This year, two Filipino films will be screening at the Melbourne International Film Festival that will take place on 2-19 of August.
Nervous Translation
In Nervous Translation, Filipino visual artist and director Shireen Seno invites you to see the world through the eyes of a child. Set in 1987 against the backdrop of political turmoil in the Philippines, the story is told entirely from the perspective of eight-year-old Yael – a shy, anxious child who spends her days after school alone at home. Yael’s mother works long hours in a factory and her father is an Overseas Filipino Worker in Riyadh. Yael fills her time listening to cassette tapes of her father’s voice and cooking him tiny meals on her miniature stove. At night, she plucks her mother’s white hairs for pocket money.
Through impressionistic imagery and occasional touches of magical realism, Seno drops clues about the outside world as well as the complicated relationship between Yael’s mother and uncle, rendered oblique through Yael’s limited understanding. Winner of the Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema (NETPAC) award at the 2018 International Film Festival Rotterdam, Nervous Translation is an enchanting, thoughtful paean to childhood innocence, curiosity and vulnerability.
SCREENING DATES & TIMES:
SUNDAY, 5 AUG, 4:15pm at ACMI
THURSDAY, 9 AUG, 9:15pm at ACMI
Season of the Devil
Lav Diaz’s melancholy, unconventional musical confronts the violence of his country’s past – and, through it, the echoes that persist to this day.
Set in a small town in the Philippines in 1979, Season of the Devil is a tale of government-sponsored militias – ostensibly set up to maintain order, and drawing upon superstition and folklore to justify their acts – ruthlessly targeting political activists, suspected drug traffickers and random civilians. When a magnanimous young doctor disappears from the village, her estranged husband travels there to find answers and face demons, both within and without.
With its dialogue delivered entirely in song, Season of the Devil retains the masterful visuals and patient observation that Diaz (The Woman Who Left, MIFF 2017) is renowned for. Surreal yet rooted firmly in historical abuses of power, his latest film is an elegy for the persecuted, past and present alike.
SCREENING DATE & TIME:
SUNDAY, AUG 12 11:00am at Kino Cinema 2
