Tickets are $25.00
- For tickets sales contact:
- Vina Francisco at 646 203-1611 or email vins_nyc@yahoo.com
- Linden Martinez at 201 224-7739
- Ching Legarda at 914 793-5351
- Rissa Hidalgo at 908 397-7206
- or send an email to Assumptionforever@yahoo.com
Friday, January 2, 2009
The Director: Ellen Ongkeko-Marfil, Assumpta HS '77
Her most recent work is “Boses” (Voices), screened at the recent Cinemalaya film festival July 2008 (Manila),about the friendship between an abused child and a reclusive violinist. It is presently going around international festivals, as well as local schools and communities sponsored by various organizations with advocacies for child rights to gender issues, human rights and peace initiatives, as well as music and film appreciation.
Her first full-length digital feature transferred to film, Mga Pusang Gala (Stray Cats), which she both directed and produced, won the Docker’s first feature award at the San Francisco LGBT Film Festival in June 2006 and was invited to various festivals abroad (Fribourg, Switzerland; New York, Dallas, Chicago, USA; Montreal, Quebec, Canada; Melbourne, Sydney, Australia, Berlin). Its dvd was released internationally last August 2007 and pending technical clearance, has been sold to the American TV network “Here”.
In the Philippines, the film was screened on the mainstream theater circuit and received awards and nominations from almost all awards-giving bodies, including teachers’ organizations.
Her documentary-drama on Filipino desaparecidos, “Walang Bakas” (Without a Trace) which she did for GMA Network was chosen best drama program by the Catholic Mass Media Awards in 2004. It was also a finalist at the Asian TV awards, as two of her teleplays were in previous years: Rattle for Maalaala Mo Kaya; Rosaryo (The Rosary)for GMA telesine.
Her first full-length digital feature is the critically-acclaimed “Angels”, a Star Cinema production which tackles the true-to-life story of a blind couple’s struggles to raise a family amidst an uncaring society. It was made available in vcd format and it is still being shown on cable TV.
Her documentaries “Is Your Gender An Issue?” and “Luha, Pawis at Tuwa: Kasaysayan Ng Mga Babaeng Maralita” (Tears, Sweat and Laughter: A Story of Urban Poor Women) won at the GAWAD CCP awards.
Schooled at the Assumption College, San Lorenzo, University of the Philippines, Diliman (a cum laude graduate in A.B.Broadcast Communication), Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA artist-teacher 1979-1988 PETA Broadcast and Film Inc. training officer,1988-1991), Mowelfund Film Institute, with short visitorship programs in Paris and London, a veteran writer-director-producer for both alternative and mainstream circuits, once a supervising producer for Star Cinema (1994-1997)and recently a public affairs progam manager for GMA Network (I-Witness, Debate,Unang Hirit 2000-2003).
Ellen recently founded “ERASTO FILMS, Inc.” named after her father, which means “man of peace”. Its objective is to help push alternative filmmaking to the forefront of Philippine Cinema, and create mainstream impact. By alternative, she means new insights and new ways of experiencing life more meaningfully, new technology –digital, which is cheaper, and which thus allows greater room for experimentation and finally, new ways of organizing business relationships, where everyone shares both risks and profits and leads towards a ‘”solidarity” type of economy. Erasto Films’ first project is Mga Pusang Gala, which was made possible through equity sharing of almost the whole cast and staff.
She is a founding member of the Independent Filmmakers Cooperative.
Her first full-length digital feature transferred to film, Mga Pusang Gala (Stray Cats), which she both directed and produced, won the Docker’s first feature award at the San Francisco LGBT Film Festival in June 2006 and was invited to various festivals abroad (Fribourg, Switzerland; New York, Dallas, Chicago, USA; Montreal, Quebec, Canada; Melbourne, Sydney, Australia, Berlin). Its dvd was released internationally last August 2007 and pending technical clearance, has been sold to the American TV network “Here”.
In the Philippines, the film was screened on the mainstream theater circuit and received awards and nominations from almost all awards-giving bodies, including teachers’ organizations.
Her documentary-drama on Filipino desaparecidos, “Walang Bakas” (Without a Trace) which she did for GMA Network was chosen best drama program by the Catholic Mass Media Awards in 2004. It was also a finalist at the Asian TV awards, as two of her teleplays were in previous years: Rattle for Maalaala Mo Kaya; Rosaryo (The Rosary)for GMA telesine.
