Young Critics Circle Film Desk

Critic of the month Eulalio R. Guieb III on Filipino independent cinema

2011-12-04T16:27:00.001-08:00

From Indio to Indie: A Redreamt Indiehood and Indiegeneity

Many are of the opinion that independent cinema will save the current state of the Filipino film industry. However, I often lose hope as an academe-based critic in the promise offered by films that we label indie or underground or alternative cinema, or whatever category that fits into our notion of this type of films.

Independent films have undoubtedly contributed in transforming film production in the country, but this practice is only one aspect of filmmaking. I do not discount the substantial contributions of new festivals that focus on independent films, the generous financial support by various groups for films that they want us to believe are indie films, the current rate of film output coming from individuals and groups that call themselves indies, and the recognition that indie films get from various international festivals. Indeed, this phenomenon has paved the way for the production of new cinematic forms and aesthetics. In my view, however, many so-called alternative filmmakers have yet to produce social discourses that confront the discourses of the unjust holders of our society’s economic and political power.

I contend that there is no significant difference in terms of offering a plurality of visions and options for just and humane social relations from the current output of either alternative or commercial cinema. Except perhaps for the counter-discourses of the films of Kidlat Tahimik and committed filmmakers, particularly those who fought against the dictator – like Joey Clemente and Lito Tiongson – and the promise coming from a few filmmakers of the current generation, specifically Pepe Diokno, seldom do I see in the films of the present breed of independent filmmakers a clearly articulated and politically grounded social consciousness. In other words, there is no alternative social discourse coming from so-called alternative filmmakers. I argue that the struggle within the commercial film industry by Lino Brocka, Ishmael Bernal, Mike de Leon and Mario O’Hara made more sense – politically – to construct a ‘just alternative’ vision of social relations in Philippine society.

In recasting the experiences of the Filipino people in indie films, we – filmmakers and audiences alike – need to interrogate our place in the country’s current political and cultural struggle – and for whom, and why, we need to articulate and pursue this position. If these films – and the framework that guides our reading of these films – if all these do not fit into the alliance of communities of knowledge and interests based on social justice, our indiehood, our indiegeneity is a misnomer. In my view, we do not deserve our indiehood or our indiegeneity as filmmakers or film critics if our positions are no different from the discourse of the current holders of political power whose development agenda disregard social justice for the marginalized. In this sense, our indiehood, our indiegeneity is a negation of the nationhood of the powerless.

The power to create a just and humane world lies at the center of humanity itself – a collective of human beings that knows how to nourish life back to life. How to get there depends on how we ground ourselves in our contemporary social life. The possibilities of the future lie in neither a fossilized past nor in an aestheticized utopia. The possibilities of the future are always present in the present. How to translate this vision into economic, political and cultural terms is another struggle altogether. Part of that struggle is to rewrite and refilm the world, to reworld the world; not to redeem the world, but perhaps – to use the phrase by Ben Okri in his novel The Famished Road – to redream the world. In my view, that is what life and committed independent filmmaking, in general terms, are all about.

*

Mula Indio Hanggang Indie: Kakaibang Kaindiehan

Marami ang nagsasabing ang independent cinema ang magsasalba sa kasalukuyang industriya ng pelikulang Filipino. Subalit bilang isang kritikong nagmumula sa loob ng akademya ay madalas akong mawalan ng pag-asa sa pangako ng tinatawag nating indie films o underground o alternative cinema, o ano pa mang kategorya natin sa mga ganitong uri ng pelikula.

Totoong nagpamalas ang mga sineng indie ng kapangahasan sa transformasyon ng produksiyong pampelikula, subalit ang ganitong gawain ay isang aspekto lamang ng sine. Hindi ko rin matatawaran ang mahalagang ambag ng pagsulpot ng mga bagong festival na nakafokus sa mga indie films, ang mahalagang suportang pinansyal para sa mga pelikulang nagpapakilala bilang indie, ang pagsulpot ng maraming pelikula buhat sa mga indibidwal at grupong nagsasabing sila ay indie, at ang pagwawagi ng maraming indie films sa iba’t ibang international film festivals. Totoong maraming pamamaraan at estetikang hinahawan ang mga penomenong ito. Subalit sa aking pananaw, maituturing na nasa iisang hulma pa rin ang kalakhan ng mga inaakalang alternatibong kamalayang binubuo ng sineng ito – na kadalasan ay siya ring diskurso ng mga kasalukuyang may hawak ng di-makatao at di-makatarungang kapangyarihan.

