LOU VELOSO
AWARD-WINNING director Brillante Ma. Mendoza’s cameras just keep grinding; and they recently were trained on veteran thespian Lou Veloso.
The 66-year-old actor plays lead in Mendoza’s 30-minute feature, which is part of an omnibus film called “Asian Three-Fold Mirror.”
The project, a coproduction of the Japan Foundation Asia Center and the Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF), also features the works of two other accomplished Asian directors: Isao Yukisada from Japan and Sotho Kulikar from Cambodia. It was launched in 2014.
Mendoza and Veloso shot the film in February in the city of Obihiro in Hokkaido, Japan. “We’re now in the process of editing it,” the director told the Inquirer on Tuesday. “We will return to Japan in October.”
He added: “We were lucky that the filming had been easy and smooth, despite the snow storm we experienced in Hokkaido during our last shooting day. We took advantage of the snow as part of our shoot.”
Mendoza said the experience “was like shooting a full-length movie,” because aside from filming in Japan, his team also shot some scenes in Pasay and Manila, as well as in Cavite and Pampanga.
The omnibus film will have its world premiere at the 29th edition of the Tokyo International Film Festival to be held from
Oct. 25 to Nov. 3, and will subsequently be shown on the international festival circuit.
Mendoza has been known for “deftly portraying Filipino stories of ordinary men bravely and proudly overcoming extraordinary situations.”
This time around, he plans to grapple with the issue of “loss of one’s national identity through an intimate portrayal of an illegal Filipino immigrant in Japan,” said the TIFF in a statement. The character played by Veloso returns to his homeland for the first time in decades after being deported.
Veloso, known for his supporting roles in over 30 popular comedy films, has already worked with Mendoza in three film projects—“Masahista” (2005), “Kinatay” (2009) and “Taklub” (2015).
He said he was proud to be a part of the “Asian Three-Fold Mirror” project and was especially happy to be given the opportunity to go to Japan. “[It is] my favorite country,” Veloso said. “The landscape of Japan has beauty and discipline.”
The TIFF explained that “the protagonist of each chapter is someone living in a different Asian country. This allows the directors to express their own unique visions and film on location in Asia.”
Filming in Japan, Cambodia, Malaysia and the Philippines began in February, and will conclude in April.
The creation of an omnibus film “aims to deepen interactions between neighboring countries within Asia, as well as enrich cultural understanding and provide a chance for people to learn more about the ways of life in these Asian countries,” the TIFF statement said.
Japanese actors Masahiko Tsugawa and Masatoshi Nagase and Malaysian actress Sharifah Amani will be starring in Yukisada’s film, while Japanese thespian Masaya Kato will work with Cambodian actress Chumvan Sodhachivy in the episode by Kulikar.
E-mail mcruz@inquirer.com.ph