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| NORA AUNOR IN BRILLANTE MENDOZA'S "TAKLUB" |
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Friday, May 29, 2015
Thursday, May 28, 2015
TRAP
By
Derek Elley
Film
Business Asia
Wed,
27 May 2015, 20:20 PM (HKT)
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TAKLUB
Philippines
Contemporary
drama
2015,
colour, 16:9, 92 mins
Directed
by Brillante Ma. Mendoza
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“Characters are casually introduced as if the viewer already knows them, and their backgrounds and relationships have to be pieced together or guessed from small clues. The most affecting is undoubtedly Bebeth, owner of a small eating place, whose charity towards others — despite having lost three of her children — shines through the film like a beacon of hope, largely thanks to the performance by veteran NORA AUNOR”
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A climate-change
info-film wrapped inside a very average docudrama. Festivals loyal to Brillante
Mendoza.
Story
Tacloban city,
Leyte island, Eastern Visayas, central Philippines, 2014. Almost a year after
the city was devastated by Typhoon Yolanda (known internationally as Typhoon
Haiyan), little action has been taken by the government to deal with the
homelessness and social problems caused. Bebeth (Nora Aunor), who runs a
carinderia (small eating place), has lost three of her children and now has
only her teenage daughter Angela (Shine Santos) left; pensioner Renato (Lou
Veloso) has just lost his whole family in a fire among some tents; young
fisherman Erwin (Aaron Rivera) and his brother Marlon (Rome Mallari) try to
hide the death of their parents from younger sister Daisy; and the widowed
Larry (Julio Diaz) descends into masochistic religious rituals in order to
handle his grief. Bebeth tries to collect money to help Renato, and also to get
her ex-husband, tricycle driver Angel (Soliman Cruz), to register his DNA to
help identify their children's bodies among the dead. When a tsunami is
rumoured to be on its way, the population is evacuated to the city's Astrodome
building for protection; in the event, the warning proves unfounded, with just
strong winds and rain. Afterwards, Daisy and her brothers move back into their
shoreside shack, which has suffered only minor damage, but find a thief making
off with some of the corrugated iron. Due to government inaction, some of the
homeless organise a petition. And with another typhoon, Lolit, now expected,
people band together to rescue another of their number, Aunt Soping, from a
landslide caused by the recent storm.
Review
Funded by
Philippine government sources, Trap Taklub is a climate-change info-film
wrapped inside a very average docudrama. It's the latest (and first
feature-length) collaboration between Brillante Ma. MENDOZA and
journalist-turned-senator Loren LEGARDA, a noted environmentalist, following
their 33-minute documentary Downpour Buhos (2011) (about pollution and climate
change) and the slickly packaged, 16-minute instructional video Ligtas (2013)
(about disaster preparedness). The elements have often played a strong part in
Mendoza's features (Lola (2009), Possession Sapi (2013)), and here they're up
front and centre stage as the film looks at the lives of a small cross-section
of survivors of Typhoon Haiyan (aka Yolanda), one of the strongest ever
recorded, that hit the Philippines in Nov 2013.
Mendoza's films
have always had a loose, docudram-ish feel, so his approach in Trap comes as
little surprise. Characters are casually introduced as if the viewer already
knows them, and their backgrounds and relationships have to be pieced together
or guessed from small clues. The most affecting is undoubtedly Bebeth, owner of
a small eating place, whose charity towards others — despite having lost three
of her children — shines through the film like a beacon of hope, largely thanks
to the performance by veteran Nora AUNOR (the midwife in Mendoza's Thy Womb
Sinapupunan (2012)). Among the rest of the cast, another Mendoza regular, Julio
DIAZ (Serbis (2008), Kinatay (2009)) has a more theatrical role as a widower
who immerses himself in Way-to-the-Cross, Christ-like suffering to deal with
his loss.
