THE NEON ACROSS THE OCEAN

FUTURE / PRESENT / PAST

Set sometime in the not-too-distant future after the worldwide crisis of 2020, Mandy is a 17-year-old Filipino Australian. In her final year of high school and dealing with her parents impending divorce, she navigates a world driven by a new normal of isolation and fear. Added to this she has a crush on her tutor Serena. Meanwhile, a young girl from the backstreets of Manila tells her story.

Film Festivals:
-World Premiere: 44th São Paulo International Film Festival (Mostra) - Brazil
-13th Cinema Rehiyon Film Festival - Philippines
-24th Revelation Perth Film Festival - Australia
-23rd Recontres internationales du cinema des Antipodes - France

Produced by Evangeline Lee, Matthew Victor Pastor & Vladelyte Valdez

Written & Directed by Matthew Victor Pastor

Associate Producers Daniel Schultheis, Ino Zan & Andrew Leavold

Original Soundtrack by Corey Reason
Additional Music: Andrew Tran (Fergus Cronkite)
Sound Design: Akira Matsuda
Production Designer: Barbara Chung

Starring: Waiyee Rivera, Chi Nguyen, Gregory Pakis, Corey Reason & Alfred Nicdao, Cassandra Rivera, Matthew Victor Pastor, Felino Dolloso (voice), Akira Matsuda (voice)
Narrated by Lilibeth Munar

91 mins / 2020 / Philippines / Australia

“He’s got such a great style, it is really being distilled quite beautifully. Working in the Philippines, bringing that culture and nationality and sense of place into Australian cinema is really something to watch. There are no holds barred and he is unconstrained by the environment around him. He just makes these movies, and a lot of them. And that kind of spirit is really commendable and it is coming through in the work.”

— Quoted in Screenhub by Richard Sowada (Founder of Revelation Perth International Film Festival)

AUSTRALIAN FILMMAKER MAKING WAVES ACROSS THE OCEAN WITH INDEPENDENT FEATURE FILM AT SÃO PAULO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

FILMINK MEDIA RELEASE, OCTOBER 2020

DURING a year which has disrupted the global screen industry in the way it makes and releases movies, one unassuming feature film produced on a dime by diverse Filipino Australian filmmaker Matthew Victor Pastor is making waves internationally.

The Neon Across The Ocean, Pastor’s most recent feature film made with a cast of friends, and Melbourne’s fantastic city streets as a backdrop (this time during Covid-19) has managed to catch the attention of one of the world’s most prestigious film festivals, the 44th São Paulo International Film Festival (or Mostra, as it is otherwise known).

The film will screen in the International Perspective program at Mostra, one of Latin America’s most important film festivals that has featured such past notable guests as Pedro Almodóvar, Quentin Tarantino and Wim Wenders. It’s a great feat for Pastor only a few years out of graduating from the Victorian College of the Arts, where he studied film.

But it’s the impressive performance by fresh newcomer Waiyee Rivera that really lends weight to The Neon Across the Ocean, a tale of cross-cultural dislocation and longing set in a fictional not-too-distant future after the pandemic crisis (the film was made Covid-safe, and as the events of 2020 unfolded, so did the narrative). Rivera plays Mandy, a 17-year-old Filipino Australian in her final year of high school, navigating her parents’ impending divorce, post-pandemic isolation and fear as an Asian Australian, while also dealing with a crush on her tutor Serena played by Chi Nguyen (Phi and Me). As Mandy looks out across the Docklands harbour, she imagines a story different to hers, but perhaps not so much, in the backstreets of Manila.

Exploring the mixed-race identity is a common theme in Pastor’s work. In an interview alongside Chris Pang (Crazy Rich Asians) in the New York Times, Pastor noted how much it means to people like him to share familiar stories: “It’s about seeing those faces. It’s about seeing those stories. It has a lot of weight”.

While Pastor would love to be travelling to São Paulo right now to enjoy the limelight, he’s still in lockdown and will have to contend himself with burying into the creativity of his next lock-down feature (part of what will become a trilogy alongside Neon), and which is currently in post-production.

