The Philippine Arts Festival 2012 Opens on Jan. 29

The National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA), the country’s prime agency for arts and culture, ushers in the National Arts Month (NAM) with a festive opening of the Philippine Arts Festival (PAF) on January 29, 2012.

The PAF is NCCA’s major event in celebration of (NAM). The opening will be at the Rizal Park, promising a fiesta atmosphere highlighted by a kite making workshop and kite flying, and sumptuous samplings of the seven arts.

This will serve as a launch pad for a month-long fete that emphasizes the artistry of the Filipino people. PAF comprises the flagship projects of the seven committees of the NCCA’s Subcommission on the Arts, comprising architecture, cinema, dance, literature, music, theater and the visual arts.

Under its chairman Felipe de Leon, Jr. and OIC-executive director Adelina Suemith, the NCCA has taken the theme “Tradition and Innovation” for the festival, which aims to further Philippine art and the Filipino’s regard for local arts and culture. PAF will comprise workshops, exhibitions, forums, performances and many more, participated in by representatives of all the seven arts and taking place all over the country. Numerous artists are expected to take part in this grand gathering.

The annual celebration of National Arts Month started with the signing of Presidential Proclamation 683, in 1991, declaring February as National Arts Month. Over the years, NCCA as well as private and government agencies organize events and activities to highlight the artistic brilliance of the Filipinos. In recent years, the NCCA has been organizing a festival that showcases the artistic harvest of Filipino talents for NAM.

This year’s PAF will emphasize traditional art forms and genres as well as contemporary ones. There will also be tributes to National Hero Jose Rizal. Closing the PAF is the Ani ng Dangal awarding ceremony as well as recognition of contemporary artists for their contributions.

For the whole month of February, expect the seven committees to present their projects, in which the public is invited to come.

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Ateneo Video Open 13 Deadline

The Ateneo Video Open, now on its thirteenth year, is an annual nationwide film competition open to collegiate-level filmmakers.

The event aims to highlight the effective use of aesthetically pleasing films as media for social discourse. There are four categories: short narrative, music video, documentary, and experimental. The competition would end in an awards night where cash prizes await winners of each category judged by renowned persons in the field of film and art.

Please be reminded that the deadline for your entries is on January 20, at 5pm. Just go to Ateneo de Manila University (along Katipunan Ave., QC), ask around for the MVP building, and proceed to room 308. The Loyola Film Circle org room will be open from Monday-Friday, 9:00 am to 5:00 pm. Please refer to the Ateneo Video Open website for reminders, FAQs, and additional information. Thanks and good luck with your entries! http://ateneovideoopen13.tumblr.com/

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AGIT POP! Post-Its To The Post Apocalypse

AGIT POP! Post-Its To The Post Apocalypse

Secret Fresh’s year opener for 2012 is an exhibit of poster art created by Manila’s top and up and coming graphic designers and artists who also venture into illustration. The show opening this January 8 Sunday at 6 PM is entitled AGIT POP! Post-Its To The Post Apocalypse and showcases their poster designs which imagines them as message boards to a future world promising utopic visions in the aftermath of an imagined anticipated holocaust as prodded by the much Mayan calendar footnoting of the year 2012. Reversing the doomdsday prophesies, the posters present instead a possibility beyond such eventuality, speculating on the premise of a promised renewed world or the unfulfillment of such in a rather dystopia.

AGIT POP! Will be on view till the 27th of January. Secret Fresh is at Ronac Art Center, Ortigas Avenue, Greenhills, San Juan, MM. Secret Fresh is open from Mondays to Saturdays from 2 to 10PM and Sundays from 1 to 6PM.

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A First: William Shakespeare's King Lear in Filipino

MANILA, Philippines - William Shakespeare is regarded as the greatest global dramatist ever. His works has prompted so many adaptations and retellings and has been articulated in many different forms and languages. However, we Filipinos have never seen one of his greatest plays, King Lear, done in graceful liquid Tagalog prose - until now.

After the back-to-back success of Philippine Educational Theater Association's (PETA) Shakespeare rap musical 'William' and its box office comedy-drama 'Care Divas', PETA opens 2012 with another brave opus: the first-ever Filipino adaptation of William Shakespeare's evocative masterpiece, King Lear.

