❤️‍🔥From May 22-31, eight rare documentaries from the Philippines will play at the Museum of the Moving Image as part of “Heart on Fire, Brain on Ice,” a rolling program available for booking in any variation. Many of the films will be shown in North America or the US for the first time, at MoMI. The opening night title, ALIPATO AT MUOG (FLYING EMBERS AND A FORTRESS), has been censored by the brazenly corrupt, US-puppet government of the Philippines. Despite these attempts to suppress the film, JL Burgos and his intimate crew (many his own family) have managed to self-distribute it across the archipelago, win the highest national film awards (Best Picture, Director, etc.), and will now release the film across North America (reach out for booking inquiries!). Several titles in the program were produced by or in coordination with National Democratic Mass Organizations in the Philippines, which are part of a peoples’ movement that is uniquely advanced and formidable at this point in world history. Overseas chapters will introduce or facilitate talk backs at some screenings. And because most of these filmmakers still own the rights to their own films, most screening fees and box office splits will go to them directly or to the organizations that produced them collectively. PLEASE BOOK AND SCREEN THESE FILMS (Theatrical or non-theatrical screenings with your communities and organizations)! Look out for ALIPATO AT MUOG (FLYING EMBERS AND A FORTRESS) and two of my all time fav ever films—WAKE (SUBIC) and LAWAS KAN PINABLI (FOREVER LOVED). MoMI Listing linked in bio. EACH FILM WILL SCREEN ONE TIME ONLY! Linocut poster by the best ♥️ @_metromaria Correction: CLAWS will have its US Premiere not NA***

RAISE YOUR HEAD! Talked for a long time with Heiny Srour about filming in the liberated zone of Dhofar with the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist PFLOAG for THE HOUR OF LIBERATION HAS ARRIVED (1974) and filming during the Lebanese Civil War for LEILA AND THE WOLVES (1984). For @filmmakermag Both restored films are playing at @bamfilmbrooklyn from now until the 20th—with Srour in person this evening and this Sunday afternoon!—courtesy of @several_futures Many many thanks to @marijasilk

Paglipas ng Gunaw is coming to the @criterioncollection this May 🔌 ⚡️3 features, 10 shorts 🖍️ Here’s some of the original art the multitalented cuties made to break the news. + a cropped clip from CLEANERS

A full @cinemovil.nyc weekend: 1-5: 🔻Next No Art (a report on the filmmaker withdrawals and BTS nastiness at IDFA) as a zine designed by @dyzhou and printed by @shoestringpressny | endless respect and gratitude to @notimeforoccupation for sharing your experience and remaining in your principles. 🫶 6-7: 💥Strike Series p.1 (first among programs of films withdrawn from festivals in protest) moved last minute to a room in a church basement partially flooded w/rain water. [We Began By Measuring Distance, Blessed Blessed Oblivion] ft. yummiest empanadas by @notmariales 8-9: 🌱Standing Ground: 3 newly digitized docs by Shashat + hands on Palestine Lives! archive @interferencearchive co-programmed with @_matt_schlesinger [Cut!, If They Take it!, The Fig and the Olive] 10: 🇦🇴Sambizanga on the gorgeous 16mm print it was recently restored from (accessible for free among 6K+ prints to anyone w/ a NYPL card at the Library of Performing Arts), organized by @_fbrice and @foonkymonkey ♥️

A twin & a cameo

@mikorevereza and I did another interview, this time about his film NOWHERE NEAR, memory play in his work over the last decade, and moving on from the diary as a canvas. It is my first for @reverseshot_momi Striking luck twice, I was also commissioned to write a brief text that accompanied the film at @opencitydocs Miko’s work, and his words, have offered me so much to reflect and project upon over the years. I seem always to be growing with it. NOWHERE NEAR premiered today at @thenyff and will play again on Oct 1 @ 6:30pm Oct 3 @ 1:00pm Oct 9 @ 9:00pm

A weekend w/ @daisukemiyazaki_official We talk yakuza and overseas US air base filming restrictions, the orientalism of some Japanese filmmakers who succeed on the festival circuit, appropriation vs copying, selling out vs being wack… Catch the the last screenings of his films @spectaclenyc ! I’m a fan! YAMATO (CALIFORNIA) • Aug 28 @ 7:30PM TOURISM • Aug 25 @5PM / Aug 29 @7 :30PM Many thanks to the great editor @c_l1z0tte