“It’s been a difficult year to make films. For the people around me who I love to make films with, this story is one of resilience, given the circumstances. Being selected for the International Perspective section of São Paulo is a real honour”, acknowledges Pastor.

It seems there’s not stopping this wunderkind from down under, who Inside Film magazine once called “Australia’s Most Prolific Filmmaker”.

AXES & THEMES shared by the 44th Mostra Internacional de Cinema
Social Media (25/10/2020)

The pandemic caused by the new coronavirus began to rage the world earlier this year, but it was long enough for filmmakers of different nationalities to reflect on the reality that was required and produce films on the subject.

The disease drives the plot of three long signs: Ai Weiwei's “Coronation ", “The Neon Across The Ocean” by Matthew Victor Pastor, and Abel Ferrara's “Sportin ' Life”, Jia Zhangke's short “The Visit” completes the theme list.

The Chinese documentary “Coronation” features filming made by ordinary citizens living in Wuhan showing the first city in the world to enter lockdown. Already Philippine fiction “The Neon Across the Ocean” is set in the future, after the 2020 global crisis, and tells the story of Mandy, a 17-year-old Australian Filipino. The French documentary film “Sportin ' Life”, a kind of diary filmed by director Abel Ferrara, has been following the filmmaker since February, when he screened “Siberia” at the Berlin Festival, passing through the arrival of the pandemic, until August. Already the Chinese short film, which is part of the Masters in Short program, addresses a meeting that reveals the rigid care protocols imposed by the new coronavirus.

The following are English transcript excerpts of an article written by Isabel Teles in FOLHA DE S.PAULO

”According to Pastor, who is also responsible for the script and editing, the distance had a direct impact on the film, which was completed during the period when Australia was in lockdown.”

“The records in the Philippines are from the director's previous trips and the narration that accompanies this passage of the film was recorded by phone, since it was impossible to personally find the actress who would make this intervention.”

“Pastor, who is always working on at least two productions at the same time, had the idea of ​​making “Neon Across the Ocean” five years ago and adapted the narrative to the current context. "I already wanted to talk about two separate people, but the pandemic came and I thought 'OK, so that's the story'."“

“The relationship between past, present and future is something intimate for the director, who says he has the feeling of always experiencing the three moments at the same time. It was this discomfort that motivated him to conceive “Neon Across the Ocean” as part of a trilogy.”

The following is an English transcript of a review by Diego Benevides in Cenas De Cinema from the 44th São Paulo International Film Festival, October 2020.

"In the first minutes of O Neon Across the Ocean, 2020 is presented as a year of crisis. Although it mainly refers to the pandemic COVID-19, this crisis characterizes a year in which moral, ethical and political issues reached new proportions in this context. Philippine-Australian director Matthew Victor Pastor elaborates his plot in a not-so-distant future, in which there is an attempt to resume a normal life and that this “normal” is not as “new” as it was agreed to think about the experiences of the pandemic, but that puts our interpersonal relationships in check.

Neon Across the Ocean is the first part of what Pastor called the 2020 Trilogy, conceived from the isolation and conviviality rules established by health entities. Each film is set at a different time, this being in the future, A Pencil to the Jugular (finished) in the present and Plans That They’ve Made (in pre-production) in the past. Although the films apparently do not communicate directly, except for the pandemic situation that sets the three, Pastor proposes a way of reading that begins in the future (the consequences) until going back to the past (the origins).

It is a curious gesture, especially because dealing with temporality is important not only for the systematization of the 2020 Trilogy, but also as a diegetic element of O Neon Across the Ocean. Thus, when set in the future - in a few days, to be more precise -, the script intertwines the present and the past of Mandy, a young woman who is about to finish high school and in transition to adulthood. She lives with her father in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, in a small apartment, but the relationship between them is not the best. The mother traveled to Manila, Philippines, to care for a sick relative. Something broke between all of them, something well before the pandemic, but which has become more potent with it. While trying to modulate her parental relationships, Mandy approaches Serena, a tutor who helps her with her studies.

