San Diego Asian Film Festival 2008

Prolific filmmaker Brillante Mendoza premieres his work at the San Diego Asian Film Festival this year with a double-header of FOSTER CHILD and SLINGSHOT, both shot on the streets of Manila in what’s been described as “real time” filmmaking. Though fictional, Mendoza’s impressive skill is to impose a calculated narrative onto Manila’s constant unpredictability, shaping its ground-level chaos into art.

SLINGSHOT opens with a bravura sequence: a nighttime raid on one of Manila’s squatter neighborhoods. The camera chases plain-clothes police wielding massive automatic weapons through the narrow laneways as they ransack homes, break in on couples making love and herd dozens of people out into the open. Only some of them are guilty. But in this neighborhood, stealing puts food in your belly. Some snatch wallets and jewelry, some shoplift, others prefer more intimate forms of thievery.

A showcase of Mendoza’s rapidly maturing abilities with digital cinema, SLINGSHOT also presents the full range of human behavior, especially the ironies of greed and vanity. The stories climax at a rally where politicians give high-minded speeches to thousands holding candles aloft in the night. But even there, the harsh economics of life on the streets rules the evening. - Adapted by Cameron Bailey

SLINGSHOT will also screen at the Chula Vista UltraStar (555 Broadway) as part of the Philippine Cinema Showcase October 17-23. For more info: www.philippinecinemashowcase.org