Fable and reality mingle in Francis Xavier Pasion's Crocodile, a film riddled with beautiful imagery and terrible poverty. Based on real events and bookended by documentary footage of the story's real protagonists, the unique, swampy landscape of the Agusan Marsh in the southern Philippines offers an arresting and foreboding backdrop to a tale of loss, community, and, to some extent, communion with nature. A mother, living in a shack in the swamp, struggles to feed her young children as her distant husband spends his days casting nets for the fish that provides them a meagre income. Her eldest daughter attends a local school and is on the cusp of graduating, but her family can ill afford the 800 peso fee ($17) to do so. One...
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- 11/29/2015
- Screen Anarchy
Crocodile, directed by the Philippines’ Francis Xavier Pasion, won the Grand Prize at this year’s Tokyo Filmex film festival (November 22-30).
Set in the southern Philippines, the film follows a mother’s search for the body of her daughter who was attacked by a crocodile. The Filmex jury, headed by Chinese director Jia Zhangke, said that “the film’s strength lies in its honest and cohesive directorial style and the vivid expressiveness of its cast”.
The film won also won four awards, including best film, at this year’s Cinemalaya Philippine Independent Film Festival.
The special jury prize went to Israeli filmmaker Asaf Korman’s Next To Her, which also picked up the student jury prize. The film, which revolves around two sisters living in Haifa, premiered in this year’s Cannes Directors Fortnight section.
A special mention went to Shadow Days, from China’s Zhao Dayong, which premiered in this year’s Berlin Forum, while...
Set in the southern Philippines, the film follows a mother’s search for the body of her daughter who was attacked by a crocodile. The Filmex jury, headed by Chinese director Jia Zhangke, said that “the film’s strength lies in its honest and cohesive directorial style and the vivid expressiveness of its cast”.
The film won also won four awards, including best film, at this year’s Cinemalaya Philippine Independent Film Festival.
The special jury prize went to Israeli filmmaker Asaf Korman’s Next To Her, which also picked up the student jury prize. The film, which revolves around two sisters living in Haifa, premiered in this year’s Cannes Directors Fortnight section.
A special mention went to Shadow Days, from China’s Zhao Dayong, which premiered in this year’s Berlin Forum, while...
- 12/1/2014
- by lizshackleton@gmail.com (Liz Shackleton)
- ScreenDaily
Tokyo FILMeX 2014 ended today with a lineup devoted to Canadian master David Cronenberg. The director's two earliest films, 1969's Stereo and 1970's Crimes of the Future, were shown before his latest, Maps To The Stars, closed the festival. Before the screening of the body-horror maestro's cutting Hollywood satire the festival's awards were announced by a jury headed by Chinese director Jia Zhang-ke. Grand PrixWinner - Crocodile Dir. Francis Xavier Pasion The PhilippinesDirector Francis Xavier Pasion won the Best Film Award at the Cinemalaya Philippine Independent Film Festival for his first film Jay before he went on to take part in FILMeX's own Next Tokyo Masters in 2010. Crocodile, his third film, follows mother Divina as she receives some terrible news; a crocodile has attacked...
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- 11/29/2014
- Screen Anarchy
It is more than instructive to look at Francis Xavier Pasion's Sampaguita, National Flower with the merits of his much-celebrated first feature Jay (2008) in mind. The first feature is essentially about eponymous Jay, a television producer who travels to Pampanga to create a TV-documentary on the life of gay teacher who was recently murdered, his family, and his close friends, is more than the immediate subject matter, it delves further into the power of media, and its abuses, all in a fine satire that is so self-aware, it reveals its own fabrication at the very end. In a very important scene in the film, the producer, having discovered that vital footage of the victim's mother's initial reactions upon seeing her dead son in the morgue was corrupted and rendered unusable for his program, instructs the mother to visit the morgue, reenact the grief, crying and wallowing in front of...
- 7/18/2010
- Screen Anarchy
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