I’ll be seeing another queer content entry at the Vancouver International Film Festival tomorrow (6pm at Granville 7). Here’s the plot summary:
Jay
(Philippines, 2008, 96 mins)
North American Premiere
Directed By: Francis X. Pasion
PRODS: Francis X. Pasion, Ronald Mangubat
SCR: Francis X. Pasion
CAM: Carlo Mendoza
EDS: Francis X. Pasion, Kats Serraon, Chuck Guttierez
Cast: Baron Geisler, Coco Martin, Flor Salanga, Angelica Rivera, Jericho Espiritu, JC Santos
Francis Pasion’s debut feature took the Best Film and Best Actor prizes at the Cinemalaya Festival in the Philippines, and there’s no doubt that it heralds a distinctive new voice in Filipino movies. The first voice we hear, though, is the woman narrator of the Channel 8 show Dearly Departed Ones, a “reality” program which brings out the soap opera in a family’s reactions to a sudden death. She takes us to a village in Pampanga, on Ash Wednesday, 2008, to a humble house that was half-buried by the eruption of Mount Pinatubo, and introduces Luz Mercado as she wakes early, little suspecting the terrible news she’s about to hear on TV: Luz’ eldest son Jay, a schoolteacher working in Manila, about to take up a lucrative post in Baltimore, has been stabbed to death in an apparent gay sex-crime.
Here’s the trailer:
Why you can trust Xtra