Her first full-length digital feature is the critically-acclaimed “Angels”, a Star Cinema production which tackles the true-to-life story of a blind couple’s struggles to raise a family amidst an uncaring society. It was made available in vcd format and it is still being shown on cable TV.
Her documentaries “Is Your Gender An Issue?” and “Luha, Pawis at Tuwa: Kasaysayan Ng Mga Babaeng Maralita” (Tears, Sweat and Laughter: A Story of Urban Poor Women) won at the GAWAD CCP awards.
Schooled at the Assumption College, San Lorenzo, University of the Philippines, Diliman (a cum laude graduate in A.B.Broadcast Communication), Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA artist-teacher 1979-1988 PETA Broadcast and Film Inc. training officer,1988-1991), Mowelfund Film Institute, with short visitorship programs in Paris and London, a veteran writer-director-producer for both alternative and mainstream circuits, once a supervising producer for Star Cinema (1994-1997)and recently a public affairs progam manager for GMA Network (I-Witness, Debate,Unang Hirit 2000-2003).
Ellen recently founded “ERASTO FILMS, Inc.” named after her father, which means “man of peace”. Its objective is to help push alternative filmmaking to the forefront of Philippine Cinema, and create mainstream impact. By alternative, she means new insights and new ways of experiencing life more meaningfully, new technology –digital, which is cheaper, and which thus allows greater room for experimentation and finally, new ways of organizing business relationships, where everyone shares both risks and profits and leads towards a ‘”solidarity” type of economy. Erasto Films’ first project is Mga Pusang Gala, which was made possible through equity sharing of almost the whole cast and staff.
She is a founding member of the Independent Filmmakers Cooperative.
For older postings, see the archives on the right side of the screen
The Cast: Coke Bolipata with Video Interview
Julian Duque, Ellen Ongkeko-Marfil
& Coke Bolipata
& Coke Bolipata
Excerpt from
an interview of Ellen Ongkeko-Marfil conducted by Jasoe Soeda during the Hawaii Film Festival
Q: So, how did you get violin virtuoso Coke Bolipata involved in this project? Did you enjoy working with him?
At first, I thought of him as a musical director and I wanted to shoot in Casa San Miguel which is the arts center he put up in the province. I also asked him for recommendations to play the role of the child prodigy. Immediately he thought of Julian Duque. He is quite passionate with his advocacy to enrich rural communities through the arts, and with music specifically, that I thought he was perfect for the role. He was hesitant at first. He said the emotion for acting is the same for playing music but he wasn't sure if he could translate it to movement and voice. We auditioned him and he just had this sense of honesty, which I said is really what makes a great actor. Not only that. In the Philippines, violinists and classical music are quite elite, quite way up there … but he made the violinist real, down-to-earth, very human. It was fantabulous working with him and we all fell in love with him and Julian as well.
an interview of Ellen Ongkeko-Marfil conducted by Jasoe Soeda during the Hawaii Film FestivalQ: So, how did you get violin virtuoso Coke Bolipata involved in this project? Did you enjoy working with him?
At first, I thought of him as a musical director and I wanted to shoot in Casa San Miguel which is the arts center he put up in the province. I also asked him for recommendations to play the role of the child prodigy. Immediately he thought of Julian Duque. He is quite passionate with his advocacy to enrich rural communities through the arts, and with music specifically, that I thought he was perfect for the role. He was hesitant at first. He said the emotion for acting is the same for playing music but he wasn't sure if he could translate it to movement and voice. We auditioned him and he just had this sense of honesty, which I said is really what makes a great actor. Not only that. In the Philippines, violinists and classical music are quite elite, quite way up there … but he made the violinist real, down-to-earth, very human. It was fantabulous working with him and we all fell in love with him and Julian as well.
In the movie, he is a reclusive violinist who is full of angst. In real life, he's a Peter Pan.
