Anak Araw
Nov 22, 7:30pm

AFW+IPCS (Institute for Postcolonial Studies, 78-80 Curzon Street, North Melbourne)

ANAK ARAW (Albino), directed by Gym Lumbera,

Philippines | 2012 | 63 minutes

Ának Araw follows a Filipino albino who, believing he is of American descent, teaches himself English using a dictionary. Set in the 1950s, the film integrates original celluloid footage with archive material to create a unique, dreamlike atmosphere in which the filmmaker explores the nature of identity in a postcolonial situation. This magical film fable includes a meta-commentary on the language of cinema, as the protagonist tries to learn English through reading translations and definitions from a Tagalog-English dictionary.

Selected for the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, 2015.

Lumbera was born in the Phillipines in 1986, his most recent film, Piding (2016), was co-directed with Paolo Picones.

The filmmaker will join Elizer Jay de los Reyes and Giles Fielke via Skype for a conversation following the screening.

Elizer Jay de los Reyes is a postgraduate researcher at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne, and a faculty on-leave at the Saint Louis University – Baguio City, Philippines, where he teaches social studies. His recent publication, (Re)defining the Filipino (Symposium/SAGE Journals, 2013), tackles issues on citizenship and education policy reform in the Philippines. Jay is currently working on the transnational dimensions of educational policy and citizenship among youth.