Cinema as Memory The films of Keith Deligero

Keith Deligero is an artist who mainly works with film. By investigating language on a meta-level, Deligero creates with daily, recognizable elements, an unprecedented situation in which the viewer is confronted with the conditioning of his own perception and has to reconsider his biased position. His work urge us to renegotiate film as being part of a reactive or – at times – autistic medium, commenting on oppressing themes in our contemporary society. By applying a poetic and often metaphorical language, he finds that movement reveals an inherent awkwardness, a humour that echoes our own vulnerabilities. The artist also considers movement as a metaphor for the ever-seeking man who experiences a continuous loss. His works appear as dreamlike images in which fiction and reality meet, well-known tropes merge, meanings shift, past and present fuse. Time and memory always play a key role. By rejecting an objective truth and global cultural narratives, he wants to amplify the astonishment of the spectator by creating compositions or settings that generate tranquil poetic images that leave traces and balances on the edge of recognition and alienation. His works isolate the movements of humans and/or objects. By doing so, new sequences are created which reveal an inseparable relationship between motion and sound. By questioning the concept of movement, he tries to grasp language. Language becomes art. At that moment, lots of ambiguities and indistinctnesses, which are inherent to the phenomenon, come to the surface. His works are being confronted as aesthetically resilient, thematically interrelated material for memory and projection. The possible seems true and the truth exists, but it has many faces, as Hanna Arendt cites from Franz Kafka. By contesting the division between the realm of memory and the realm of experience, he absorbs the tradition of remembrance art into daily practice. This personal follow-up and revival of a past tradition is important as an act of meditation. His works focus on the inability of communication which is used to visualise reality, the attempt of dialogue, the dissonance between form and content and the dysfunctions of language. Keith Deligero currently lives and works in Manila. 500letters.org

KEITH DELIGERO UWAN INIT PISTA SA LANGIT (2009) Rudy, a young sculptor, and Tootsie, a stripper, live in seemingly opposite worlds divided only by a thin wall. Everything changes after Rudy rescues Tootsie from a police raid and they are forced to face each others differences.

BABOYNGIRONGBUAN (2010) Gerald and Clifford will be riding the Ferris wheel for the first time. Their story happens a few years after the mining company in their town suspends its operation. The metal that brought them together could tear them apart.

KORDERO SA DIOS (2012) Keith Deligero is an independent filmmaker from Cebu, Philippines. He

This is the life of Divino Maligalig as he walks through the valley of the shadow of death.

is the director of the critically acclaimed Iskalawags (2013) and Lily (2016). When he is not making films, he carries a projector around and projects films in basketball courts, basements and on rooftops for the BINISAYA Movement.

ISKALAWAGS (2013) Seven young punks decide to set out on a mini quest to find the tree that according to Palot—the gang’s de facto leader—bears the lone papaya fruit as large as the belly of Intoy’s father.

LILY (2016) Stories abound in Cebu about a woman rumoured to be a murderous monster, but behind the myth is a MOTHER seeking justice. Go home, LILY is coming.

BABYLON (2017) Two young girls travel through time to assassinate a small town dictator to revise history. Welcome to Barangay Babylonia!

Contact the producer: Gale Osorio [email protected]

CINE ADARNA SCREENINGS April 30

2:30 PM Baboyngirongbuang (95 mins) 5:00 PM ISKALAWAGS (85 mins) 7:30 PM Uwan Init Pista sa Langit + Babylon (55 mins)

May 1

2:30 PM Kordero sa Dios (111 mins) 5:00 PM Lily (93 mins) 7:30 PM Uwan Init Pista sa Langit + Babylon (55 mins)

May 2

2:30 PM Baboyngirongbuang (95 mins) 5:00 PM Kordero sa Dios (111 mins) 7:30 PM Uwan Init Pista sa Langit + Babylon (55 mins)