Interview: Coke Bolipata
English Translation: Coke Bolipata is the most famous Filipino classical violinist today. Since completing his studies at Juilliard and Indiana University, he has played with world famous orchestras all over the word, but playing with children remains his passion. About 15 years ago he established the Casa San Miguel Arts Center in his family's mango orchard in the fishing village of San Miguel in San Antonio Zambales. Here he teaches poor children from the fishing and farming barrios who otherwise would never get exposed to classical music. Together with 15 other musical instructors they bring culture to the countryside as their way of giving back to the community. In 1994 he established the Pundaquit Virtuosi, a children's orchestra composed of his most talented students. Many of his former students have today become professional classical musicians themselves.
Interview: Coke Bolipata
English Translation: Coke Bolipata is the most famous Filipino classical violinist today. Since completing his studies at Juilliard and Indiana University, he has played with world famous orchestras all over the word, but playing with children remains his passion. About 15 years ago he established the Casa San Miguel Arts Center in his family's mango orchard in the fishing village of San Miguel in San Antonio Zambales. Here he teaches poor children from the fishing and farming barrios who otherwise would never get exposed to classical music. Together with 15 other musical instructors they bring culture to the countryside as their way of giving back to the community. In 1994 he established the Pundaquit Virtuosi, a children's orchestra composed of his most talented students. Many of his former students have today become professional classical musicians themselves.
Article from the Inquirer: Boses is for the World
The Cast: Coke Bolipata, Cherry Pie Picache, Ricky Davao, Julian Duque
“Boses” is for the world
By Joel David Philippine Daily Inquirer First Posted 11:23pm (Mla time) 10/12/2008 MANILA, Philippines
It is not the first noteworthy film shut out of awards recognition in Cinemalaya history. “Boses” joins a long list of works overlooked upon initial release, whose rewards would come in the form of belated acclaim, discursive attention, extended shelf-life, or maybe all three. “Boses” also serves to indicate a peak in the Cinemalaya ideal: the hope that talent from the margins could overrun the mainstream while playing by the latter's rules. The movie takes a grim situation (child abuse) and matches it with high-art therapy (classical music). The narrative unfolds with a strong dose of pleasure, unexpected and startling in its effectiveness, given the nature of the material. Already the top grosser among the latest Cinemalaya crop, “Boses” appears capable of attaining blockbuster status. Repeat viewership is boosted by word-of-mouth commendation, occasionally hysterical responses even in staid venues that it has graced so far, and star-is-born adulation lavished on its gifted and charismatic child performer, Julian Duque.
Not perfect
To be sure, “Boses” is not a perfect film. A more radical handling of its material would probably have made us better understand, even empathize with, the abuser's dramatic condition and the child's reason for willing to remain a victim for so long. Those conversant with real-life accounts may suspect that the filmmakers sanitized the situation, not to mention the language, familiar to actual child-abuse perpetrators, victims, and therapists. Given all the ways it might have fallen short, is “Boses” the favorite of many Cinemalaya observers? One reason maybe that it is dedicated to Johven Velasco, a film artist, teacher, and scholar who spent a lifetime in the academe until his sudden, tragic demise a year ago this month, unknown to the rest of the world except for a handful of students and friends who swear by his selfless dedication and willingness to share everything he had. The fact that filmmaker Ellen Ongkeko-Marfil makes this connection between the lives of her characters and that of an actual acquaintance indicates that she upholds the power of love, a value that, even more than film pleasure, tends to upset film experts used to the facile ways it constantly gets exploited in the medium. Indeed, the core relationship in “Boses” between the young survivor of parental abuse and the violinist who awakens the former's talent (and, in the process, recovers from his own tragedy), provides the film's heartbeat. Not only does the interaction start cute and end intensely, with a near-breakdown and bittersweet separation; it also occasions bravura performances by the actors as thespians and as musicians.
Stage to film
Surprising, though perfectly logical, was Ongkeko-Marfil's acknowledgment, during one of the film's screenings that, in real life, Bolipata is Duque's violin mentor. Ongkeko-Marfil's background in stage arts has obviously helped the impressive evolution of her cinematic skills. With “Boses,” she hews close to what the late greats Lino Brocka and Ishmael Bernal misrecognized among indie filmmakers as foreign-festival and anti-mass audience innovators, struggled to achieve: an unapologetic catering to the viewers' pleasure alongside intelligent direction.
