Manila By Night (Bernal, 1980)There is no easy way to learn Philippine Cinema but to take an academic subject of it in U.P. Of course, at the very second day of class, I could not deny myself that I am, flesh and blood, a hardcore cinephile. 2000+ films in three years: 99% foreign films and 1% Filipino films. I pity myself for not being a hardcore Philippine Cinema fan. Critics like oggs, dodo, noel, chard and even a local cinephile named epoy would trample over me against the very idea of not committing my film analysis schema to the beauty and aesthetics of Philippine cinema. Well, aside from adopting the Bordwell-Thompson approach in analyzing film to the evaluation of its rich history, I also encountered a big blunder on engaging a study on it: the availability of the materials themselves. Where could I get them? Who can help me? Who can bring me to an archive where I can methodologically view films? What sort of approach of film research does this project entail?
So many questions, dilemmas, trilemmas, quadrilemmas and many, mnay opposing conjectures have discouraged me on engaging a thorough research on it. Most of these conjectures were politically inflamed reasons i do not want to discuss further.
With Film 12 i might be encourage to drop all these doubts and bury it underground. I hope Maam Felix is enthusiastic enough to hone film critics of Philippine cinema from a pool of students whose main interests are not mainly that of film. The aspect of honing students to learn the basics of criticism and theory, as her first lecture suggest, is a painful process that requires a lot of effort from the students. I am glad I have backgrounds on semiotics, feminist, formalist and structuralist criticism.
The weird thing was I wasn't able to pass a diagnostic film review on our first movie: Manila by Night (1980) by Ishmael Bernal. My laptop brokedown and I had a tantrum the whole night anxious about the paper, i slept through it and didn't able to finished it at the end of the day. Good thing she wanted all the film review re-done by this week. We have a report about the movie on thrusday and I am the leader. What not! Haha! it's time to share my thoughts about film aesthetics, film theory and criticism to bright young minds of the university. But how am I gonna cram the ideas that I have painstakingly learned for three years now. All those film journals, essays and film books, all those films.
I hope they would understand me. Groupmates, wherever you are, read read read.
That's all folks, thank you!
Ciao!
***
So many questions, dilemmas, trilemmas, quadrilemmas and many, mnay opposing conjectures have discouraged me on engaging a thorough research on it. Most of these conjectures were politically inflamed reasons i do not want to discuss further.
With Film 12 i might be encourage to drop all these doubts and bury it underground. I hope Maam Felix is enthusiastic enough to hone film critics of Philippine cinema from a pool of students whose main interests are not mainly that of film. The aspect of honing students to learn the basics of criticism and theory, as her first lecture suggest, is a painful process that requires a lot of effort from the students. I am glad I have backgrounds on semiotics, feminist, formalist and structuralist criticism.
The weird thing was I wasn't able to pass a diagnostic film review on our first movie: Manila by Night (1980) by Ishmael Bernal. My laptop brokedown and I had a tantrum the whole night anxious about the paper, i slept through it and didn't able to finished it at the end of the day. Good thing she wanted all the film review re-done by this week. We have a report about the movie on thrusday and I am the leader. What not! Haha! it's time to share my thoughts about film aesthetics, film theory and criticism to bright young minds of the university. But how am I gonna cram the ideas that I have painstakingly learned for three years now. All those film journals, essays and film books, all those films.
I hope they would understand me. Groupmates, wherever you are, read read read.
That's all folks, thank you!
Ciao!
***