With the main
roles based on real characters, and actual locals blended into the background,
the sense of docudrama is heightened to a point where fiction is hardly
separable from fact. But the script itself is thin and shapeless, with little
accumulated tension or drama — despite an accumulation of Roman Catholic
symbolism in the latter stages that will resonate with audiences in different
ways depending on their religious sympathies. Yet again, Mendoza shows he has
little ability to create a universally involving narrative or ensemble that
goes any deeper than surface events.
Technically the
production is sound, with Odyssey FLORES' toned-down photography imparting a
verismo feel, especially in the storm sequence that manages much on a minimal
budget. Diwa DE LEON's ominous music, all sustained chords, is atmospheric
rather than descriptive. The film's Tagalog title literally means Lid or Cover,
but also refers in its sound to Tacloban city itself.
Cannes: 21 Films That Stood Out at the 2015 Festival
Variety Staff
MAY
25, 2015
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Source:
http://variety.com/2015/film/columns/cannes-21-films-that-stood-out-at-the-2015-festival-1201504524/
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Variety critics Scott Foundas, Justin Chang,
Peter Debruge, Guy Lodge, Jay Weissberg and Maggie Lee weighed in with their
choices for the 21 best films at this year’s Cannes Film Festival (listed in
alphabetical order):
1. “Amy”
British director Asif Kapadia followed up his 2010 “Senna” with this even more
daring and revealing portrait of the brilliant but tragic jazz diva Amy
Winehouse. Drawing on a wealth of professional and user-generated video,
Kapadia again eschews the usual talking-heads interview format to keep
WInehouse front and center for two harrowing hours, during which we come to
understand how thoroughly the troubled singer lived her life under the camera‘s
relentless and unforgiving gaze. The result is an unforgettable portrait of the
cult of celebrity in the iPhone era. (Scott Foundas)
2. “Arabian
Nights” Even this year’s most impressive competition films couldn’t match
Portuguese auteur Miguel Gomes’ magnum opus for brazen ambition and conceptual
heft. Screened in three parts across one week in Directors’ Fortnight, this
six-hour allegorical meditation on the current European economic crisis
bristled with invention, ribald wit and flashes of heated fury. Knotting
stories of ghost dogs, mermaids and laid-off shipyard workers into one vast
tapestry, Gomes made one of the festival’s most daunting-looking pics into one
of its most unpredictably entertaining. (Guy Lodge)
3. “The
Assassin” While viewers were rightly mesmerized by the film’s ravishing
visuals and exquisite period details, most have overlooked Hou Hsiao-hsien’s
subtle and timely political allegory on the uneasy yet symbiotic relationship
between Taiwan and China, obliquely yet poignantly evoking the conflicting
loyalties and sense of estrangement felt by Taiwan’s settlers and their
homegrown offspring. (Maggie Lee)
4. “Carol”
The jury may have fobbed it off with half a best actress award (for half its
exemplary star duo, to add insult to injury), but Todd Haynes’ tender take on
Patricia Highsmith’s lesbian romance ranks among the director’s most immaculate
achievements: Though it’s composed and constructed with metric precision, a
raw, reckless heart beats fast beneath its exquisite wintry surface. It also
takes an immediate place in the canon of great melancholy Christmas films; one
hopes and expects that American awards bodies will give generously in the
holiday season. (G.L.)
5. “Cemetery
of Splendor” As familiar as home and as mysterious as a dream, the lush and
hypnotic world of Apichatpong Weerasethakul — let’s call it Joeburg — is a
place to which I always long to return. His latest film, a melancholy melding
of the personal and the political, is a calmer, gentler thing than his previous
films, yet it’s no less remarkable in its ability to find a strange,
otherworldly magic in the everyday. (Justin Chang)
6. “Disorder”
A drum-tight home-invasion thriller fiercely anchored by the increasingly
ubiquitous Matthias Schoenaerts, Alice Winocour’s sophomore feature isn’t a
stunningly original feat, but was still among the most pleasant surprises in Un
Certain Regard: Few would have guessed from the French helmer’s costume-drama
debut, “Augustine,” that she has such tough, tactile genre-filmmaking chops.
