9/2/09

Farewell to Alexis A. Tioseco and Nika

Farewell to Alexis A. Tioseco and Nika

ข่าวร้ายจาก เต้และ filmsick
ไม่คิดว่าวันหนึ่งต้องมาเขียนรำลึกถึงคนอนาคตไกลที่อายุน้อยเพียงนี้

เจอกันหลัด ๆ ในงาน Lav Diaz ไม่คิดว่าต้องลาจากกันตลอดไป

ความหวังของ southeast asian cinema ดับไปอีกดวง

อำลา Alexis และ Nika
นอกจากทำหนังสือ Lav Diaz แล้วควรเปิด Lav Diaz Community, Lav Diaz, Society หรือ Southeast Asian Community ด้วย เพื่อรำลึกถึงคนเหล่านี้

7 comments:

FILMSICK said...

เมื่อคืนผมหลับไม่ลงเลยครับ

เท่าที่ดีที่สุดทื่ทำได้คือ พยายามทำหนังสือ LAV ออกมาให้จงได้

เศร้าเป็นบ้าเลยว่ะพี่

tete said...

we really should do criticine.com or some space that links SEA cinema community. I alrady translate his interview (at the restaurant) in Thai and print it on BIOSCOPE next issue. i think i will encode it in english too. it may be his last official interview.

Filmvirus said...

Yes, we should!

Last Interview! That's sound so grim. Does that confirm the widespread idea of "film critcism is dead", since the critics are no longer there?

FILMSICK said...

even film critics dead but passion for cinema will survive

Filmvirus said...

Here is a moving tribute from Richard MacDonald

Although I had met Alexis once before in London, it was in Bangkok at the Lav Diaz retrospective he helped to organise that I began to get to know him. His critical advocacy of the filmmaker’s work, his precise, measured, authoritative responses to questions posed at the first two screenings contributed a great deal to everybody’s experience of this special event. At the first Q&A Alexis memorably recalled his response to an academic who, at a conference the previous year, had questioned whether Lav Diaz could be regarded as a Filipino filmmaker given the limited audience for his films in the Philippines. Undoubtedly the reply Alexis gave then was delivered in the same calm and assured manner with which the exchange was now being recalled, but it also carried something passionate and steely. The fault, he stated, lay not with the filmmaker but with the film culture. If we value these films we should then ask ourselves what we are doing as critics and teachers to ensure their critical reception, to build an audience who might fully engage with them. That steeliness spoke of the seriousness with which he regarded the project of building film culture in the Philippines and more widely in Southeast Asia and his conviction that a strong film culture required more than just films and filmmakers but critical debate and discussion. To my ears, living in a country with a senescent and complacently populist film culture, this was a wonderfully inspiring sentiment and one that will remain long in the memory.

Through this same event I met Nika and was immediately drawn to her for the vivid way she expressed herself, the way she chose her words with great care and precision, feeling the weight and complexity they might carry. Weaving our way through a Bangkok department store on our way to a bright food hall she spoke about life in Manila where she had recently gone to live with Alexis. It was a subtle, nuanced but also humorous meditation about being away from one’s home and what has to be negotiated when one forges a relationship with a new city as a stranger. The many threads of these conversations, about the need for a discursive film culture, about the films of Lav Diaz, the complex experience of making a new home were taken up after screenings, over meals and as we cruised up and down the river on one of those gloriously gaudy river boats. They felt exploratory, like the start of something. Thrilled to have met Alexis and Nika, I naturally imagined that we had started a dialogue that would unfold and develop over the years. When I returned from London I sent Alexis a copy of something I had written on the history of film appreciation and activism in Britain, eager to know what he thought, what parallels he might draw, what differences with the film culture he had committed himself to. I knew that there was a lot that he and Nika could teach me. I am deeply saddened by their tragic loss. My heartfelt sympathies go to both of their families at this time of sorrow.

Richard MacDonald

Filmvirus said...

ภาพอดีต

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?id=774917809&pid=2436893#/profile.php?id=774917809&ref=name

Filmvirus said...

What is passion for Cinema? Are there anybody else? Who cares? Watch it alone, die alone.