Wednesday, 30 September 2009
Korean Studies Auditorium 6:30 PM
Tara Illenberger’s Brutus (the name given to laborers — many of them juveniles — hired by unlicensed loggers to drag lumber through forests and transport it by raft to distant destinations) is an advocacy film. It was awarded the Jury Prize in the 4th Cinemalaya Film Festival precisely “for courageously and effectively drawing the audience’s attention to the complex dynamics between the exploitation of cultural communities and the degradation of the environment.” The film, about the journey of two Mangyan children (charmingly played by Timothy Mabalot and Rhea Medina) to the lowlands to deliver a load of illegal lumber, tackles several pertinent subjects, from the degradation of the forests by the proliferation of illegal loggers to the undue eviction of the indigenous Mangyans from the fertile lowlands to the forests.The film is gorgeously shot by cinematographer Jay Abello and expertly scored by Joey Ayala, providing the film with visual and musical flair. -Francis “Oggs” Cruz
Wednesday, 23 September 2009
Korean Studies Auditorium 6:30 PM
A thoughtful portrayal of the relationship between a father and a son, Jermal explores themes of social and physical exclusion and the pain of growing up. The plot is given a unique twist by its setting on an isolated fishing platform, or jermal, in the middle of the Malacca Straits off North Sumatra.
There are between 1,200 and 1,500 such jermals employing more than 5,000 kids (ages 10 – 17) in Indonesia. Their world consists only of these rickety wooden structures not much larger than a tennis court sitting a few meters above the waves. Typically 10 workers live on a jermal, half or more of whom are children.
The work is extremely hazardous, and the average day can last between 12 to 20 hours at a stretch, lifting heavy nets filled with anchovy-like fish, sorting the fish from stinging jellyfish or seasnakes, then boiling, salting and drying the catch. The minimum stay is three months, without any time on shore. The wage is meager, with beginners getting $5 a month, while an experienced boy may get $10.
The central character in the story is Jaya, a 12-year-old schoolboy whose orderly life is dramatically disrupted when, after his mother’s death, he is sent to a jermal to be with his father, Johar. Johar, a taciturn and solitary figure, is an escapee from the mainland with a past he is determined to reject. Snubbed by his father, Jaya is left to fend for himself in a tough new environment that transforms him from a naive schoolboy into a hardened survivor. Jermal was an official selection at the 2009 Rotterdam International Film Festival. -Kabar Indonesia
Wednesday, 9 September 2009
Korean Studies Auditorium 6:30 PM
Dong Loc Crossroad is a poignant, poetic, and heartbreaking true-life story of eleven members of an all-female unit of north Vietnamese volunteers charged with the hazardous task of detonating unexploded ordnance at a key crossroad during the Viet Nam War. The beautiful and haunting soundtrack features rare royal court songs interspersed with patriotic songs of the era. Dong Loc Crossroad won the Gold Lotus Prize for Best Film at the 12th Vietnamese Film Festival in 1999. It is being screened here for the first time with English subtitles produced by the Center for Southeast Asian Studies.
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