Festival Reviews
SWANA Film Festival Q&A with Festival Head Hajer
SWANA is a decolonial term for the South West Asian & North African region.
Rolmar Baldonado
April 8, 2023
https://queerscreen.org.au/
Among the many selections are two Filipino films to watch out for.
For someone who passed on the mashed potato to skip carbs, he sure loves his apple pie! OK, now that I got that out of the way, this film took me on a roller coaster ride of plot twists and character reveals, much more than that old red Volks can handle. I loved Jun Lana’s DIE BEAUTIFUL, and this one, despite its COVID lockdown budget, entertained me as well. Based on his interview, Lana admits that this is partly autobiographical as Lana is the youngest member of the Palanca Hall of Fame for winning 11 Palance Awards for Literature, the most prestigious literary body in the Philippines. So, this is definitely going to be a hit as a theatre play, and mostly it is, a two-hander that could probably be cliched and boring, possibly a gay romance between the professor and his student, but then it did get very dark, and though unbelievable at times, I was hooked. The dialogue had that truth is stranger than fiction feel to it as it can be based on Lana’s life experiences. Won the Talin award and is quite deserving. He wrote this in three weeks during a bout of depression during the lockdown. Can’t wait for his future work.
This Filipino episodic from Samantha Lee about a lesbian love affair is well-filmed, well-edited, and well-directed. Good production values capture good mise-en-scene showing interesting, middle-class areas of Manila. As far as storytelling and scripting, I don’t think it will stand alone as one episode. The dialogue, humour and syntax are unique to Filipino sensibilities, and some are too corny and cringe-worthy at the extreme for Western audiences. The major strength of this episodic is the disability representation and the culture of openness to LGBTIQ+ individuals, but I feel the episode touches the surface of the characters only without really getting deep into the nuances. A second episodic instalment can redeem that.
SWANA is a decolonial term for the South West Asian & North African region.
Not much is known about famed Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s wife, Antonina Miliukova. Wikipedia summarises her in Tchaikovsky’s biography with just a few statements, stating that their marriage in 1877 was “a disaster” and they were “mismatched psychologically and sexually” and only lived together for six weeks before Tchaikovsky left her, as he was emotionally agitated and suffered “from acute writer’s block.” Their separation forced Tchaikovsky to confront the truth about his sexuality with the support of his family. Ultimately, he “never blamed Antonina for the failure of their marriage.”