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LA holds Dante Mendoza retrospective
Written by staff   
Saturday, 24 January 2009 05:50

“I feel old,” director Brillante “Dante” Mendoza joked via e-mail when we asked how he feels about the University of California, Los Angeles, (UCLA) Film and Television Archive holding a retrospective this weekend of his films in the Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer Museum here in LA.

“Siyempre, naka-kataba ng puso,” admitted Dante, who is 48, on this latest honor in his already much-lauded career. As we write this, Dante’s “Serbis (Service)” and “Tirador (Slingshot)” were scheduled to be shown Friday (yesterday), while “Masahista (The Masseur)” and “Foster Child” are scheduled for today. Both screenings are at 7:30 p.m. (More information is available at www.cinema.ucla.edu.)

The Los Angeles Times’ Susan King, in her recent article on Dante and the retrospective, described his films as “gritty features that hark back to the Italian Neorealist cinema of post-World War II.”

Unfortunately, the San Fernando, Pampanga, native couldn’t attend the two-day retrospective due to a scheduling conflict. Jonathon Aubry, vice president for theatrical marketing of Regent Releasing, which is showing “Serbis” beginning Jan. 30 in the US, is representing the prolific Filipino filmmaker.

Dante cited various commitments that prevented him from coming to LA: “First, the retrospective that NYU (New York University) is preparing, in time for the opening of ‘Serbis’ in New York on Jan. 30 has been moved to another date. I’m also doing a special video project with the Filipino community there. Second, my project, ‘Chop Chop’ was accepted at the Hong Kong Asian Film Financing Forum (HAF), so I have to finish the script.

“Third, I was asked to serve on the jury at the International Mexico City Festival of Contemporary Cinema (Ficco) next month. Fourth, I have to meet with my French producer in Rotterdam to discuss the project that was accepted in Hong Kong, and to attend the screening of ‘Serbis’ at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) on Jan. 22, 26 and 29.”

We were pleasantly surprised to learn from Dante that there have already been several retrospective screenings of his work. “This is my fifth retrospective,” he informed us. “I’ve had retrospectives at the Sixth Rome Asian IFF (International Film Festival), the Sixth Paris IFF, the 32nd Cleveland IFF and the 10th CineManila IFF, where I was featured as the Director in Focus.”

Less than a year ago, at Cannes in May, Dante’s stature as an international film festival favorite almost ended when many movie critics slammed “Serbis.” Dante and his film rose from that harsh reception on the Croisette and went onto more enthusiastic embrace from other film festivals and reviewers.

Big achievement

Does the former art director and production designer now feel vindicated? “In a way, yes,” Dante replied to us in our e-mail exchange. “Kasi, para sa akin, just to be in competition at Cannes was already a big achievement. ’Yun pa lang panalo na ang pakiramdam ko. ‘Serbis’ won the Best Director and Best Actress awards at the Sixth Vladivostok (Russia) IFF and the Best Southeast Asian Film at the Bangkok IFF in 2008. ‘Serbis’ will also compete in the Torino Gay and Lesbian IFF this April. I am nominated for the Best Director award, while Gina Pareño and Jaclyn Jose are up for Best Supporting Actress at the Asian Hong Kong Film Awards this year.”

Also via e-mail, we asked Paul Malcolm, programmer at the UCLA Film and Television Archive, how the idea of a Dante Mendoza retrospective came about.

“I have been aware of Dante Mendoza for a while, so I made a point of attending the screening of ‘Serbis’ at the last Toronto International Film Festival,” Paul replied. “I was really taken with it, and thought it would make for a good preview screening at the Billy Wilder Theater. At the same time, the Archive has been interested in doing more miniretrospectives, to highlight the work of young or up-and-coming directors. As it turns out, the stars aligned such that we could have a preview of ‘Serbis’ tied to a retrospective of his work. Given that there has been some controversy about the film, I think it’s great that we’re able to present it in the context of Mendoza’s career and concerns, aesthetically and thematically.”

Paul offered his own take on Dante’s films: “Certainly the look of Mendoza’s films is radically different from the classics of the Italian Neorealist cinema, which has as much to do with technology as sensibility. Mendoza has been exploring and expanding his cinematic vocabulary with every film, so while his visual lexicon may not be readily readable within the neorealist tradition, the ethics that inform Mendoza’s aesthetics are very much in that tradition. There’s faithfulness to space and place in his films, which grounds the lives of his characters and scenarios in a certain sense of truth.”

As to how he first heard about Dante, Paul shared: “I had been hearing and reading about his films since ‘The Masseur’ came out but did not actually see any of his films until ‘Serbis.’ ”

“We plan on showing the version of ‘Serbis’ that was screened at Cannes,” Paul shared. “That was the version I saw in Toronto. Thankfully, going in to the Toronto screening, I was unaware of any of the press the film had received so far, so I was able to watch it without that as a filter. After seeing the film and reading the festival reviews, Iwasn’t sure what all the fuss was about. I don’t think there was anything particularly controversial about what was onscreen. ‘Serbis’ is not the first film at a major festival to depict a blow job onscreen, for instance. Critics get more suspicious when they’re confronted by certain kinds of imagery, whether it’s graphic sexuality or poverty. They’re on the watch for any hint of exploitation or sensationalism and rightly so in a lot of cases.”
Characters

Paul added, “I think Mendoza avoided that, because there wasn’t anything in the film that wasn’t motivated by the lives of the characters and the reality of the space they inhabited. As an obvious example, I read one critic who accused Mendoza of cheap voyeurism for the way he framed the young girl in the opening scenes, but she was, in fact, being watched by a character in the film: Her younger brother. If you want to complain that this sequence is upsetting, shouldn’t you also acknowledge that it’s a scene that plays itself out in families all the time? Ultimately, ‘Serbis’ is a family drama, one drained of sentiment, perhaps, but certainly not of humanity.”

We also asked Paul which one of Dante’s films so far will he be best remembered for. He answered, “Mendoza has been very prolific since ‘Masseur,’ and he’s shown an exciting growth in a short period of time, so I think it might be a little too soon to be thinking about posterity at this point. I wouldn’t want to suggest that he’s already reached his peak!”

With his interest for Filipino films sparked by his exposure to Dante’s movies, Paul admitted: “I’m not as familiar with contemporary Filipino cinema as I’d like to be, and I aim to get to know it better. While our current retrospective is focused on Mendoza, I hope audiences will want to see more of what’s going on in Filipino cinema after seeing his work. No one works in a vacuum, after all.”

With all these accolades being heaped on Dante—quite impressive because he began directing only four years ago—we asked him to single out a moment or two that he cherishes the most. Dante answered, “One was when I accepted my very first award for my first feature, ‘Masahista’ from Susan Sarandon at the 58th Locarno IFF in 2005. I couldn’t believe seeing thousands of people applauding at the piazza. Also, the standing ovation at the screening of ‘Foster Child’ at the Cannes Directors Fortnight two years ago. I will cherish these moments for a long time!”

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