Kidlat Tahimik

An elderly nun witnesses a young construction worker's fatal accident, compelling her to question the ethical principles of the institution she has devoted her life to.

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A young filmmaker is bent on recreating forgotten massacres from Philippine history, but when she begins shooting at a site where 1,000 men, women, and children were slaughtered, angry spirits are awakened and the lives of her team and the local villagers are put in peril.

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An observation of post-colonial economic relations through the intersecting trajectories of two Filipino women: one preparing to leave her native island to work as a domestic in Europe, the other to return for good.

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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.

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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.

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A silent film by Jet Leyco.

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

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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.

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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."

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

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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.”

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The film follows Kaspar Hauser, 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.

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A documentary film by filmmaker couple Egay Navarro and Rica Concepcion. It focuses on the life of Baguio artist Roberto Villanueva, known for his distinct approach to artmaking that included community participation.

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This is a Filipino omnibus film about three different journeys.

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Experimental documentary about roof-making.

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Documentary about an oil spill near the Philippines

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Essay film about rice farming and Kurosawa's Seven Samurai.

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The film illustrates the philosophy of “giving back” to nature, and documents the pinugo, the unique system of sustainable land cultivation developed by the Ifugao to take equal account of forest management and rice growing.This diary film also turns into a travelogue when a group of woodcarvers embark on a trip to Japan to the Takedera temple where they transform a 250-year-old tree, which had been struck by a lightning bolt, into a totem pole.

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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."

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A man plants trees around the world.

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Inspired by a trip to Monument Valley and the Navajo Nation while en route to the Telluride Film Festival, Tahimik and his eldest son Kidlat Gottlieb Kalayaan use the "spaghetti machine" (Tahimik's nickname for his Bolex camera) to make their own "spaghetti western." The decade-long path of the film encompasses the assassination of Benigno Aquino and the subsequent Yellow Revolution that brought Corazon Aquino to power, the decommissioning of the US air base Camp John Hay, and the younger Kidlat's trajectory through school, all shown through a Third World Projector salvaged from a junk pile on Navajo land.

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Short film about the sons of the director.

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Documentary about the meaning of bamboo.

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A Filipino slave travels around the world. An early version of the story Tahimik used for Balikbayan.

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Kadu, a boy from Pakil, Laguna, experiences the dissolution of tradition as it gives way to capitalism in the form of Madame, a foreigner who initially came to their village as a customer during the Festival of Turumba.

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Documentary about the working poor in Hongkong.

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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.

Open details →

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.”

Open details →