Philippine Showbiz Today
May 8 - 21, 2018
Canadian premiere on May 14, 2018
17
Film highlights Overseas Filipino
Workers in Hong Kong
Domestic Helpers who transform themselves
into dazzling beauty queens for one special day
Demand Film, the Australian-
based “event cinema” film distribu-
tor who successfully brought the
documentary feature “Mamil” to
screens throughout Can-
ada in 2017, will present
the Canadian premiere of
documentary feature “Sun-
day Beauty Queen” at 20
cinemas throughout Cana-
da on Monday, May 14. All
seating for the one-night
national screening must be
reserved in advance, online
at https://ca.demand.film/
sunday-beauty-queen.
Directed by Baby Ruth
Villarama and shot over the
period of four years, “Sun-
day Beauty Queen” follows
a particular, yet universal,
tale of OFWs (Overseas
Filipino Workers), Filipino
maids and domestic help-
ers who compete to be-
come Hong Kong’s beauty
queens on their one day
of freedom each week, while also
revealing their workaday lives lived
with their employers. They work long
hours for near-slave wages in order
to support families living back in the
Philippines. “Sunday Beauty Queen”
features the real stories of five wom-
en among the thousands of OFWs
(Overseas Filipino Workers) in Hong
Kong working as domestic helpers.
Each Sunday, these Filipino maids
transform themselves into dazzling
beauty queens, entertaining their fel-
low Filipinos and raising funds for
distressed OFWs in need of help.
“’Sunday Beauty Queen’ is not
just an OFW story,” says director
Baby Ruth Villarama. “It’s the story
of every Filipino, struggling to make
a living and yet finding light and hope
in any way they can.”
“Sunday Beauty Queen” has
been featured at numerous inter-
national film festivals, including the
Metro Manila Film Festival 2016,
where it was named Best Picture;
CinemaAsia Film Festival 2017,
where it won the Audience Choice
Award for Best Documentary, the
Busan International Film Festival,
HotDocs 2017 and Shanghai Inter-
national Film Festival 2017, among
others. Variety hailed the film as “an
engaging documentary on Filipina
overseas workers’ self-empowerment
through beauty pageants.”
Demand Film has agreements
in place with both major movie the-
atre chains as well as independent
screens, whereby Demand Film es-
sentially co-ops traditionally low at-
tendance nights, and crowd-sources
audiences to those cinemas with
unique offerings of cinema-worthy
films.
Following is a complete list
of cinemas where “Sunday Beauty
Queen” will screen on Monday, May
14 at Cineplex esplanade in North
Vancouver, Cineplex Strawberry Hill
in Surrey and Cineplex Park Theatre
in Vancouver. All showings are at
7:00 pm, local time, with the excep-
tion of Calgary, where the film will
screen at 8:00 pm local time.●
https://ca.demand.film/sunday-beauty-
queen
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Team UPAABC: University of the Philippines Alumni Association in British Columbia