Film Fest Report (Day 1)

Sparky and I put the "inter" in international on our first day of the Film Festival that's going down here in town last night. Since we're big fans of foreign films and especially the ones with an Asian bent, we went to see two films made by Filipino filmmakers.


The first film was called Rigadon. It was made a a first time filmmaker who studied film at NYU. Rigadon is a dreamy languid piece of film making. It's about the lives of three Filipino immigrants living in NY who lives intersect. There lots of slow artsy shots of people doing pointless things or staring off into the great void of nothingness and there is the mandatory dream sequence which thankfully does not contain a dwarf spouting gibberish or nonsense phrases but it did feature lots of men in lots of garish make up who spoke in funny sounding tones. In short I hated this film due to it's pretentiousness and forced artiness. It's just the type of film that leaves me with the desire to throttle the filmmaker and say, "Will you stop trying to be so god damned obscure and just tell a feckin' story after all?" But to be honest this it just the type of film that one should expect at film festivals and on one level I was glad to have seen it because it would never ever have shown around here if not for the Film Festival.

The next film we were supposed to see was called "Imelda" and it was going to be an unflinching look at the former First Lady of the Philippines, Imelda Marcos. But since the print of said film did not make it to the festival on time they could not show it. The young Filipino woman, who it turns out is also the head of the art gallery on the ETSU campus, who was in charge of the venue apologized profusely for not getting the film in on time but she assured us that it was available on DVD if we really wanted to see it.

So we stayed and saw a film that we had not intended to see and that film was called Edades (pronounced e-DODD-ess). By the time this film ended I was happy that Imelda did not get there in time to be seen because the film we actually saw was better than I ever imagined. Edades is a documentary about Victorio Edades the father of modern art in the Philippines. I must admit that I've done quite a bit of self guided study about art and artists through out my life but I had learned mostly about European and American artists and my knowledge of Asian artists in general and about Filipino artists in particular was spotty if not non existent. Watching this film I was astounded by the beauty and depth of Edades art, and that of the people who he influenced and or taught. He studied in America and was influenced by Cezanne and other modern artists but when it came time for him to create his own art he made truly unique art that is nothing less than striking. The film combines straightforward documentary film making along with re-enactments, but not the usually dull and dry as toast History Channel style re-enactments, instead these are stylish, striking, and something to behold re-enactments. By the time the credits rolled I was ready to jump up and applaud the filmmakers, but discretion forbade me and when I say discretion I mean Sparky.


Sadly there were only three of us in the audience at Rigadon and when it finished the little blond gal who sat near Sparky and I got up and left, I guess she had gotten her fill of pretentious Filipino made art films. So that left only Sparky and I in the audience to see Edades, which was, trust me, everyone elses loss. If you'd like to see Rigadon or Edades you're going to have a tough time because Rigadon is not available commercially yet and Edades is only available on DVD in the Philippines.


We're sticking with our diet of Asian films tonight and we're going to see a full fledged Bollywood epic that is replete with over wrought acting, singing, dancing, and some wild romancing. I'm looking forward to seeing it and of course writing about it afterwards. See you at the movies later tonight kids, bye now!