Hollywood producers should take note. (G.L.)
7. “Inside
Out” Co-directors Pete Docter and Ronaldo Del Carmen somehow manage to
deconstruct emotion while supplying it in generous measure in this deliriously
funny, intensely cathartic romp through a young girl’s head space. The result
is a wondrous return to form for Pixar, and a welcome reminder that there are
still unexplored worlds waiting to be colonized by the imagination — including,
perhaps, the imagination itself. (J.C.)
8. “Journey
to the Shore” Not since “Truly, Madly, Deeply” has the communion between
the living and dead been depicted with such tenderness and heartache. Kiyoshi
Kurosawa, Japan’s maestro of psycho-horror, infuses this hushed, timorous drama
of loss, regret and acceptance with his signature haunting mood, employing
magical shifts of light and darkness. (M.L.)
9. “The
Lobster” Lonelyhearts who fail to find a suitable partner at a dating boot
camp are transformed into animals, or else forced to hide out in the forest
where they’re hunted for sport, in “Dogtooth” director Yorgos Lanthimos’ jury
prize-winning absurdist social satire. Taking aim at the way modern society
imposes a narrow definition of marriage on everyone, the crafty Greek
allegorist sets out in the darkly comic Bunuel tradition, before turning its
bachelor protagonist (an emasculated Colin Farrell) loose in its unexpectedly
tender second half. (Peter Debruge)
10. “Macbeth”
That Justin Kurzel’s stormy new interpretation of Shakespeare’s punchiest
tragedy was left until the very end of the competition led some critics to
expect a cautious afterthought. What they got instead was an urgent, visceral
update to enthrall the “Game of Thrones” set, unmistakably the work of the same
director who electrified festival auds with “The Snowtown Murders” four years
ago. With arresting performances by Michael Fassbender and a particularly inspired
Marion Cotillard, this spare new adaptation stands worthily alongside
Polanski’s 1971 version. (G.L.)
11. “Mad
Max: Fury Road” Having set the high bar for the modern action movie with
“The Road Warrior” in 1981, George Miller surpassed himself (at age 70!) with
this years-in-the-making “revisiting” of his iconic post-apocalyptic action
hero (Tom Hardy, ably stepping in for Mel Gibson), here paired with a
formidable female ally in Charlize Theron’s Imperator Furiosa — arguably the
greatest female action hero since Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley. Miller’s
dizzyingly kinetic, color-saturated, wall-to-wall chase sequences kicked off
Cannes with a bang which it never quite surpassed. (S.F.)
12. “The
Measure of a Man” Veteran French leading man Vincent Lindon won a
well-deserved best actor prize from the Cannes jury for this modestly scaled
but powerfully affecting social drama from director Stephane Brize. As an
unemployed factory worker turned supermarket store detective, Lindon appears in
virtually every shot, effortlessly holding the screen with his weary brow and
unassailable humanity. (S.F.)
13. “Mon
roi” While it passionately divided critics, Maiwenn’s power-romance should
be required viewing for all aspiring American indie directors (especially those
of the mumblecore school). The “Polisse” director demonstrates the raw,
heartbreaking emotional truth that one can achieve through personal
storytelling and collaborative improvisation, eliciting career-best work from
Emmanuelle Bercot (who shared best actress honors with “Carol’s” Rooney Mara)
and Vincent Cassel. (P.D.)