Maaari kong sabihin na hindi sapat ang nagaganap na produksiyon ng pluralidad ng mga pananaw at opsyon para sa isang makatarungan at makataong ugnayang panlipunan buhat sa mga pelikulang komersyal at indie. Liban marahil sa counter-discourse ng mga sine nina Kidlat Tahimik at ng mga committed filmmakers lalo na noong panahon ng batas militar sa bansa – tulad nina Joey Clemente at Lito Tiongson – at sa bagong pangako ng mangilan-ngilang filmmakers sa kasalukuyan, tulad ni Pepe Diokno – bihira akong makapanood ng mga indie films na may malinaw, lapat-sa-lupa at alternatibong kamalayang politikal. Sa madaling salita, pangangahasan kong sabihing hindi alternatibo ang diskurso ng kalakhan ng mga binabansagang sineng indie. Kung tutuusin ay tila mas makabuluhan pa ang ginawang pakikisangkot mula sa loob nina Lino Brocka, Ishmael Bernal, Mike de Leon at Mario O’Hara sa paglikha ng mga ‘makatarungang alternatibong’ pananaw sa buhay at lipunang Filipino.

Sa paglikha ng mga karanasan ng mamamayang Filipino na isinasapakete sa pelikulang indie, mahalagang tanungin ng mga manlilikha at tanungin nating mga manonood ng sine kung saang panig tayo kasangkot sa kasalukuyang pakikibakang politikal at kultural ng bansa – at para kanino, at bakit, isinusulong ang panig na ito. Kung ang mga pelikula – maging ang ating mga pamantayan sa panunuri ng pelikula – kung hindi sumasabay at nakalapat ang mga ito sa alyansa ng mga komunidad ng kaalaman at interes na nakabatay sa katarungan, walang kabuluhan ang ating pagka-indie o ang tinatawag kong kaindiehan, ang ating indiegeneity. Sa aking pananaw, hinding-hinding indie ang pelikulang indie, ang filmmaker na nagmamalaking siya ay indie at ang kritikong tulad ko na nagpapakaindie kung hindi lihis ang ating posisyon sa diskurso ng mga kasalukuyang nasa kapangyarihang politikal na ang agendang pangkaunlaran para sa bansa ay hindi nagtataguyod ng katarungang panlipunan para sa mga nasa laylayan ng kapangyarihan. Kung ganito ang kalakaran, ang kaindiehan, ang ating indiegeneity ay hindi pagkabansa ng mga walang kapangyarihan.

Ang kapangyarihang lumikha ng isang makatarungan at makataong mundo ay sentral sa ating hangad na maging ganap na tao – na isang kolektibo ng mga indibidwal na gustong muling ibalik ang buhay sa buhay. Kung paano ito magaganap ay nakasalalay sa kung paano tayo nakikisangkot sa ating mga kontemporaneong buhay. Ang mga posibilidad ng bukas ay wala sa isang fossilized na nakaraan o sa isang romantikong kinabukasan. Ang mga posibilidad ng kinabukasan ay lagi’t laging nasa sa kasalukuyan. Kung paanong isasapraktika ang pananaw na ito sa mga usapin ng ekonomiya, politika at kultura ay isang panibagong pakikibaka. Bahagi ng pakikibakang ito ay ang muling sulatin o isapelikula ang mundo, muling gawing mundo ang mundo; hindi kailangang iligtas ang mundo, ang kailangan marahil – ayon sa tinuran ni Ben Okri sa kanyang nobelang The Famished Road – ay muling mangarap ng makatuturang mundo. Iyon, para sa akin, ang ibig sabihin ng buhay at committed independent filmmaking.

