The 22nd Singapore International Film Festival will take place on April 14 to April 19, 2009 and  a few Filipino films will be featured: Aureus Solito’s Boy, Francis Xavier Pasion’s Jay, Roxlee’s Cesar Asar and Lav Diaz’s Melancholia.

BOY

(Producer: Auraeus Solito, Endi “Hai” Balbuena, Screenplay: Jimmy Flores, Arturo Calo, Cast: Aeious Asin, Aries Pena, Madelaine Nicolas. Schedule: 19th Apr, 11:30am and 24th Apr, 7:15pm at The Substation)

Boy is a coming-of-age story about a boy who falls in love with a macho dancer:

A young budding poet, who is unnamed, observes lip-synching drag-queens and dancing rent-boys in a gay bar one evening and finds himself attracted to Aries, who comes from a poorer part of town. Selling his action heroes and comic books so as to be able to afford Aries for one night, he buys Aries at the bar and brings him home for the new year. Sparks fly while celebratory fireworks go off outside the house and the boys forge a fragile connection that neither of them is certain will last. This is an idealistic, coming-of-age tale of a sensitive boy who arrives at his first lesson about love and who learns to grow confidently into his own sexuality.

Boy is a finalist for the Asian Feature Film Competition.

Cinema Today is a section of the festival about films of today that will become tomorrow’s classics. From drama to comedy to documentaries, presenting the realities of today in this scope of films by some of the most watched filmmakers. The following Filipino films are featured:

Jay

(Producer: Francis Xavier Pasion, Ronald Mangubat, Screenplay: Francis Xavier Pasion, Cast: Baron Geisler, Coco Martin, Flor Salanga – schedule: 16th Apr, 9:15pm at

the National Museum of Singapore)

Television reality and real-life blur in the making of a sensationalist documentary about an anti-gay sex-crime.

Jay, a gay schoolteacher, is stabbed in an apparent sex-crime. But this is not what this film is about. Even before his family hears about the death, another Jay, a conniving TV producer, moves inside the family house with his crew to document their reactions. This new Jay convinces the family to let them shoot the dead man’s wake and funeral for a “reality show”, even up till the moment when the murderer is found. The plan goes so well that even the grieving mother is willing to redo the scene when she first confronts her son’s corpse. Director Francis Xavier Pasion explodes the gap between onscreen reality and real-life in this debut feature, which critiques sensationalist journalism by revealing what is entailed in the making of a documentary. The truth is never quite what it seems. Jay took the Best Film and Best Actor prizes at the Cinemalaya Film Festival.

Cesar Asar

(Producer: Roxlee, Mon Lee, Screenplay: Mon Lee, Cast: Jorge Caudilla, Fourth Lee, Mon Lee – schedule: 16th Apr, 9:15pm at The Substation)

Cesar and dim-witted George are best friends who manage to survive in the throes of poverty in this offbeat comedy.

George Boy was born late, hence he is slow in the head. Because he is the only student left in his class after no one can afford to go to school, he is named valedictorian. His uncle, who bullies him into singing a song about Kangkong in an “International Language” (ie. English), is striving to be an attorney. Cesar Asar is George’s best friend whose parents are working as illegal immigrants in the States. Cesar cracks jokes about how supermarkets vendors’ hands get swollen from changing the price tags on food products due to continual inflation, while George Boy soon disappears illegally to Saudi to find work and help his uncle. This surreal and self-mocking film pokes cruel fun at an aspect of the Philippines that has failed to rise above its poverty.

Imagine is another section of the festival: Step into this section if you want to experience the possibilities of cinema. Thought provoking, surrealistic and genre-defying, the eight films presented is an invitation to adventurous cineasts to discover the new frontiers of cinema. Melancholia by Lav Diaz is one of the featured films.

Melancholia

(Producer: Kristine Kintana, Screenplay: Lav Diaz, Cast: Angeli Bayani, Perry Dizon, Roeder Camanag, Raul Arellano – schedule: 18th Apr, 2:00pm at the Goethe-Institut – free screening)

The great independent auteur Lav Diaz’s latest epic explores the devastating emotional consequences of political oppression in the Philippines.

A film made up of three distinct movements. In the first part, three alienated characters – a prostitute, a pimp and a nun, reveal that they aren’t who they appear to be in the provincial town of Sagada. The burden of their ‘role-playing’ can only lead to madness. The second chapter takes place in Manila, where two ‘survivors’ from Sagada try to pick up the pieces of their lives with mixed results. In the final section, we are plunged back in time to the jungle, with three leftist guerrillas scrambling to escape government troops. Like all of Diaz’s films, life unfolds in real-time, but the details are rarely banal – every moment counts, the atmosphere is hypnotic and the images often breathtaking. The space he gives his characters (and performers) gradually accumulates into powerful sense of a national tragedy.

The Singapore International Film Festival is the largest international film festival in Singapore.  it has become significant in the Singapore arts landscape because of its dynamic film programming and commitment to the development of film culture and local cinema. The Festival screens over 200 films annually of all genres, with a focus on groundbreaking Asian cinema. Under the umbrella of the Silver Screen Awards, SIFF recognizes excellence in Asian cinema with its 3 awards categories – Asian Film Competition, Singapore Short Film Competition and the Singapore Film Awards introduced in 2009.

Read more about it on the 22nd Singapore International Film Festival website.

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