'Bunso' bags Best Director award in Prague

Posted 07:08pm (Mla time) May 21, 2005
By Claire Agbayani
Inquirer News Service



Editor's Note: Published on Page A2-1 of the May 22, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


FILIPINO filmmaker Ditsi Carolino won the Best Director award for her riveting documentary film, "Bunso," at the recently concluded One World '05-the 7th Annual International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival in Prague.

Carolino shared the award with Pirjo Honkasalo of Finland ("Three Rooms of Melancholia").

"Bunso" is a disturbing documentary film about three boys Tony, Itsoy and Diosel, aged 11 to 13, who are detained in a jail for adult criminals. It is an immersion into prison life, with many poignant moments from the boys who speak their truth with innocence and street smarts, pain and humor.

The citation of the festival Grand Jury states, "With the Best Director Award, the jury wishes to honor two very different styles of documentary filmmaking, both addressing the situation of children caught up in conflict and inhumanity. In 'The Youngest (Bunso),' the filmmaker achieves empathy and closeness to her characters who are children held in atrocious conditions in a Manila (sic) jail. Filmed from not above or below their level, humor and despair intermingle as the children are allowed to speak for themselves as equals."

In an e-mail to Consuelo Foundation and Unicef-which jointly funded the documentary film, Carolino wrote: "If you go through the films we competed against, it's a miracle that we won. We didn't think we had a ghost of a chance. Almost all of them were made in First World countries with budgets of 100,000 to 200,000 euros each-especially 'Three Rooms of Melancholia' ..."

"Bunso" has been screened in Amsterdam, Toronto, Prague and Munich. It debuted, and was screened thrice, at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) in November 2004. Several festival programmers first heard about "Bunso" from this festival.

The documentary film had a sold-out screening at the Canadian International Documentary Film Festival or HotDocs-with 500 Canadians, international delegates and a handful of Filipinos in attendance.

Also, "Bunso" had three screenings at the One World Human Rights Film Festival-one with English subtitles, and two screenings with Czech subtitles.

"Believe it or not, we have a Czech subtitled version of 'Bunso' now!" said Carolino.

The director added that they had two screenings at the Dokfest Internationales Dokumentarfilmfestival Muchen (Munich)-with simultaneous German translations on headphones.

Carolino added that so far, they've had very, very strong responses to "Bunso" and viewers make it a point to stay for Q & A "wanting to know how they can help in concrete ways."

"Bunso" will be joining film festivals in Washington D.C. from June 14-19; Silverdocs-an international documentary film festival organized by Discovery Channel South Africa sometime July; and Encounters, an international documentary film festival in South Africa.

i just saw this docu at our school last week and it was the BEST! it was actually "shot" here in cebu and the language used by the subjects was Cebuano (i think this was the reason why i find the docu kinda funny). although for the most part i was laughing, the issues being address by this story are really deep. i was actually shock about the maturity of the minds and views of the children that were featured.

wow! now I really wanna go see it. is it a filipino production?

it is actually, but i don't know if Carolino (the director) is a cebuano/a. btw, the word bunso means youngest ( in case you don;t know, hehehe).

in tagalog right?