Set in a post-nuclear world that is strangely contemporary and familiar, Shakespeare's King Lear receives a fitting, royal makeover, fashioned by a pool of Filipino theater giants.

National Artist for Literature, Bienvenido Lumbera translates the text into prose while retaining the rhythm, texture and elegant brutality of Shakespeare's tragedy. Acclaimed theater director, Nonon Padilla then turns the epic classic into a modern-dress contemporary family drama, while World Stage Design Awardee Gino Gonzales establishes the dark aesthetic, settings and styles of the play.

Exciting, suspenseful and virtually violent, PETA's 'Haring Lear' retains Shakespeare's beautiful and devastating themes of the disintegration of family solidarity, running the gamut of love, madness, death and sacrifice.

'Haring Lear' features a traditional Shakespeare all-male cast helmed by theater stalwart Teroy Guzman who plays the role of the aging monarch, Haring Lear. The rest of the cast includes: Gary Lim (Regan), Nor Domingo (Goneril), Abner Delina (Cordelia), Jay Gonzaga (Edmundo), Myke Salomon (Edgardo), Jack Yabut (Gloster), Josel Reyes (Kent), George De Jesus (Oswaldo), Jeff Hernandez (Duke ng Cornualles), Renante Bustamante (Duke ng Albanya), Fredyl Hernandez (Duke ng Burgonia), Angel Moratilla (Hari ng Francia) and Ernie Cloma (Matandang Lalaki).

'Haring Lear' runs every Friday, Saturday and Sunday from January 27 until March 4, 2012 at The PETA Theater Center. For tickets, contact 7256244, 4100821-22, 0917-5765400,petatheater@gmail.com, www.petatheater.com.

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First Asian Gong & Bamboo Music Festival to Highlight Philippine Arts Festival

The National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) will hold the First Asian Festival of Gongs and Bamboo Music, as part of the Philippine Arts Festival (PAF) in celebration of the National Arts Month.

Led by Prof. Felipe de Leon Jr., NCCA chairman, the music festival will gather local and foreign gongs and bamboo ensembles for performances and workshops from February 20 to 24, 2012 in Cagayan de Oro and from February 25 to 28 in Baguio and Iloilo.

The Musicology Society of the Philippines is the principal proponent of the First Asian Festival of Gongs and Bamboo Music, which will also incorporate a conference that will explain the social and spiritual significance of the music created by the gongs and bamboo.

PAF 2012 will emphasize traditional art forms and genres as well as contemporary ones. The launching is set at the Rizal Park with a fiesta atmosphere highlighted by a kite making workshop and kite flying, as well as sumptuous samplings of the seven arts. Closing the PAF is the Ani ng Dangal awarding ceremony as well as the recognition of contemporary artists for their contributions.

PAF is held every February in celebration of the National Arts Month in pursuant to Presidential Proclamation No. 683 signed in 1991. The month-long festival is spearheaded by the NCCA, led by its chairman Felipe de Leon Jr. and OIC-executive director Adelina Suemith, with Marichu Tellano as head of the Planning, Policy Formulation, and Programming Division.

For next year’s celebration, the NCCA has taken the theme “Tradisyon at Inobasyon” (Tradition and Innovation) which aims to further advance local creativity in the arts. Eminent local and foreign artists will take part in this biggest and grandest month-long cultural gathering.

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CALABARZON Film Festival 2012: Call For Entries

We are pleased to inform you that pelikuLAB-Samasining, in cooperation with UPLB Office for Initiatives in Culture and the Arts, is organizing PELIKUL2URA: The Calabarzon Film Festival 2012, which will be held on Feb. 22-24 at UPLB. Its first edition was held successfully last year in February also at UPLB.

In line with the second Calabarzon-wide film festival, we are now accepting entries for the short film competition, and we are inviting your institution to participate in this historic event by sending films and delegates. May we also ask for your assistance in disseminating this announcement in your institution?

The winners of the competition will receive cash prize, plaque and certificate. There is also a chance that your film submissions will be screened in NCCA’s Cinemarehiyon 2012 to be held in Bacolod City in Feb. together with films from other regions prior to the festival.

The deadline for submission of entries and delegate registration is on Dec. 31 at 11:00 pm. Due to budget constraints, we will not be able to shoulder accommodation of delegates, but we are currently raising funds to subsidize accommodation expenses.

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