The National Committee on Cinema (NCC) of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) will hold Cinema Rehiyon 7 on Aug. 6-9 in Cebu City.
Cinema Rehiyon is the flagship program of the NCC and showcases regional films from Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao.
“Cinema Rehiyon 7: At The Crossroads of the Seventh Art” will feature winning short films from the regional film festivals funded by the NCCA, such as CineKabalen in Pampanga; Pelikultura: Calabarzon Film Festival; Pasale: Film Concourse and Advocacy in Bicol; Lilas Binisaya in Cebu; Lutas in Dumaguete; CineKasimanwa: The Panay Island Film Festival in Iloilo; Cinemagis: Northern Mindanao Digital Short Film Festival in Cagayan de Oro City; CineAnimo: Misamis Occidental-Zamboanga Digital Short Film Festival in Ozamis; Nabunturan Independent Film Exhibition in Compostela Valley; Mindanao Film Festival in Davao City; and Lantawan-Socsksargen Film Festival in General Santos City. Short films from the Bacollywood Workshops will also be featured.
Cinema Rehiyon is noncompetitive and this year will exhibit around 40 short and full-length films.
Films were selected by curators Teddy Co and Katrina Ross Tan (Luzon), Bambi Beltran and Elvert Bañares (Visayas), and Dax Cañedo and Rudolph Ian Alama (Mindanao).
The festival will also show Cebuano film classics: Leroy Salvador’s “Badlis sa Kinabuhi,” starring Gloria Sevilla and Mat Ranillo Jr.; Joe Macahor’s “Manok ni San Pedro,” starring Estevan Escudero and Teresa Diez; and Gene Labella’s “Alyana,” starring Chanda Romero and Bert Impas.
There will also be a screening of a rarely seen film of National Artist for Film, Lamberto V. Avellana, on the occasion of his birth centennial.
Seminars and forums will discuss the situation of regional films, film programming here and abroad, and the representation and/or misrepresentation of indigenous people in Filipino films.
Outreach screenings will be mounted in selected orphanages and juvenile detention centers.
Outdoor screenings will also be held in Bogo City, devastated by supertyphoon “Yolanda.”
Kidlat Tahimik’s Berlin festival winning movie, “Balikbayan #1 Memories of Overdevelopment Redux III,” will be the closing filmfest. Planned as a revisionist historical drama about the first man who circumnavigated the globe, its hero is not Magellan, but rather his possibly Visayan slave, Enrique. The film gives tribute to a pre-Hispanic Cebuano who is possibly the first man to circumnavigate the globe.
Maria Victoria Beltran of the NCC is the festival director.
Call the NCCA Public Affairs and Information Office, 0928-5081057 or 5272192 loc. 208. E-mail ncca.paio@gmail.com.