7 PH films in Udine

“Sunday Beauty Queen”

Seven Filipino films will be shown in the 19th Far East Film Festival in Udine, Italy, from April 21 to 29.

Two Metro Manila Film Festival frontrunners and a Cinemalaya product are competing for the Audience Award. Erik Matti’s “Seklusyon” and Jun Robles Lana’s “Die Beautiful” (major winners in last December’s MMFF) and Jason Paul Laxamana’s “Mercury is Mine” (a Cinemalaya topnotcher last year) are part of Udine’s tilt.

Meanwhile, Baby Ruth Villarama’s “Sunday Beauty Queen,” best picture in the MMFF, is included in Udine’s documentary category.

Lastly, three “Golden Age” films—Lino Brocka’s “Cain at Abel,” Mario O’Hara’s “Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos,” and Mike de Leon’s “Kung Mangarap Ka’t Magising”—will be showcased in the Classic Restoration section.

The Udine fest, which seeks to highlight Asian popular cinema, aims to be “a venue for cultural exchange between East and West.”

The annual event, which persists in “exploring, experiencing and describing the unexpected,” has always presented films that are “extreme, anarchic and unsettling whatever their genre or narrative slant … rather than a question of technique or aesthetic, it’s a question of soul,” remarks Screen Anarchy. —BAYANI SAN DIEGO JR.

“Seklusyon”

Paolo Ballesteros (left) and Christian Bables in “Die Beautiful”

Hilda Koronel in “Kung Mangarap Ka’t Magising”

Nora Aunor in “Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos”

Bret Jackson (left) and Pokwang in “Mercury is Mine”