RENOWNED film director Kidlat Tahimik (Eric de Guia) opened the Balanghai ni Ikeng theatre at Ili Likha Artist Village last week.
Balanghai ni Ikeng is an indie film sanctuary and is a multi-purpose hall for Indie Films and IP powwows inspired with the woodcrafts from the region.
The theatre can accommodate a hundred to a hundred fifty guests and will also be later a part of the Film Development Council of the Philippines (FDCP).
During its opening last week, Tahimik called to celebrate the first person to circumnavigate the world, Enrique de Malacca, through the showing of the indie film, Balikbayan #1 Memories of Overdevelopment Redux III.
The film took 35 years to finish (1979 – 2015) and is a tribute to the first Filipino circumnavigator, Enrique de Malacca and was the official entry of Tahimik in the Berlin Film Festival in Germany in 2015.
The film won the Festival’s Caligari Award in the same year.
The film is about Enrique or Ikeng, a slave of Ferdinand Magellan and the first Filipino who circumnavigated the globe. Balikbayan #1 unites the official story of Ikeng’s venture throughout the globe as well as the Director’s cut of Tahimik for 35 years of filming.
Enrique, in the film, was an Ifugao who has skill in carving. According to the plot, he was first blown by the wind from Cordillera region and landed on Cebu. He was also brought to Malacca and later on was sold to Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese explorer, and became his slave.
After his master’s death in Mactan, Cebu, he became a free man and finds his way back to his home.
In 1979, Tahimik started to base his characters from the Antonio Pigafetta’s chronicles (the chronicler of Magellan).
Tahimik got fascinated by the idea that maybe Enrique de Malacca was actually Filipino by reading the chronicles of Pigafetta which includes observations about the customs and languages of the people they encountered.
According to Pigaffeta, Enrique has known the Cebuano language when they arrived in Cebu and conversed with the natives on April 21, 1521.
Tahimik wants to establish the idea that instead of Magellan’s arrival in Cebu on April 21, it is Enrique’s moment for being the first Filipino to sail around the world. (Alvin Orpilla and Dimple B. Morales/CDD interns)