Opening: 19.11.2014 @6:30pm
Location: Hoa Sen University
Marie Curie Room (6F)
8 Nguyen Van Trang, District 1
HCMC

 

 

Introducing the work of Filipino filmmaker Kidlat Tahimik

The name Kidlat Tahimik immediately connotes contradiction. As an obsessive cultural observer, Kidlat has been exploring his inner cultural contradictions by making his non-commercial films since 1975. Born in 1942 as Eric Oteyza de Guia in Baguio City, he was raised in that American enclave resort town, situated in the heart of the tribal highlands of Igorot Culture. Three decades ago, he began questioning his American education, (a.k.a “my benevolent assimilation”). This had begun with his Maryknoll nuns in primary school; followed by further immersion in high schools in The Philippines with US curricula, ending up in America for a graduate degree (Wharton School MBA). After five years as an economist in Paris, he tore up his MBA diploma in 1972, tuned-in to commune-culture lifestyle, and embraced an anti-Hollywood school of filmmaking. As a self-taught filmmaker, his works are recognized at home and abroad for their primitive style and for their humorous deconstruction of his American education. In Baguio, he is an active artist (film, video-installation, performance), supporting the process/viewpoint of the undiploma-ed artists. In 1997, his Sunflower Film Collective embarked on a project to share user-friendly video technology with tribal people, with the aim that responsibility for cultural documentation rests in their own hands. He lectures at U.P. and Ateneo University, speaks at local/international conferences, contributes articles in Taglish to the Sunday Inquirer.

This film is Kidlat Tahimik’s most renown essay film, whose release in 1978 was made possible with the assistance of Werner Herzog and Francis Ford Coppola.

After a lifetime in his somewhat backward hometown, Tahimik travels to Paris. His trip is motivated by his fascination with American technology (why he doesn’t go to America is typical of spontaneous nature of the storyline). Once in the City of Light, Tahimik is both fascinated by and disillusioned with the “wonders” of the modern world. The film has a delightfully spontaneous home-movie quality–literally so, since it was lensed in Super 8mm on a budget of less than $10,000.

English with Vietnamese subtitles

*Presentation to be followed by Q&A with Kidlat Tahimik

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Kidlat Tahimik participates in ‘Encounter’, a lecture series which is part of a large artistic endeavour called ‘Conscious Realities’, initiated and organized by San Art in partnership with Prince Claus Fund.