23 March 2016, 10:30, Birkbeck Cinema At this special event, joining the audience via Skype, filmmaker and artist Kidlat Tahimik looked back over his wide-ranging forty-year career and discussed with the audience his original working methods – which he defines as a way of “straying on track” – and his uniquely personal filmmaking style and world-vision, which Japanese writer Kenzaburo Oe once described as “opening windows onto the cosmos”. Alongside discussion of Kidlat Tahimik’s role as a cultural and political activist in the Philippines, a selection of short films made by Tahimik between 1992 and 2006 (“Video-Palaro: The Video Diaries of Kidlat Tahimik”) was shown, offering a way to understand the continuous journey that his life, work and filmmaking followed during those years. Films: Orbit 50: Letters to My Three Sons, Philippines/Japan, 1990–92, digital, 17 minutes, English and Tagalog with English subtitles “Made for his fiftieth birthday, Orbit 50: Letter to My Three Sons reveals the source of Kidlat Tahimik’s filmmaking powers. He is a father first, and a filmmaker second. Structured like almost all of his films where found footage are playfully edited together and provided sense and substance by his honest and often humorous narration, the short film appears to be a dedication to his three sons, Kidlat, whom he acknowledges to be his creative father considering that his filmmaking name is borrowed from his son’s birth name, Kawayan, whose artistic impulses rival his father’s, and Kabunyan, whose youthful playfulness reveals his father’s own joyous unpredictability. Seen today, the film performs as an enduring ode to the beautiful simplicity of family life in the midst of the more alluring world of arts. That he chose to honour his children instead of his career in his fiftieth orbit around the sun reflects the very unique attraction of his life’s creative work.” (source: Jeonju International Film Festival 2012) Celebrating the Year 2021, Today, Philippines, 1995, digital, 24 minutes, English and Tagalog with English subtitles “In the year 2021, it will be the 500th anniversary of the circumnavigation of the world of Magellan’s slave, a Filipino. Starting from the Philippines where he was captured, he was brought to Portugal via the Indian Ocean, sailing off the coasts of India and Africa. When Magellan went to the Philippines from Portugal, crossing the Atlantic Ocean to South America and crossing the Pacific Ocean to the island of Mactan where he was killed by the island’s chieftain, he brought with him his Filipino slave, who at that moment, is the first person to have circumnavigated the globe. The story was supposed to have been a film by Kidlat Tahimik. However, budgetary limitations have halted the project. A few clips from the terminated project make their appearance in this short, a testament to Kidlat Tahimik’s creative resourcefulness. Undaunted by the hindrances to making his film project, he instead has planted trees in various places around the world. By 2021, the trees will have all grown, and will be steadfast testaments to Filipino ingenuity as well as markers for the historical footnote of Kidlat’s filmmaking fantasy.” (source: Jeonju International Film Festival 2012) Some More Rice, Philippines, 2000, digital, 19 minutes, English and Tagalog with English subtitles “The Philippines and Japan are linked in so many ways. However, Kidlat Tahimik, ever the idiosyncratic artist, explores the connection via rice, staple food for both nations. However, what Kidlat Tahimik explores in this short documentary is hardly relegated to rice as food, but rice as a way of living. Narrated by Kidlat Tahimik from letters he wrote to a Japanese rice farmer and Akira Kurosawa, whose Seven Samurai (1954) serves as starting point of the film’s discourse and also as the source for its curious title, the film details the several similarities and differences between the two cultures. As the film goes on, as its discourse moves from the facile to the intimate, it reveals a sympathetic heart for farmers, and more importantly, a fluent understanding of the human condition. Notwithstanding physical, cultural and economic distance between the two nations, Kidlat Tahimik convinces that the connections are more real than hypothesized.” (source: Jeonju International Film Festival 2012) Bubong! Roofs of the World! Unite!, Philippines, 2006, digital, 20 minutes, English and Tagalog with English subtitles “Kidlat Tahimik’s always curious creativity is now focused on shelter. Starting with a hike up the Himalayas where he notices his guides carrying heavy roofs to the villages up the mountains, the film moves around the world, depicting various roofs, from the ornate bronze domes of Buddhist temples to the humble bamboo structures of Kidlat Tahimik’s Baguio home. Much more than a document on anthropological details on roof-building, the short film only makes use of the detail to forward the resilience that is shared by humanity, no matter how different in terms of culture. Although carried heavily by the utilization of the roof as a metaphor to the virtues that connect cultures, the film, like most of Kidlat Tahimik’s works, is fuelled not by a need to prove a logical flow or predictable sense. Thus, the film follows no structure and instead persists like a collage made from footage collected through the years. Despite its lack of form, the film is a masterfully conceived and joyously executed essay on the fundamentals of human living, as seen through eyes that have travelled and witnessed the world.” (source: Jeonju International Film Festival 2012) Our Film-grimage to Guimaras, Philippines, 2005, digital, 10 minutes, English and Tagalog with English subtitles “In August of 2006, an oil tanker sank off the coast of Guimaras, an island famed for its pristine beaches and nearly untouched natural beauty. Almost immediately after, the Independent Filmmakers Cooperative of the Philippines spearheaded a project where several of its filmmakers, which include Khavn dela Cruz, Raya Martin, and Roxlee, are to make a film in reaction to the oil spill. Kidlat Tahimik’s contribution, aptly titled and brimming with the director’s trademark levity amidst the heaviness of his themes and topics, humorously starts off with his promise to his cat to bring home fish from Guimaras. The “film-grimage” is documented with hardly any frills, and fuelled primarily by Kidlat Tahimik’s unrehearsed and therefore veritable wit. The resulting film has all the marks of an impromptu project. Notwithstanding its obvious simplicity and probably all the more because of the unlikely humour that surrounds the humble production, the film resonates with a mature understanding of the gross repercussions of the oil spill.” (source: Jeonju International Film Festival 2012) In collaboration with Open City Documentary Festival, and with thanks to Tobias Hering, Arsenal Institute for Film and Video Art, and Goethe-Institut London.