Select movies here

Batad (DVD)
Ag-ap (Alchris Galura) is a teenage Ifugao boy who thinks owning a pair of trekking shoes can win him the admiration of Lab-an, a local girl. To raise money for his shoes, he tries all kinds of odd jobs. He eventually becomes a tourist guide that exposes him to the westernized world outside their remote village. This is a story about tradition vs. modernization in the life of indigenous people.

Blue (DVD)
Created by Kieslowski and his writing partner Krzysztof Piesiewicz for France's bicentennial, the titles--and the themes of the films--come from the three colors of the French flag representing liberty, equality, and fraternity. Blue examines liberation through the eyes of a woman (Juliette Binoche) who loses her husband and daughter in an auto accident, and solemnly starts anew. This is a devastating film that is not based on contrived dialogue, but on subtle actions. Unable to live in the country estate with her painful memories, she abandons all of her possessions to start a new life. But physical distance cannot sever her from her past, withdrawing further into her grief, locked in enigmatic silence. Blue is a beautifully realized, intimate, and intensely personal film on the process of healing and catharsis.

White (DVD)
White is an ironic comedy about a befuddled Polish husband (Zbigniew Zamachowski) who takes an odd path of revenge against his ex-wife (Julie Delpy). White is a fascinating, dark comedy about obsession, revenge, and redemption, replete with subtle irony. It is also a disturbing portrait of the price exacted when a soul is consumed by its own destructive passions. Karol Karol (Zbigniew Zamachowski) is a broken Polish immigrant whose beautiful French wife, Dominique (Julie Delpy), publicly humiliates him in a French courtroom during their divorce hearing. He meets a fellow countryman, who would later become his most trusted confidant. They are both melancholy and want to go home. Karol returns to a corrupted, post-communist Poland. Through illicit means, he sets out to make his fortune, and attempts to reclaim his life and love. White is a highly engaging film about complex human emotions. It is also Kieslowski's personal statement on the disintegration of his beloved homeland.

Red (DVD)
Red is an intricately constructed parable on the need for connection and the complexity of fate. Valentine (Irene Jacob) is a model whose vacuous existence is disrupted when chance intercedes and, one evening after a runway show, runs over a German shepherd. She meets the dog's owner, Joseph Kern (Jean-Louis Trintignant), a reclusive, retired judge. We later see that the seemingly misanthropic judge has been intercepting the telephone conversations of his neighbors, and amplifying them through his stereo. Through a series of peripheral characters and events, we gain insight into the judge's traumatic past, and a sense of the universality of isolation. It is not accidental that the deepest secrets of the human soul are revealed in moments of absence and separation. But Red is also a love story - a deep intimacy that is cerebral and not corporal.

Breaking the Waves
Drama set in a repressed, deeply religious community in the north of Scotland, where a naive young woman named Bess McNeil (Emily Watson) meets and falls in love with Danish oil-rig worker Jan (Stellan Skarsgaard). They are deeply in love but, when Jan returns to his rig, Bess prays to God that he returns for good. Jan does return, his neck broken in an accident aboard the rig. Because of his condition, Jan and Bess are now unable to enjoy a sexual relationship and Jan urges Bess to take another lover and tell him the details. As Bess becomes more deviant in her sexual behaviour, the more she comes to believe that her actions are guided by God and are helping Jan recover.

back Animation, Filipino, Documentary, Indie-Experimental-Art

LINKS: A, B, C, D, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z