*

Eulalio R. Guieb III obtained in 2009 his Ph.D. in Anthropology from McGill University (Montreal, Quebec, Canada). He completed his M.A. in Philippine Literature and B.A. in Broadcast Communication at the University of the Philippines-Diliman. He has published two short story anthologies: Pamilya® (U.P. Press, 2003) and Pitada (Anvil, 1994). His artistic works have received recognition from the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature, Cultural Center of the Philippines, New York Festivals, Sony Video Competition in Japan, the Catholic Mass Media Awards, and Gantimpalang Ani. His experimental films and video documentaries have been exhibited in Uppsala, Mannheim, Oberhausen, Torino, Osnabruck, New York, London, Montreal, Toronto, Tokyo, Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur, among others. He teaches ethnography, development, criticism, teleplay and qualitative research at the U.P. Department of Broadcast Communication. His research interests include political ecology; ecological, development and legal anthropology; the history of the drama in Philippine television; and the politics of representation.

YCC Film Desk holds Annual Circle Citations in December

2011-11-11T05:18:00.001-08:00

The Film Desk of the Young Critics’ Circle will hold the 21st Annual Circle Citations for distinguished achievements in film on December 6, 2011 at the University of the Philippines Jorge B. Vargas Museum in Diliman, Quezon City.

Leading the list of winners for film year 2010 is Raymond Red’s Himpapawid, which YCC cites for best film, best screenplay, best cinematography and visual design, and best editing. Best achievement in sound and aural orchestration will be awarded to Jerrold Tarog’s Punerarya. Best performance honors will be conferred on Raul Arellano for Himpapawid and Carla Abellana for Punerarya.

Only Himpapawid, Punerarya and Ang Damgo ni Eleuteria made it to YCC’s short list, which is composed of films that got the nod of majority of the members of the organization. Only short-listed films earn the privilege to be nominated for any of the six categories. YCC does not confer nominations on artistic or technical merit if the film does not qualify in the short list. This is one of the major departures of the YCC from all award-giving bodies in the country.

The organization departs from many conventions of other award-giving bodies both here and abroad in bestowing cinematic honors. For instance, the award for Best Film of the Year is reserved for the director such that no separate prize for direction is needed. The Best Performance award is most coveted as it is conferred on a screen performer whether male or female, adult or child, individual or as part of an ensemble, in leading or supporting role. To uphold a more dynamic and encompassing way of looking at films, technical honors refer to fusion of outstanding efforts in fields otherwise deemed apart. In this case, the Best Cinematography and Visual Design recognition covers both camerawork and art direction. Similarly, Best Sound and Aural Orchestration encompasses not sound engineering alone but musical score as well.
Established in 1990, YCC is composed of members of academe who, through the years, have become attentive observers of Philippine cinema. Coming from various disciplines, they bring an interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of film. Current members are from the University of the Philippines, Ateneo de Manila University and De La Salle University.
Members of the Film Desk include Eulalio R. Guieb III (chair), Romulo P. Baquiran Jr., Flaudette May V. Datuin, Noel D. Ferrer, Patrick D. Flores, Tessa Maria T. Guazon, Eloisa May P. Hernandez, Jayson P. Jacobo, Nonoy L. Lauzon, Eileen C. Legaspi-Ramirez, Gerard R. A. Lico, Jema Pamintuan, Choy Pangilinan, Jerry C. Respeto, Jaime Oscar M. Salazar, Neil Martial R. Santillan, and Galileo S. Zafra. New members include JPaul Manzanilla and Skilty Labastilla.

Here is the complete list of winners and nominees for this year’s YCC Annual Circle Citations:
Best Film of the Year:

Winner: Himpapawid directed by Raymond Red (Pelikula Red, Pacific Film Partners, Ignite Media, Filmex Inc., and RSVideo Production; Raymond Red, David Hukom, Roger Garcia and Butch Jimenez, producers; Jimmy Duavit and Oli Laperal, associate producers)
Nominees:
Ang Damgo ni Eleuteria directed by Remton Siega Zuasola (Cinema One Originals and Panumduman Pictures; Jiji Borlasa and Beverly Tañedo, producers; Ronald Arguelles, executive producer; Sherad Anthony Sanchez, supervising producer)
Punerarya (episode of Shake, Rattle & Roll 12) directed by Jerrold Tarog (Regal Entertainment; Lily Monteverde, executive producer; Roselle Monteverde-Teo, producer; Sarah Pagcaliwagan, associate producer; Manny Valera, supervising producer)

