Award-Winning Filipino Director showcases films

Renowned Filipino director Kidlat Tahimik presents his first as well as his latest work at the SFU Woodwards building April 26 and 28. 
Perfumed Nightmare, his first film, launched him into the ranks of great auteurs at the international level. His low budget film has been compared to masterpieces of Chris Marker, Werner Herzog, and Agnes Varda. Perfumed Nightmare is a story about young Kidlat who follows his dream to become the first Filipino astronaut. The dream takes him on a journey from the rural Philippines to Paris. 
His latest work, Balikbayan #1 (Memories of Overdevelopment Redux III) tells the tale of Enrique, Magellan’s (the first person to circumnavigate the world) slave. Balikbayan is the Filipino term for a box used Filipino expatriates used to send goods back home. 
Born as Eric Oteyza de Guia, he was raised in Baguio City - the centre of the tribal highlands of Igorot Culture. He attended Wharton School to earn his MBA. He worked in Paris as an economist for five years before he took hold of an anti-Hollywood school of filmmaking (also known as Banal-Kahoy production). In 1975, he started working on Perfumed Night, which received the Berlin Film Festival International Critics Award for Perfumed Nightmare, (1977). Other awards he received include: the Manheim Film Festival Top Cash Award for Turumba, (1981); 15th Tokyo Video Festival, Fukuoka Prize Laureate for arts and Culture (2012); CineMalaya Lifetime Achievement Award as “father of Philippine Independent Cinema”, for inspiring a new generation of filmmakers in the Philippines and Asia (2014); and the Berlin Film Festival Caligari Prize for Balikbayan #1 (Memories of Overdevelopment Redux III).
Tahimik supports artists who have not been formally trained. In 1997, his Sunflower Film Collective shared a user-friendly video technology with tribal people to empower them to document their culture with their own voice.
He has three sons. Tahimik prides himself as a father first and then a filmmaker.