Abrenian Heritage Film Festival calls for entries

 BANGUED, Abra -- The province is joining celebration of the centennial of the Philippine Cinema with the Abrenian Heritage Film Festival.  

The festival aims to discover, encourage, and support the aspiring filmmakers from the province to  articulate, interpret and express the Abrenian cultural heritage through filmmaking in short film or documentary.

Open to all teachers and students of the Dept. of Education in the 27 municipalities of Abra, the festival gives opportunity to aspiring and talented filmmakers to showcase their skills and abilities in cinematography.

Entries for short film should be five minutes and 10 minutes for documentary.

Deadline of submission of entries will be August 31, 2019 at the Abra Schools Division Office (SDO). Interested individuals may visit Abra SDO for the mechanics, entry forms and other information. 

The very first provincial film festival is rheaded by Film Ambassador and multi-awarded Abrenian filmmaker Dexter Macaraeg’s Sine Abreño and the Film Development Council of the Philippines (FDCP) in partnership with DepEd Abra and Philippine Information Agency -Abra Information Center.

Artist Macaraeg described the Abrenian Heritage Film Festival, his brainchild, as a venue and platform that will value their outputs in terms of narrative, characters and technical aspects and how this creatively elements weaved together into one coherent whole production using the elements of cinema.

Macaraeg is the founder of Sine Abreño which is recognized by the FDCP as provincial film ambassador and accredited by the Department of Trade and Industry.

Macaraeg had earlier conducted multiple seminar-workshops on filmmaking in schools in the different towns in the province, and he hopes the participants will be able to craft their films with competitiveness and creativity.

He also spearheaded a film symposium in Bangued with over 100 schools teachers participated. With support from the FDCP, there were sessions on understanding film through education, creating film synergy in the student body and crash course on filmmaking for educators.  

“This is the first ever film festival of Abra. This has never been done in the past and it is their chance to exhibit their short films and documentaries in big screens,” Macaraeg said. (JDP/CAGT- PIA-CAR, Abra)