Best Screenplay:

Winner: Himpapawid (Pelikula Red, Pacific Film Partners, Ignite Media, Filmex Inc., and RSVideo Production) – Raymond Red
Nominees:
Ang Damgo ni Eleuteria (Cinema One Originals and Panumduman Pictures) – Remton Siega Zuasola
Punerarya (Regal Entertainment) – Onay Sales and Aloy Adlawan
Best Performance by Male or Female, Adult or Child, Individual or Ensemble in Leading or Supporting Role

Winners:
Carla Abellana in Punerarya (Regal Entertainment); and
Raul Arellano in Himpapawid (Pelikula Red, Pacific Film Partners, Ignite Media, Filmex Inc., and RSVideo Production)
No other nominees in Best Performance

Best Achievement in Cinematography and Visual Design
Winner: Himpapawid (Pelikula Red, Pacific Film Partners, Ignite Media, Filmex Inc., and RSVideo Production) – Raymond Red, cinematographer; Danny Red, production designer; Cesar Hernando and Ronald Red, design consultants
Nominees:
Ang Damgo ni Eleuteria (Cinema One Originals and Panumduman Pictures) – Christian Linaban, cinematographer; Kaloy Uypuanco, production designer; Victor Villanueva, art director; Syrel Lopez, costume
Punerarya (Regal Entertainment) – Mackie Galvez, director of photography; Benjamin Padero, production designer

Best Achievement in Sound and Aural Orchestration
Winner: Punerarya (Regal Entertainment) – Lamberto Casas Jr., sound designer and engineer; Jerrold Tarog, musical scorer)
Nominees:
Himpapawid (Pelikula Red, Pacific Film Partners, Ignite Media, Filmex Inc., and RSVideo Production) – Diwa de Leon, musical scorer
Ang Damgo ni Eleuteria (Cinema One Originals and Panumduman Pictures) – Vanya Fantonial, sound designer; Jerrold Tarog, musical scorer

Best Achievement in Editing
Winner: Himpapawid (Pelikula Red, Pacific Film Partners, Ignite Media, Filmex Inc., and RSVideo Production) – David Hukom, Jay Halili and Raymond Red
Nominees:
Ang Damgo ni Eleuteria (Cinema One Originals and Panumduman Pictures)
Punerarya (Regal Entertainment) – Renewin Alano

Ang Dalumat ng Kakayahan sa Pelikulang “Himpapawid” ni Raymond Red

2011-11-05T01:49:00.000-07:00

Pamilyar na sa mga manonood kung paano karaniwang tinatalakay ang isyu ng kahirapan sa mga pelikula. Sa pamamagitan ng mga imahen ng gutom, pagtaas ng populasyon, polusyon sa kapaligiran, sakit, kawalan ng hanapbuhay, at iba pang mga larawan ng lunggati, binigyang-katuturan ng ilang mga pelikula ang kahulugan ng dahop na pamumuhay. Ang mga imaheng ito rin naman ang madalas sambitin ng ilang mga klasikal na teorista hinggil sa usapin ng kahirapan at kaunlaran. Binigyang-puna ni Dr. Firoze Manji, isang aktibista mula sa Kenya at visiting fellow sa Oxford University, ang mga klasikal na ideya sa ekonomiks, tulad ng sumusunod: “Ang pinakamahalagang tungkulin ng mga polisiya sa ekonomiya ay protektahan ang karapatan ng minoridad na makapangalap ng pinakamataas na halaga ng kita, at sa pamamagitan nito ay may posibilidad para sa pag-unlad ng nasabing minoridad.” (akin ang salin, sinipi mula sa http://socialtheoryblog.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/developmentasfreedom-by-manji.pdf. Accessed on 1 October 2011.) Isa umano ang nabanggit na sipi sa mga nakagawiang kumbensyon na ginagamit na salalayan sa pag-unawa ng mga konsepto hinggil sa pag-unlad, partikular, ang hindi pagtaas ng kita, o kawalan ng kabuhayan, bilang sanhi ng kahirapan.

