Big Boy (2012, 89 min)
Film Screening + Talk
Friday 11 October 2019, 7.30 pm - cost $5
Artist Film Workshop + Institute of Postcolonial Studies
78-80 Curzon Street, North Melbourne
(Please note this screening is not held at AFW HQ in Fitzroy)
Filmmaker Shireen Seno will join Audrey Lam (AFW) and Camila Marambio via Skype after the screening to discuss her film.
The titular character of Shireen Seno’s film is a ten-year boy growing up in a large family in post-war 1950s rural Philippines, where the 'American Dream' has been embraced. On the island of Mindoro, Big Boy’s family lay their hopes and dreams into their son’s growth. They are hopeful that the cod liver oil that they are also selling to fellow villagers will prove itself effective. The miracle tonic, its marketability and allure, reflect the colonial might and the tantalising promises of contemporary America and its pop/consumer culture.
In 2016, AFW presented Kalampag Tracking Agency in Melbourne. Kalampag Tracking Agency is a program of historical and contemporary films from the Philippines and its diaspora, curated by Shireen Seno and Merv Espina.
The screening will be followed by a brief discussion.
Please register here to attend the screening.
Shireen Seno is a Filipino visual artist and filmmaker whose work addresses memory, history and image-making, often in relation to the idea of home. She studied architecture and cinema at the University of Toronto and taught in Japan before relocating to Manila, where she began working as a stills photographer for filmmakers Lav Diaz and John Torres. Her first two feature films, Big Boy and Nervous Translation premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, where the latter won the NETPAC award for best Asian film. Together with John Torres, Seno founded the Manila-based Los Otros collective, a studio, film laboratory, library and platform for live events.
Irina Herrschner is a researcher at the University of Melbourne, where she completed her PhD on German cultural and cinematic diplomacy. Her research interest is the intersection between cinema and the audience, as a means of diplomacy and meaning-making. Irina is the co-editor of a book series on German transnationalism, titled Global Germany in Transnational Dialoges and has recently published an article in the journal of tourism anthropologies on Bentley Dean's film Tanna (2017). This paper sits in the wider discourses surrounding global power structures, cultural diplomacy and global mobilities.
Audrey Lam is a member of Artist Film Workshop. She worked as a cinema projectionist at various institutions for ten years, and has co-organised a number of local film screenings and programs. Her films have screened at film festivals including BFI London Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen and Visions du Réel. In 2015, she undertook an Asialink arts residency at Green Papaya Art Projects in Manila.