November 20, 2020
QCinema International Film Festival stages a hybrid festival with an edgy line-up for its special edition for 2020.
Known for its well-curated films in this side of Southeast Asia, QCinema Special Edition returns with a slate that will either be streamed online or physically screened with a limited audience. It will take place from November 27 to December 5, 2020.
“Like many other film festivals around the world, we’ve had to adapt to the unprecedented challenges of 2020. Factoring in safety concerns and restrictions, we’ve decided to follow the global trend of staging a hybrid film festival,” says Ed Lejano, festival director.
The festival’s socially-distanced and by-invitation-only screenings will be held on its opening day, November 27 and on November 28 at an outdoor venue in Quezon City.
For its opening on November 27, QCinema will screen the monochromatic version of "Parasite" by Bong Joon-ho, the 2019 winner of the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and Best Picture at the 2020 Oscars. This black and white version of "Parasite" was first released at the Rotterdam Film Festival last January.
QCinema will also have a ceremonial turnover of the COVID-19 assistance grant it is giving to the Inter-Guild Alliance. It will also announce the winners of its COVID Completion Grant (for chosen independent films forced to halt production and post-production during the pandemic lockdown) and the QCShort Shorts Competition.
On November 28, it will hold outdoor theatrical screenings of two more films to a limited number of viewers. These are:
"Identifying Features" by Fernande Valadez (Mexico) premiered at the Sundance Film Festival 2020, where it won the Best Screenplay and the Audience Award. It is about a woman who tries to find her son's whereabouts after he left Mexico to find work in the United States. More recently, it also won as Best Film at the Zurich Film Festival last month, and again at the 61st Thessaloniki Film Festival just this week.
"Death of Nintendo" by Raya Martin (Philippines) had its world premiere at Berlinale 2020. It is a coming-of-age film set in the 1990s that takes us into the colorful pop culture world of four teenage friends, back in the days when video games were still a novelty.
After the screening, QCinema will host the book launch of "Philippine Cinema" by Gaspar Vibal and Dennis Villegas and edited by Teddy Co.
The festival’s online screening will be released nationwide through UPSTREAM, the newly launched online Transactional Video on Demand (TVOD) streaming platform. Tickets may be purchased from the country’s largest aggregator for online cinema ticketing, GMovies.
A. QCINEMA GREATS:
Three former QCinema best picture winners stage a comeback. These are "Cleaners" (2019) by Glenn Barit; "Oda sa Wala" (2018) by Dwein Baltazar; and "Balangiga Howling Wilderness" (2017) by Khavn. The fourth is the big winner at the recent Urian awards, "Babae at Baril" (2019) by Rae Red.
B. ASIAN SPECIAL EDITION:
"Genus, Pan" by Lav Diaz is a look at how much human beings are like animals. The film won for Lav Diaz the best director award in the 2020 Venice Film Festival.
"Roh" is a 2019 Malaysian Malay-language indie art-house horror film by Emir Ezwan. It is Malaysia’s entry to the 93rd Academy Awards. It is about a strange little girl with a frightening prediction.
C. NEW HORIZONS (for first and second-time filmmakers who are receiving accolades from the international film festival circuit):
"Song Without a Name" is a 2019 Peruvian drama film directed by Melina León. It was screened in the Directors' Fortnight section at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival. It is also the Peruvian entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 93rd Academy Awards. It is about a mother who takes her newborn baby to a health clinic, but the baby and the clinic both disappear.
"Rom" by Tran Thanh Huy, the first Vietnamese film to receive the New Current Awards at the 24th Busan International Film Festival. It is about residents who live a desperate life in an apartment complex that is slated for demolition.
D. RAINBOW QC (for LGBT-themed films)
"End of the Century" is an Argentine romantic drama film, directed by Lucio Castro and released in 2019.
"Suksuk" is a 2019 award-winning and critically acclaimed Hong Kong drama written and directed by Ray Yeung. It presents the story of two secretly homosexual married men in their twilight years.
E. SCREEN INTERNATIONAL:
"Divine Love" by Gabriel Mascaro is a Brazilian drama screened in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival,
"True Mothers", a Japanese drama film by Naomi Kawase was in 2020 Cannes Film Festival selection. Based on a 2015 novel by Mizuki Tsujimura., this is Japan’s entry to the 93rd Academy Awards.
"Corpus Christi" is a Polish film by Mateusz Pacewicz, which premiered at the 2019 Venice Film Festival and is the Polish entry in the 92nd Academy Award. It is about a reformed criminal who is prevented from applying to the seminary after his release. He dresses as a priest and ministers a small town parish.
QCinemas Special Edition 2020 will include online talks on the new filmscape and free screenings of QCinema 2016, 2017, and 2019 shorts.
The film festival is supported by Movie and Television Review and Classification Board, Film Development Council of the Philippines, Outpost, Viva Communications, Inc., Treasury Wine Estates, Beringer Wine, Philippine Daily Inquirer, Megamobile, Inquirer.net, Clickthecity.com, Cinema Bravo, Cinema Bravo PH, Film Geek Guy, Film Police Reviews, Pelikula Mania, Blog-ph.com, Lakwatsera Lovers, and WheninManila.com.
More about the festival are at qcinema.ph.
