Tenth session of Illegal_Cinema

Screening of a film proposed by Juan Guardiola, followed by a discussion.

Screening: “Mababangong bangungot / Perfumed Nightmare” (1977, Kidlat Tahimik)

16 mm / Colour / Sound / 95 min.

Kidlat Tahimik, meaning “calm or quiet light” in Tagalog, is the pseudonym used by Eric de Guia, artist and mythical figure in Southern Asian experimental film. The artist, almost completely untrained as a filmmaker, made Mababangong Bangungot (internationally known as Perfumed Nightmare), in a semi-documentary, amateur style which includes autobiographical references. The film is a surreal, humorous, absolutely original tale of an innocent Philippine man, played by the artist, who, fascinated by American technology and culture, travels to the West and discovers the disadvantages of progress first-hand. Kidlat’s utopian fantasy thus becomes his disillusion, a “perfumed nightmare” and a longing for a return to his idealised indigenous culture. A recurring element in the film is the figure of the bridge, as a metaphor of development and the union of past and present, reality and dreams, countryside and city, and tradition and modernity. A paradigm of Third World film for some Western intellectuals, for others the work is a magnificent example of postcolonial critique. A transnational allegory of the Philippine artist in his or her search for self affirmation and identity, with a mixture of realism, “exoticism” and irony, which has become a true cult piece for Philippine artists and filmmakers.

Juan Guardiola (1965) studied Philosophy and Arts and is an art historian, curator, conservator and the writer of several books and catalogues, notably, his studies on postcolonialism such as Filipiniana, El Imaginario Colonial and Cinema Filipinas. Historia, teoría y crítica fílmica (1899-2009).