May tesis ang ekonomistang si Amartya Sen hinggil sa kahulugan at sanhi ng kahirapan gamit ang ilang kaso at karanasan ng mga bansang nasa Ikatlong Daigdig. Sa kaniyang aklat na Development as Freedom (Sen, 1999), nilinaw pa ni Sen ang kabuluhan ng kaunlaran, na iniankla niya sa teorya ng kakayahan (capability theory). Ang depinisyon ng kahirapan, para kay Sen, ay ang kawalan ng kalayaang isangkot ang sarili sa lipunan, at kawalan ng kakayahang matamasa ang mga sumusunod: politikal na kalayaan, akses sa mga ekonomikong pasilidad, panlipunang oportunidad, protektibong seguridad.

Sa tesis na ito, palagay ko, uminog ang diskurso ng pelikulang “Himpapawid” ni Raymond Red hinggil sa pigil na partisipasyon at pagkatiwalag sa lipunan ng mga tauhan, bilang mga salik na tagapagpaandar ng kahirapan. Sa pelikula, lumampas pa sa mga nakasanayang imahen ng paghihikahos ang ginawa ng direktor upang makapaghulma at maitanghal ang kaibuturan ng isyu. Ang kahirapan, sang-ayon sa mga pinagdaanan ng pangunahing karakter na si Raul (Raul Arellano), ay kasingkahulugan ng pagiging talunan, ng kawalan ng akses sa anumang oportunidad, at ng hungkag na pakikisangkot sa anumang larangan. At ang patuloy na pagkonsumo nito sa indibidwal ay humantong sa destruksyon ng katinuan ng sarili. Mahalaga ang pelikula dahil sa mabisa nitong artikulasyon hinggil sa kawalan ng makabuluhang ambag sa lipunan bilang isa sa mga pangunahing tagapagtakda ng karalitaan.

Ang kulminasyon ng pelikula ay isang eksena ng hijacking sa eroplano. Ito ang nagluklok sa karakter sa pisikal na tugatog na katumbas din ng pagkabuwal nito sa katapusan ng pelikula. Idinetalye sa eksena ang desperasyon ng hijacker na si Raul (Raul Arellano), ang terorismo, na tinugunan ng matinding takot ng mga pasaherong nasangkot sa kriminal na akto, hanggang sa engrandeng pamamaalam ng hijacker na nagtanghal ng kaniyang kasawian. Bagaman batbat ng rubdob at tensyon ang bahaging ito, ang kapangyarihan ng pelikula ay higit na makakapa sa mga naunang inilatag na pangyayari sa buhay ng hijacker.

Malinaw na sa unang bahagi pa lamang ng pelikula, hindi paghingi ng dagdag na suweldo, o promosyon sa trabaho, ang pakiusap ni Raul sa kaniyang superbisor. Gusto niyang makauwi sa probinsya upang bisitahin ang amang maysakit, kasama na rin ang intensyong magpasa ng aplikasyon para makapaghanapbuhay sa ibang bansa. Ani ng superbisor, hindi nila pinapayagan ang day-off, at wala nang daratnang trabaho si Raul pagbalik nito. Alinsunod sa paradigma ng teorya ng kakayahan, naghain ng kataliwas na pamantayan ang karanasan ng tauhang si Raul. Nilumpo siya ng sunud-sunod na mga limitado, o higit, kawalan ng opsiyon at kalayaang kumilos at mapakinggan—mula sa mga balikong karanasan sa pagpapakopya ng dokumento, pagkaunsyami ng pagsumite sa aplikasyon, kapalpakan bilang tagabantay dapat sa ilegal na operasyon kasama ang mga kaibigan, at sa kalahatan, pangingibabaw ng mga bigong taktika.

Ang linsad na kapalaran ni Raul ay pinatingkad pa ng indibidwal na naratibo ng mga kasamang tauhan sa pelikula. Mabisa ang pagkatugaygay sa karanasan ng mga karakter na may kani-kaniya ring kuwento ng nakalundong kalagayan. Itinawid ng mga tauhang ginampanan nina Soliman Cruz, John Arcilla, Raul Morit, at Karlo Altomonte ang pagiging biktima ng pekeng recruiter at pagkalubog sa utang, ang pagkakasya sa maliit na kita bilang taxi driver, at ang uri ng buhay na tanging sa inuman lamang maaaring makapagsiwalat ng mga tanong at himutok. Ang malinis na editing ang nagsilbing aparato para sa pagtalakay ng baliktanaw ng mga dehadong nagsasalaysay (Soliman Cruz at John Arcilla) habang kinukumbinsi nila na walang tatamasahing anumang pag-asa si Raul sa kaniyang mga tangkang pagsisikap. Sa mga tauhang ito rin umangkas ang pesimistikong panukalang nagdiin hinggil sa direksyong pupuntahan ng kuwento ni Raul, at ng kuwento nilang lahat.

