Sarah: What the FUCK is "Reckless Endangerment."
Twitter hacked. Trying to resolve.
— Darren Criss (@DarrenCriss) March 25, 2015
גִּבְעַת בִּנְיָמִין
||Third-World Cinema||
Uri Klein: Mendoza’s films are not easy to watch.
"Kinatay" is one of the most violent crime melodramas I have ever seen. It revolves around the abduction, torture and dismemberment of a prostitute (and Mendoza spares viewers few of the graphic details of this horrible process ).
In a conversation in Sderot this week, Mendoza noted the ironic paradox created by this combination: The film’s critics simultaneously objected to what they saw on the screen and complained that they were unable to see with sufficient clarity what they did not want to see.How would you define the style of your films?Brillante Mendoza: Like someone walking the thin line between documentaries and features. My movies have a narrative, but the stories are all based on stories that really happened and I use documentary film techniques to make them feel as realistic and believable as possible. I often use nonprofessional actors, but even when the actors are professionals I coach them to act in a style that is completely different from mainstream Philippine cinema. In my movies, I try to give the feeling that they are happening in real time. I seek to make my movies not as a director, but, above all, as a human being. For that reason, it's important to me to give viewers freedom of choice. I show them an existing reality. I present the issues connected to it, but I don't tell them what to think, what's right, and what isn't. I don't judge or preach. In the end, the viewers make up their own minds about what they see.Uri Klein: Do you care at all about the notion of movies as entertainment?Brillante Mendoza: No. You can't show such acts in a refined, polite way.Uri Klein: Do you target mainly a local audience?Brillante Mendoza: No. I don't label my films for a specific audience because what happens in the Philippines happens throughout the world.Uri Klein: We tend to talk about the Southeast Asia cinema as though all the states in the region were one country. Do you think this is a mistake?Brillante Mendoza: I believe that the cinema from Southeast Asia does present an alternative to Western, especially European, cinema, which, unlike the cinema to which I belong, is gradually losing its national identity. The cinema I do is Third-World cinema and always will be. In this respect, there's no doubt that the cinema from the Third World is an alternative.
Emily Quintero: GUTS
Mixed Media
