Cannes. Now Showing.

"Raya Martin's fourth feature Now Showing, which [premiered] at Cannes in the Director's Fortnight, deeply examines that void that possibly and probably happens when all the stars have died all at once," writes Francis Cruz. "The film, epic-like in length with a running time of four hours and forty minutes, can be divided into two parts, an episodic account of Rita's childhood and her present experience as an adult working for her aunt's pirated DVD stall, divided by an intriguing interlude composed of clips from one of the few surviving Filipino pre-war films, Octavio Silos's Tunay na Ina (Real Mother, 1939)."

"This film is probably better suited to gallery spaces than traditional cinemas," suggests Scott Foundas in the LA Weekly. "Purportedly scripted but giving off the impression of old home videos exhumed from an attic grave, Now Showing offered an extreme example of what could be considered Cannes 2008's defining trend: an aggressive blurring of whatever boundaries remain, in the YouTube/MySpace/Blair Witch era, between documentary and fiction."

Update, 6/1: Online viewing tip. Noel Vera points to clips in which Martin "talks about his filming and logistical methods, his scriptwriting style (for his first two features, he didn't have any), and how Indio Nacional, Autohystoria and Now Showing form not a trilogy, but the beginnings of three separate trilogies. Ah, youth! And more power to him, for his ambitions..."

Posted by dwhudson at May 29, 2008 5:54 AM