Hwal

"Soaring" by Kang Eun Il (Original Score of "The Bow")

I first saw"The Bow (Hwal, Korean Title)" last February 2006 at the Titus Brandsma Media Center in quezon City, as their feature film for the love month. This is a movie you'll either love or hate, but will never forget. I watched it again and the feeling of enchantment came back to me. Definitely, I love this movie. This is the type that will engulf your soul throughout the roll of the movie (the main characters haven't uttered a single word in the film). It will demand you to observe and guess and will hit you in the head afterwards screaming at you: Don't guess, idiot, it's no use. I don't know if I'm giving you a hint to what this film is all about whatsoever. It's just very difficult to describe.

The story centers around a man in his sixties who has been raising a young girl since her childhood on a ship that floats unanchored off the coast. Though the borders of her world are obviously quite limited, she seems happy, and the old man plans to marry her the day she reaches sixteen. The two make their living by hosting fishermen aboard the boat, and also tell fortunes in a rather bizarre and dangerous fashion, by shooting arrows whizzing past the girl's head into a Buddhist painting on the side of the boat.

Trouble rears its head when one group of fishermen includes a handsome young man. He introduces her to the joys of his portable music player, castigates the Old Man for keeping her cooped up on the boat, and soon there's conflict in the couple's floating boat.

What happens next , I will not reveal. My heart's still beating.

And I'm Coming Back

After completely abandoning this blog and shifting to Wordpress, I realized that this will again be my new temporary home in this cyberworld. This year is pretty weird for me, as far as my decision-making is concerned. In a jiffy, I will realize that something wrong is happening to me, then I will tend to change and reverse the events, make a new move, suffer the consequences of that move and hopefully learn from it then move back to where I came from. Just like what I did today.

But I changed my blogname from "Mental Pornography" to a more wholesome and self-descriptive "Demented Pictures," which is the name of my "production company", aka myself. And for those who are curious where my words went for the past five or six months, feel dree to indulge here.

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Ladies and gentlemen, the third short film that I produced, directed and written. (I also do editing, cinematography and production design... I did the editing and production design for this one) I've started taling about this short project as early as April 2007. You can read related posts. Here, and here, and here and finally, here. Finally, you can watch it in this site.



This short project was screened twice this year, aside from its first screening at the UP Film Institute last April. It was shown in Cinekatipunan at Mag:net Cafe and at the Third Independent Film Festival at Pelikula @ Titus Brandsma. Here are some of the related articles about my past screenings: PinoyFilm, Titus, MagnetGig and PeP. Again, I will say thanks to all the people who helped me make this project to a reality. Mwah to all of you.

2008 will be a busy year, as far as filmmaking is concern. I can't wait.

And 2007 has been a remarkable, bittersweet rollercoaster ride for me.