It’s that time of the year again! Film lovers and enthusiasts are buzzing once more for the return of trailblazing films in celebrated independent film festival popularly known as Cinema One Originals. In its fifteenth year, #C1Originals loudly and proudly stays true to pushing for originality in all its permutations, and challenging old and new audiences for a new viewing experience—beyond cinema, beyond cinephilia, beyond entertainment.
Cinema One Originals has since give filmmakers, veterans and new ones alike, a platform to fully express their visions. This year, eight original narrative features were selected and given P3 million worth of grant each–four first time filmmakers, three alumni, and one director on her second feature, and now making Cinema One Originals debut.
Diverse as the four first-time filmmakers’ visions are, they find common ground in the way they invert their genres, and subgenres, of choice: a bildungsroman, a noir, a gothic horror and a resurrection rom-com.
J.E. Tiglao makes his feature debut with “Metamorphosis”, which stars Gold Aceron, Iana Bernardez, Ivan Padilla, Ricky Davao, and Yayo Aguila in a coming-of-age drama about an underrepresented story of intersexuality that’s as wistful as it is provocative.
Dustin Celestino reverses the wrong time/wrong place dynamics of noir with a little help from a comet in “Utopia,” a blackly comic riff on the genre starring Enzo Pineda, Joem Bascon, and Aaron Villaflor.
Eve Baswel’s “Tia Madre” is a gripping gothic horror that brings together veteran actress Cherie Gil and young superstar-in-the-making Jana Agoncillo in a rather unorthodox telling of a mother-daughter discovery.
Nigel Santos’ “Yours Truly, Shirley” marks the momentous return of multi-talented Regine Velasquez on the silver screen, this time as a widow who believes a young pop star (Rayt Carreon) is the reincarnation of her late husband.
Returning to Cinema One Originals are Victor Villanueva and Kevin Dayrit, who made their feature film debuts with Cinema One Originals. Dayrit’s entry resumes his fascination with the intertwining of rom-com tropes with supernatural tinges that made “My Paranormal Romance” a quirky treat with “Lucid”, in which Alessandra De Rossi plays a lucid dreamer whose waking life and dream life start to blur when she meets JM De Guzman.
Dayrit, whose “Catnip” was the multi-awarded darling of its year, takes on vampirism, necrophilia, the drug wars and rom-coms in “O” which stars Anna Luna, Lauren Young and Jasmine Curtis-Smith.
Giancarlo Abrahan whose second feature was the Best Picture-winning Cinema One Original “Paki” returns with “Sila Sila”, which stars Gio Gahol and Topper Fabregas with what was described as an LGBT ghosting story navigating the interstitial dynamics of yet another extended family, a group of friends nursing consensual emotional traumas.
Denise O’ Hara makes her Cinema One Originals debut, with her second feature, “Tayo Muna Habang Hindi Pa Tayo”, a rom-com inversion with JC Santos and Jane Oineza, about the underside of trauma that even the truest of loves have.
Cinema One Originals has been producing breakthrough films with thought-provoking contents for the Filipino audience for 15 years. The festival has since served as springboard to up and coming filmmakers with memorable films like Dennis Marasigan’s “Sa North Diversion Road”, Richard Somes’ “Yanggaw”, Eduardo Dayao’s “Violator”, Dan Villegas’ “Changing Partners”, Petersen Vargas’ “2 Cool 2 Be Forgotten”, and Antoinette Jadaone’s “Six Degrees of Separation from Lilia Cuntapay” and “That Thing Called Tadhana”. This year’s celebration will then coincide with the 100th anniversary of Philippine Cinema and the 25th anniversary of leading cable channel Cinema One.
Fresh, cool, vibrant, inclusive, brave, original. The 15th Cinema One Originals runs from November 7 to 17 at Trinoma, Glorietta, Ayala Manila Bay, Gateway, and Powerplant Makati. There will also be screenings at Vista Cinemas in Iloilo and Evia Lifestyle and in Cinema Centenario, Cinema ‘76, Black Maria, UP Cine Adarna, and FDCP Cinematheque Manila.
Visit @CinemaOneOriginals on Facebook, @c1origs on Twitter and @c1originals on Instagram. #C1Originals #IAmOriginal
Rank Magazine is an official media partner of the 2019 Cinema One Originals