Anyone who’s looking for a refreshing take at the movies would do well to check out one interesting avenue for independent cinema that’s popped up lately: the Globe Independent Film Festival (GIFF).
If it’s a little strange for you to see that Globe—a telecom company—is sponsoring an independent film festival and cultivating the scene, you have to know that they’re in it to foster some fresh, young talent behind the camera. (For one thing, they’ve commissioned some original work for their streaming service HOOQ, including a serialized adaptation of Erik Matti’s popular crime thriller On the Job.) They called for entries late last year for animated shorts, documentaries, narrative films, music videos, experimental works, and webisodes, and a lot of hungry filmmakers rose to the challenge.
You can watch all the works that are officially competing for recognition, as well as featured shorts by notable local directors such as Joyce Bernal and Quark Henares, at the GIFF right here on their official website. If you’re looking for something to bingewatch today, this may be it; there are quite a number of gems in this field of contestants no matter what you’re into.
The GIFF will be crowning their winners—decided on by a group of notable judges Bianca Gonzalez, directors Sid Maderazo and Antoinette Jadaone, and local film critic Philbert Dy—on a huge awards night on Thursday, April 6, at the Palace Pool Club. Grand winners for almost all categories get a whopping P100,000, while the winner for the narrative category get P200,000. Not a bad deal at all.
With all the filmmaking talent on deck at the GIFF, don’t be surprised if the next big thing in local indie cinema comes from a seed of an idea grown here. You know what it is—support local indie films.