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Christopher Gozum
Christopher Gozum studied Film in the University of the Philippines and is an alumnus of the 2006 Asian Film Academy (South Korea). His films received the Cultural Center of the Philippines Award for Alternative Film and Video (2005), as well as the Best Short Film (2007), the Ishmael Bernal Award for Young Filipino Filmmaker (2008), the Lino Brocka Grand Prize (2009) and the Best Director Award (2009), all in the Digital Lokal section of the Cinemanila International Film Festival. Gozum was an overseas Filipino worker in Saudi Arabia from 2007 to 2015. He is now based in his hometown of Bayambang.
Khavn
Khavn (born 1973, Manila) is a poet, novelist, songwriter, pianist, and filmmaker known for hi punk, innovative, and genre bending cinema. The father of Philippine digital filmmaking, Khavn has made 51 features and 115 short films. He has served as jury member at the Berlinale, Clermont-Ferrand, CPH:DOX, Jeonju, BiFan, Jihlava, & Dok Leipzig film festivals and has exhibited at the MoMA, Guggenheim Museum, Tate Modern, Museum of the 21st Century Arts in Rome, National Museum of Singapore, and Venice Biennial Architecture. He has lectured at the Berlinale Talent Campus, Bela Tarr’s Film Factory, Goethe Institute Nigeria, and he Danish Film Institute, and has curated programs for Viennale, Edinburgh International Film Festival, and Sharjah Biennial.
BALANGIGA: HOWLING WILDERNESS
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Pag-ukit sa Paniniwala
A sculpture believed to have been imported in town during Spanish colonial conquest, locally known as Mahal na Señor Sepulcro, is celebrating its 500 years. Meanwhile, composed of non-actors, Senakulo re-enacts the sufferings and death of Jesus. As the local community yearly unites to commemorate the Passion of Christ, a laborious journey unfolds following local craftsmen in transforming blocks of wood into a larger than life Jesus crucified on a 12-ft cross. The film is a 5-year visual ethnography of traditional yet practical orchestration of Semana Santa in a small town where religious woodcarving is the livelihood. An experiential film on neocolonial Philippines’ interpretation of Saints and Gods through many forms of rituals and iconographies, exposing wood as raw material that undergoes production processes before becoming a spiritual object of devotion.
Hiyas Baldemor Bagabaldo
Hiyas Baldemor Bagabaldo grew up in a family of artists and craftsmen in Paete, a small artisanal town in the Philippines. With a degree in Digital Filmmaking, she started merging her background in traditional arts with digital media that gave her an edge in visual storytelling. Most of her works are invested in visual elements. Her approach is experiential, aiming to blur and reveal correlation, contradiction, and multiple meanings behind constructed socio-political realities, personal and public spaces, Filipino colonial past, spiritual beliefs, and human strengths and weaknesses.
All Grown Up
A filmmaker closely follows her teen brother as he starts a new life in college. Although her brother is smart, he is a bit of an oddball and finds it hard to navigate the world like a normal teenager. However, as she moni- tors his progress, the filmmaker notices similar traits on her own daughter. This makes her question her ability to help the people she loves the most.
Wena Sanchez
Wena Sanchez is a filmmaker from Leyte. In 2014, she co-directed “Nick and Chai” — a documentary feature which won Best Picture at the QCinema Film Festival in 2014 and screened at International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), Busan IFF, and other festivals. All Grown Up is her second film.
Oda sa Wala
Sonya is an old maid stuck in a town that long ceased to recognize her existence but only until one fateful morning when a mysterious corpse arrives at the footsteps of their family owned funeral shop. Bringing forth strange luck and fortune, Sonya instantly gets drawn to the corpse’s mystique, reinvigorating not only her life but also that of her father Mang Rudy. But luck would eventually dry up, provoking further distress back to Sonya’s life. She faces the reality that her existence is nothing more than that of the corpse, at the tail end of its mortality.
Dwein Baltazar
Dwein Baltazar, first and foremost, is a mother, who has a love- hate relationship with writing and still dreams of becoming a theatre actress. Currently, Baltazar writes and directs for mini-series and movies. Her debut film, “Mamay Umeng” (2012) took home the Best Picture prize at the 14th Jeonju International Film Festival held in South Korea. Baltazar’s sophomore feature, “Gusto Kita With All My Hypothalamus” is set to have its international premiere at Busan International Film Festival this October 2018.
Masla A Papanok
A princess seeks refuge in a convent to escape an arranged marriage. A young prince tries to make sense of his station. A giant bird mysteriously appears after centuries of absence. Masla A Papanok (Ave) mixes history, myth, memory and magic to reimagine the Spanish colonial period in Mindanao like never before.
Gutierrez Mangansakan II
Born in 1976, in Cotabato, Southern Philippines, Gutierrez Mangansakan II is a keen observer of Southeast Asian cinema and one of the leading figures of the Regional Cinema New Wave movement in the Philippines. He has produced, written, and directed prize winning films such as “Limbunan” (The Bridal Quarter) which closed the Venice Critics Week section in 2010, “Cartas de la Soledad” (Letters of Solitude, 2011), “Qiyamah” (The Reckoning, 2012), “Daughters of the Three-Tailed Banner” (2015), and “Forbidden Memory” (2016).