Kidlat Tahimik

Lucid

A national artist delivers a powerful message urging us to embrace and celebrate our cultural heritage, highlighting its richness and greatness, and encouraging us to avoid being mere imitators of modern society.

A Man Who Became Cinema

Masato Hara made his directorial debut in high school in 1968 and achieved a reputation as a young prodigy. Many years later, he continues to make films and show his old experimental 'live-screening' films, but is saddled with massive debts. This film follows eight years in his life.

BalikBayan #1: Memories of Overdevelopment Redux VI

As the ultimate enfant terrible of Philippine cinema, avant-gardist Kidlat Tahimik refuses to settle on anything, whether it’s the telling of a colonial past, or any version of this film, which he’s been making and revising for nearly four decades. BalikBayan, which means “returnee” in Filipino, is partly about the homecoming of the historical figure Enrique of Malacca, a Malay who Tahimik first played and brought to the screen in 1979. As the slave of the 16th-century Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan he circumnavigated the Earth, before returning home as a free man. Old footage of Enrique, played by the young Tahimik, is mixed with the fictional story of a mysterious old man, played by the present-day Tahimik, and documentary footage of a contemporary artist community in Baguio, in northern Philippines. In this version, Redux VI, Tahimik continues his quest to reconsider the Philippines’ colonial legacy. Shot on 16mm (1979–1980s) and video (1990s–2017).

Ode to Dreamers

A machine capable of recording ideas directly from the mind is invented, and an out-of-work comedian suffering from depression uses it to learn if he still has the gift to make people laugh.

Balikbayan #1: Memories of Overdevelopment Redux III

Magellan, the famous navigator, met his untimely death in the Philippines before he could circumnavigate the globe. Ironically, it was his slave and translator Enrique who most likely was the first to achieve the historic feat.

Illogical Patterns of a Logical Parallelism

A silent film by Jet Leyco.

Philippine New Wave: This Is Not a Film Movement

Documentary profiling the directors involved in the loose Philippine New Wave filmmaking movement.

José Rizal

Accused of treason, Dr. Jose P. Rizal awaits trial and meets with his colonial government-appointed counsel, Luis Taviel de Andrade. The two build the case and arguments for the defense as significant events in the central figure's life prior to his incarceration unfold. Upon hearing Rizal's life story, Taviel begins to realize that the accused not just is innocent but exhibits in fact all the qualities of an extraordinary man. When the mock trial unreels, Taviel is all set to act as the prime advocate for his client as Rizal himself is about to give an earth-moving speech to defend his honor and address his countrymen. Meanwhile, the Spanish authorities have worked out the vast political machinery to ensure a guilty verdict. A revolution waits in the wings.

Japanese Summers of a Filipino Fundoshi

Kidlat Tahimik, a director and performer, sought to recreate relations between the body and filmed image seen through "Asian eyes." This groundbreaking project took the form of a documentary which Mr. Tahimik directed and in which he performed himself in order to show his own thinking about the different views of the body held by the "East" and the "West."

A Movie Capital

This film is a record of the first Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival. It reflects the various ways the festival was given shape by nascent global changes embodied by Perestroika, the Tiananmen Square massacre, and many other contemporaneous events.

Shaman Wars

Three powerful shamans fight it out in a series of bizarre encounters over an a-go-go dancer. Their final encounter ends disastrously for all three, while the a-go-go-girl ends up acquiring all their powers.

I am Blushing

"I am blushing" - Swedish comedy about a film crew traveling to the Philippines to find environments for a movie.

Perfumed Nightmare

Kidlat, a Filipino jeepney driver, is fascinated by the idea of the American space programme and by Western society as a whole. When he moves to Paris, disillusionment sets in as his dreams are gradually shattered.

Who Invented the Yoyo? Who Invented the Moon Buggy?

Stuck in the German lands of “Yodelburg,” our hero Kidlat dreams of space and muses on humanity’s endless capacity for creativity, whether on the moon or at home in the Philippines. A delightful, self-proclaimed “third-world space spectacle.”

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser

The film follows Kaspar Hauser (Bruno S.), who lived the first seventeen years of his life chained in a tiny cellar with only a toy horse to occupy his time, devoid of all human contact except for a man who wears a black overcoat and top hat who feeds him.