Movie nights in Sinekultura

I had to hold back tears watching the closing scene of Charlie Chaplin’s “City Lights,” one of the first films that launched “Sinekultura,” the festival of local and international classics of cinema still running thrice weekly until the end of this semester at the College of Architecture and Fine Arts Theater of the University of San Carlos in Talamban.

And, no, it’s not the mush. That day, I was the only person in the theater watching the film festival meant for students, who according to the Russian-American filmmaker Misha Anissimov, our film program’s coordinator, were “just there sitting at the stairs picking their nose.”

I could not therefore tell whether I wanted to cry for the poor tramp who fell in love with the blind girl in the silent movie (crying being not unusual in Chaplin’s comedy) or for the current state of art appreciation right in the art school.

Misha had to require the cinema majors to attend the workshop  to assure an audience  every screening in our school theater, which otherwise must have cost around P1,000 an hour in rental for outside users.

And so Misha’s “must-see-or-else” policy worked. The students stopped picking their noses and rose from the stairs to watch old movies at the school theater. It saved the film education series, which was promoted with posters, tarps and even an offset-printed catalog.

At least, it saved my movie nights. It’s been most convenient for me, as I have only to walk a few steps from the classroom or faculty office to the  theater right after my class. It’s a great way to relax after the stress and noise of a day’s work in the art school.

You drop by the canteen for a  bite and brew to warm yourself up for the fully air-conditioned cavern to watch two hours or more of films by, say, Buster Keaton, Wim Wenders, Francis Ford Coppola, or Fritz Lang (to name just a few of the directors featured so far).

Unfortunately, because of some big dinner with a friend who just arrived from Texas, I missed the chance of watching on the big screen  “Metropolis,” an expressionist film about the rule of machines over humans in a future society, when it was shown a couple of weeks ago.

But with Misha now becoming a colleague in the faculty, I am sure there will be an encore of this film, hopefully in the same theater. So wait lang, Fritz Lang.

I couldn’t wait for other films though browsing my copy of the program. It’s still a long way to go to the last film in the series, which is Henry Clouzot’s documentary on Pablo Picaso at work, scheduled to be screened on September 28. The list is still long and it includes some famous films I have not seen: Federico Fellini’s “La Strada,” Carl Dreyer’s “The Passion of Joan of Arc,” David Lynch’s “Eraserhead” (from which the Filipino rock band got its name), Luis Buñuel’s “Los Olivados,” etc.

And tomorrow, our former student Kerwin Go’s “Eskrimadors,” a critically acclaimed documentary about the indigenous Cebuano martial art, will be shown at 5:30 p.m. The film has been shown in film festivals here and abroad and had a screening in a theater in New York City.

Two more films by local independent directors are also scheduled for screening. But until now, the titles  have yet to be announced. I am hoping that the film “Ang Damgo ni Eleuteria,” an award-winning film by our other former student Remton Zuasola will be included as I myself have yet to see it.

Or perhaps, a documentary by Joanna Vasquez Arong, a Cebuano filmmaker who spent a long time making films abroad (largely in Beijing, China). I have seen her film “The Old Fool Who  Moved Mountains,” a documentary  about the struggles of a local rock joint facing demolition in Beijing. These films made me proud as a Cebuano even before Cebu earned the title of Asean “City of Culture.”

Yet it may be hard for the public to see these films as  DVD copies are not available commercially. The Sinekultura film festival thus provides a rare opportunity for us to watch them on big screen for free.

The film festival runs every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 5:30 p.m. at the USC CAFA Theater. Join me in my movie nights.