The U.P. Subol in cooperation with the Sine Caboloan and the Ulupan na Pansiansia’y Salitan Pangasinan (UPSP) [Association for the Preservation of the Pangasinan Language] will screen for the first time in Metro Manila the award-winning Anacbanua (The Child of the Sun), the first full-length digital feature film in the Pangasinan language with English subtitles, on February 24, 2010, 7 pm at the Cine Adarna, U.P. Film Center, U.P. Diliman in Quezon City.
Written, produced, directed, and edited by Pangasinan filmmaker Christopher Gozum, the experimental film won the Digital Lokal Lino Brocka Grand Prize as well as the Digital Lokal Best Director Award during the 11th Cinemanila International Film Festival in October 2009.
Using the Pangasinan poetry of Santiago Villafania, Erwin Fernandez and Melchor Orpilla and Pangasinan oraciones as well as the ancient Calatagan pot script as voice-over narration, Anacbanua is a story of an exiled Western-educated Umaanlong (poet) who, suffering from an unknown illness, decides to return to Pangasinan, the land of his birth. Upon his return, he encounters the Musia (muse) who would seek the cure to his illness. While in half-sleep, the uprooted poet would meet the Ogaw (child) who would guide him in his cosmic immersion testing him in the ways of the fermented fish sauce, butchered livestock, burned metal rods, molded clay and the baked bricks leading him to finally reclaim his primal connection to the water (danum), land (uma) and his people (katooan). Upon surviving the series of tests, the poet would return to the real world ready to offer himself towards the cultural renaissance of his own people; thus, he would become one with the Musia (muse).
Coinciding with the UP Diliman Arts and Culture Month, the screening will be preceded by the showing of another prize-winning Gozum short experimental film in the Pangasinan language, the Surreal Random MMS Texts para ed Ina, Agui, tan Kaamong ya Makakailiw ed Sika: Gurgurlis ed Banua (Surreal Random MMS Texts for a Mother, a Sister and a Wife Who Longs for You: Landscape with Figures), which won for the filmmaker the Ishmael Bernal Award for Young Cinema during the 10th Cinemanila International Film Festival in 2008.
Founded in 1975, the U.P. Subol is an organization of UP students from Pangasinan promoting Pangasinan culture in the university. Founded in 2007 by filmmaker Christopher Gozum, the Sine Caboloan is a film production company committed to producing independent digital feature films about the Pangasinan region and its people in the homeland and in the diaspora. Established in 2000, the Ulupan na Pansiansia’y Salitan Pangasinan, the only literary organization promoting the Pangasinan language, aims to create a pool of creative writers in various genres: poetry, essay, creative fiction as well as creative non-fiction. The gathering of these three organizations presages the exciting revitalization and development of Pangasinan culture in the years to come.
For ticket inquiries and reservations, please contact Ana Asperin at 0916 472 6097 or e-mail Erwin Fernandez at win1tree@yahoo.com.