Melodrama, the mode that Ongkeko-Marfil has chosen, poses a grave challenge to serious film evaluators. The genre belongs to the larger group of “body” films, so-called for their ability to provoke corporeal, as opposed to cerebral, responses - goose bump-raising in horror, sexual arousal in pornography, laughter incitement in comedy and, in this instance, tear jerking. For the greater part of the last two decades, feminist critics have been spearheading a campaign to rehabilitate these much-derided genres, but their uphill movement shows no signs of reaching level ground in high-art culture, the indie-film scene included. “Boses” evinces a systematic working-through of the elements peculiar to local melodrama: kilig, tampuhan, tawanan, kantahan (with violins instead of voices), habulan, and pagwawala. The penultimate sequence between the teacher and student protagonists encapsulates the earlier depiction of the shifting nature of their interaction: from farewell bonding, to panic, to relief, to hysteria, to music-making, to a brief comic exchange, to a final display of exuberance. One might wish that the performers had been seasoned enough to allow Ongkeko-Marfil to use a single take, but the scene had unfolded in one continuous action, such was the brilliance of said sequence's nearly wordless conception, grand in romantic dimension yet sad in its recognition that the just-bonded individuals may never be this close, and this innocent, again.
Successful finale
The musical number that ends the narrative succeeds because it refuses to provide definitive closure for any of the characters. The teacher will have to contend with his newfound dependence on the validation provided by his prodigy. The child will have to work out his loyalties for two needy father figures. The biological father will have to face the reality of his son challenging his vulnerable manhood. The social worker will start worrying whether her decision to reconcile the family was right. A few films have helped incite revolutionary change, and the inward turn that “Boses” inspires ought to be fulfillment enough for the talents behind it. Most local digital practitioners will continue to aspire for, and attain, festival honors abroad, but this is the first movie made by a colleague of theirs that, more than anything else, truly belongs to the world because it remains rooted at home.
Julian Duque playing Springtime by Vivaldi
For older postings, see the archives on the right side of the screen
BOSES Reviews
"At the end, a rousing ovation was given the movie (the foreigners had risen, too) and the crowd started to chant Onyok’s name and Julian stood with pride and went onstage. Like Pacquaio at the end of a well-fought match, he stood at the center, crossed his arms and looked straight into the lenses of the cameras that had flocked around him. Standing far away, I knew that the audience recognized genius and was giving it its proper recognition.” – Rica Bolipata, Phil. Star
"The film is made even more compelling by the stirring performances turned in by the boy who plays Onyok, Davao, Picache - and most of all, by Bolipata, who moves us not only with his unexpectedly felt and insightful portrayal but also with his musical performance, which is an overwhelming experience."- Nestor Torre, PDI
"Your film made me motionless for some time even after watching it.
Its beauty really moved me. Poignant and so powerful, the music comes from theheart.”- Archie de Calma, journalist
”At the premiere night, the audience was not shy in proclaiming its feelings about the movie, both shouting, laughing and crying at various times. In one scene, Ariel attempts to elude Ricky’s character and the audience collectively cheered, some people even rising from their seats! At the back of the hall was a row of foreigners and I wondered what they all thought of this Filipino brand of audience participation" - Rica Bolipata, Phil. Star
"... specially moving and value-laden film. I was in tears many times, so clean and well told. Cheche Lazaro, Broadcast Journalist
"Brilliant Cinema!"- Joel Lamangan,film director"… your film is one of the best in the four years of Cinemalaya. “- Gil Portes,film director
"BOSES will soothe the uneasy, fearful, troubled breast ... The story tackles child abuse, healing, and friendship-without being preachy and didactic. Never has a local movie integrated social advocacy and the promotion of classical music so seamlessly, movingly, and beautifully...Movie collaboration at its creative best." - Mario Hernando, Malaya, Urian
"The moving BOSES offers an emotionally rich, cathartic experience ... This is an intense, heartfelt film brimming with lovely moments,"- Gibbs Cadiz, Phil. Daily Inquirer
"... has powerful emotional appeal, electrifying musical scenes and intrinsic moral values which raise it several cuts above the average movie."- Rosalinda Orosa, Phil. Star, Columnist
Surprisingly, Bolipata shines as an actor. His warmth and empathy for children, developed through years of teaching, shines through in this film. The man is funny as well. But Duque is even better. To say so much without a word is a command performance."-
Lito Zulueta, Philippine Daily Inquirer, Lifestyle Editor
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