Cinema Thinks the World
Free Admission

“An audacious classic of independent filmmaking.”

Richard Brody, The New Yorker

There is no better film to kick off a new season of ​“Cinema Thinks the World” than Kidlat Tahimik’s landmark DIY satire of Western cultural and imperial dominance. Tahimik’s signature ​“cups-of-gas” filmmaking style embraces the resourcefulness required to make a film in his native Philippines: he compares his low-budget practice to an unhurried road trip that scrounges gas along the way, in stark contrast to the fast-paced ​“full tank” Hollywood method his films openly critique. Perfumed Nightmare follows jeepney driver Kidlat, Tahimik’s onscreen alter ego, on his journey to Paris and corresponding disillusionment with Western culture and technology. Hilarious, disturbing, messy, and brazen, Tahimik’s debut was somewhat ironically celebrated in the Euro-dominated film festival circuit and championed by Werner Herzog and Francis Ford Coppola.

In English, Tagalog, French, and German with English subtitles

“Perfumed Nightmare makes one forget months of dreary moviegoing, for it reminds one that invention, insolence, enchantment—even innocence—are still available to film.” Susan Sontag

This free screening is presented as part of ​“Cinema Thinks the World,” a partnership project between The University of British Columbia and The Cinematheque. After the film, there will be a short reception followed by a one-hour panel talk with audience discussion.

Panelists: Chelsea Birks, William Brown, JP Catungal, Christopher Pavsek

Acknowledgments

“Cinema Thinks the World” is sponsored by the Grant for Catalyzing Research Clusters (GCRC) at the University of British Columbia. Through a series of public screenings, panel talks, and discussions, it aims to explore the ways in which global cinema represents and helps us to think about the world.

Media
Note

Chelsea Birks is The Cinematheque’s Learning & Outreach director and a sessional lecturer in Film Studies, Department of Theatre and Film, at the University of British Columbia. She is the author of Limit Cinema: Transgression and the Nonhuman in Contemporary Global Film (Bloomsbury, 2021).

William Brown is a filmmaker and an associate professor in Film Studies, Department of Theatre and Film, at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of numerous books, including Navigating from the White Anthropocene to the Black Chthulucene (Zer0 Books, 2023).

JP Catungal is an assistant professor in Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at the University of British Columbia. JP is co-editor of the landmark volume Filipinos in Canada: Disturbing Invisibility (University of Toronto Press, 2012).

Christopher Pavsek is a filmmaker and associate professor in Art, Performance, and Cinema Studies at Simon Fraser University. He is the author of The Utopia of Film: Cinema and Its Futures in Godard, Kluge, and Tahimik (Columbia University Press, 2013).

Upcoming in this Series

  • Perfumed Nightmare 1
  • Perfumed Nightmare
  • Mababangong Bangungot
  • Phillippines1977
  • Kidlat Tahimik
  • 94 DCP
  • PG
  • Cinema Thinks the World