Showcasing a Filipino superstar in Europe

No doubt about her world-class artistry. Nora Aunor--widely considered as the greatest actress in the history of Philippine cinema and popularly known as the Superstar with her multi-media reign (music, television, cinema, and theater)--could be the closest to Meryl Streep and Barbra Streisand combined in terms of iconic cultural impact.

At the 69th Venice International Film Festival (29 August - 8 September 2012), the diminutive Aunor will stand one of the tallest as the spotlight of the world's oldest film festival beams up at two of her works. Her new film Thy Womb, directed by Brillante Mendoza (the best director awardee at the 2009 Cannes International Film Festival) has been officially selected at Venezia's competition section. Moreover, the digitally restored version of her 1982 film Himala (Miracle), awarded as the CNN Viewers' Choice for Best Asia-Pacific Film of All Time, has been chosen for Venezia's section of rediscovered world classics along with the works of European and American masters like Ingmar Bergman, Roberto Rossellini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Orson Welles, Michael Cimino, etc.

Aunor, who has won best actress awards from various international festivals, holds the distinction as the first Filipino actor and one of only a few Asians  whose films have been featured in three of the top-tier international festivals--Cannes (1981) for Lino Brocka's Bona, Berlin (1983) for Ishmael Bernal's Himala (Miracle), and Venice (2012) for Mendoza's Thy Womb. Affirming her preeminence, she topped the list of the 10 Best Asian Actresses of the Decade at the 2010 Green Planet Movie Awards (Los Angeles, California) along with China's Gong Li, Zhang Ziyi, and Maggie Cheung as well as celebrities from South Korea and Japan.

At 59, Aunor continues to reaffirm her royalty long after she sang her way to national fame out of poverty (she used to sell bottled water at the train station in her hometown). Since she became a singing champion at the age of 16 (think of American Idol circa the late 60s), the "little dark girl" has ensconced herself as the showbiz queen, reconfiguring the face of Philippine entertainment where the colonial standard of beauty--fair-skinned mestizas--used to reign. Cited for her pioneering efforts in producing independent films that have been considered among the classics in Philippine and world cinema, she has been a recipient of several lifetime awards. Her globally viable gifts as an artist will be up for a reaffirmation as she makes her presence felt in Europe once again.

Below is a video of a CNN feature on Himala (Miracle) with interviews of Aunor as well as the film's scriptwriter and producer:

Top 20: Spotlighting my favorite Asian films

How does one define Asia? Culturally, no continent on the planet is arguably more intricate and seemingly incomprehensible than Asia. Where the Western gaze often zooms in on its mysterious and sometimes misunderstood Oriental ethos, sizing up the Asian character or its soul can be a monumental undertaking in light of its ancient history, ageless traditions, and diverse belief systems.

For me, nothing can be more vividly potent in fostering understanding and appreciation of Asia in all its complexity than the portrayal of its people or its societies at large through the camera of its most accomplished filmmakers.

Or, if you’d ask me what’s the most engaging and enriching way—at once entertaining and enlightening—to encapsulate life-and-death issues of Asians or the universality of the Asian experience, let me present my personal list of favorite movies. The stories of its characters and their circumstances—by dint of their creators’ genius and style—have not only disturbed and delighted me in equal measure but also defined for me intuitively the world of Asians. Though arbitrary, my list with its order of preference defines as well my subjective sense of what world-class cinema means.

Needless to say, this list is never definitive, reflecting as it does only the movies that I have seen so far, something that I will remain fond of watching over and over again:

1) The Apu Trilogy: Pather Panchali, Aparajito, & The World of Apu 
    by Satyajit Ray: India
2) Okuribito (Departures) 
     by Yōjirō Takita: Japan
3) Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos (Three Years Without God) 
     by Mario O’ Hara: Philippines
4) Sansho the Bailiff 
     by Kenji Mizoguchi: Japan
5) Ikiru (To Live) 
     by Akira Kurosawa: Japan
6) Tokyo Story 
     by Yasujirō Ozu: Japan
7) Bona 
     by Lino Brocka: Philippines 
8) Himala (Miracle) 
     by Ishmael Bernal: Philippines
9) The Circle 
     by Jafar Panahi: Iran
10) Dà Hóng Dēnglóng Gāogāo Guà (Raise the Red Lantern) 
     by Zhang Yimou: China
11) Maborosi / Maboroshi no Hikari (Phantasmic Light) 
     by Hirokazu Kore-eda: Japan
12) Madeo (Mother) 
     by Bong Joon-ho: South Korea
13) City After Dark 
      by Ishmael Bernal: Philippines
14) The Ballad of Narayama 
      by Shohei Imamura: Japan
15) Bayaning 3rd World (Third World Hero) 
      by Mike de Leon: Philippines 
16) A Separation 
     by Asghar Farhadi: Iran 
17) Oldboy 
     by Chan-wook Park: South Korea 
18) Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang (You Were Weighed But Found Wanting) 
     by Lino Brocka: Philippines 
19) Zatoichi 
     by Takeshi Kitano: Japan 
20) Hero 
     by Zhang Yimou: China
 

Like life, this list shall go on...

