1978 | 1h 33min | Written and Directed by Kidlat Tahimik
Synopsis
A jeepney driver in a Philippine village dreams of becoming an astronaut. A series of adventures and encounters with different ideologies that take him as far as France causes him to revisit his values.
Availability Window
7pm, Oct 16 – 7pm, Oct 30
How to Watch
Click on the following link to access the film’s Eventive page: Perfumed Nightmare. On this page, click on “Buy” or “Pre-order” (don’t worry, you will be able to screen film free of charge) and you will be prompted to enter an unlock code, which is (case sensitive):
siglo*de*epifania137a*z
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Please note that once you start the film, you will have a 48-hour window within which to watch it in its entirety.
Curator’s Commentary
“Perfumed Nightmare makes one forget months of dreary moviegoing, for it reminds one that invention, insolence, enchantment – even innocence – are still available on film.” — Susan Sontag
“One of the most original and poetic works of cinema made anywhere in the world in the seventies” – Werner Herzog
“(The film) is constructed like a cinematographic equivalent of a shanty town. Any material that can be used is. The result is tough, vital, simple, real.” – Ross Davenish/De Beeld
Perfumed Nightmare, which premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1977, is still celebrated internationally as a key text of post-neocolonial Third-World cinema in the way it declares its independence from reliance on neocolonialist values. It turns put-downs and characterizations of films from developing countries – such as low budget, technical raggedness, non-conformity to expected dramatic arcs – on their heads and transforms such perceived limitations into virtues. Francis Ford Coppola distributed the film in the US and said, “I felt Americans had to see one of my favorite independent films – for its non-Hollywood strengths.”
The film was so unique in form and content that many at that time wondered if it was just a flash in the pan. However, Kidlat has since accumulated a body of work that has stayed true to the gleefully rebellious and artisanal exuberance of Perfumed Nightmare: a filmography that has been honored with several major accolades, including the Fukuoka Prize, the Caligari Award, the Prince Claus Laureate, and his designation as a National Artist of the Philippines.
Rather than a one-off, Perfumed Nightmare is now seen as the opening salvo of a distinguished career: a credo, a declaration of artistic and intellectual independence from strictures imposed by commonplace, borrowed, or imposed modalities and ideologies.
—Gil Quito
About the Director
Kidlat Tahimik was born Eric de Guia to a cosmopolitan family in Baguio, a mountain resort city popular with Filipinos and the pre-independence American colonizers. At the University of the Philippines, he wavered between Engineering and Geology before graduating with a BA in Speech and Drama.
He received his MBA at the Wharton School in Philadelphia and, afterwards, worked in Paris as researcher at the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development. He then joined an artist commune in Germany where he met Werner Herzog who cast him as a flute-playing, Tagalog-spouting, South American Indigenous figure in The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser. He published his artist’s name Kidlat Tahimik (Silent Lightning) when Perfumed Nightmare premiered in Berlin a few years later.
In spite of their diversity, the films that followed Perfumed Nightmare all share the latter’s free-form, questioning, man-on-the-street character. They often champion indigenous cultures, especially the Ifugao culture around his native Baguio where he has founded an artists’ center and colony.
Watch the Trailer
Extras
Prince Claus Laureate tribute video for Kidlat Tahimik’s work (2018)
Kidlat Tahimik’s acceptance at the Prince Claus Laureate Awards, the Netherlands (2018)
Masterclass with Kidlat Tahimik at the Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival (2014)