As we follow Mandy's routine, a narrator relives familiar issues from the past and we see flashbacks that are associated, in some way, with what is treated in the present moment of the protagonist. We know a little more about the personality of the Australian father and the efforts of the Filipino mother to take over the family, also putting the issue of migration in perspective. New characters begin to emerge from the second to the third act, with the intention of sustaining such a family break, even if it does not always bring enough information to care about the betrayals, the impending divorce and Mandy's own sexual awakening.

The script is always more striking when it shows the city streets still little busy after the pandemic or even when investigating the physical and psychological consequences on the characters. Mandy refuses to eat all the time, as if her body no longer depends on food to exist, while her father only sleeps and disguises his contempt for the girl. When Pastor looks deeply at the characters, the film takes on a breath because they face a huge malaise - among themselves and with the world. It is in this suggestion of how we will be in a few days, when all this passes, that the plot grows because it invites us to dive into the trauma and the changes we had in 2020. Thus, Mandy's enchantment with Serena is a breath of hope in the middle this apathy for the world. City tours and car conversations propose a reconnection with others, a resumption of post-catastrophe affects. That's when the cast also de-botches and opens up to the feelings of their interpretations.

What is a surprise in O Neon Across the Ocean is the considerable production value when conceived in a pandemic moment and when articulating still unsettling questions about how life will be resumed. Directed by a small team and following the rules of social distancing, the feature film circumvents these limitations well, even though it still stumbles in harmony between the themes it discusses - perhaps due to the rush to assemble, finalize and exhibit it as a “child of the pandemic” .

Pastor seems to follow his own creative process, regardless of the circumstances to happen and is nonetheless ambitious. In 2018, the director came to make three feature films and, in a career of less than 10 years, he already has more than 15 productions in the curriculum, between short and feature films, with the most varied narrative proposals. Bringing to the Neon Across the Ocean autobiographical traces of his troubled childhood with his father, Pastor uses his lights to illuminate not only the title of this work, but also all this sadness caused by isolation, questioning whether he already existed and how much of it will remain among us."

3/5

The following is an English transcript of a review by Daniel Curry in Cinemaçào from the 44th São Paulo International Film Festival, October 2020.

The voice in the elevator warns of the importance of washing your hands. A mask is lying on the floor. The city is empty. Mandy is always alone, and needs only to live with her absent father and guardian. With a prologue these days, “Neon Across the Ocean” is an Australian and Filipino film set in the near future. Directed by Matthew Victor Pastor, it has its world premiere at the 44th Mostra in São Paulo, and was filmed during the lockdown period. We followed a little of the life of the young Mandy, who lives only with her depressed father in Melbourne, since her brother moved and her mother had to accompany relatives in the Philippines, her country of origin. She lives the loneliness of someone who is always in front of a screen, and by searching everything on the internet she ends up not needing her tutor so much - although she wants to have her around, for other reasons. Mandy is always shown with lots of light around her, be it natural or artificial, in contrast to other characters, a little more in the shade. It is also always separated from everyone: by a vase, a wall, or simply by the architecture of the apartments, which the director manages to show with his camera in the corners. Speaking of cameras, it is worth noting how Pastor chooses to approach the characters with an angled lens, which expands the space and, in a way, never really gets close. After all, we have to stay away. “Neon Across the Ocean” has a parallel narrative in Manila that suggests that stories are cyclical, even when times change. Some solemn dialogues shown off-line only reinforce the idea that youth is increasingly distant from people. The neon light of the title is what connects Australia and the Philippines, separated by the sea and connected by the internet - and by the blood ties of the children of immigrants. It remains to be seen whether this connection is sufficient for a generation of loners. “Neon Across the Ocean” is a film that establishes a climate and remains in it all the time, even with the few turning points. The choices are interesting, even though the connections between filming in Manila and Melbourne are not so well connected - which is a paradox. The insertion of racial issues is played in an abrupt way and does not match the discourse of the film until then. Although fiction, it is a document of our time. May it serve to reflect.

