Ode To Nothing

This special limited edition spot gloss slipcover (designed by Constantino Zicarelli) is limited to 1,500 units and is only available here at VinegarSyndrome.com! Named after Yasujiro Ozu’s custom-made, tatami-level, crab-like tripod, Kani is a new home video label dedicated to leveling the gaze and furthering the understanding of Asian cinema in North America. Focused on genre-defying films, Kani aims to expand the canon, bolster up-and-coming filmmakers and reintroduce repertory classics in context. Vinegar Syndrome’s sister company, OCN Distribution, is thrilled to be representing this diverse and unique home video line! Sonya (Marietta Subong a.k.a. Pokwang) is a living ghost, struggling to keep her family-owned funeral home afloat. Lonely and thoroughly alienated by an insistent bailiff, she wanders inside her own house, leaning heavily on her favorite Chinese song, recorded on a broken cassette tape, to get through the hours and days… Until an unexpected corpse lands, rather illicitly, at her doorstep. Developing a unique relationship with the unclaimed body, she becomes fascinated by the cadaver’s absorbing mystique. Dwein Ruedas Baltazar’s ODE TO NOTHING (following 2012’s MAMAY UMENG and 2018’s I LIKE YOU WITH ALL MY HYPOTHALAMUS) is a powerful meditation on our universal longing for connection, in increasingly precarious, uncertain and isolated times. The ineluctability and omnipresence of death is given form, here, in an uncanny cohabitation with desuetude itself – in what amounts to one of the most captivating art-horror hybrids to emerge from the Philippines in recent years. A Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay award winner at Quezon City’s influential QCinema Festival highlighting new Filipino cinema, ODE TO NOTHING unfolds in a languid and hypnotic manner – every careful shot oozing with the palpable texture of rot, humidity and crushing loneliness. directed by: Dwein BALTAZARstarring: Marietta SUBONG, Joonee GAMBOA, Angelita LORESCO, Dido DE LA PAZ, Anthony FALCON, Iana BERNARDEZ2018 / 92 min / 1.33:1 / Tagalog with English subtitles Additional info: Region Free Blu-ray INTERVIEW WITH DIRECTOR DWEIN BALTAZAR (2022, 19MIN) BOOKLET INCLUDING WRITING BY DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY NEIL DAZA, PRODUCTION DESIGNER MAOLEN FADUL AND NEW ESSAY BY ELMO GONZAGA English SDH subtitles