14. “Mustang”
Five headstrong sisters in rural Turkey are forced to conform to their
society’s rigid concept of female self-expression in Deniz Gamze Erguven’s
impressive feature debut. Undeniably scripted with Western auds in mind and not
averse to exaggeration, the pic nevertheless boasts energetic performances of
an intriguing nascent sexuality (think “The Virgin Suicides” by way of Sally
Man) and a maturely fluent visual style very much in line with current arthouse
aesthetics. (Jay Weissberg)
15. “My
Golden Days” Arnaud Desplechin imagines the childhood and adolescence of
his cinematic alter-ego Paul Dedalus (first played by Mathieu Amalric in 1996’s
“My Sex Life … “) in this transporting memory film set in the late 1980s, with
Roxanne Shante on the soundtrack and a thick, bittersweet air of first loves,
fractured friendships and lost youth. Denied a slot in competition, “Golden”
was the toast of this year’s Directors’ Fortnight, where it was acquired by
Magnolia Pictures for a U.S. release. (S.F.)
16. “One
Floor Below” Champions of new Romanian cinema long ago cottoned on to Radu
Muntean’s minimalist storytelling, and while he stays true to his style here,
there’s a slightly simmering quality that turns this story of a regular guy
unwilling to finger a murderous neighbor into a quietly tense anti-thriller.
Wrestling with questions of societal responsibility via a protag used to
playing the system, the pic may seem understated, but its themes are weighted
with a moral dilemma of quasi-Dostoevskian proportions. (J.W.)
17. “Our
Little Sister” Hirokazu Kore-eda’s portrait of blossoming womanhood is a
lightweight yet graceful divertissement that, a few arch Ozu-esque flourishes
notwithstanding, reps a companion piece to the hypersensitive feminine
sensibilities and visual luxuriance of Kon Ichikawa’s “The Makioka Sisters.”
(M.L.)
18. “Sicario”
Emily Blunt, Benicio Del Toro and Josh Brolin are all aces in Denis
Villeneuve’s serpentine, pulse-pounding thriller, but the film’s undeniable MVP
is the great cinematographer Roger Deakins, in his second visually stunning
collaboration with the director of “Prisoners.” After the likes of “Traffic”
and “Heli,” Villeneuve tells us little that’s new about the horrific cycle of
violence and corruption that has ensnared both the Mexican drug trade and
America’s war against it, but there’s no denying he tells it in muscular,
bracingly cynical style. (J.C.)
19. “Son
of Saul” The most powerful and provocative Holocaust-themed film since
“Fateless” (which coincidentally also hailed from Hungary), Laszlo Nemes’ Grand
Prix winner engages directly with the impossibility that any film could
possibly do justice to those events, while challenging the notion that
consequently none should try. Nemes rejects the melodrama of “Schindler’s List”
in favor of a rigidly formalist approach, one that forces audiences to evaluate
and consider its artistic choices alongside the already profound moral dilemmas
faced by its characters. (P.D.)
20. “Taklub” Brillante Mendoza’s ode to the decency and dignity of ordinary people afflicted by the worst typhoon disaster in Philippine history thoughtfully reflects on the limits of faith, compassion and hard work. A welcome return to the studied simplicity of his earlier works like “Foster Child” and “Slingshot.” (M.L.)
21. “Youth”
Paolo Sorrentino’s most tender film to date is dividing the critics and took
home no prizes, yet its champions are touting the emotional rich way the
bravura filmmaker explores aging via two very different figures in the waning
years of their lives. Selling points include standout performancess by Michael
Caine and Harvey Keitel, a blistering cameo from Jane Fonda, plenty of
eccentric humor, expectedly wide-ranging musical choices and a visual banquet
courtesy of d.p. Luca Bigazzi. (J.W.)
FILED UNDER: Cannes Film Festival
'TAKLUB' screens in the City of Paris on May 30
"As in previous years, a week after the
Festival finishes, the "Un Certain Regard" category of the Selection
transfers to the Reflet Médicis cinema in Paris. Here all the films selected
this year for this category will be screened from Wednesday 27 May to Tuesday 2
June."
