YAYA

Curiosity, Adventure and Love

July 2016 •Tagalog

One woman’s journey through a century of love, war and discovery. Curiosity, Adventure & Love is a the story of a woman raised by fate to go boldly where few young women of her time and upbringing would go, into the arms of chance and life. A young American woman leaves her country and all security behind, to begin an adventure in the Philippines that would witness the birth of a nation, a cruel war and Occupation and reconstruction. Jessie is a striking personality, somewhere between Scarlett O’Hara and Amelia Earhart, who knew no boundaries and flew far ahead of her times, without regard to sex or society. Her story of a century well-lived is both rich and one that should restore our faith in our own humanity.

Three Words to Forever

November 2018 •Tagalog

Three generations of a family get together for the 25th anniversary of Rick and Cristy while their daughter Tin appears clueless that her parents no longer sleep on the same bed.

Lai Man-wai: Father of Hong Kong Cinema

January 2002 •

In the life of Mr. Lai Man-wai, he had seen the most turbulent times of recent Chinese history. From the fall of the Qing Dynasty to the founding of the Republic, from the Sino-Japanese War to the founding of the People’s Republic. With a patriotic spirit, he joined the revolution and used the theatre to promote the revolutionary course. For a ‘stronger China’, and ‘education for all’, he chose film as his life long goal and career. Lai was more than the father of Hong Kong cinema was; he was also one of the pioneers of the Chinese cinema. He made Hong Kong’s first short fiction film ‘Zhuangzi Tests His Wife’. He opened the first Chinese owned cinema, the New World Cinema, in Hong Kong…. In the several decades, Lai had devoted his life and fortune in writing this glorious inaugural chapter in early Chinese film history. The technical enhancement, the introduction of foreign techniques and equipment were all part of his contribution to the Chinese cinema.

Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse

November 1991 •English

A chronicle of the production problems — including bad weather, actors' health, war near the filming locations, and more — which plagued the filming of Apocalypse Now, increasing costs and nearly destroying the life and career of Francis Ford Coppola.

Supot

October 2016 •Tagalog

After refusing a ritual circumcision intended to usher him into manhood, Rene-boy (10), tries alternate methods to remove this mark of cowardice.

La Vie sans Brahim

January 2003 •French

Trip to Asia: The Quest for Harmony

February 2008 •German

Journey with the musicians of the Berlin Philharmonic and their conductor Sir Simon Rattle on a breakneck concert tour of six metropolises across Asia: Beijing, Seoul, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taipei and Tokyo. Their artistic triumph onstage belies a dynamic and dramatic life backstage. The orchestra is a closed society that observes its own laws and traditions, and in the words of one of its musicians is, “an island, a democratic microcosm – almost without precedent in the music world - whose social structure and cohesion is not only founded on a common love for music but also informed by competition, compulsion and the pressure to perform to a high pitch of excellence... .” Never before has the Berlin Philharmonic allowed such intimate and exclusive access into its private world.

Aberdeen

May 2014 •

The extended Cheng family, which, like Aberdeen harbor’s Chinese namesake, represents today’s Little Hong Kong and its myriad of contradictions between traditions and modernity; superstitions and materialism; family and individuality.

Sunday Beauty Queen

December 2016 •Tagalog

Beneath Hong Kong's glittering facade, Filipina domestic helpers work in relative anonymity and for near-slave wages. In a beauty pageant like no other, five helpers give themselves makeovers for a day and gleefully reclaim their dignity.

Road Not Taken

December 2016 •Chinese

After the failed Umbrella Revolution in 2014, lives go back to normal, but the scenes of the great protest are like yesterday for Billy and Popsy, students in the University of Hong Kong who took part in the movement. One of them now becomes a student leader, while the other chooses a low-profile life as a private tutor. Amid the rapid social changes, when the Communist Beijing government is extending their influence to Hong Kong to take away the freedom and democracy, how would the youths see their future? Do they still see hopes, when both peaceful protests and radical actions seem to be futile?

Ang Sikreto ng Piso

January 2019 •Tagalog

It is inspired by actual events on the smuggling of the Philippine peso coin in 2006.

Blue Island

April 2022 •

Although the Chinese government promised that Hong Kong would retain separate status until 2047, in recent years the Chinese state has consolidated its power over the metropolis. Large-scale protests by the populace have been brutally suppressed. This mix of documentary, fiction, and visions of the future reveals the current state of desolate depression among the people of Hong Kong. “A desperate attempt to capture the final moments of a sinking island”, as maker Chan Tze-woon himself puts it.

People Power Bombshell: The Diary of Vietnam Rose

November 2016 •Tagalog

The unfinished movie of the late Celso Ad Castillo now a Cinema One Originals documentary film.

Piding

November 2016 •Tagalog

Once upon a time, you were born. In the Philippines, there was no science education when you were a child. When they began to offer it in your adulthood, you leapt at the chance and studied harder than everyone else. You learned of kingdoms and species and genes and atoms. Science helped you to see the bigger world beyond. You studied so well, an American university paid you to keep studying with them, so you left. You gained mastery over the evolution of birds there, but you missed home the whole time. You lost your first wife and son to Science. So with degree in hand, you went back to your people. You found that they had burned their forests, and had exploded their seas. So you gave a new bird to your people; because, now you knew how to use it to save them. This was the piding. And the rest is the story of Oliver Carlos.

Forbidden Memory

November 2016 •English

Forbidden Memory summons remembrances and memories of the fateful days in September 1974 when about 1,500 men from Malisbong and neighboring villages in Palimbang, Sultan Kudarat were killed while 3,000 women and children were forcibly taken to naval boats stationed nearby where they encountered unspeakable horror. For 40 years, the survivors lived in relative silence. Now they tell their stories.

Migrant Mother

May 2021 •English

Migranta tells the stories of Vicky, Betty and Lety, (three mothers who have come to Canada from Mexico as part of the federal government’s Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program) as they face calculated risks, difficult choices and harsh realities while navigating, work and life in Canada while being separated from families and communities they support.

Cinema Strada

April 2024 •

Having devoted much of his career to programming and film history research, Law Kar, a.k.a. Uncle Kar, places himself before the camera for the first time. This nostalgic trip down memory lane, as he recounts his personal and cinematic experiences, from film criticism, experimental filmmaking to auditioning for Federico Fellini, cumulates in a brief history of Hong Kong cinema itself. Reflecting on the past 80 years, Law Kar's affectionate documentary sheds light on local movies and Chinese cinema, brooding over the socio-political transformation of our perplexed city, as the restless cinephile ponders the role cinema and art play in times of crisis.

Bahadur: The Accidental Brave

November 2011 •English

Far West Nepal, where maximum labour migration to Bombay happens, is reeling under the impact of an HIV micro epidemic. This documentary is an in depth look into the brave Nepalese migrants’ life in a social, economic and political context.

The Lucky Woman

October 2020 •Vietnamese

This film follows the lives of undocumented Vietnamese workers in Taiwan doing odd jobs to survive, after having been forced to flee their employers due to harsh working conditions and lack of medical care. How will living this way for more than a decade shape their lives?

Familia Blondina

February 2019 •Tagalog

Cindy leaves her family and moves to the US to marry an American soldier. When her husband dies, he leaves her in debt and is forced to go back to the Philippines with her three blonde children to support them. She then meets Tony, a widower with blonde children as well and raises their children on what it means to be a Filipino.