Fil-Am’s debut film to premiere at The Philip K Dick festival

From Jessica Prudencio’s “American Quartet.” CONTRIBUTED

NEW YORK – A Filipino American director’s debut film “American Quartet,” will premiere at The Philip K Dick Film Festival on March 5, at 7 p.m., at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens, New York.

Internationally acclaimed director and Head of Directing at San Diego State University Jesca Prudencio homes in on the question, “Will it take a technological breakthrough for Americans to learn empathy?”

Prudencio’s new sci-fi short is set in the near future, in which the newest digital device is a telepathic diary. The diary, owned by everyone, records only each individual’s emotions and memories for the purpose of re-experiencing them.

In a 2030s small town bitterly divided over who belongs, a young Muslim-American woman in love with her local city councilwoman puts herself at risk when she shares her private, digitized memories with strangers, challenging the status quo in the hope that empathy will triumph over hate.

Antonín Dvorák’s beautiful “American Quartet” drives the film and allows the characters to tell their stories entirely without dialogue.

Using the universal language of music, and shot by award-winning cinematographer Nona Catusanu, this film echoes the widening ideological divisions in the United States, and suggests that technology, instead of dividing us, can be used to create empathy toward those with ideologies unlike our own.

“American Quarter” the newest short film from Filmelodic, an award-winning collective that makes short, narrative films to open up the world of classical music to newer, younger, and more diverse audiences.