Source:
Check out the schedule here:
NORA IS ‘NATATANGI’: Distinct, singular
By
Tito Genova Valiente
Reeling
Business
Mirror
May
27, 2015
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Source:
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ON June 16 Nora
Aunor will receive the Natatanging Gawad Urian. The award recognizes and
celebrates the actor’s body of works in cinema.
It has been a long
journey for Nora Aunor from the time she sang with dwarfs at the backyard in a
film that was more about the lack of magic in our life, to essaying the role of
a mother searching for life in the valley of death in the aftermath of a most
terrible storm. It is one huge filmic arc that, despite the lows in personal
life, sustains a high in acting unseen heretofore in this industry.
As always and even
with the expectations by the many, when the award was formally and officially
announced by the Manunuri ng Pelikulang
Pilipino, there were sectors who asked that the recognition be justified. The
question is not impertinent; the question merely demanded an answer.
And there are many
answers.
There is the
social history of cinema. Before Nora, there was the dominant ideology that
required all actresses to be fair-skinned, tall and beautiful in the Caucasian
way. More than the physical appearance, these actresses had to flesh out roles
that conformed to the template of the idealized woman, the one who would do
everything to keep the home intact. The actress/woman’s duty was to maintain
along with the home her virginity, if she was not married, and her purity, if
she was a wife or a mother. The allure of the leading lady was that she was
part of the breathtaking landscape. The force to reckon with was this woman who
was lovely in her fragility because the men around her were robust in
masculinity. When Nora came, even early in those silly musicals, she stood
there passive-aggressive in simplicity and unadorned humility. If she had
purity, it was shrouded in sincerity that bordered on the naive. The Great Unwash, if we may use the term, was
making herself heard. The voice was Nora’s and the body was instinct and
genius.
Came 1976. The
Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino, battling what it perceived to be the lack of
ardent film criticism (and we are not even talking about the absence of an
institutionalized film education), rose to the occasion with a radical choice
and chose Nora Aunor as its very first Best Actress. The film was Tatlong Taong
Walang Diyos. The story was set in the Second World War; the enemy was played
by a matinee idol about to become a multiawarded actor. Nora played Rosario,
leading lady in form but in content a complex person who would sleep with the
enemy and allow the generation of audiences to ask the unsettling question: Was
that our war we died for?
It was the new
world. The country was rushing away from the memories of the Great War. Japan,
the grand nemesis in many war films, was becoming a superpower. It was time to
dilute or question the collective memory. It was time for the leading lady to
question life by embodying all the complexities of love, loyalty and fealty to
a nation. Even if in the end, Nora Aunor’s Rosario dies and the notion of the
nation as a punisher is promoted, we see the audacity of an actress to embrace
what all leading actresses of the period avoided: to die at the end of the
movie.
Nora, already a
phenomenon at the time, became an actor in Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos.
It is often a
question I ask: Are the fans of Nora Aunor aware that in most of her heralded
portrayals, Nora inhabits roles that are duplicitous and convoluted, tortured
and twisted in her understanding of the commonly acceptable valuations of roles
and mores in society? Nora taught us the sins of the world not by denying them
but by displaying the ineptitude and incoherence.
In Bona, Nora
Aunor is this daughter who will never be the ideal member of a Filipino family.
It is thus, the vindication of community values when Bona is mauled by her
brother when she tries to sneak into the house so she could view the remains of
her father. It is our fear and shame that this insensibility will befall upon
us and Nora is the persona to show us all this. The show is not the crass,
sentimental plot about a fallen woman played with flamboyance by Rita Gomez and
Charito Solis, but a quirky ballet about religion, fanaticism and the tragedy
that shuttles between poverty and identity.
For all the
tremendous mystery of the apparition, Elsa in Himala will declare at the end
not only the absence of miracles but the end of transcendence. “Tao ang
gumagawa ng himala.” Man makes miracles. Leave it to Nora Aunor and her amazing
thespic range that each pause, each taking in of the breath brings us to wonder
if we could really believe her Elsa. If we believe in the Virgin Mary appearing
before the simple girl, then we are the accomplice to a church that upholds the
divine vision; if we affirm Elsa’s declaration that there is no miracle, then
we are at the mercy of a cult. It is a baffling situation and Nora is part of
the puzzle, never completing for us the picture because we are ourselves part
of the big picture.
