SINEMALETA

Sinemaleta is a portable film festival of NCCA-funded films to be shown in pre-selected barangay centers around Metro Manila on weekend evenings during February, National Arts Month. For directions to the venues and further inquiries on Sinemaleta, contact Kristine Kintana at +63905.2404177.

8 February 2008, Friday, 7 pm
Covered Court, Barangay 178, Camarin, Caloocan City
Mudraks
Directed by Arah Badayos

Inside the Rabadon house, nobody talks. Lives are kept to themselves; problems are not shared; questions are not entertained. The people living inside it have become used to leaving everything unstirred especially Margaret, the mother of the home. Margaret's desire for cleanliness and order alienates her from her family. She cannot confront the problems of her life and so she confronts dirty dishes, ugly stains, and disorderly appliances. To get to know her family, she snoops around—entering rooms, opening cabinets, reading journals she is not supposed to read. But everything changes when a journal entry of her daughter's makes her unravel, stirring the unstirred life that she has held on to for years.

9 February 2008, Saturday, 7 pm
Policarpio Chapel, Barangay San Jose, Navotas
Rotonda
Directed by Ron Bryant

Beginning at the break of dawn and ending the next morning, the story, set around a rugged city intersection, follows the path of a marked one-thousand-peso bill as it transfers from one character to another, returning to its originator in the end, blood-tainted. The money leads us to each of the five offbeat characters, all in desperate need of their soul's redemption: a disillusioned tabloid reporter planning to commit suicide in a motel, a nightclub dancer con prostitute who has avowed to give her kid sister a better life, a fallen henchman resurfacing to score big time, a chronic runaway teenage girl held captive as sex slave by a cop, and a long-suffering son bearing a sadomasochistic relationship with his brutish, half-paralyzed father who behaves like a mad dictator in his wheelchair. Like a ticking time bomb, the story unravels with unforgiving immediacy and explodes in the end with a tabloid front-pager triple homicide where death seems to have come full circle.

15 February 2008, Friday, 8 pm – 5 am
Angono Municipal Hall, Angono, Rizal
Death in the Land of Encantos
Directed by Lav Diaz

The main character of Kagadanan is a Filipino poet named Benjamin Agusan (played by Roeder Camañag). He is the hapless native who returns to his hometown Padang to witness the aftermath of a super typhoon. Director Lav Diaz short Kagadanan in Padang, Legaspi City, where a village was buried by landslides caused by super typhoon REming that hit the Bicol region on November 30, 2006.

For the past seven years, Benjamin has been living in an old town called Kaluga in Russia. With his grant and residency, he taught and conducted workshops in a university. The poet published two books of sadness and longing in the process.

In Russia, Benjamin shot video collages, fell in love with a Slavic beauty, buried a son, and almost went mad. He came back home to bury his loved ones—father, mother, sister and a lover. He came back to face Mount Mayon, the raging beauty and muse of his youth. He came home to confront the country that he so loved and hated, the Philippines. He came back to die in the land of his birth. He wanders around the obliterated village meeting old friends and lovers.

Shot in black and white, Kagadanan sa Banwaan ning Mga Engkanto (Death in the Land of Encantos) expresses an inexhaustible belief in the regenerative power of both nature and art.

16 February 2008, Saturday, 7 pm
3^rd corner Main Avenue, Barangay Bagong Lipunan, Cubao
Saan Nagtatago Si Happiness?
Directed by Florida Bautista

Finding happiness isn't part of Tikyo's everyday plan. For him, at the age of 50, nothing is as simple as selling sorbetes, his only source of living. Everything's just perfectly fine until breaking news comes—his mother, whom he believed for so long was already in heaven, is still alive. Dogged and eager, Tikyo will do everything to reconcile with the woman he loves the most—from the long queue in the TV studio to the chaotic newsroom of a radio station to the lunatic and hysterical fortune teller. Every effort he does with the help of his best bud, Nene, the problem child of the tenement. His world will be lost in confusion when Sara, the girl of his dreams comes. The 50-year old guy is now torn between finding his mom and pursuing the young woman's heart. Tikyo believes that true happiness will come to him if he'll be successful in winning the two women. Tikyo must find his way to happiness, lead other people to it or redefine its true meaning.

