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18/10/2012

Raya Martin

Museum of the Moving Image, Astoria

Curated by David Schwartz

Filipino filmmaker Raya Martin is one of the most distinctive emerging voices in world cinema. Born in Manila in 1984, he has more than a dozen films to his credit: an ambitious, constantly evolving body of work consisting of fiction features, documentaries, shorts, and installations.

Museum of the Moving Image will present the first U.S. retrospective of Raya Martin, from October 19 through 27, 2012, including seven feature films and a video installation that will be on view in the Museum lobby. Martin will appear in person on the opening night of the series, on Friday, October 19, with a screening of Independencia.

“Raya Martin is a daring, restless filmmaker with a sensibility all his own that suggests entirely new ways of approaching film, personal, and national history,” said David Schwartz, Chief Curator of Museum of the Moving Image.

The Museum series includes the first two parts of his trilogy on cinema: Now Showing, a 4 ½ hour diary film that captures the coming of age of a girl named Rita (named for Rita Hayworth); and Next Attraction, a making-of movie that is also a coming-out tale.

In addition, the retrospective includes two parts of a series on imperialism in the Philippines, each using a style evocative of the era depicted: A Short Film About the Indio Nacional, a mostly silent black-and-white feature set in the 1890s buildup to the revolution of Filipinos against Spain; and Independencia, about the American invasion of the Philippines, the tale of a mother and son fleeing into the forest and created completely on a soundstage. Another highlight is Martin’s documentary, The Island at the End of the World, which captures the lives of the inhabitants of Itbayat, a remote island in the north of the Philippines, in home-movie style.

A complete schedule is included below. Tickets are free with Museum admission, which is free for Museum members. To become a member, visit http://movingimage.us/support/membership/

The youngest artist on Cinema Scope magazine’s 2012 list of the 50 best filmmakers under 50 years old, Raya Martin draws on a wide array of sources—combining pop culture references, archival material, and avant-garde structuralism—in his radically lyrical works.

He is the first Filipino filmmaker to have a film selected for the Cannes Un Certain Regard showcase (Independencia, in 2009) and is also the first Filipino filmmaker to be accepted in the prestigious Cannes Festival Cinefondation Residence in Paris, France (2005–2006). The Museum presented the New York premiere of Martin’s Buenas Noches, Espana (2011) during its inaugural First Look Showcase.

SCHEDULE FOR ‘THE FILMS OF RAYA MARTIN,’ OCTOBER 19–27, 2012

Unless otherwise noted, film screenings take place in the Main Theater and in the Celeste and Armand Bartos Screening Room at Museum of the Moving Image, 36-01 35 Avenue (at 37 Street), Astoria, and are included with Museum admission.

All films directed by Raya Martin.


Independencia
With Raya Martin in person
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 19, 7:00 P.M.
2009. 77 mins. 35mm. In Tagalog with English subtitles. With Tetchie Agbayani, Sid Lucero. During the early twentieth-century American invasion of the Philippines, a mother and son flee to the woods, to stay. A visual pastiche of early American cinema (and its colonized imitators), using a simple set with hand-painted backdrops and sound-stage bombastics, Independencia mocks Hollywood’s exotic fantasies as it simultaneously tells its tale in a style that resembles indigenous and oral storytelling traditions. The result is a reflexive allegory of imperial and cultural resistance. Preceded by: Track Projections. 2007. 6 mins. Digital.

The Island at the End of the World
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2:30 P.M.
2005. 106 mins. Digital. In Filipino/Tagalog with English subtitles. Martin’s debut film is a quietly immersive document of the cloistered inhabitants of Itbayat, a remote island in the north of the Philippines. Recorded on digital video, the film switches between intimate interviews and verité shots that blend into the surroundings, creating the sense of watching a home movie, rather than a film by an outsider looking in.

A Short Film About the Indio Nacional
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2:00 P.M.
2005. 97 mins. 35mm. In Filipino/Tagalog with English subtitles. With the Barasoain Kalinangan Theater Group. The first film in a trilogy about imperialism in the Philippines that includes Independencia, A Short Film About the Indio Nacional is a collection of silent actualities revolving around an indio, or common man, set in the 1890s buildup to the revolution of Filipinos against Spain. “Shot in stately black-and-white long takes, Martin’s work recalls the films of Bela Tarr and Martin's countryman Lav Diaz, but with an eye for composition and detail all his own.” —Filmmaker Magazine.

Next Attraction
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 21, 4:30 P.M.
2008, 90 mins. Digital projection. In Filipino/Tagalog with English subtitles. With Jacklyn Jose, Coco Martin, Paolo Rivero. The middle part of a trilogy on cinema that also includes Now Showing, Next Attraction, which purports to document the production of a short about a young man’s first sexual experience, doubles as a coming-out film and a multiply layered making-of movie.

Autohystoria
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 21, 7:00 P.M.
2007, 95 mins. Digital projection. In Filipino/Tagalog with English subtitles. With Lowell Conales, J. K. Anicoche. Opening with an epic handheld shot of a man walking through city streets, Martin’s hallucinatory doc-fiction hybrid combines paranoid thriller and landscape film to revisit a traumatic episode in Philippine history: the execution of the revolutionary Bonifacio brothers in the mountains in 1897.

The Great Cinema Party
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 27, 1:30 P.M.
2012. 70 min. Digital. In English and Tagalog with English subtitles. A silent passage of black-and-white war footage leads into what the title promises: a group of cinephiles and filmmakers, all friends of Martin, convene for a social gathering at a small island in Manila Bay where Pacific War relics have been preserved. Commissioned as part of the 2012 Jeonju Digital Project.

Now Showing
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 27, 4:00 P.M.
2008. 280 mins. Digital. In Filipino/Tagalog with English subtitles. With Ness Roque, Adriana Agcaoili. The coming-of-age of young Rita—named after Rita Hayworth by her actress grandmother—is recounted in long scenes of daily life suggestive of home movies, with the film’s two halves divided by excerpts from a 1939 Filipino melodrama. This movie about self-discovery through cinema is described by Martin as being “about everyone’s efforts to make sense of their own pasts.”

Museum of the Moving Image (movingimage.us) advances the understanding, enjoyment, and appreciation of the art, history, technique, and technology of film, television, and digital media. In January 2011, the Museum reopened after a major expansion and renovation that nearly doubled its size. Accessible, innovative, and forward-looking, the Museum presents exhibitions, education programs, significant moving-image works, and interpretive programs, and maintains a collection of moving-image related artifacts.

Press Contacts
Tomoko Kawamoto
e.mail tkawamoto@movingimage.us
Tel. 718 777 6830

Opening: 19 October 2012

Museum of the Moving Image
35 Avenue at 36 Street

Hours: Tuesday-Thursday, 10:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Friday, 10:30 to 8:00 p.m. Saturday-Sunday, 11:30 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. Closed Monday except for holiday openings

Museum Admission: $12.00 for adults; $9.00 for persons over 65 and for students with ID; $6.00 for children ages 3-18. Children under 3 and Museum members are admitted free. Admission to the galleries is free on Fridays, 4:00 to 8:00 p.m. Tickets for special screenings and events may be purchased in advance by phone at 718 777 6800 or online.

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