Faith is both
shaken and stirred in Himala. A film that brings out of the closet all the
tricks of apparitions and faith healing is also the film that represents who we
are as people in religion. At the center of this order and peace is this wisp
of a woman—unpredictable as a person but predictably excellent as an actor—who
unfolds her own mysteries before relentless cameras that never seem to get
enough because the actor before the lenses hides and shades her own tremor as a
human being. That is acting, that is incarnation, when the word is made flesh
and is made to dwell among the viewers.
The new
performance and the seeming lack of fear and bias toward any roles enabled
critics to look at the performance than the celebrity, the role rather than the
royalty. It is late 197os and the military rules but the new film criticism is
born, addressing without timidity and this time without question the politics
not only of films but of those who make the films.
The extracinematic
is born. Nora Aunor’s character in the film is judged within the context of the
plot and the resolutions. The same character is investigated following Nora’s
fandom, her personal stories, and her politics that while critiqued for unpredictability
are, otherwise, always sustained by a sense of daring and independence, even
recklessness, rarely seen within the perfumed enclaves of show business. The
lines between the reel and the real are once more blurred, this time not for
the invasion of the actor’s privacy but for an incursion into her politics and
psychology.
If there is a
milestone in the career of Nora as an actor, it was in her gradual shift to
portraying roles that stopped addressing the vagaries and vulgarities of
commerce.
Nora Aunor’s
career swung from those monster box-office hits (that satisfied many) to films
that did not cause lines to form outside theatres but inside the minds of the
enlightened, Nora’s public who care to learn from this most popular of art
forms, the movies.
With the roles and
films, there was ultimately the formation of new ways of reading cinema. Nora
was still the leading lady but there was no more the leading man. In fact, her
leading ladies led only because she was Nora Aunor in the film; otherwise, in
the narrative they were peripheral personas, not template for good behavior but
trails to a forest of symbols. The characters are not always likeable, better
for us to look at how life can be unfair and, well, better. Without us knowing
it, Nora has lifted the contravida from the dark side of the stock and the
stereotype into the center, the spotlight of importance for us to contemplate
both the evil and the good, for us to savor the grays and the anomalous, those
inscrutable in-betweens that mark us imperfect, human.
In Thy Womb,
Shaleha the midwife holds the child that her husband had fathered with another
woman. She praises the heavens but could not let go of the infant. When she
does, the camera follows the sky. The woman is lost in the eternity that appears
to be made for man. Before we got there, we are treated to how an actor
suffuses the screen with awesome ordinariness that appears only ordinary
because the mind behind those gestures has the gift to make the everyday
profound.
Which came first,
good criticism or good film? That, of course, is a chicken-and-egg predicament.
What is clear is that there is a Nora Aunor, whose manifold characters can
bring in a slew of questions. Love her or leave her; take her or leave her.
Good critics can disagree with her, dispute the best and worst in her but no
good critic can ignore Nora Aunor in cinema. Ever.
Nora Aunor is the
Natatangi, separate, singular, distinct for the Manunuri ng Pelikulang
Pilipino.
PAJE HAILS 'TAKLUB' SUCCESS IN CANNES
From:
Department
of Environment and Natural Resources
[Kagawaran
ng Kapaligiran at Likas Yaman]
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Source:
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Environment
Secretary Ramon J.P. Paje expressed elation over the Yolanda-inspired movie
"Taklub" winning a special award in the recent Cannes Film Festival
in France.
In its website,
the Ecumenical Jury at the 68th Cannes Film Festival awarded “Taklub” the
Special Mention “for the sensitive portrayal of individuals and communities working
for life in the midst of suffering and death in the shadows of natural
catastrophies in the Philippines.”
