In celebration of its 26th founding anniversary, the UP Center for Ethnomusicology, along with the UP Diliman Office of the Chancellor, presents “Ambient Images: Stories of People and Sonic Experiences Told through Film,” a film-screening event that will run on June 26, 27, 29, 30, and July 3, 2023. Through this occasion, the UP Center for Ethnomusicology seeks to advance milestones that it has set through “Road Map to 2027,” a five-year program of action geared toward the Center’s development into a world class music research institution for a global age.
“Ambient Images” will feature (semi-/)fictional and documentary films that engage ethnomusicological research, cultural preservation, Indigenous ancestral practices, and the politics of representation. It opens on June 26th with Jose Monserrat Maceda: Breaking Music’s Frontiers, a documentary on the pioneering ethnomusicologist, modernist composer, and founder of the UP Center for Ethnomusicology, and Harana: the Search for the Lost Art of the Serenade, which depicts classical guitarist Florante Aguilar’s attempt to highlight and salvage a dying courtship practice. On the next day, June 27th, the film-screening will showcase Cordilleran customs and cultural dynamism as represented in Threaded Traditions: the Ikat of Cordillera, a documentary by The Mahalina Foundation and HABI, The Philippine Textile Council. Acclaimed shorts by Don Josephus Eblahan will also be shown: Talimpusod sa Patungo sa Paraiso and The Headhunter’s Daughter. The latter, which evokes histories of colonial violence that relentlessly haunt Indigenous experience, won the Short Film Grand Jury Prize at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival.
The event will look further into filmic portrayals of Indigenous life and knowledge on June 29th through successive screenings of Nanook of the North: A Story of Life and Love in the Actual Arctic, a silent classic by Robert J. Flaherty and one of the first ethnographic films, and Elvert Bañares’s Sa Paglupad ka Banog, a present-day, community-centric retelling of a Suguidanon epic. Sa Paglupad ka Banog received the Golden Kinabalu Award for Best Indigenous Language Film in 2022. Then, Kulintang: Gong Music from Mindanao in Southern Philippines, a documentary on the Maranao gong and drum ensemble narrated by ethnomusicologist and kulintang master Usopay H. Cadar, and Dana Rappoport’s Death of the One Who Knows, a poignant reckoning over a sole culture bearer’s passing—and, consequently, changes in a ritual and oratory practice that has defined Indigenous Toraja identity—will be shown on June 30th. Finally, the event culminates on July 3rd with the Philippine premiere of 2022 New York Times Critic’s Pick Expedition Content, an immersive, nearly imageless historical account of a 1961 fieldwork project among the Hubula in West Guinea that provokes reconsideration of research on underrepresented people.
Further, audiences are in for a treat (apart from the light snacks and refreshments that will be served during brief intermissions). Filmmakers and expert guests—including Florante Aguilar, Adelaida Lim and Jeannie Laccay of Threaded Traditions, Cordillera studies expert Analyn Salvador-Amores, Don Josephus Raphael Eblahan, Elvert Bañares, ethnomusicologist, composer and National Artist Ramon P. Santos, and Expedition Content directors Ernst Karel and Veronika Kusumaryati—will grace the event with virtual and in-person appearances through directors’ talks and Q&A sessions. The first event of its kind by the UP Center for Ethnomusicology, “Ambient Images” promises to be a rich, unique experience that prompts reflection on people who shape sound cultures and music-making, a core element of the Center’s advocacies.
“Ambient Images” will be held at the UP Center for Ethnomusicology Reading Room at the College of Music in UP Diliman from 2 to 5 pm. Admission is free, but seating is limited! Register your attendance here: bit.ly/ambientimages.
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