Dear Alexis,
Sorry it has been so long. I last saw your name randomly pop up on my Viber contacts, and then now, the Alexis-Nika FB page has been hacked. Badtrip. Marcos Jr. is president right now, so the world is upsidedown.
Hey, I can give you better updates now-
Since you helped us in Active Vista in 2008 in IndieSine, we’ve done 10 editions already.
We’ve screened Jafar Panahi’s This Is Not A Film.
We’ve had Gertjan Zuilhof program a Dutch-Filipino Film Festival, and he introduced us to Morgan Knibbe’s Those Who Feel The Fire Burning, and I’ll be filming with him next month for his first feature. And Khavn was able to do Edsa XXX, and it was the opening film of AV during the 30th Anniversary of EDSA Revolt!
We’ve screened Ramona Diaz’s Motherland and Lauren Greenfield’s The Kingmaker which I still have issues about because of how much Imelda is there. Alyx Arumpac’s Aswang, which we’re now distributing, is a very affecting film that did not have to show Duterte’s face but still everyone who sees it knows who the monsters are.
This year, we showed 11,103, produced by Kara Magsanoc, and up to now, days after I’ve seen it, it still haunts me. We’ve had Sir Lav and Kuya Ceasar retrospectives. Legit tribute too.
Sir Lav will be premiering Servando Magdamag as a 6 episode series in iWant, too bad we were not able to get the Fid Marsailles cut called A Tale of Filipino Violence, but of course, we’ll screen its 12 hour version someday.
Sometimes, I wish we could still discuss films, laugh at the bad ones, and champion the good ones.
Alexis, thank you for supporting Active Vista that first year. Thanks for introducing us to Mike De Leon’s Signos. It made the first edition of AV so legit.
I’m not sure when’s the next time I can write to you, but I think this is a good enough update, right? I miss you, and I think Winrico Santiago is emailing again.
I know this reads like an Active Vista update and not a real letter to you- but we met because of cinema so this is how it really is.
Ingat dyan,
Kints
