Newsletter

September 9, 2022

This edition highlights Cinemata’s partnership with Malaysia’s FreedomFilmFest 2022 for the ‘Pandemic of Inequality’ screenings. We also feature the first prize winners of the experimental and animation categories of the Gawad Alternatibo film competition, plus the latest episode of Pretty Good Podcast.

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CINEMATA PARTNERSHIPS

Cinemata partners with FreedomFilmFest 2022 for ‘Pandemic of Inequality’ film screenings

Cinemata is an official partner of this year’s edition of FreedomFilmFest, Malaysia’s first and only international human rights documentary film festival. With the theme Pandemik Dua Darjat (Pandemic of Inequality), the festival features films and documentaries highlighting the economic inequalities and power disparities exposed by the health crisis. Over 35 films will be screened from September 9 to 17 at the PJ Live Arts Theatre, Petaling Jaya, Malaysia.

Cinemata is hosting the screenings of the films. The festival will also feature the premiere of the EngageMedia film Hopes and Feeds and two films from the ‘Tech Tales: Films about digital rights in the Asia-Pacific’ collection, namely Pattani Calling and Not Love Songs. Read more about the partnership here.

To learn more about the festival program, visit the FreedomFilmFest2022 website. To purchase festival passes and attend the physical events, register here.

Festival Organiser: Freedom Film Network
Country: Malaysia

WATCH THE TRAILER

 

FEATURED VIDEOS

'Ang Amomonggo sa Aton’ (The Monster Among Us)

Under martial law in the Philippines, the Magbuelas family and the Dumaan farmers of Negros Island face a brutal threat from the mythical creature Amomonggo, believed to be the culprit behind a series of killings in the community. For their safety, the community is forced into solitude while struggling to protect their rights.

Ang Amomonggo sa Aton (The Monster Among Us) by VinJo Entuna won first prize in the animation category of the 34th Gawad Alternatibo, the longest-running independent film competition of its kind in Asia.

Director: VinJo Entuna
Country: Philippines

WATCH THE FILM

From August to October 2022, Cinemata will be hosting the online screenings of this year’s festival. Watch the other films in the animation category here.

'Kasikas sa Ganiha ug Unya’ (A Rustling from a Time Ago and Tomorrow)

A reminder of life as a brief movement in the vestiges of nothingness – this Cebuano experimental film explores the temporal nature of multiple lifetimes as we experience it in dreams of life and death.

Kasikas sa Ganiha ug Unya (A Rustling from a Time Ago and Tomorrow) was among the first place winners in the 34th Gawad Alternatibo Experimental Category. In 2021, it won the Best Film Award at the Binisaya Shorts Film Festival.

Director: Eric Bico & Kuda Bux
Country: Philippines

WATCH THE FILM

Watch the other films in the experimental category here.

'Pagbilang Kong Tatlo'

Five friends – Luna, Sol, Kenok, Anna, and Tonton – arrive at their usual hangout spot, an abandoned building full of trash and graffiti. After a couple of drinks and games, Luna suggests that they play bang-sak to reminisce about their childhood. But as the night progresses, the game takes a dark turn.

Pagbilang Kong Tatlo by Xzy Dumabok won second prize in the 34th Gawad Alternatibo Short Feature Category.

Director: Xzy Dumabok
Country: Philippines

WATCH THE FILM

Watch the other films in the short feature category here.

‘Pretty Good Podcast Episode 21: Pandemic of Control in South Asia’

In this episode of Pretty Good Podcast, two South Asian contributors of EngageMedia’s Pandemic of Control series elaborate on how the digital technologies used for COVID-19 management have infringed on human and digital rights.

Harindrini Corea, legal consultant of Hashtag Generation, shares more about the criminalisation of people’s movements and peaceful protests amid the economic decline in Sri Lanka. Filmmaker and human rights advocate Zayed Siddiki discusses how the state used the legal system to suppress citizens' rights in online and offline spaces.

Producer: EngageMedia
Country: Sri Lanka and Bangladesh

WATCH THE PODCAST

Check out the accompanying blog post that provides additional references and relevant links to this podcast episode.

'#DigitalSafetyFirstMM:Digital Safety Checklist for Myanmar Citizens ဒစ်ဂျစ်တယ်လုံခြုံရေးအလေ့ထများ'

In a country like Myanmar where people's digital rights are under threat, practicing digital safety is important. This video provides key tips to enhance your protection against potential cyber attacks and other digital threats.

မြန်မာနိုင်ငံလိုမျိုး လူ့အခွင့်ရေးနဲ့ဒစ်ဂျစ်တယ်အခွင့်ရေး ခြိမ်းခြောက်ခံနေရတဲ့ နိုင်ငံတစ်ခု ဒစ်ဂျစ်တယ်လုံခြုံရေးဆိုတာ အင်မတန်ကိုအရေးကြီးတဲ့ အခန်းကဏ္ဍတစ်ခုဖြစ်ပါတယ်။ ဒီဗီဒီယိုမှာတော့ မိတ်ဆွေတို့ရဲ့ ဒစ်ဂျစ်တယ်လုံခြုံရေးနဲ့ အခြားသော ဆိုက်ဘာရပ်ဝန်းမှ ခြိမ်းခြောက်လာမှုတွေကိုကာကွယ်ပေးနိုင်မယ့်ထိရောက်တဲ့ အလေ့အကျင့်ကောင်းတွေကိုဖော်ပြပေးထားပါတယ်။

This video is part of EngageMedia's initiative to raise awareness on digital rights issues in Myanmar and support activists, digital rights advocates, and ordinary citizens in enhancing their digital safety.

Producer: EngageMedia
Country: Myanmar

WATCH THE FILM

To learn more, look up #DigitalSafetyFirstMM on social media and visit https://engagemedia.org/myanmar/.