Sherad Anthony Sanchez, a 22-year old Mindanao native completing his undergraduate degree in Manila, attempts to tell us one. With a 700,000 pesos (US $14,000) grant from Cinema One Originals, Sanchez, whose disturbing yet tender short-film Apple traveled to Rotterdam earlier this year, took time off school, armed himself with an HD camera and ventured to Cotabato, to shoot a film about the last ‘balyan’ (tribal shaman) of a fictional tribe, ‘buhi’ (‘life’, in the native vernacular). Sanchez shot the film with a cast comprised almost entirely of non-professionals (he bravely threw out entirely the footage that included well-known Filipino actor Bembol Roco, from Manila in the Claws of Neon fame, feeling it was false), in tenuous locations, and with an almost all-local crew. The resulting work is a devastating glimpse into a transitory moment in a culture hidden, with scenes, filmmaking, moments, and a score so raw and so tense, yet so focused and precise. Sanchez is mature beyond his years, and this film, the first feature to be shot entirely in Mindanao, with almost all cast and crew comprised of locals, is the single most important Filipino Film of 2006.

Möchte ich gerne sehen. Überhaupt klingt das meiste, das in dem Artikel erwähnt wird, spannend. Vielleicht taucht ja das eine oder andere in der einen oder anderen Berlinale-Reihe auf. (Unsinn. Wenn, dann nur im Forum.) Gerardo De Leon: Mal nachsehen, ob es da DVDs gibt.