japanese
Islands / I Lands
—Cinemas in Exile
  • The Sorceress of Dirah
  • Meta Ekologi
  • Foreign Sky
  • each film . . . an island?
  • Accentuation
  • The Place Where I Live—and touch me
  • Reflection
  • Amami Film: In Memory of Miho-san
  • dolce . . .
  • Puppet Shaman Star
  • Promised Paradise
  • Order
  • Life on Distant Islands
  • The Struggle Against Endemic Diseases
  • At the End of the Arc: Yaeyama Islands
  • Theresa Hak Kyung Cha
  • Maria Rosalie Zerrudo
    		•

    each film . . . an island?

    - THE PHILIPPINES / 2009 / English, Tagalog / Color / Video

    Director, Photography, Producer: Kidlat Tahimik with Kidlat de Guia (K1), Kawayan de Guia (K2), Kabunyan de Guia (K3)
    Script: Home-grown sound bytes
    Editing: Kidlat Tahimik with Kidlat de Guia
    Sound Design: Malaya Camporedondo
    Source: Sunflower Collective

    Tahimik’s filmic journey now extends?across Asia and Europe. He and ten farmers participated in the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial 2009, where they reconstructed an Ifugao indigenous dwelling on the terraced rice fields of Niigata, in a work called “A Postwar Love Letter.” The images Tahimik gathers here and there become the beads in a necklace. He continues his island-hopping filmmaking/bead gathering journeys, trailing the roots of his indigenous Filipino spirit as he goes.


    [Director’s Statement] Each film . . . an island? . . . An isolated mass of sedimented sights/sounds?

    A cineaste’s filmography . . . an archipelago of edited films? . . . Can island explorers decipher the auteur’s DNA from the celluloid bedrock?

    In 2004 my house burned, with all the VHS masters of my Video8 shorts. I was resigned—impermanence is a fact of life. How many more islands will submerge with global warming?

    In 2008, on a wild impulse, I emailed the Tokyo Video Festival: Were winning videos archived? Hooray! Even non-winning entries by my sons were digitized since 1989 (our analog decade)!

    My fossilized videos—an uncharted atoll of my filmless-films. Let’s go island-hopping! Let’s see if re-incarnated analog Hi-8 images merged with HD open up a whole new road-film diary.


    - Kidlat Tahimik

    Born in 1942 in Baguio City, Philippines. After studying business management in the US, he tore up his diploma and became an artist in 1972. Since his 1977 debut film, Perfumed Nightmare, he has continued to work as a unique, independent artist. Tahimik has visited Japan frequently since 1982, and presented evolving versions of Why is Yellow Middle of the Rainbow? (I Am Furious Yellow), performances, and installations at YIDFF from 1989 through 1995. He was a juror for the International Competition at YIDFF 2007.