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The 28th San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival's special focus on Pinoy films and filmmakers.
The 28th San Francisco Inter-national Asian American Film Festival (SFIAAFF) is especially different this year as it pres-ents a special focus on Filipino and Filipino-American media-making. Through retrospectives, exciting new films and a mobile game produced by the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM), the festival offers a vital and dynamic look at the Filipino community.
The SFIAAFF showcases the best Asian and Asian American films from around the globe and takes place from March 11 to 21 in San Francisco, Berkeley and San Jose.
In the past 28 years, the SFIAAFF has pre-sented works of pioneering Filipino filmmak-ers including such notable names as Raymond Red, Ramona Diaz, Marilou Diaz-Abaya, Marlon Fuentes and Brillante Mendoza. This year marks nine years since the groundbreak-ing Fil-Am narrative features The Flipside, directed by Rod Pulido and The Debut by Gene Cajayon. That same year also brought into focus the achievements of Fil-Am film-makers who had paved the way for Pulido and Cajayon, and set the course for many filmmak-ers to come.
A retrospective on Brocka and the Philip-pines’ political history.
This year, the festival presents a wide-ranging look at the past and future of Filipino media making. A retrospective of legendary director Lino Brocka’s films offer a historical look at the first Filipino filmmaker to present works at the Cannes Film Festival.
SFIAAFF is honored to present four of Brocka’s best works in a retrospective look at the career that is arguably the father of all Filipino filmmakers who came after him. Openly gay, Brocka was, as filmmaker Khavn de la Cruz, "the ultimate icon of Philippine cinema."
The festival will present screenings of You Were Weighed and Found Wanting (Tinim-bang Ka Nguni’t Kulang), Bayan Ko, Manila in the Claws of Neon (Maynila sa Kuko ng Liwanag) and Insiang.
You Were Weighed... was Brocka’s 1974 movie which he considered his "first novel" and his first production for his own film outfit. The film is about a young boy growing up in a small town and the unusual friendship he develops with a leper and the village idiot. Bayan Ko, deemed subversive in 1985 by by the government of Ferdinand Marcos and underwent a legal battle to be shown in its uncut form.
Brocka was a talent who would influence generations of filmmakers, including Raya Martin, whose Independencia screened at Cannes in 2009 and will be presented too at the festival. Both filmmakers have made pow-erful explorations of the Philippines’ political history, a history that is also investigated in Tom Coffman’s new entry into the Documen-tary Competition, Ninoy Aquino and The Rise of People Power. Coffman’s entry charts the extraordinary and tragic life of the influential Philippine senator and opposition leader.
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