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Way before Richard Linklater’s Boyhood, there was Kidlat Tahimik’s Balikbayan #1 Memories of Overdevelopment Redux III.
The American director’s award-winning movie may have captivated Hollywood for being shot over twelve summers, but that time span is nothing compared to this movie of celebrated ‘father of Philippine indepenent film cinema’ Kidlat Tahimik (Eric de Guia in real life).
The epic project, Balikbayan #1, took over 35 years to “complete”.
Screened last week at the 65th Berlin International Forum of New Cinema, it won Tahimik the Caligari Filmpreis at 2015 Berlinale early this morning.
The Caliagri has been awarded annually since 1986 in recognition of “an innovative film in terms of style and content,” according to Goethe Institut. It comes with a €4000 (PHP200,000) cash prize.
“The award recognizes a stylistically and thematically innovative contribution of the Berlinale’s Forum,” says the festival’s website. “The woven film revolves loud festival program to the slave Enrique and the world sailor Ferdinand Magellan — a study of colonialism.”
The movie has a cast of 12 which includes the director himself, wife Katrin, sons Kabunyan and Kawayan and photographer Wigs Tysmans. It is about slave Enrique and his master Magellan.
Kidlat started this project 35 years ago and has been adding and subtracting scenes, shaping it over the years. A pre-Berlin cut was screened at the Singapore Biennale in 2013.
The movie is a fictionalized account of an Enrique de Malacca, an Ifugao boy who was sold as a slave to Ferdinand Magellan. Enrique de Malacca is inspired by real-life Italian scholar Antonio Pigafetta, the assistant of Magellan who later assisted him in translating Cebuano.
“When he started the film in 1980, Tahimik cast a German gardener, George Steinberg, in the role of Magellan. Following the death of Steinberg, Tahimik’s artist son, Kawayan Thor de Guia, took on the role,” writes Frank Cimatu on Inquirer.net.
“Tahimik himself played the role of Enrique in 1980, when he was only about 38 years old. As the story runs to the present, Enrique will look a lot different as Tahimik is now 71 years old. How Kawayan interacted with his 71-year-old father as Enrique is another reason why this film is a must-see for Filipino indie fanatics,” he adds.
“Now he has taken some of the scenes, added narration that describes what happens in them, and weaves this into a exhilarating freeform doc-fiction piece, that may be the most exciting opening up of narrative possibilities since Mariano Llinás’ inimitable Extraordinary Stories (2008),” writes film reviewer Adam Cook.
“…Its rawness may certainly turn people off, but the way Tahimik has assembled everything here is really special, as impressive a formal feat I’ve seen realized in recent memory,” he points out. “We looked at each other in utter delight and surprise at what was happening on screen, such inexplicable and whimsical beauty! Karaoke history lessons, digressions on Filipino art, and the overwhelmingly lovely and warm personality of the film’s director, which is present in every line of narration, every edit, every shot choice!”
The Berlin festival praised the film for being “a flamboyant epic, a study of colonialism, a historical corrective and an homage to what Tahimik calls ‘Indio Genius’.”