Vying for the top prize at Venice

It takes three filmmakers from Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines to prove to the world that Asian cinema can not to be trifled with. Though only three from Asia have made the cut in a field of 18 films selected officially for competition at the 69th Venice International Film Festival (29 August – 8 September 2012), the creative wattage of Japan's Takeshi Kitano, South Korea's Kim Ki-Duk, and the Philippines's Brillante Mendoza are more than enough to light up the festival's line-up that counts the latest work from heralded American filmmakers Terrence Malick and Bryan de Palma along with European celluloid visionaries vying for the top prize at the world's oldest film festival.

KIM KI-DUK made history in 2004 when he won
best director at the film festivals in Berlin and
Venice in the same year for two different films. 

Kitano, Ki-Duk, and Mendoza are among the most internationally acclaimed auteurs whose works were selected to compete in the previous editions of the Venice film fests as well as in Cannes, Berlin, and the rest of showcases for global cinema. Though Ki-Duk’s Pieta marks the first time in seven years a Korean movie has entered the competition section of the festival since Park Chan-wook's Sympathy for Lady Vengeance in 2005, he earlier competed in Venice with The Isle (2000) and 3-Iron (2004) for which he won Best Director. Mendoza, who returns to Venice with his new film Thy Womb, earlier made his mark in Venice’s competition section with Lola (Grandmother) in 2010.

  

BRILLANTE MENDOZA made history in 2009 as the first Filipino filmmaker
to win the best director award at the Cannes International Film Festival

For his part, Kitano's new film Outrage Beyond marks his return to Venice where his films have been hailed with multiple awards. Here's a sneak a peek of Kitano's two films--Zatoichi and Hana-bi (Fireworks)-- that once wowed the critics and audiences at Venice: 

Let's talk about sex...

To the Western eye, the East often embodies the stranger titillating the mind with either fascination or suspicion at once unleashing a powerful urge for conquest. To the extent that ethnocentrism is synonymous with superiority, the impulse to dictate and domesticate the “other” can be very sexual in its impulse to control, to colonize. This sense of potency obviously has a gendered nuance of dominance, especially in a culture steeped in patriarchy and machismo.

Where Asians are often objectified as tame or submissive, if not suffused with an earthy aura of the mysterious, the unknown can spawn stereotypes that may reflect the dark side of desire. Consider the geishas, the girls in a harem, the cabal of concubines.

Exotic may as well be just another word for erotic. And where it is mostly the female who fleshes out the image of victimhood even in non-Asian countries, media representation of women—especially in the movies—is often rendered skin-deep like whip marks or tattoos.  Interviewed about her 1996 film Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love, Indian director Mira Nair revealed:  “I make films of issues that get under my skin, and I made this film almost directly to counter the perversity with which women are being presented on our screens, not just in India, but in the West as well. I wanted very much to look back to a time in our country when sexuality and love were something to be taken very seriously, as an art, as a skill, as something sacred."

Where the idea of an empowered feminism wears a Western hat or a short hair, it could be nearly unimaginable for Oriental women to have fun flaunting themselves with the cheerful air of a Marilyn Monroe over her wind-blown skirt.  

Leave it to the non-Western filmmakers, however, to render sexuality as a complex of human experience within a social and cultural context.  Such is the dimension of sex in Asian cinema, where the evocation of the most private act—whether lyrical, unsettling, or simply controversial—can intuit a public issue that exemplifies a sociological imagination. More often than not, lust is not the last word even in the ten greatest sex scenes fromAsian movies. For instance, Peque Gallaga’s Scorpio Nights (arguably one of the finest in Philippine cinema), Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution (Best Film at the at the 64th Venice Film Festival in 2007) or the works of Nagisa Oshima (who won the best director prize in Cannes for his 1978 film Empire of Passion) can make sense of this maxim: There’s more than meets the eye.

Beware of voyeurs, doggone if they don’t give a damn even to the wisdom of Oshima’s odd but iconic masterpiece In the Realm of the Senses:

This is just to say...

