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World Fantastic Cinema

Beneath the Cogon

Rico Maria Ilarde

Philippines2005 81min DV Color

Synopsis

A man is passed out on the ground. His name is Sam, and talks of what he went through up to now. Sam joined a gang and robbed a factory. After killing a gang member who had betrayed him, he takes the money and runs. He then faces a somewhat different situation... The movie moves across action and horror, and most of the incidents are out of order. However, the director somehow manages to put all of the elements of the movie together, making it worthwhile to watch for the viewers.

Diretor

Rico Maria Ilarde

Ilarde was born and raised in Metro Manila, the Philippines. He attended La Salle Greenhills for both his elementary and high school education. Originally, he was going to study Business Administration at U.P. Diliman , but when his father (TV icon Eddie Ilarde) suddenly had a change of heart, allowing him to pursue his interests in film, Rico ended up enrolling at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, majoring in film/video. After completing several shorts, with one 16mm short feature (Z-MAN 1985) bagging an award for Best Experimental Narrative at the Experimental Cinema of the Philippines competition, almost immediately (while barely out of his teens), Ilarde dove right into the thick of the business by directing action scenes for his father’s ABS-CBN anthology program “Kahapon Lamang,” This was followed by the 35mm full-length feature version of his short Z-MAN (1989). It was a low budget sci-fi thriller with an all-Filipino cast, but shot with English dialogue, and which managed to be sold to the Los Angeles movie distribution company Overseas Filmgroup/First Look Pictures. Sensing that this might be a breakthrough, Ilarde returned to the Philippines and was disappointed to learn that the achievement was met with relative indifference by the mainstream movie industry.