ROUTE SHARING II is out in the wild (& linked in my bio) 🌊 I. Fugitive Kiss ft. the first on-screen kiss in Philippine cinema plus excerpts from Vernadette Vicuña Gonzalez’s Empire’s Mistress, Starring Isabel Rosario Cooper. My editor’s letter. II. One Long River ft. Ricky Lee and Sa Puso ng Himala By @jaseybel Focusing on the film books of Filipino screenwriting legend Ricky Lee, Jason Tan Liwag writes about bookmaking as film preservation in the Philippines. III. Liminal Exhibitions for Liminal Cinemas in Oaxaca ft. The Life of Pancho Villa By @viridianammar Viridiana Martínez Marín reflects on her work with Salón de Cines Múltiples (@sa.ci.mu ) a brand new nomadic cinema collective, and the Nahuatl and Zapotec practices and past “cineclubs and traveling exhibitors” of Oaxaca that inspired it. Plus a recommended reading list ft. @zenzelesque , @dimension__tide , @juggaloreporter , @vernadette24 , @nicopedrero , Elisha Tawe, Caitlín Doherty, and Jewel Maranan Copy edited by @hophiasaid

Part 1 of a series I guest edited for @sentient.art.film , ROUTE SHARING 🗺️, is online now (in bio). This first part comprises 3 conversations; the second part, releasing the week of July 17, comprises 3 writings. Ft. film folks doing refreshing work: @entre.tx @asiiiro @texasarchive @eah2b @media_archivista @mikorevereza @epfcfilmmobile @missmarr @karissahahn____ @brixtoncommunitycinema @_a_biba @cinemovil.nyc Many many thanks to Keisha Knight, @hophiasaid (who also copy edited!) and @pleasurings —— Cover image: Nuestra Madre Tierra, Paula Nicho Cúmez, 2010

KANI 🦀 is releasing on bluray one of my favorite films: Lupita Aquino-Kashiwahara’s Minsay’ Isang Gamu-gamo (Once A Moth), a kinda radical glitch in the 70s Philippine studio system starring singer-super star Nora Aunor. Because it is directed by the sister of Ninoy Aquino (a vocally anti-Marcos senator who was assassinated 7 years after the film’s release) the regime could not suppress the film without too obviously looking like the political censors that they were. So, in a bind but still wanting to scupper the release, they premiered the anti-military film at the Military Christmas party. Lol. For the bluray booklet, I interviewed the film’s screenwriter, Marina Feleo-Gonzales. It is pre-order-able now (in my bio). This discussion, as well as the film, is resonant and surreal to me for many reasons, including that the crew managed to film on location in the US Clark Air Base (by pretending that they were shooting a love story) just a few years after the Hunts, the American Airforce family who adopted my father, were stationed there. The film follows a nurse who lives in Crow Valley, beside Clark, and is petitioning for a US visa to work overseas. But she gives up that dream and is radicalized when a US soldier kills her brother. Gamu-gamo depicts such common wanton killings by GIs stationed at the bases, inspired by first hand accounts from families that Feleo-Gonzales interviewed in Crow Valley. These killings were not reported at the time, and so, very strangely, this big studio melodrama is one of the few records of them. In her research for the script, Feleo-Gonzales came across other appalling discoveries, such as the popular selling of mestizo babies, something my adoptive grandmother was deeply hurt to encounter herself. This is a rare and wild anomaly of a film with lamentably relevant themes; it happens also to be, in my opinion, among the superbest melodramas. 🤷🏻‍♂️ *the title of the interview “Sons of America…” is what Feleo-Gonzales had the Crow Valley community write onto placards for a protest in her original ending of the film, which was cut and replaced by the studio. A million thanks always to Ariel & Pearl.

A long time coming, I wrote about 3 depictions of Japanese holdout soldier Hiroo Onoda, who remained in Lubang Island for 30 years after the end of WWII, ostensibly convinced the war never ended: @littlebigsounds nearly finished 15+ years in the making documentary, SEARCHING FOR ONODA, Arthur Harari’s Onoda 10,000 Nights in the Jungle, and Herzog’s debut novel, Twilight World, the latter two quickly made, almost unanimously celebrated, and which romanticize the soldier, obscuring his murders of civilians outside of war time. Stewart’s film tells the lesser known story, from the point of view of the islanders who were affected by Onoda’s violence, including her own family members. She is still raising finishing funds, which you can donate to at the link in my bio. Many thanks to @abbypsun for always challenging me & pushing me to grow. And thank you Mia, for allowing me to try to do a little justice to your film. PS: there’s another version of this where I got lost in the sauce for about 10K+ words roasting Harari and Herzog, if the streets wanna c

4x5 taken by Tuan (@lightcomesthrough ) on a Keith Twin Lens (Ilex Paragons)