Paje was hoping
the film, which was co-produced by the Department of Environment and Natural
Resources, would help spread awareness of climate change and the need to adapt
to the global phenomenon.
He decribed the
movie -- directed by acclaimed director Brillante Mendoza and starred by
multi-awarded actress Nora Aunor -- as a realistic depiction of the devastating
effects of climate change on the natural and human environment.
"We see
'Taklub' as one of those movies that have the power to change the way we see
the world and inspire all of us to take action on the critical issue of climate
change," Paje pointed out.
"The film
depicts the catastrophic aftermath of what has been dubbed as one of the most
powerful storms ever recorded, which is a stark reminder of the need for swift
and strong global climate action," he added.
Yolanda killed at
least 6,000 people and displaced four million when it struck in November 2013.
The victory of
"Taklub" in Cannes comes a few months before the much-anticipated
United Nations meeting in Paris in December in which countries will try to
reach and sign a new international climate agreement to replace the Kyoto
Protocol.
"Taklub,"
which follows the intersecting lives of three Yolanda survivors, won the
Ecumenical Jury Prize-Special Mention at the world's most prestigious film
festival.
"Taklub"
will have its Philippine premiere as the opening film of the French Film
Festival on June 3.
Wednesday, May 27, 2015
Taklub: Philippine Premiere at French Film Festival
Seymour
Barros Sanchez
Need I Seymour?
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Source:
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After receiving a
special commendation from the Ecumenical Jury at the recent Cannes Film
Festival, Brillante Mendoza’s film Taklub (Trap) will have its invitational
Philippine premiere at the 20th French Film Festival on June 3, 8:30 p.m., at
Greenbelt 3 Cinema 1.
Camille Conde,
Press Attaché of the Embassy of France to the Philippines, confirmed this
latest development regarding the annual event which is organized by the French
Embassy together with Alliance Française de Manille and Institut Français.
The French Film
Festival, which reaches a significant milestone this year as it celebrates two
decades of bringing the best of French cinema to the Philippines, will kick off
with an invitational screening of Eric Lartigau’s award-winning hit comedy film
La Famille Bélier (The Bélier Family), also at Greenbelt 3 Cinema 1, at 5 p.m.,
followed by the red carpet opening ceremonies at the Fashion Walk, at the
ground floor of Greenbelt 5, at 6:30 p.m.
French film
festival for 20 years, the French film festival has been providing a venue for
the Filipino audience to appreciate critically acclaimed and blockbusters from
the French New Wave, the classics, auteur films, and contemporary releases like
La Famille Bélier, as well as Filipino films showcased in international film festivals
in France such as Taklub. At the same time, the event also celebrates the
developing bilateral relations between France and the Philippines.
Taklub is the only
Philippine entry in competition at Cannes this year, officially selected to the
Un Certain Regard category, and one of only two Filipino films screening in
this year’s edition of the prestigious film festival, the other one being a
restored version of Lino Brocka’s masterpiece Insiang, which was shown as part
of the Cannes Classics section.
Mendoza’s film,
which stars Nora Aunor, tells the story of three survivors of typhoon Yolanda
in Tacloban, Leyte. The independent jury honored the advocacy film with a
special commendation “for the sensitive portrayal of individuals and
communities working for life in the midst of suffering and death in the shadows
of natural catastrophes in the Philippines.”
Serving as one of
three Cannes juries, together with the official jury and the FIPRESCI critics
group, the Ecumenical Jury is made up of President Barbara Lorey de Lacharrière
and Marie-Nicole Courboulès, both from France, Chiara Fortuna from Italy,
Jonathan Guilbault and Andrew Johnston, both from Canada, and Jolyon Mitchell
from the United Kingdom. The jury members were nominated by SIGNIS for the Catholics
and Interfilm for the Protestants.