Binalangkas din sa pelikula ang gradasyon ng mental at emosyonal na kalagayan ng pangunahing tauhan, na rurok ng karahasan at karalitaang nakalukob dito. Nagsimula ito sa pag-uulol ng pakiramdam (sa mga pabugso-bugso at taas-babang temperamento ni Raul), na humantong sa poot at desperasyon, gayundin, ginatungan at itinulak ng sinambit ng ilang tauhan: “Lahat ng tao dito sa Pilipinas ay nag-uunahan,”(mula sa tauhang ginampanan ni John Arcilla), “Tingnan niyo kung gaano kahirap makiusap?” (mula sa tauhang ginampanan ni Raul Arellano) at “Wasak!” (mula sa tauhang ginampanan ni Lav Diaz). Magtataka ba ang manonood kung bakit nag-amok si Raul, halimbawa, dahil lamang sa simpleng pagpapa-xerox ng mga dokumento? Sa mga tauhang sangkot sa eksena, oo, may sayad sa utak ang tingin nila kay Raul. Subalit sa mga manonood, ang resulta ng eleganteng paraan ng pagsasalaysay ay ang pag-unawa sa lohika ng unti-unting pagtakas ng bait ng tauhan. Nagsanib din sa paningin ni Raul ang tatlong tauhang babae, na may iisang anyo, senyal din ng demensiya ng karakter. Magkakaugnay, bagaman may malinaw na distinksyon, ang bukod-tanging pagtatanghal ni Marissa Sue Prado bilang prostitute, klerk, at flight attendant, at bilang obheto ng halu-halong pagnanasa, kahinaan, at kasawian ni Raul sa pelikula.

Sa unang pagkakataon sa pelikula, saka lamang tila naisangkot si Raul sa iba pang indibidwal bukod sa mga kainuman, at saka lamang siya “pinakinggan,” nang hawak na niya ang atensyon ng mga pasahero sa eroplano dahil sa kaniyang pagbabantang pasabugin ito. Tila nangangako ang eksena, at ang posisyong kaniyang kinalagyan, na sa unang pagkakataon ay mukhang naglarawan ng pag-iral ng kaniyang kontrol at kakayahan—posibleng makakolekta ng pera si Raul at mailapag nga siya ng eroplano sa hiningi niyang destinasyon, at sa wakas, mabisita na ang amang maysakit. Katulad ng mga kuwento sa mga balita tungkol sa pag-akyat at pahiwatig ng pagtalon mula sa matataas na gusali at billboard ng Maynila, sa mga pagbabanta na lamang nakakukuha ng lunan para makapagsalita at bakasakaling mapakinggan ang mga tulad ni Raul, na dahil sa pagkakalugmok ay, ayon nga kay Sen, “can make a person a helpless prey in the violations of other kinds of freedoms.” (Sen, 1999, 8)

Ang punto ng teorya ng kakayahan ay paglaan ng mga pangako at posibilidad, ng pagtalunton sa potensyal ng tao sa pag-unlad ng sarili at pagbahagi nito sa lipunan, at pagpapalawak ng kaniyang mga opsiyon upang maiangat, sa isang multi-dimensyonal na antas, ang kaniyang kalidad ng buhay. Sa pelikula, madalas ianggulo ang kamera at perspektiba (maaaring ng tauhan o manonood) sa himpapawid, at naroon ang ilusyon ng tangkang pagsibad na paitaas ang direksyon. Subalit ang katotohanang taglay na kasalukuyan ding nakabalabal sa lipunan, at matagumpay na ipinabatid batay sa konteksto at kalagayan ng iba’t ibang tauhan, institusyon, at sosyo-kultural na praktis sa pelikula, ay lihis sa anumang akto ng pagpailanlang. Hindi aliwalas, hindi rin luwang, ang sinasambit ng mga imahen ng kalangitan, bagkus, restriksyon at walang humpay na pagtatakda ng mga hangganan.

