Nervous Translation by Shireen Seno

Friday, December 6, 2019
7:00 PM

Woodland Pattern Book Center
720 E Locust St
Milwaukee, WI 53212

Nervous Translation
Shireen Seno
90 min, Philippines, 2017
Color, HD

Synopsis:
Late 1988, Post-dictatorship Philippines. Eight year-old Yael, shy to a fault, lives in her own private world. Left to her own devices while her mother assembles shoes at the local shoe factory, Yael cooks miniature meals for herself, sometimes forgetting about leftovers for dinner in the fridge. In the evenings, she cuts her mother’s white hair for 25 centavos a strand while they watch soap operas on television. Yael only knows her father through his voice through voice letters in the form of cassette tapes which he sends back every now and then from Saudi Arabia. Their boombox has a problem of ‘eating tape’, but this does not stop Yael from secretly listening to Father’s voice letters. One night, she accidentally records over a voice tape meant for her Mother.

Director’s Notes:
“Nervous Translation is based on my experiences growing up a shy child of the Filipino diaspora, unsure of myself, wanting to belong, and longing for a way to express that. It’s a portrait of the quintessential Filipino family nowadays, since the 80s, where we only see and hear fragments of each other, and always in spurts.

Set in 1988, Nervous Translation seeks to recapture an important period in Philippine history and draw connections to the present day through issues that are still very familiar to us: the complexity of the family unit in light of migration, an obsession with consumer electronics and personal technology, and the sheer power of nature to remind us of our limits and about what really matters.”

Artist Bio:
Shireen Seno was born to a Filipino family in Japan, where she spent most of her childhood. She graduated from the University of Toronto with a B.A. in Architectural studies and Cinema studies.

She started out in film shooting stills for Lav Diaz and John Torres before going on to direct her debut feature, Big Boy, which premiered at Rotterdam 2013 and went on to screen at festivals in Jeonju (South Korea), Edinburgh, New Horizons (Poland), 3 Continents (France), and at institutions including Deutsches Historiches Museum Berlin, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and the Echo Park Film Center, among others. Big Boy was the opening film of Hors Pistes Tokyo, organized by the Centre Pompidou, and won the prize for Best First Film at the Festival de Cine Lima Independiente.

Her next feature film project, Nervous Translation, was one of 15 projects of the Venice International Film Festival's inaugural Biennale College – Cinema in 2013, a recipient of a Script & Project Development grant from the Hubert Bals Fund and a production grant from The Global Film Initiative, and was invited to IFP's No Borders International Co-Production Market in 2013 and CineMart and Produire au Sud in 2014. Nervous Translation will have its World Premiere at the 2018 International Film Festival Rotterdam in its prestigious Hivos Tiger Competition.

She is an alumnus of Berlinale Talents 2014, Oberhausen Seminar 2015, and was 1 of 4 finalists in Film for the Rolex Mentorship & Protege Arts Initiative 2016-2017.