Extracts from an Imaginary Interview: Questions and Answers about Bontoc Eulogy by Marlon Fuentes
Film Still from Bontoc Eulogy (1995)
As a preview to our film screening of Bontoc Eulogy on January 20, we have attached an insightful article based on a fabricated interview by Marlon Fuentes. It can be found in “F is for Phony: Fake Documentary and Truth’s Undoing” by Alexandra Juhasz and Jesse Lerner.
“Art for me has always been an orienting device, and I thought that film was a good medium that could capture the process of passage through the membranes we navigate.”
the book F Is for Phony discusses a broad scope of works and explores issues raised by “fake docs” such as the fiction/documentary divide, the ethics of reality-based manipulation, and whether documentariness derives from form or reception.
Marlon E. Fuentes' Bontoc Eulogy is a moving, personal exploration into the filmmaker's internal struggle with his Filipino heritage. The film is premised on the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair where 1,100 Filipino tribal natives were brought to the U.S. to be a "living exhibit."
Bontoc Eulogy encompasses a harrowing consideration of the "other", as spectators witness the suffering of Indigenous people. The Fair was the site of the world's largest ever "ethnological display rack," in which so-called primitive men and women were gawked at by the "civilized world."
The film is based on his "grandfather" Markod, a Bontoc Igorot warrior brought to St. Louis in 1904. Using archival footage and reproductions, Fuentes constructs a poignant reminder to our history and ties it to themes of memory, relationships, immigration and cultural loss.
Extracts from an Imaginary Interview: Questions and Answers about Bontoc Eulogy is a thought-provoking read, delving into the mind of Marlon Fuentes.
Please join us on January 20 at 7:00 pm at Bellas Artes Outpost for the film screening of Bontoc Eulogy by Marlon Fuentes!