Jema M. Pamintuan obtained her Ph.D. in Philippine Studies from the University of the Philippines, Diliman. She is currently teaching at the School of Humanities, Ateneo de Manila University. Her essay, “Risk Management, Probability, and the Theory of Games in Segurista (Dead Sure) and Kubrador (The Bet Collector)” appeared in the Fall 2011 issue of Positions East Asia Critique, published by Duke University Press.

Raymond Red’s Himpapawid tops YCC honors for distinguished achievement in film in 2010

2011-10-08T11:13:00.001-07:00

Raymond Red’s Himpapawid swept five of six categories of the annual awards of the Film Desk of the Young Critics’ Circle for film year 2010. The tragic drama of a deranged hijacker pushed to his limits by modernity’s dehumanizing and oppressive social relations was voted Best Film of the Year and conferred recognition for Best Screenplay, Best Cinematography and Visual Design, Best Film Editing and Best Performance for Raul Arellano. It won over two other nominees for the best film category: Remton Siega Zuasola’s Ang Damgo ni Eleuteria and Jerrold Tarog’s Punerarya (an episode of Shake, Rattle & Roll 12).

Tarog’s Punerarya, which garnered nominations in all categories, scored in Best Sound and Aural Orchestration, and the film’s lead performer Carla Abellana tied with Arellano for Best Performance. Zuasola’s Ang Damgo ni Eleuteria got nominations in all categories, except in performance.

YCC cites Himpapawid for intelligently plunging into the ironies and complexities of interstitial spaces left open by the tensive relations between social injustice and individual redemption. The film’s trope of escape, flying, fleeing and migration frames the desperation and angst of characters negotiating the countryside’s abjection, the city’s inhumanity, and society’s decaying institutions. While all characters are eventually trapped in several labyrinths of debilitating alienation, the film succeeds in investigating the poignant circularity of humanity’s convoluted fall – which draws us into reframing the materiality of the human condition, in general, and the impoverishment of Filipinos, in particular, all in terms simultaneously dialectic, cyclical and spiral.

Only Himpapawid, Punerarya and Ang Damgo ni Eleuteria made it to YCC’s short list, which is composed of films that got the nod of majority of the members of the organization. Only short-listed films earn the privilege to be nominated for any of the six categories. YCC does not confer nominations on artistic or technical merit if the film does not qualify in the short list. This is one of the major departures of the YCC from all award-giving bodies in the country.

Established in 1990, YCC is composed of members of academe who, through the years, have become attentive observers of Philippine cinema. Coming from various disciplines, they bring an interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of film. Current members of the organization are from the University of the Philippines, Ateneo de Manila University and De La Salle University.
The organization departs from many conventions of other award-giving bodies both here and abroad in bestowing cinematic honors. For instance, the award for Best Film of the Year is reserved for the director such that no separate prize for direction is needed. The Best Performance award is most coveted as it is conferred on a screen performer whether male or female, adult or child, individual or as part of an ensemble, in leading or supporting role. To uphold a more dynamic and encompassing way of looking at films, technical honors refer to fusion of outstanding efforts in fields otherwise deemed apart. In this case, the Best Cinematography and Visual Design recognition covers both camerawork and art direction. Similarly, Best Sound and Aural Orchestration encompasses not sound engineering alone but musical score as well.
Schedule for the awards presentations has yet to be arranged.
Here is the complete list of winners and nominees for this year’s YCC film awards:
The Film Desk of the Young Critics’ Circle
21st Annual Circle Citations for Distinguished Achievement in Film for 2010

Best Film of the Year:

