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Cannes Indies Short Awards singles out Filipino docu as best short film

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Pablo A. Tariman, VERA Files

<div class="embed-wrap"><figure data-feedback="fb:likes,fb:comments"><img src="http://sa.kapamilya.com/absnews/abscbnnews/media/2021/life/07/14/20210714-dax.jpg"/></figure></div><p>A short documentary on a 15-year-old student trying to survive as a ballet dancer won the Best Short Documentary at the Cannes Indies Cinema Awards.</p><p>Entitled They Call Me Dax, the documentary was written and directed by Filipino filmmaker Patrick Alcedo who is based in Toronto, Canada.</p><div class="embed-wrap"><figure data-feedback="fb:likes,fb:comments"><img src="http://sa.kapamilya.com/absnews/abscbnnews/media/2021/life/07/14/20210714-patrick-alcedo.jpg"/><figcaption>Filipino filmmaker Patrick Alcedo </figcaption></figure></div><p>The same documentary is now an official nominee in another online festival Phoenix Shorts in Toronto where jury selects the winners of each category through private screenings.</p><p>Another docu, A Will to Dream, is now an official entry in the Chicago Indie Film Awards.</p><div class="embed-wrap"><figure data-feedback="fb:likes,fb:comments"><img src="http://sa.kapamilya.com/absnews/abscbnnews/media/2021/life/07/14/20210714-awilltodream.jpg"/></figure></div><p>“I was of course elated,” director Alcedo told Vera Files. “I was also surprised my film got notice in an international film competition.”</p><p>He is not totally strange to awards as his first feature length docu, A Piece of Paradise, won the <a href="https://news.abs-cbn.com/overseas/03/15/19/a-piece-of-paradise-the-struggle-of-pinay-workers-in-canada" target="_blank">Best Canadian Film Award</a> and the Best First Feature Film Award at the 2017 Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival.</p><figure class="op-interactive"><iframe height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/NiE1vwEoW2c?enablejsapi=1" width="560"></iframe></figure><div class="iwantbar">Watch more in <a href="//www.iwantv.com.ph/">iWantv</a> or <a href="//tfc.tv/">TFC.tv</a></div><p>To his knowledge, his film was the first to receive back-to-back win in the festival’s 20-year history.</p><p>Alcedo said his love affair with documentaries started in 2009. </p><p>“Thus far, I have directed, written, and produced nine films. My previous domestic partner, <a href="https://vimeo.com/frutocorre" target="_blank">Fruto Corre</a>, is a documentary filmmaker. He was the one who encouraged me to go into documentary filmmaking as an additional platform in disseminating my research on dance and culture. Watching his works and working side-by-side and collaborating with him for years made me fall in love with filmmaking.”</p><p>A native of Andagao, Aklan, Alcedo said he grew up dancing in the Ati-atihan festival in Kalibo. “I was also born in a family of dancers and musicians. Hence, expressing externally one’s culture, grace, and emotion has always been a part of me. My father was a lover of films. As a young boy, he would bring me to my hometown’s cinemas where I would be vicariously brought to worlds and lives outside my own. Each time, I would be spellbound by that kind of ‘travel’ my father would give me.”</p><p>Presently chair and associate professor in the Department of Dance at York University in Toronto, Canada, the filmmaker believes documentaries are powerful on their own. “They have a kind of immediacy and connection that is unique from the written text. As a dance anthropologist, I consider docus as incredible partners to my written publications and to my own teaching and promotion of Filipino expressive culture within the Philippines and in the diaspora.”</p><p>They Call Me Dax along with his two new docus, A Will to Dream (feature-length, 90 minutes) and Am I Being Selfish (short, 8 minutes) were all funded by Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Grant and the Canada Council for the Arts.</p><p>The pre-production phase of these films was under the auspices of the Early Researcher Award he received from the Government of Ontario.</p><p>It’s really in Toronto were he started producing his body of works in documentary filmmaking.</p><p>The production for They Call Me Dax took three months and the post-production close to year.</p><p>“Thanks goodness the filming was completed before the pandemic! But the post-production -- editing, color correction, subtitling, musical scoring --was done at the height of the pandemic. My editor and I had to learn how to communicate via FB messenger, mobile phone, and email. I also had to make sure that my Vimeo was a professional account to allow for uploading of several drafts and studies for vetting and approval,” he recounted post-production blues of the docu.</p><p>His first docu was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/video/sports/1247465653943/boxing-in-the-shadow-of-pacquiao.html?smid=url-share" target="_blank">Boxing in The Shadow of Pacquiao</a> which was cited in the New York Times. He also made three films about the <a href="https://ycar.apps01.yorku.ca/programmes-projects/ati-atihan/" target="_blank">Ati-atihan festival</a>.</p><div><iframe allow="autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameBorder="0" height="345" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/288229620" width="640"></iframe></div><p><a href="https://vimeo.com/288229620">Dancing Manilenyos Trailer by Patrick Alcedo</a> from <a href="https://vimeo.com/user60853790">Patrick Alcedo</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p><p>His later output includes A Piece of Paradise followed by Dancing Manilenyos, a 20-minute docu that juxtaposes the life of a poor male dancer to that of a rich, privileged female dancer who are members of Ballet Philippines. It was an official selection at the 2019 Diversity in Cannes Short Film Showcase. It received an Award of Recognition at the 2018 Hollywood International Independent Documentary Film Award.</p><p>He explains his passion for documenting life of performing artists. “As a dance anthropologist, I am passionate about putting a spotlight on the ability of dance to empower the marginalized. I want to illustrate that dance is an incredible embodied form in understanding the complexities of race, class, ethnicity, gender, religious practices, and diasporic/transnational identities.”<br/> <br/>As a Philippine Studies scholar he said he devotes all his energies and resources to fleshing out who we are as Filipinos whether in the Philippines or in transnational elsewhere. “I believe I work best mostly from the point of view of dance and our own dancing bodies.”</p><div><em>(<a href="https://verafiles.org/" target="_blank">VERA Files</a> is put out by veteran journalists taking a deeper look at current issues. Vera is Latin for “true.”)</em></div><div><strong>RELATED VIDEO: </strong></div><figure class="op-interactive"><iframe height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bViU-N-2vYI?enablejsapi=1" width="560"></iframe></figure><div class="iwantbar">Watch more in <a href="//www.iwantv.com.ph/">iWantv</a> or <a href="//tfc.tv/">TFC.tv</a></div>

<p>A short documentary on a 15-year-old student trying to survive as a ballet dancer won the Best Short Documentary at the Cannes Indies Cinema Awards.</p>

A short documentary on a 15-year-old student trying to survive as a ballet dancer won the Best Short Documentary at the Cannes Indies Cinema Awards.

Cannes Indies Short Awards singles out Filipino docu as best short film

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Cannes Indies Short Awards singles out Filipino docu as best short film

Pablo A. Tariman,

VERA Files

Published Jul 14, 2021 10:50 PM PHT

Read More:

Cannes Indies Cinema Awards

Filipino filmmaker

Patrick Salcedo

They Call Me Dax

Canada

Overseas Filipinos in Canada

documentary

short film

Dancing Manilenyo

A Will to Dream

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