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Cinemalaya 2020 Online

Cinemalaya 2020: Main Competition Shorts – Set A Film Reviews

The country's biggest independent film festival is now online! You can now stream the 10 short films in competition.

2. Pabasa Kan Pasyon

Directed and written by Hubert Tibi

Pabasa Kan Pasyon - Cinemalaya 2020

With the gorgeous Bicol landscape framing every scene, ā€˜Pabasa Kan Pasyonā€™ is a lyrical piece that mines its dramatic setting — in the middle of the celebration of Easter in the province — and strikes gold. Itā€™s a play of contrasts as we follow a son and his mother who go house to house with their large crucifix and sings the Pasyon for money while the son prepares to play a part of King Herod at the senakulo; but there is also a radio DJ whose radio station is about to close due to the stiff competition of social media and the Internet like Facebook and Spotify.

Shot in black and white and in the middle of an actual Easter celebration in a small town, director Hubert Tibi fills the screen with religious iconography and juxtaposes it with the mundane, the rituals along with the spectacle and the spectators.

And in the middle of this busy world are two stories of people trying to make money and the challenges they face in this economics-driven world. The acting is raw that lends to an authenticity of place and time but itā€™s the cinematography that really captures attention as director Hubert Tibi uses camera framing, quick cuts, and sound design to give life to inanimate objects.

The effect is a cinematic poem that never really offers a clear-cut message except that which you can get from all the symbolic images and narrative elements that pepper the film. The obvious parallelism with religious fervor and the need to turn it into a job puts into focus what religion really is for some people in the country. Itā€™s a clever film that is wonderfully shot and realised.

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3. Fatigued

Written and directed by James Robin Mayo

Fatigued - Cinemalaya 2020

James Robin Mayoā€™s ā€˜Fatiguedā€™ pushes the boundaries of cinema by offering a short film that takes the narrative form of a video game. Text appears over a montage of a city that is busy and alive, even at night, asking the viewers to participate in the interactive elements of the film; and then, like a video game, it tells us the dramatic situation we are in until the ā€œgameā€ starts and the camera acts as our eyes as we enter the dream-state of the main character, which is the audience.

I would have loved to have seen this in a packed theater with everyone engaging with the film as it asks us to chant, to stomp our feet, to clap, and other things while taking us down a surreal, dream-like narrative of finding the need to wake up when one is so exhausted from working so hard.

While the experience of watching ā€˜Fatiguedā€™ is unique and thrilling, I have to put into focus its conceit of being both an interactive film and a game. It doesnā€™t feel fully like a game nor does it feel fully committed to being an interactive film. It is more successful as an interactive film and thatā€™s what drew me into the material and it was when it would present itself as a game, it felt false because games donā€™t interact that way (or the ones I play or have seen my friends and family play).

While ā€˜Fatiguedā€™ is great to watch the first time, I donā€™t know what the experience will be watching it again as its big finish requires that element of surprise. And, this film would really work best in a packed cinema full of people who are interacting with the film.

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