PH short wins in Directors’ Guild awards

“PAGPAG

Filipino John Paul Su of the New York University won the best Asian-American student filmmaker honor from the Directors Guild of America (DGA).

He won for his 12-minute short film “Pagpag (Garbage Food),” which features Bibeth Orteza as a 75-year-old scavenger. News was relayed to the Inquirer by filmmaker Carlos Siguion-Reyna, Su’s teacher at the NYU Tisch Asia.

According to its website, the DGA Student Film Awards for African-American, Asian-American, Latino and Women Directors seeks “to honor, encourage and bring attention to exceptional minority and women directors in film schools and select universities” in the United States.

DGA president Taylor Hackford said that the DGA “recognizes young directors who have shown exceptional talent and promise.”

“Winning is surreal,” Su told the Inquirer. “It hasn’t fully sunk in yet as I was screening a short docu (“The Caregiver”) in New York, as well as writing my thesis and the feature version of ‘Pagpag.’” Bayani San Diego Jr.