Her films have screened in Europe, Asia, and both North and South America. Previous films include “Kamikaze”, “Bullet Days”, “White Funeral” and “From Asia with Love”. Her two shorts, “Little Crosses” and “Church Dogs” won the Gawad URIAN for Best Short Film. She is the recipient of CCP’s 13 Artists Award, the Asian Cultural Council Fellowship, and the Starr Foundation Award.

KEITH SICAT began his creative life focusing on the visual mediums of painting and photography long before falling in love with cinema. He has exhibited in various group shows held in the US including the Smithsonian Institute (Washington, DC) and solo exhibits in the Washington DC area and the Philippines (West gallery). Sicat earned a double-major in Philiosophy and Literature at the University of Sussex in England. His works have screened internationally in Eusope, Asia, and North America. Previous films include “Solo Cadenza”, “Introspectres”, and the award-winners “The Trickle Down Effect” and “Third Party”.

Rigodon 16 mm, 80 minutes, 2005. This feature film follows the spiritual journeys of three Filipino immigrants in New York City whose lives intertwine in the age of racial profiling and government crackdowns. Amado, the fighter, too old to continue boxing in his native land, comes to the US to battle the harsh conditions every migrant faces as he dreams of the family he left behind. Salome, the dreaming war-bride, has been wed to her American husband for ten years, but visions haunt her as she pursues her American dream. Dante, the rebel-poet, has been helping his fellow immigrants for over a decade. But who will help him in his hour of need? Their stories unfold in poetic cinematic language as the film meditates on the beauty and the horror that is the American dream.

Bullet Days. Black & White, Silent, 16mm., 9 minutes, 2001. A veiled woman drags her goat across a stony desert landscape. Her goat seems to embody her despairing situation—lustful men victimise her, while society is ever-ready to put the blame on her. When she meets a bandit, she gets her revenge.

MARIE BOTI is a documentary film director and co-founder of Productions Multi-Monde based in Montreal, Canada. She has directed a trilogy of films about women migrant workers, mostly from the Philippines and has been actively involved with her partner Malcolm Guy in international solidarity with the Philippines since the 1980's.

Modern Heroes Modern Slaves Betacam, 43 min., 1997. It starts from the story of Flor Contemplacion, a Filipino maid in Singapore who was hanged in March 1995. Her plight and the campaign to stop the hanging, was a turning point in the national consciousness of the Philippines about the plight of migrant workers. Modern Heroes Modern Slaves shows the systemic trade in workers, with complicity of the states supplying them, and those receiving them. Best investigative documentary award by the Canadian Association of Journralists, 1997.

Rebel Music Quebec Mini-DV, 52 min., 2002. French with English subtitles. The effervescence of social movements in the French-language province of Quebec Canada are featured through the music and lives of musical artists connected with their causes. The different styles and nature of the musicians reflect the changing face of the society, and of social movements today. All come together to protest the meeting of 34 heads of state at the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City in April 2001. The camera follows the artists as they perform through the tear gas and riot squads during the event that was pegged the "Tear gas summit", one of the mega protests against globalisation and free trade that greet most international conferences of this type. Rebel Music Quebec is the first of a collection of documentaries being produced by the team at Productions Multi-Monde about music and politics around the world.

TAD ERMITANO graduated from the Philippine Science High School, and studied Biology at the University of Hiroshima. He holds a Bachelor`s degree in Philosophy from the University of the Philippines, but trained in film and video at the Mowelfund Film Institute. He currently designs and mixes sound for digital features and produces video for projection in a variety of stage/concert contexts. He has collaborated with choreographers of Ballet Philippines in the creation of several video dance pieces. His own unaccompanied single-channel videos are distinguished by an audiovisual sensuousness underpinned by a rigorous sequential logic that reflects his training in philosophy and the sciences. Included among these single-channel works are Sausage, The Retrochronological Transfer of Information, and Hulikotekan v. 2.1, the last two of which have been screened at a number of international festivals, including the Yamagata International Film Festival, and the Hong Kong International Film Festival. His facility with a broad range technologies has caused the focus of his work to expand to include the use of computers in performance and installation contexts. He was the lone Filipino media artist at the 2006 Ogaki Biennale in Japan, which featured Hulikotekan v. 2.1 and his computer video installation Shift Register. Alone and in collaboration, he exploits the malleability that sound and video acquire when transformed into digital data, exploring new ways of using sound and image, both in the studio and in real time. Aside from creating computer-video installations, he performs audiovisual pieces, both solo and as part of the experimental media group The Children of Cathode Ray.