22 February 2008, Friday, 7 pm
Barangay East Rembo Park, East Rembo, Makati City
iSNATS
Directed by Mike Dagñalan

iSNATS, dubbed as neo-realist, is a story of a cellphone snatcher-collector (J) who got into trouble when he steals Sam’s cellphone (a former cop - drug dealer). J thinks he hits it big-time when he gets a drug delivery through the snatched phone but drug lord Rudy wants his drug money and so orders/threatens Sam to get it back. Yet, then again, local gangster Bonsai gets in the way and pushes J and Sam into deeper trouble. Sam and J team up to survive and eventually escape on a rusty PNR Bicol Express Train. The duo then decides to change their lives as they reach the province. Drug lord Rudy eventually gets caught by the police when he throws the cellphone away that caused them all this trouble. Shot in the gritty streets of Cubao and Recto Manila, the film portrays man's attachment to material things that leads him to bad decisions/situations.

23 February 2008, Saturday, 7 pm
Penguin Bar, Malate
Voice, Tilted Screens and Extended Scenes of Loneliness: Filipinos on High Definition
Directed by John Torres

Voice, Tilted Screens and Extended Scenes of Loneliness: Filipinos on High Definition is at once a meditation. It is a meta-film that unravels a journey, a chronicle of stories through foreign regions. It is a probing letter from outside circles, an honest account of illegitimate views from uneven terrain, and a narrative-driven exploration of the nooks and peripheries of the body, geography, and weather. As the journey progresses, the film increasingly traverses the countries of revelation, film, and heart to where all journeys are meant to end with.

23 February 2008, Saturday, 6.00 – 10.30 pm
Luneta Park, Luneta, Manila
EDSA People Power Anniversary Special: Three Film Showings

Barako
Directed by Manolito Sulit

The story unfolds on the eve of the American occupation of Batangas in January 1900. It then moves on to recall the childhood of the Publisista (publicist) in the 80s, who two decades later, will form a kapihan, oddly referred to as the barukuhan to play a pivotal role in the resolution of the town's six-week electricity crisis and in the events leading to the 2004 elections. The movie delineates post-colonial realities and inquires into the state of our democracy one hundred years since losing the Fil-American war.

Siglo Filipino: Odyssey of a Nation
Directed by Butch Nolasco

The most significant events and personalities in Philippine history during the 20th century, written from the point of view of National Artist Nick Joaquin.

Lakas Sambayanan (People Power)
Directed by Butch Nolasco

An hour 40-minute long documentary hosted by Cesar Montano about the search for the true definition of People Power. It shows in parallel the two successful EDSA People Power revolts in the years 1986 and 2001.

24 February 2008, Sunday, 6 pm
Barangay Buwayang Bato, Gawad Kalinga Concepcion Village, Guadalupe
Balikbayan Box
Directed by Mes de Guzman

Children of Filipino workers who have gone overseas in search of employment struggle to survive in this drama from filmmaker Mes De Guzman. Ilyong, Jun-jun and Moymoy are three young boys living in the rural Philippines. Their parents are OFW's-- Overseas Filipino Workers," a local term for people who have traveled to the Middle East, Hong Kong or Japan in search of jobs that are hard to come by at home. Most OFW's support their families by sending home "Balikbayan boxes," parcels containing cash and presents that have been designed with Filipino shipping regulations in mind. But the boys have learned that a Balikbayan box is a poor substitute for a mother and father, and that despite their parents' good intentions, getting by on what they're sent is difficult if not impossible. Ilyong, Jun-jun and Moymoy steal food to get by and occasionally scrounge up enough change to take in a show at "Betamax House," a makeshift movie house where bootleg videos of American action films are shown. Just as the youngsters suffer in the absence of their parents, their folks discover that the fortune they imagined would be found elsewhere proves to be elusive at best. Balikbayan Box was screened as a work in progress at the 2007 Rotterdam International Film Festival.