Art Fair Philippines to hold outdoor cinema from Feb. 14 to 16

Art Fair Philippines presents the first ever edition of its film program, after launching a new section focusing on photography in 2018.

Last September 2019, the Film Development Council of the Philippines launched a year-long celebration for the centennial of Philippine cinema. Ever since the first Filipino feature film, Jose Nepomuceno’s Dalagang Bukid, was produced and released, cinema has changed. Like all art-forms, cinema is evolving.

The Art Fair’s film program acknowledges this and aims to be both a celebration of the last 100 years — but also point the possibilities for the next hundred. 

The featured special exhibition is an example of this. Self-Portrait by Lyle Nemenzo Sacris began as a film idea in 2006. It was to be composed of a 7,107 frames, each one a portrait of a different Filipino, to see if it would form a single face. It was not completed. Every Filipino visiting this year’s Art Fair will help realise it. 

The program will also screen a selection of the best films from the last 100 years. It will include feature-length and short films, narrative and experimental, documentary and animation, to showcase the diversity of Philippine cinema. 

There will also be a panel to discuss the “The Future of Cinema in the Philippines.”

The film program will have a special outdoor cinema from Feb 14 to 16 at the former Philippine Stock Exchange. This will start with a special presentation on Valentine’s Day. 

According to the curators of the Art Fair’s film program, they do not intend it to be a retrospective. The approach was more conceptual, taking into consideration that way audiences watch “movies” today. “Movies aren’t just shown in theatres anymore, but also streamed on our devices and projection-mapped on buildings,” they say. “Our program will challenge the typical notion of cinema. We intend to curate new experiences of cinema. Considering that Filipino filmmaking is now over a hundred years old, it will seek to present possibilities for its future.”