Nanni Moretti’s
Mia Madre (My Mother) from Italy, an entry in the main competition, won the
Prize of the Ecumenical Jury, while Stéphane Brizé’s The Laws of Contract from
France, which is also entered in the same category, received a special mention
like Taklub. Grimur Hakonarson’s Hrutar (Rams) from Iceland won the Un Certain
Regard top prize.
Taklub is
Mendoza’s fourth Cannes entry, after Foster Child, Serbis, and Kinatay, for
which he won Best Director in 2009. This is also his fourth time to win an
award of such nature from a film festival, after winning the Interfaith Award
for Masahista at the 2006 Brisbane International Film Festival in Australia,
the SIGNIS award for Foster Child at the 2008 Las Palmas Film Festival in
Spain, and another special mention citation from the Ecumenical Jury for Lola
at the 2010 Fribourg International Film Festival in Switzerland.
The Belier
FamilyMeanwhile, La Famille Bélier is about a sixteen-year-old girl living with
her deaf-mute family who discovers she has a gift for singing. Her teacher
encourages her to join a prestigious Radio France singing competition, which
may lead to a college degree, a good career, and a better future. However, this
would mean leaving her parents and brother who have depended on her as an
indispensable interpreter especially in running their dairy farm.
La Famille
BelierThe film won Best Female Newcomer for Louane Emera at the 2015 Cesar
Awards, Best Actress for Karen Viard and Best Female Newcomer for Emera at the
2015 Lumiere Awards, and Salamandre d’Or (Audience Award) at the Sarlat Film
Festival in November 2014.
This year, the
event will run from June 3 to 9, at Greenbelt 3 and at Bonifacio High Street’s
Central Square Cinemas, offering a selection of 20 films, both recent and
classic releases, and concluding with the new CINEMIX, a special DJ event
fusing cinema with electronic music.
Nora Aunor-starrer Taklub wins Ecumenical Jury Prize at Cannes Film Festival
The Nora-Aunor starrer Taklub won a special
award at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival in France.
Directed by Brillante Mendoza, this film
about Yolanda survivors earned a special commendation from the 2015 Ecumenical
Jury at the 68th Cannes Film Festival.
The Filipino film is one of only three
movies honored by the Ecumenical Jury this year. It was the only entry
recognized from among the entries of the Un Certain Regard section of Cannes.
Taklub is cited “for the sensitive portrayal
of individuals and communities working for life in the midst of suffering and
death in the shadows of natural catastrophes in the Philippines.”
In Taklub, Nora is cast as a mother who lost
her children to super typhoon Yolanda that devastated and killed thousands in
November 2013. The film is set in Tacloban, one of the hardest-hit areas in
Eastern Visayas.
The film also stars Julio Diaz, Aaron
Rivera, Rome Mallari, Shine Santos, Lou Veloso, Soliman Cruz, and Ruby Ruiz,
among others.
Portrait Painting of Nora Aunor from the movie, Himala
Art
Work by:
Vincent Kristan Quilop
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Nora Aunor wins Best Actress award in St. Tropez Film Festival
Superstar Nora
Aunor won the Best Actress in a Foreign Film award for her role in Dementia and
‘Dementia’ took the awards for Best Foreign Language Film at the St. Tropez Film
Festival in France on May 16, 2015.
Perci Intalan,
director of Dementia accepted the awards on behalf of Nora who was unable to
attend the ceremony.
Monday, May 18, 2015
SUPERFAN
The unparalleled
Superstar of Philippine showbiz, Nora Aunor, had a super fan in Mandy Diaz who
is the focus of this documentary from writer-director Clodualdo del Mundo, Jr. The 23 minute short is centered around the
life of Diaz, one of the most colorful and avid Noranians, and his adoration of
Aunor that spanned four decades until his death. Nonie Buencamino plays the
role of Diaz in the film and features select clips from some of Aunor's
greatest films. Superfan was produced by Buruka Films.
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