Blog: Film festivals

BAKUNAWA FEST [Fantastic Film, Art + Music] - (formerly Bakunawa Young Cinema) - is the first fantastic & genre-based film, art & music festival based in The Philippines currently presented by Negros Museum and E Unlimited; and ran by volunteer filmmakers and artists. Bakunawa is a dragon-like creature in Philippine mythology that devoured moons. Because we are a genre-bending film fest, we want to flip the Bakunawa's role and we want it to instead symbolize the creative monsters inside us.

On its tenth year, Bakunawa Fest adds a new cinema to its in-person fest screenings: UPFI Film Center in Quezon City, Metro Manila. Across the islands, The Negros Museum remains our main venue in Bacolod City, Negros Occidental in Western Visayas Region. This year, Bakunawa Fest X opens on August 22, 2023 and will have a five-day physical festival run with a Bakunawa Funtastik Fair at the UPFI Film Center while we're having the Film Camp for first-time filmmakersy this July 2022 in Bacolod City. [Filipino students who want to join the FILM CAMP, pls email us at bakunawafilmfest@gmail.com]

Bakunawa Fest runs annually in one season - spread in fourth months becoming a hybrid festival resulting from the pandemic lockdowns. Bakunawa Fest starts with a film camp which includes a series of film workshops for first time young filmmakers that culminates into a competition - their final works are mostly genre films (horror, sci-fi, fantasy, folk, noir, folk, etc). From the Film Camp, Bakunawa Fest celebrates the year's crop of genre films through both an online and in-person festival screenings (with competitive and curated sections) of local and international films making their Philippine Premiere. Bakunawa Fest ends its season run with Primetime Philippine Cable TV airing and an Awards Show via SolarFlix TV where we can reach to millions of Filipino viewers.

Bakunawa was initially created with this principle: "new visions, new voices". We still stand by this principle as we continue to program young promising filmmakers, artists & musicians who either have no access to expensive workshops and may not have the name recognition to be programmed in festivals. Since our third edition, we have included a section that screens curated local and international selected films mainly for educational purposes. Most of our Bakunawa Fest's film camps are done as outreach programs/workshops and are mostly free. Here our participants are scholars paid for by the festival and its partners usually hosted by different cities/municipalities in the Philippines.

During the pandemic years and lockdowns from 2020-2022, we have temporarily migrated to mostly online screenings but this year 2023, we will conduct more live screenings following health protocols. For our tenth edition, we will do a semi-hybrid festival wherein we screen more films in live venues and do a limited program online.

[ Please note that, since we are an artist and volunteer-ran filmfest, we can't fund filmmakers to come physically and we don't pay screening fees. ]

We are a fantastic film fest. Our festival is interested in: Horror or Thriller Films / Sci-Fi, Fantasy or Adventure / Experimental Films / New Media, Expanded Cinema / Genre-Bending Films / Music Videos / Creative Documentaries / Contemporary Art / Photography.

For 2023, we have made our submissions more streamlined (This is NOT our programming approach though, just for submissions):
► Fantastic Full-legth Features
► Fantastic International Shorts
► Fantastic Indigenous Shorts
► Fantastic Filipino Shorts
► BAKUNAWA FEST Alumni Filmmakers
► Midnight Films
► Digital Art & Photography
► One-Minute Films
► Trash, B-Movie-esque, Underground Shorts
► Rewind (Past films released earlier than 2021)
► Pinoy Horror (no restrictions, no premiere status required)

OUR PROGRAMMING PRINCIPLE - A NOTE ON FILM SUBMISSIONS
Our programmers pride themselves on watching all submitted films with an annual 98-100% watching average. We don't base our decisions on which festivals your film has been accepted. We decide on the merit of your film and not on the popularity of the filmmakers and its actors. Last year (9th edition), all 100% of our competition shorts came from submissions via Festhome and Bakunawa Forms. Bakunawa has two festival advisers and curators who recommend films from around the world - especially, Asia - but these recommendations still has to pass through our chief programmer and are mostly programmed out of competition. So just submit and don't send us all your laurels. While we are happy of your achievements (because we're filmmakers too!), we still look at each film at "face value" - we watch them (usually more than twice) and decide.