The Retrochronological Transfer of Information 11 mins, 1996. A metadocumentary, an actual attempt to breach time. It is also perhaps the first Filipino conceptual film. The film documents the filmmaker’s attempt to exploit Jung’s synchronicity principle, and send a message back in time to Jose Rizal, the Philippine National Hero.

Cathode Jam 17 mins, 1992. A man is drawn into a whirpool of feedback and has communion with the heart of the machine. Ursula K. Leguin called these kinds of narratives “psychomyths,” that is, a parable that illuminates certain psychological states or processes. It might also be called a “ technomyth.”

Sausage 15 minutes, 1996. A meditation on the relationship of pigs and jesus.

Hulikotekan v 2.1 6 minutes, 2002. An audiovisual round using household objects. It is constructed to contain relationships between its parts that can only be experienced when the work is expanded into its final multichannel form. The title of the piece, is a compound portmanteau word, which the filmmaker defines as a noun whose meaning is: an evolving pattern produced by the interaction of echoes.

It incorporates the following words:
Huli: Tagalog, to be delayed
Uli: Tagalog, again
Likot: Tagalog, restlessness
Ikot: Tagalog, cycle, to go around
Kotekan: Balinese, interlocking melodies
Teka: Tagalog, wait a moment

JOHN TORRES recently bagged the NETPAC/FIPRESCI critics award at the 2006 Singapore International Film Festival. Last year, he won the 2005 Cinemanila award for Best Short Film and the Ishmael Bernal Award for Young Cinema. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communication (cum laude) in the Ateneo de Manila University in 1997. Under the steady influence of a Jesuit priest, he learned about the fundamentals of filmmaking, watching masterpieces by local heroes Kidlat Tahimik, Mike de Leon, and Ishmael Bernal. He spent a year as a film apprentice under internationally-acclaimed feature film director Carlitos Siguion-Reyna (Ligaya Ang Itawag Mo Sa Akin), commercial director/cinematographer Manolo Abaya, and French cinematographer Michel Hugo. Known to his friends as Tempestad (tempestuous), John made his first three films to retell the personal journey of a young man trying to reflect and make sense of his own brokenness amidst pain and isolation. Currently a resident filmmaker of Los Otros, doing digital short films, documentaries, commercial advertisements, and multimedia projects, he is also a singer/songwriter of Taggu nDios, a hard rock band doing the rounds of the Manila independent music scene.

Todo Todo Teros Mini-DV, 102 min., 2006. An artist wakes up as a terrorist. He is sent abroad to bomb subways. He hasn't gone home. Manila sits still. A videotape emerges. This stranger talks to the camera and a familiar voice reacts, blasting as they move along. Composed mostly of found footage of close friends, Filipino musicians and performance artists, the film is a surreal take on Manila and how artists can subvert a culture by the mere act of creating works that empower and transform. It is a metamovie of sorts, a self-aware film that exposes suffering, infidelity, a woman's empowerment, and filmmaking as a benign mode of terrorism against strangers and lovers alike.

RICKY ORELLANA studied architecture at the University of Santo Tomas. He has worked variously as a sound recordist, film and sound editor, director, cameraman and animator on documentaries and short features. He is currently the Head of the Audiovisual Archive at the Mowelfund Film Institute.

Lines of Vision: A film on Arturo Rogerio Luz 16mm, 69 minutes, 1997. The line is the foundation of Arturo Luz’s art. Not line as boundary but line as idea, the line that leads to other lines. This vital credo can be seen in his steady attempts at defining and refining his vision, which earned a solid validation when Luz was given recognition as National Artist in 1997. “Lines Of Vision” sketches a portrait of Arturo Luz through the medium of several voices. Voices of art associates, critics, and friends who have known him or worked with him through the years. And then the voice of Luz himself. All first person accounts. Outlining detail after fine detail to bring into relief an intimate likeness of Arturo Luz the man and the artist. The first part situates Arturo Luz with art critics as they assess Luz and his art. Aesthetics, techniques and the art milieu come into play. The second part is a biographical timeline that draws Luz’s many transformations from student painter to gallery owner to family man and to national Artist. This is the realm of memory and personal destiny.