Weekend of art overload

With the end of the semester-long Sinekultura film education series, a sampling of classic and contemporary art films screened regularly at the College of Architecture and Fine Arts theater of the University of San Carlos, comes another treat for Cebuano film buffs: the 14th Cineuropa Film Festival held since Friday and until tonight at the Ayala Center Onstage theater.

Cineuropa is one of the longest-running film festivals in the country today and we are lucky to have the Arts Council of Cebu and its corporate partners to bring the festival here every year. It is free and open to the public on a first-come, first-served basis. So expect a long queue near the theater entrance.

Other big cities like Davao and Cagayan de Oro have also started to host the Cineuropa. They also followed Cebu by starting to organize their own arts councils, which often end up as  local government initiatives and thus not always having an independent character. With membership based on donations from individual and business entities not beholden to politicians, our own Arts Council of Cebu has been operating for decades as a corporate citizen promoting theater, classical music, ballet and cinema to the Cebuano public mostly for free.

In fact,  Cineuropa is just one of the foreign film festivals that the Arts Council brings to Cebu almost yearly. Perhaps it is also the biggest, with member countries of the European Union, the main sponsor of this yearly event, participating through their embassies and consulate offices here by sending a sample of their contemporary cinema for the Filipino audience. This year’s Cineuropa features a total of 19 films.

Movies have long been the most effective way to educate a people about foreign culture. In fact, our so-called “colonial mentality” has largely been the result of years of monopoly by Hollywood of the Pinoy silver screen. The joke goes that our nation spent 300 years in the convent and 50 years in Hollywood.

But that has largely changed now as the Philippine independent cinema is starting to challenge not just Hollywood but the  local big studios as well. And of course, there is the proliferation of foreign films and growing interest in them by the Filipino audience.

In fact, even young audiences who regularly watch Japanese anime or Korean telenovelas are starting to get used to reading subtitles. I heard a Korean film festival is also being held right now in one of those SM cinemas. So two film festivals simultaneously running on a weekend is a rare double treat for the Cebuano cinephile.

The foreign film festivals add to the many different ways we experience world culture today. Right at the food court near the theater,  choices of foreign cuisine are already confusing to the starved moviegoer. Should we have ramen, lasagna or caramel macchiato to warm ourselves just before entering the freezing caverns of the theater? Of course, there’s  American popcorn which may now be flavored with Mexican salsa, teriyaki, adobo or what have you.

Once inside, our cozy seats turn into airline recliners as we are brought to faraway places, with strange food, music, language, architecture, etc., in a virtual travel. The stories may be told in  different ways, using plot lines, cuts, and shots not seen in local screen, yet there is always something that strikes a nerve, perhaps a common feeling arising from a universal predicament.

For example, in the Romanian film “Exchange,” featured last Friday night, we saw how a newly entrenched government worker tries to seek opportunities abroad with the last of his  money only to be victimized by Romanian “budol-budol” gangs. Away from his family and frustrated by corrupt and inept local police, he ends up taking the law in his hands and becoming the  same criminal who had victimized him and other innocent people in illegal currency exchange.

We saw the same moral contradiction being tackled in “Bicycle Thief” by the Italian neorealist Vittorio De Sica and in our own “Kapit sa Patalim” by Lino Brocka. It only goes to show that cinema best expresses that which makes us different from peoples of other countries and yet also the many things that we share in common.

The Cineuropa continues today with films from Spain (“Mataharis,” 10:30 a.m.), Slovakia (“Mosquito’s Tango,” 12:30 p.m.), Sweden (“Mammoth,” 2:45 p.m.), United Kingdom (“Never Let Me Go,” 5:00 p.m.), Switzerland (“How About Love,” 7 p.m.), and The Netherlands (“The Silent Army,” 9 p.m.).

Last day night also saw the opening of “Share Light: A Visual Insight,” an exhibit of paintings on the theme of light by the Cebu Artists Inc. (CAI) at the newly opened Cebu Museum (second floor of the Rizal Memorial Library). I was one of non-CAI member artists invited to participate in this exhibit. Other guest artists include Fr. Jason Dy, S.J.; the French painter Remy Rault; and Malaysian artists Janiz Chan and Queenie Chow. As in the globalization of our cinematic tastes, this show promises to be another cultural fusion.

READ: Movie nights in Sinekultura