“A La Juventud Filipina”, a poem of ten stanzas, written by an eighteen year old Jose Rizal in 1879, won a literary contest held in the Manila Lyceum of Art and Literature. An elite society of literary men and artists conferred on him a feather-shaped silver pen and a diploma. Towards the end of the colonial period, when… Read More »
THEY PRAY BEFORE THEY PREY depraved traditions of uninterrupted servility persist conspicuously ingrained by foreboding mechanisms vulnerable to predatory systems of living in the gutter from centuries of unmitigated oppression and misery insidious moguls regulate the market at their behest unilateral decision is made in delusions of solipsism downturns impact hens on nest while dogs saunter but horned… Read More »
what you see is what you think you see the colour wheel of popular democracy makes an illusion of communal harmony surreptitiously framed by the bourgeoisie freedom is the brilliant colour of humanity squeezed out on palette of social justice mixes all sorts of liberty and opportunity to paint some semblance forging equality intricate brushstrokes by the bureaucracy… Read More »
The Philippine alphabet has gone through a peculiar transformation of writing system during the evolution of the country’s national language. Undeniably attached to its long history of foreign influences, having been colonized by Spain for centuries and the United States of America prior to the Second World War, the shifting consensus on national language reflects a history of… Read More »
Czech dissident and playwright Vaclav Havel who would later become President of the Czech Republic, wrote in 1967 a satirical play ‘The Memorandum,’ which parodied bureaucracy and society’s adherence to communist rule. Havel critiqued the system by utilizing an invented language “Ptydepe” to magnify the incomprehensibility of bureaucratic jargon or newspeak which disallows ordinary citizens from living in… Read More »
Veteran Polish director Agnieszka Holland whose films have been nominated three times in the Best Foreign Language film category, namely ‘Angry Harvest’ (1985), ‘Europa, Europa’ (1990), and ‘In Darkness’ (2011), has finally realized her decades long dream project about the enigmatic literary giant, Franz Kafka, in her latest Academy Awards contender, ‘Franz’. The celebrated international filmmaker shares her… Read More »
Guillermo del Toro was seven years old when he first saw ‘Frankenstein’ starring Boris Karloff as the creature. It was his epiphany, vowing to follow his messiah in creating a ‘sacred horror’ of a world. It was spawned by his fear-based religion and Mexican rooted dark imagination. He felt compelled to make his own cinematic version of the… Read More »
Raoul Peck adds “Orwell 2+2=5” to his stirring list of documentaries on human rights, which includes the Oscar nominated “I Am Not Your Negro,” a film about the life of James Baldwin. Peck has dedicated his career longing to change the way people view history and he could not let a project like ‘Orwell’ slip by without applying… Read More »
Multi-awarded and internationally renowned auteur Jafar Panahi arrives at TIFF50 with his new masterpiece, ‘It Was Just An Accident’. The revenge thriller has been awarded the Palme d’Or at Cannes 2025, adding to his filmography an impressive list of international film festival awards like the Golden Leopard in 1997 for ‘The Mirror’, the Golden Lion in 2000 for… Read More »