This is my first time to do podcasting, and so I was virtually groping or literally lost for a while there making sense of the whole nine yards of recording and transferring the audio. But all the false starts have been water under the bridge, so to speak, with this initial attempt at podcasting. Though I don't apologize for my distinct Filipino accent, I hope you will be more tolerant with my audible unease with disembodied disclosure about a private obsession: my addiction for films--preferably Asian:  

Podcast Powered By Podbean

Looking through Asian lens: The legendary Indian director Satyajit Ray

Limbs as fast as light

It's nearly impossible to talk about Martial Arts without thinking of Asian films, specifically the Kung Fu or Karate variety. Kick-ass action, with its jaw-dropping stunts, have made international icons of Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Jet Li, etc.

Of course, Hollywood has been quick in cashing in on the entertainment bonanza from mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. At its most basic level, McLuhan's theory of the global village can be easily gleaned from the escapist experience of viewers from Afghanistan to Zaire whose common culture may include their being enthralled by the gee-whiz genre of flying kicks and faster-than-bullets fisticuffs. We may as well call it the transnationalization of the action genre beyond the so-called Hollywood hegemony. Aside from the Karate Kid franchise, audiences in the United States and the rest of the world have been all out in embracing such Asian sensation as Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Zhang Yimou's Hero.

Yuen Wo Ping, the stunt director and choreographer of Lee's critically acclaimed film, has become a fixture in Hollywood as its filmmakers seek his expertise in calling the shots for the stylized kinetic poetry in such box-office sensation as the Wachowski brothers' The Matrix series and Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill, among others.

There's more than meets the eye as Ping picks his favorite action scenes, among them this clip from Lee's film:

For more action, read this article on Asian cinema's 20 greatest fight scenes.

Ray, the rajah of world cinema

Three is a mystical number, and cinephiles would concur thrice about the best in cinematic history: Francis Ford Copolla's iconic The Godfather series. Krzysztof Kieslowski's poetic reverie White, Blue, and Red. Peter Jackson's monumental Lord of the Rings saga. All have thunder and lightning all over them—the lush light of grand design, the flourish of an operatic aria.

And then there is The Apu Trilogy by Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray. Unerring and almost God-like in the way  the simplest scenes become luminous with lyricism, Ray's vision catches the world of his characters in the spider-web rhythm of the ordinary, rendering it no less epic as Ray unearths the sublime pathos out of the main character's rites of passage from his bucolic village to the city and back. No larger-than-life gestures here. No highlights of blinding virtuosity. No soaring musical score other than the simple but haunting strain of Ravi Shankar's sitar.

But listen how the great Akira Kurosawa raves along with a chorus of international directors: "Not to have seen the cinema of Satyajit Ray means existing in the world without seeing the sun or the moon... It is the kind of cinema that flows with the serenity and nobility of a big river."

And so, taking Kurosawa's cue, it was with nearly erotic abandon that I went to the screening of Ray's The Apu Trilogy during a retrospective film festival at the cineplex in my hometown (Cebu City, Philippines) nearly a decade ago.

Thus it happened that there was no turning back for me from Ray's evocative rendition of a poor family's life in a small Bengali village in Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road) and their migration to the holy city of Benares in Aparajito (The Unvanquished), and the protagonist’s return to his old village in Apu Sansar (The World of Apu), the trilogy's last installment. Haunted by the almost spiritual spell of Ray’s film, I got hold of the trilogy's DVD set in 2008. It has been a treat to return to its realm of wisdom with its narrative so nuanced with its evocations of innocence and wonder, heartbreak and healing.  

Nothing less than miraculous how Ray edifies everyday life in each of the three films, "refusing to divorce beauty from tragedy, rendering the ordinary majestic and discovering insight and ironies in the smallest of moments."

Truly, Ray’s trilogy more than holds a candle to Orson Welles's Citizen Kane as one of the most promethean debuts in the annals of filmmaking as Ray earned the unprecedented Best Human Document award at the Cannes International Film Festival for his debut film, Pather Panchali (1955).   The cinema of Ray, one of only a few directors who won awards at the top three international film festivals (Cannes, Venice, and Berlin),  has been huge influence of some of the most heralded filmmakers all over the world, including Martin Scorcese. Hear how Scorcese waxes ecstatic about Ray's impact on his own brand of filmmaking:

 
Ray received an honorary Oscar for Lifetime Achievement weeks before his death in 1992. See video of Ray accepting his Oscar from his bed:

Behold the master filmmaker as talks about his evolution as an artist: his childhood, the influence of the Bengal renaissance, his fascination for design and typography, his attitude about politics and violence in cinema, his enthusiasm for period films as well as children's films, his view on Western films and critics, and his intimation his mortality. 

A tale of two mothers

Complexity is of the essence in films that I find at once entertaining and enlightening. This quality is easily evident in the best of Korean cinema, which is one of the world's most intoxicating visual brew. Highly layered, the Korean facet of the human condition--even at its most horrible and heartbreaking--never fails to beam up with a grin and to surprise us with the grace of transcendent beauty. Since getting bedazzled by the films of Park Chan-wook after watching his exhilarating offbeat trilogy--Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002), Oldboy (2003), and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (2005)--I've been bracing myself to wade deep into the New Wave of Korean filmmaking.

