26 Films you shouldn’t miss at the 4th Pista ng Pelikulang Pilipino (Part 2)

By Asian Film Festival on November 23, 2020 • ( Leave a comment )

We continue with our list of films that you shouldn’t miss at the 4th Pista ng Pelikulang Pilipino (PPP), which is taking place online until December 13th, 2020.

About the festival:
The Pista ng Pelikulang Pilipino (PPP) is a week-long celebration of Philippine Cinema where new quality genre Filipino films are screened for one (1) week in all regular cinemas nationwide. No foreign film will be screened during PPP except in specialty cinemas to give the opportunity for the whole country to celebrate its own local films. This event is organized by the Film Development Council of the Philippines in partnership with the National Cinema Association of the Philippines.

How to watch the films:
1) Go to https://fdcpchannel.ph
2) Register and log-in.
3) For watching the Feature Films you will need to pay for a Subscription. You can buy a Daily Pass valid for 24 hours only (PHP 99), Half Run Pass valid for 12 days only (PHP 299) or a Premium Pass for PHP 599 that will give you access to all the films. Short Films are FREE to watch.
4) After the payment has been accepted you will have access to the film/s BUT only on the days the film is scheduled.
5) Log in 10 min before the film schedule time.
6) Enjoy the film.

VERY IMPORTANT NOTE: The festival is not running on Video On Demand (VOD) meaning you CAN’T STREAM the films when you want. The festival runs on LIVE STREAMING. You will need to follow the schedule to watch the film you want. This is VERY annoying we know but it’s the festival’s rules. So please log in at least 10 minutes before the movie starts to get access to the screenings. There are NO REFUNDS of any means. We strongly advice to read the Q&A of the festival at https://fdcpchannel.ph/faqs

Recommended Films:

**Mula Sa Kung Ano Ang Noon** (From What is Before) by Lav Diaz – Philippines | 2014 – 338 minutes

Mysterious things are happening in a remote barrio. Wails are heard from the forest, cows are hacked to death, a man is found bleeding to death at the crossroad and houses are burned. Military operations are becoming common. Brutal militias rule the countryside. Ferdinand E. Marcos announces Proclamation No. 1081 putting the entire country under Martial Law. Greater cinema fulfills one of its promises—that of reclaiming the Malay Philippines’ provenance. Banished traditions/practices of the pre-Hispanic and pre-Islamic periods are resurrected and immortalized. (PPP 2020)

Trailer:

Ned’s Project by Lemuel Lorca – Philippines | 2016 – 90 minutes

An itinerant tattoo artist joins a talent reality show for lesbians in the hopes of winning the prize money that will enable her to get artificially inseminated and achieve her lifelong dream of becoming a mother. (PPP 2020)

Trailer:

**Never Not Love You** by Antoinette Jadaone – Philippines | 2018 – 100 minutes

Two young lovers meet and fall in love. Together they build a life until career opportunities bring them out of the country. Out of the comforts of home and with individual careers going different directions. Will their love survive? (PPP 2020)

Trailer:

**Nick & Chai** by Cha Escala, Wena Sanchez – Philippines | 2014 – 70 minutes

Nick and Chai lost all their four children to Super Typhoon Yolanda. How do they cope with their loss? (PPP 2020)

Trailer:

**Paglipay** by Zig Dulay – Philippines | 2016 – 98 minutes

The film focuses on Atan, an Aeta from Baytan village in Zambales, who makes a living from traditional farming system kaingin and hunting on the foothills of Mt. Pinatubo. The narrative opens as we follow Atan’s fulfillment of his arranged marriage with a fellow Aeta, Ani. He has to accomplish a number of responsibilities which includes the offering of bandi or bride price to Ani’s parents. Atan needs to cross the mountain river going to Banwa, the town where he could earn the necessary amount for the bride price. In order to find a job, he needs to adapt himself with the modern way of life in town, including change in appearance, manner of clothing, religious practice, and even the use of different language in order to associate himself with the Unat or ‘straight-haired ones,’ such as Rain, a young lass from Manila who would turn his life around. Rain has to immerse with the Aetas of Banwa for her thesis, and Atan is commissioned to accompany her in research and interviews with the locals. Atan develops special feelings with Rain in his daily encounters with her. Slowly, the young Aeta forgets the very reason of his journey—the bandi, and the arrangement with Ani. On his effort to accommodate himself in a modern society, Atan faces cross-cultural modifications amid changes in the mountain brought about by immense modernity. Paglipay is a Sambal Ayta term being used by Aetas when crossing the mountain river going to town. (PPP 2020)

Trailer:

**Pauwi Na** by Paolo Villaluna – Philippines | 2016 – 122 minutes

Pauwi Na follows a family’s exodus from Manila to return to their home province. Mang Pepe and Aling Remedios live in a cramped shanty with their daughter Pina, son JP and his pregnant blind wife Isabel; along with their dog, Kikay. To survive daily, Mang Pepe drives his pedicab to deliver goods at the market and Remedios takes laundry from her neighbors. JP and Pina strive to earn in their own ways. Isabel manages to cope in spite of her blindness. A series of unfortunate incidents prompts Mang Pepe to convince his family to leave the city, in the hope of overturning their miserable existence. Without any means to travel, they decide to pedal their way back to the province – riding on their two pedicabs with blind faith and sheer determination. The harrowing journey and fateful encounters soon test the family’s resolve to continue their mission. (PPP 2020)

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Rainbow’s Sunset by Joel Lamangan – Philippines | 2018 – 11 minutes

Ramon Estrella, an 84-year old retired senator, temporarily leaves his wife of six decades to take care of his gay best friend who is dying of cancer. He has his wife’s blessings, but Ramon’s three children are scandalized. The old man defies their collective protest and declares that he loves his friend—godfather to all three both in baptism and matrimony—the same way that he loves his wife. The news quickly sends shock waves to the community, raising the hackles of the ex-senator’s second-born, the first of two feisty daughters. As the city’s newly elected mayor, she is the sole heiress to her father’s political legacy. When the youngest child—a formidable feminist and activist—sides with her father and godfather, and the eldest—a weakling and flawed bureaucrat—figures in a scandal of his own, the siblings turn on one another, resulting in a full-blown three-sided war. Their ever patient and loving matriarch does her beatific best to sue for peace among her brood—with some timely help from the absent patriarch. Blood eventually proves thicker than water, but the force of filial piety cannot mend all of the siblings’ differences. Not when one of them remains resolute in her prejudice against homosexuality. (PPP 2020)

Trailer:

**Sakaling Hindi Makarating** (The Amazing Journey of the Letters) by Ice Idanan – Philippines | 2016 – 90 minutes

A series of mysterious hand-illustrated postcards take a young woman on a journey throughout the Philippines in search of its anonymous writer. (PPP 2020)

Trailer:

**Signal Rock** by Chito S. Roño – Philippines | 2018 – 130 minutes

Intoy takes care of his parents when his sister moved out to work overseas. Since he lives in a remote area in Samar, the only way he could contact his sister is by going to strange rock formations on the island. (PPP 2020)

Trailer:

**Tanabata’s Wife** by Charlson Ong and Lito Casaje – Philippines | 2018 – 90 minutes

The film is based on the classic Philippine short story ‘Tanabata’s Wife’ by Baguio born author Sinai Hamada published in the 1930s. It is the early part of the 20th century and Japanese immigrant farmers are doing well with vegetable gardens in La Trinidad Valley near Baguio, where they have pioneered the cultivation of salad greens in the region, among them Tanabata- San. Middle-aged and lonely, he hires a young Bontok woman, Fasang, as farmhand, and falls in love with her. They marry and have a son, Kato. They grow the garden, but Fasang is enamored of the city lights of an emerging Baguio. She loves the cinema. She falls for the wiles of a distant cousin, Okdo, and they elope, taking Kato with them. With only his teen-aged aide Tiago working the farm, Tanabata is distraught. He loses his will to live and abandons the garden. He wants to go home to Japan to die, wishing only to see his wife and son one last time. Fasang falls on hard times, too. Okdo loses his job at Camp John Hay and abandons her. She goes to the work camp to dig roads. When all seems lost, Tiago finds Fasang and implores her to come home with Kato. Tanabata-San’s family is restored: True love like the seasons will have its way, it is as old as the mountains. (PPP 2020)

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**The Search for Weng-Weng** by Andrew Leavold – Australia | 2013 – 96 minutes

The bizarre history of Filipino B-films, as told through filmmaker Andrew Leavold’s personal quest to find the truth behind its midget James Bond superstar Weng Weng. (PPP 2020)

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**Transit** by Hannah Espia – Philippines | 2013 – 93 minutes

It tells the story of Moises, a Filipino single-dad working as a caregiver in Herzliya, Israel, who comes home to his apartment in Tel Aviv to celebrate his son Joshua’s 4th birthday. It was on that day that Moises, together with their Filipino neighbor Janet, and her daughter Yael, ﬁnd out that the Israeli government is going to deport children of foreign workers. Afraid of the new law, Moises and Janet decide to hide their children from the immigration police by making them stay inside the house. (PPP 2020)

Trailer:

**Tu Pug Imatuy** by Arnel Barbarona – Philippines | 2017 – 90 minutes

Tu Pug Imatuy, the Manobo term for “The Right to Kill”, tells the story of a Lumad couple in Mindanao, Obunay and Dawin, who strive to raise and teach their children of their indigenous ways amidst the threat of mining and militarization. Tragedy strikes as their infant child dies of illness and after burying their child they encounter soldiers who separate them from their children and forced them as guides in their hunt against guerrillas in the mountains. The nightmarish event forces Obunay to fight back in order to reunite with the family. (PPP 2020)

Trailer: