Pacific Cinematheque
1131 Howe Street
Vancouver.

Saturday, September 27, 2008
Time: 10:45 am

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Blink
Kurap
Dragons and Tigers
(Philippines, 2008, 70 mins)
DigiBeta (NTSC)
North American Premiere
Directed By: Ronaldo Bertubin
PRODS: Olivia Madrigal, Antonio de Guzman, Jr.
SCR: Romualdo Avellanosa
CAM: Gary Gardoce
ED: Soon Lee Mi
MUS: Ceejay Javier
Cast: Sherwin Ordonez, Jojit Lorenzo, Ashley Rhein Arca, Christian Burke, Jeff Luna, Nikolai Villamor

“If you don’t want to be used, if you don’t want to be duped … don’t ever blink!” Ronaldo Bertubin’s feisty, street-beat melodrama is wise to all the risks in a dodgy district like Quiapo in Manila. Small-time crook Ambet and his sister Luchie live in an abandoned building. A high proportion of Ambet’s dubious earnings goes on treatment for Luchie’s glaucoma, and he tries to shield her from exposure to his varied sex-life (women and men) and his line of work. But when middle-class photojournalist Marlon comes calling with a proposition that Ambet should rat on his buddies in the criminal underworld--for the sake of TV news reports which will inevitably lead to police busts--the money doesn’t quite explain why Ambet agrees.

Blink sometimes looks and sounds like a thriller, but it’s actually a fresh (and, uh, homo-erotic) take on the slum melodrama as developed by the likes of Lino Brocka. Where Brocka tended to focus on family relationships, Bertubin is more into larger social tapestries; his guitar-driven style surrounds the central characters with a continuous collage of street-life and snatched glances. And it’s paced like a rocket. Most directors would need 90 minutes to tell this story, but Bertubin bangs through it in little more than an hour. “If you blink, you may get lost…”