The UP Film Institute Film Center (UPFI Film Center) and the UP Center for Ethnomusicology (UPCE) have once again collaborated to present the third iteration of the film festival Ambient Images: Stories of People and Sonic Experiences Told Through Film (Ambient Images III).
According to the UPCE, the festival, held from Oct. 6 to 9 at the UPFI Cine Adarna, “highlighted indigenous lives with particular attention to sound and musical cultures in the Philippines, Southeast Asia, and the Global South.”
The festival opened on Oct. 6 with The Middle Mystery of Kristo Negro, a deconstruction of Philippine folk Catholic rituals and inspired by the work of National Artist for Music Jose Maceda. This featured live music by Talaandig culture bearer Datu Waway Saway and Tusa Montes, ethnomusicologist, percussionist, and faculty member at the UP Diliman College of Music.
These were followed by the screening of the short films Musika Bago Lumubog ang Araw sa Paoay, about the remaining Paoay traditional harpist’s struggle with “the inevitability of music-cultural change; Sa Paghilway ka Balinsasayaw, featuring the Ati dance hilway; and Mayuntudug: Banuwa hu Talaandig, a slice-of-life view of Datu Saway’s hometown on Oct. 7.
The third day (Oct. 8) screened I Must Return the Gift and Dahomey.
The Atom Araullo Specials: Lupang Pangako was featured on Oct. 9, the festival’s final day. According to UPCE, the documentary “sheds light on inequalities that relate to class and ethnicity, alongside the deep ties that bind indigenous persons to their ancestral lands.”
Save for the screening of Dahomey, Ambient Images III admission was free.—With a report from the UPCE