After reading the reviews of Bong Joon-ho’s Mother and Lee Chang-dong's Poetry, I watched them one after the other recently and still can't get over it. I can not recommend it strongly enough to give justice to its exquisitely nuanced narrative, performances, and other production values that are simply world-class. In a nutshell, both films feature two of the most out-of-the-box and complicated characterization of mothers I have ever seen---crazy, scary, but always feisty with resilience and tenderness.

Let these trailers speak for the pleasure that awaits those who will watch these two modern gems of Korean cinema:

A Filipino giant named Mario O'Hara

Vita brevis, ars longa. Life is short, art is long. This truism becomes a living testimony to the works of a Filipino Renaissance Man—“actor, director, writer, a giant of Philippine theater and film," as affirmed in the eulogy from National Commission on Culture and the Arts (NCCA).

Mario O'Hara, 68, died from complications due to acute leukemia last June 25, 2012. With the news of his passing, a chorus of  artists and writers memorialized their mourning by turning his name a trending buzzword in Twitter. After the outpouring of grief came the ode to his artistry—at turns socio-realist and fabulist in its cold-eyed dramatization but always warm with its humanist vision.  Known for his unassuming ways, O’Hara certainly left a void in the hearts of many who attest to his generosity of spirit and his non-compromising craftsmanship. “Though he’s been invited to direct soap operas and mainstream films many times, O’ Hara was consistent in refusing offers from major studios, citing the creative limitations set by network executives,” cited a report.  

O’Hara wrote the screenplays of two famous films by Lino Brocka, the most internationally renowned Filipino director, one of which (“Insiang”)  became the first Filipino film to be invited to the prestigious Cannes International Film Festival in 1977.  In 2003, "Ang Babae Sa Breakwater" (Woman of the Breakwater), written and directed by O’Hara, was also shown in Cannes. “This low-budget independent film was one of the pioneers leading the charge of Philippine cinema on the international festival circuit. Today Philippine movies are a fixture at Cannes, Venice, and other festivals. This would not have been possible without the ground-breaking work of the quiet, self-effacing Mario O’Hara,” acknowledged the Cinema One Originals Festival last year when it named him a co-recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award along with the Superstar of Philippine entertainment, Nora Aunor.

Known as  O’Hara’s muse and collaborator in most of his critically acclaimed films, Aunor started to be recognized as the “country’s greatest actress” when O’Hara directed her in the 1976 classic “Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos" (Three Godless Years), which a film critic arguably considered as “the best Filipino film ever made.” 

That immortality becomes O’Hara can be gleaned from his body of work as a performer and filmmaker. That immortality becomes O’Hara’s can be gleaned from his essential body of work both as a performer and filmmaker.  His influence is immense, wrote a fellow filmmaker in a tribute titled "Once There Were Giants."

Cinemasia

Can't imagine life without cinema. Neither can I see the real getting more vivid and multi-dimensional if it is not rendered in reel or in the digital magic of motion picture. As much as I'm hooked on books, movies are just as mystifying to me with its seduction of light and shadow that compels me to behold and grasp the world inside and around me in sharper focus.
  

To the extent that films feed my imagination, what I watch also shapes my evolution: my sense of identity, my image of a nation, my notion of a worldview.

I'm an omnivore as far as films are concerned, and my viewing pleasure knows no genre, no race, no border. Indeed, my ongoing education about the universality of the human condition is largely owed to an appreciation for and fascination with the diversity of international films regardless of whatever is lost in translation. 

As a Filipino, however, I'm obviously most at home watching movies made not only from the Philippines but also from neighboring countries in the Asian region. My interest in Sociology also inspires me to look for qualities of Asian character and culture portrayed on screen that makes it both local and global at the same time. One sociological theory that appeals to me is "glocalization." That such concept was mulled over by a Western scholar (Roland Robertson) makes it all the more fascinating, proof-positive of the interconnected aspects of self and social experience that animate the dialectics of homogeneity and heterogeneity in time and space. 

In this context, this blog will be both my way of paying tribute to the dynamism of Asian cinema and my offering to non-Asians so they may partake of its opulent particularities that are often prone to be misunderstood and muddled into exoticism and xenophobia, which are mostly influenced by media representation. By highlighting a few of my favorite films that are not produced by Hollywood or the dream factories in Europe,  this blog is a testimony of pride and goodwill to people who look forward to seeing the common tie that binds us all, Asians or not. 


Below is a video showcase of the 10 Best Films of All Time from the Asia Pacific region honored by the CNN in 2008.