A new festival honors Filipino American and Filipino film.
Miguel Sevilla made a lot of cold calls in the run-up to the Cinematografo International Film Festival, San Francisco’s newest film festival dedicated to the celebration of Filipino American and Filipino cinema. As he would call filmmaker after filmmaker to tell them about the festival and talk about the possibility of showcasing their work in it, he made a discovery. Most of the filmmakers didn’t know one another; in some cases, had not even heard of each other.
“Filipinos don’t know each other for some reason,” Sevilla says. “That’s something I want to make, a community of Filipino American filmmakers. ‘Oh, do you need help here?’ ‘Do you need someone to read your script?’ That is the most exciting part, for me, getting them all in a room and making a community out of it.”
That dream is about to become a reality when Cinematografo International Film Festival makes its debut Nov. 9-12. It is the brainchild of ABS-CBN, the Daly City company that reaches 300,000 American homes through its station, the Filipino Channel.
“I met with John-D (Lazatin, CIFF executive director) and Miguel and they said, ‘You have to understand. This is a new initiative, it’s a new thing. We have our tendrils everywhere in the world, but not really in America,’ ” says San Francisco filmmaker H.P. Mendoza, whose new film “Bitter Melon” is a Cinematografo Original and who will appear at the festival for the “Presenting Cinematografo Originals ... and Other New Projects” panel. “I’m like, ‘You’re in America. My family watches you.’ They said, ‘No, that’s Filipino programming. We want Filipino American programming.’ ”
“When ABS-CBN started out, we were just providing Filipino content to Filipino families that have migrated here, so we were bringing our telenovelas, our soap operas here, and subtitling them so that their children could also watch,” Sevilla says. “Then as the generations went on, they didn’t have a connection to the Philippines anymore; some of them have never gone back home. It sort of became imperative to reach out and say, ‘What are your stories? What are the films you want to make?’ ”
Cinematografo opens not with an American film but with the Filipino “Ang Larawan: The Portrait,” a musical by former Bay Area resident Loy Arcenas, whose next film is Cinematografo Original, “Mirador.” A scenic designer who has worked with ACT and
‘I’m really excited to see the work over this concentrated amount of time and also gathering all these filmmakers and realizing there is a community.’ Filmmaker Ramona Diaz
Berkeley Rep, he turned to filmmaking in 2011 with the award-winning “Niño.” While he hopes to reconnect with old theater friends, he is also excited about meeting the other filmmakers in the festival.
“They are much younger than I am,” Arcenas, 64, says. “I would like to see how they think.”
The festival also will pay tribute to documentary filmmaker Ramona Diaz with a special panel, as well as screenings of her latest film “Motherland,” about a busy Manila maternity ward; “Don’t Stop Believin’: Everyman’s Journey,” her 2012 film about singer Arnel Pineda’s rise to fame with the Bay Area’s rock band Journey; and “Imelda,” her 2003 portrait of former Philippine first lady Imelda Marcos.
“I’m really excited to see the work over this concentrated amount of time and also gathering all these filmmakers and realizing there is a community,” Diaz says. “A lot of the times I feel like I’m the only one making this work, when I’m not, really. This is a chance to really start forming community.”
The festival, named for the first movie theater in the Philippines, established in 1897, has gathered a diverse group of films and filmmakers.
“Cinematografo means a lot to me, being Filipino,” Mendoza says. “Everyone in my family is like, ‘You’re working with ABS-CBN!’ To them, that’s bigger than doing anything for Fox or Netflix. I mean this, if I visit anyone in my family, ABS-CBN is on 24 hours a day, in every room of the house. It’s kind of a cultural thing for me. It’s a big deal.”