Francis Pasion’s debut feature film Jay, which won the Best Film and Best Actor prizes at the Cinemalaya Festival in The Philippines, heralds a distinctive new voice in Filipino movies.
The Vancouver International Film Festival welcomes this 96-minute satire on the ethics of contemporary TV production on Oct. 6 at 6 p.m. and Oct. 8 at 3 p.m. at the Empire Granville 7 theatre.
The first voice heard is the female narrator of the Channel 8 show Dearly Departed Ones, a “reality” program which brings out the soap opera in a family’s reactions to a sudden death. The narrator takes us to a village in Pampanga, on Ash Wednesday, 2008, to a humble house that was half-buried by the eruption of Mount Pinatubo, and introduces Luz Mercado as she wakes early, little suspecting the terrible news she’s about to hear on TV.
Luz’s eldest son Jay, a schoolteacher working in Manila, has been stabbed to death in an apparent gay sex-crime.
About 10 minutes into the story, Pasion backtracks to show how TV director Jay Santiago and his crew manipulated the situation and set up the re-enactments. It emerges that they “bought” the co-operation of the family by promising to help track down Jay’s murderer. This Sharp, smart and dark film is a must see for those who are conscientious and curious about the kind of images of the “Third World” produced for the rest of us.
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