Framing Stories: Truth in Art and Film

Working across painting, installation and sculpture, Kawayan De Guia incorporates an eclectic mix of objects into his wall-based works and art projects, including Ifugao rice gods, decorative torpedo bombs, and American jukeboxes transformed into Pinoy jeepneys. His works humorously and piquantly comment on a multitude of issues, from the histories of occupation, trade and exchange that have influenced Philippine history and culture, to the relationships between community and commodities. De Guia lives in Baguio City, a key alternative art centre to Manila, situated in the mountainous region of Cordillera in the northern central part of the island of Luzon. Like his mentors who were part of the Baguio Arts Guild, he is deeply embedded in Cordilleran culture and interested in the heritage and indigenous cultures of the region. De Guia is also a curator and author of key projects such as the Axis Art Project presenting the artists of his community.

Tanya Yuson is a founding partner and Chief Creative Development officer of BASE Entertainment, a studio based out of Jakarta and Singapore that develops, finances, produces and distributes content for the Indonesian market, as well as for the international market. She is the Executive Producer and writer for the Netflix Original Anime Series Trese, Prime Video’s Comedy Island for the Philippine and Indonesian version, and co-showrunner (Executive Producer and Head Writer) for Cigarette Girl, Indonesia’s first Netflix Original Series, which debuted at the Busan International Film Festival and won Best-Miniseries at the 2024 Seoul International Drama Awards.

Currently, BASE has a slate of projects in varying stages of development and pre-production, including a slate of movies that are co-productions with CJ Entertainment and Ivanhoe, the first of which is Joko Anwar’s film Impetigore, which had its world premiere at Sundance in 2020 and won the top prize at the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival in South Korea. Aside from Trese, BASE also has its live-action series Quarantine Tales on Netflix, as well as the films Respati, My Annoying Brother, and The Adventures of Sherina 2. Prior to founding BASE, Tanya spent 14 years in New York and Los Angeles where she worked in development for studios such as New Line Cinema and The Walt Disney Company. She then went on to be a producer and an executive at Millar Gough Ink, a production company whose principals were Al Gough and Miles Millar, where she worked on company projects such as Smallville for TV and feature films such as The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, Hannah Montana: The Movie and I Am Number Four, to name a few. Tanya was also a consultant for the Dino de Laurentiis company in Los Angeles.