HCMC – ‘Encounter’ Presents Kidlat Tahimik

Presentation “Perfumed Nightmare”: Wed 19 Nov 2014, 6.30 pm
Room Marie Curie (6th Floor)
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Encounter Lecture: Fri 21 Nov 2014, 6.30 pm
Room Marie Curie (6th Floor)
Hoa Sen University

From the organizer:

‘Encounter’ presents Kidlat Tahimik with a Presentation and a Lecture on 19 & 21 November 2014.

Presentation “Perfumed Nightmare”

Introducing the work of Filipino filmmaker Kidlat Tahimik

This film is Kidlat Tahimik’s most renown essay film, whose release in 1978 was made possible with the assistance of Werner Herzog and Francis Ford Coppola.

After a lifetime in his somewhat backward hometown, Tahimik travels to Paris. His trip is motivated by his fascination with American technology (why he doesn’t go to America is typical of spontaneous nature of the storyline). Once in the City of Light, Tahimik is both fascinated by and disillusioned with the “wonders” of the modern world. The film has a delightfully spontaneous home-movie quality–literally so, since it was lensed in Super 8mm on a budget of less than $10,000.

Encounter Lecture with Kidlat Tahimik

Introducing the work of Filipino filmmaker Kidlat Tahimik.

The name Kidlat Tahimik immediately connotes contradiction. As an obsessive cultural observer, Kidlat has been exploring his inner cultural contradictions by making his non-commercial films since 1975. Born in 1942 as Eric Oteyza de Guia in Baguio City, he was raised in that American enclave resort town, situated in the heart of the tribal highlands of Igorot Culture. Three decades ago, he began questioning his American education, (a.k.a “my benevolent assimilation”). This had begun with his Maryknoll nuns in primary school; followed by further immersion in high schools in The Philippines with US curricula, ending up in America for a graduate degree (Wharton School MBA). After five years as an economist in Paris, he tore up his MBA diploma in 1972, tuned-in to commune-culture lifestyle, and embraced an anti-Hollywood school of filmmaking. As a self-taught filmmaker, his works are recognized at home and abroad for their primitive style and for their humorous deconstruction of his American education. In Baguio, he is an active artist (film, video-installation, performance), supporting the process/viewpoint of the undiploma-ed artists. In 1997, his Sunflower Film Collective embarked on a project to share user-friendly video technology with tribal people, with the aim that responsibility for cultural documentation rests in their own hands. He lectures at U.P. and Ateneo University, speaks at local/international conferences, contributes articles in Taglish to the Sunday Inquirer.

It is an extremely rare opportunity to hear one of the world’s most under-recognized Third Cinema Movement practitioners speak about his films – his motivations, choice of style, his influences and method of practice. His anti-colonial gaze, evident in his commentary and choice of subject, embraces a love of his culture and the importance of the local who he believes must not be goaded into the global race for ‘uniformity’ of value.

Language: English with Vietnamese translation

*Lectures to be followed by Q&A.

The event is free of charge.

Kidlat Tahimik (b. 1942, Baguio City, The Philippines) is a pioneer of experimental film in Asia, practicing as a film director, writer and actor. His films are commonly associated with the Third Cinema movement – a film movement begun in the 1960s-70s in Latin America that denounced neocolonialism, the capitalist system and the Hollywood model of cinema as mere entertainment to make money. He is considered the Father of Philippine Independent Cinema, entering the international stage in the late 1970s with ‘Perfumed Nightmare’, a release enabled with the support of filmmakers Werner Herzog and Francis Ford Coppola. Tahimik’s work embraces the essayist form. He is considered a magician of the fragment with an aesthetic often described as whimsical, politically incisive and with a third-world self-consciousness.