3/5

The following is an English transcript of a review in Eiga Desu written by Lobo

The year 2020 was full of unpleasant surprises and forced most of the world's population to reinvent itself. This could not fail to reflect on the film industry as a whole, affecting production, distribution and also the audiovisual consumption itself. In the midst of this challenging scenario and driven by a mixture of anxiety and vulnerability caused by isolation, Philippine-Australian director Matthew Victor Pastor created a film that is a direct result of these difficult times in which we live.

Recorded in the midst of a pandemic, just before the lockdown was decreed in Melbourne, Australia, Neon Across the Ocean is a film that takes advantage of silence and practically empty urban settings to create a feeling of discomfort and loneliness in the unfolding of a near post-crisis future. The feature presents us with two stories that complement each other. One is told by a narrator who describes the hardships and bohemian life on the streets of Manila, Philippines. The other is experienced by Mandy, a 17-year-old girl who is about to finish high school needs to deal with her parents' difficult relationship, the longing for her brother who went to live abroad, the cultivation of a secret passion and a growing desire to reconnect with a country across the ocean. Two destinations intertwined, but distant in space and time. In fact, a key point within the work, distance is a theme that is repeated and branches into a variety of representations that transcend the merely geographical and physical aspect.

Worsened by isolation, the feeling of non-belonging and emptiness makes the protagonist seek the support and comfort of those around her. However, without being able to truly connect with anyone, only her tutor is able to break a bit with the barriers that suffocate her, perhaps because she is outside her complicated family nucleus. Despite the timid approach, it is also commendable that social issues such as class differences, xenophobia, women's objectification and sexual orientation are included in the debate. However, the simplicity of the plot coupled with the somewhat plastered performances means that the story does not advance in this direction, causing some scenes to be out of place. Even if these aspects end up contributing to the atmosphere of strangeness and desolation proposed by the director, movement, dialogues and relationships - everything seems too contained. 2020 portrait, Neon Across the Ocean opens space for essential dialogues and shows us that we need to be resilient. It remains to be seen whether the distances between us will be shortened or whether we will be swallowed by the abyss of a society that is as globalized as it is fragile.

7/10

The following is an English transcript of a review from Cinemaqui written by Mariana González

Set in a near future in which the world tries to rise after “the crisis of 2020”, Neon Across the Ocean appears temporal because it was recorded during the Covid-19 pandemic and, although without giving many details about what happened in reality, imagine how the “normal life” process would resume. However, the empty way in which he approaches his themes and builds his characters ends up damaging his analytical character.

Directed by Filipino-Australian Matthew Victor Pastor, the film accompanies young Mandy (Waiyee Rivera) in her transition from adolescence - specifically marked by the end of the approaching high school - to adult life.

Living with her father (with whom she has at least a troubled relationship) in Melbourne, Australia, she finds herself far from her mother after she went to Manila, Philippines, to look after a sick relative. This 2020 crisis seems to have only reinforced the problems and traumas that each one already had in relation to the other. Meanwhile, Mandy begins to approach tutor Serena, with whom she has private lessons.

Pastor follows Mandy's routine in an almost observational way. While this brings a naturalness to the feature, it also harms him: amid subplots involving immigration, divorce, maturity and sexuality, the filmmaker seems to have little to say about what we see on the screen, making the void not only in the characters, but in The Neon Across the Ocean itself. There is something metalinguistic about it, but clearly this void is not at all intentional.

Anyway, there is something melancholyly beautiful about Melbourne's still quite empty streets, which not only open up the protagonist's loneliness and internal conflicts, but also serve as a kind of glimpse into our own futures. Perhaps this attempt to portray the current situation in the world is one of the setbacks of the feature: Pastor, after all, is reflecting on something still very recent (and, of course, current).

Neon Across the Ocean, however, fulfills its purpose of being a film not about the pandemic, but about social isolation, made during social isolation - and, if it were more solid, it might have managed to become memorable for that. What remains is an interesting exercise that has more aesthetic than documentary strength.