Winner: Himpapawid directed by Raymond Red (Pelikula Red, Pacific Film Partners, Ignite Media, Filmex Inc., and RSVideo Production; Raymond Red, David Hukom, Roger Garcia and Butch Jimenez, producers; Jimmy Duavit and Oli Laperal, associate producers)
Nominees:
Ang Damgo ni Eleuteria directed by Remton Siega Zuasola (Cinema One Originals and Panumduman Pictures; Jiji Borlasa and Beverly Tañedo, producers; Ronald Arguelles, executive producer; Sherad Anthony Sanchez, supervising producer)
Punerarya (episode of Shake, Rattle & Roll 12) directed by Jerrold Tarog (Regal Entertainment; Lily Monteverde, executive producer; Roselle Monteverde-Teo, producer; Sarah Pagcaliwagan, associate producer; Manny Valera, supervising producer)

Best Screenplay:

Winner: Himpapawid (Pelikula Red, Pacific Film Partners, Ignite Media, Filmex Inc., and RSVideo Production) – Raymond Red
Nominees:
Ang Damgo ni Eleuteria (Cinema One Originals and Panumduman Pictures) – Remton Siega Zuasola
Punerarya (Regal Entertainment) – Onay Sales and Aloy Adlawan
Best Performance by Male or Female, Adult or Child, Individual or Ensemble in Leading or Supporting Role

Winners:
Carla Abellana in Punerarya (Regal Entertainment); and
Raul Arellano in Himpapawid (Pelikula Red, Pacific Film Partners, Ignite Media, Filmex Inc., and RSVideo Production)
No other nominees in Best Performance

Best Achievement in Cinematography and Visual Design
Winner: Himpapawid (Pelikula Red, Pacific Film Partners, Ignite Media, Filmex Inc., and RSVideo Production) – Raymond Red, cinematographer; Danny Red, production designer; Cesar Hernando and Ronald Red, design consultants
Nominees:
Ang Damgo ni Eleuteria (Cinema One Originals and Panumduman Pictures) – Christian Linaban, cinematographer; Kaloy Uypuanco, production designer; Victor Villanueva, art director; Syrel Lopez, costume
Punerarya (Regal Entertainment) – Mackie Galvez, director of photography; Benjamin Padero, production designer

Best Achievement in Sound and Aural Orchestration
Winner: Punerarya (Regal Entertainment) – Lamberto Casas Jr., sound designer and engineer; Jerrold Tarog, musical scorer)
Nominees:
Himpapawid (Pelikula Red, Pacific Film Partners, Ignite Media, Filmex Inc., and RSVideo Production) – Diwa de Leon, musical scorer
Ang Damgo ni Eleuteria (Cinema One Originals and Panumduman Pictures) – Vanya Fantonial, sound designer; Jerrold Tarog, musical scorer

Best Achievement in Film Editing
Winner: Himpapawid (Pelikula Red, Pacific Film Partners, Ignite Media, Filmex Inc., and RSVideo Production) – David Hukom, Jay Halili and Raymond Red
Nominees:
Ang Damgo ni Eleuteria (Cinema One Originals and Panumduman Pictures)
Punerarya (Regal Entertainment) – Renewin Alano

Film Desk of the Young Critics Circle 2011: Eulalio R. Guieb III (chair), Flaudette May V. Datuin, Patrick D. Flores, Tessa Maria T. Guazon, Eloisa May P. Hernandez, Jayson Jacobo, Jema Pamintuan, Choy Pangilinan and Jaime Oscar Salazar; on leave: Noel D. Ferrer, Nonoy L. Lauzon, Eileen C. Legaspi-Ramirez, Gerard R. A. Lico, Jerry C. Respeto, Neil Martial R. Santillan and Galileo S. Zafra.
YCC drew its selection from both regular and non-regular releases comprising the entirety of Philippine cinema output in 2010. Films considered for discussion were those that had three or more screenings before a paying or non-paying audience in any public venue. ###

Review sa pelikulang “Senior Year” ni Jema Pamintuan

2011-07-17T21:49:00.000-07:00

Review sa pelikulang “Senior Year” (Jerrold Tarog, 2010)

Buong ingat na hinalungkat at itinanghal ng direktor na si Jerrold Tarog ang mga alaala ng kolektibong karanasan ng mga estudyante ng ikaapat na taon sa high school, sa kaniyang pelikulang “Senior Year” (2010). Ang mga huntahan sa mga pasilyo, kuwentuhan tungkol sa buhay pag-ibig ng kanilang guro, panloloko ng kapwa kamag-aral sa comfort rooms, mga eksena ng biruan at tsismisan sa cafeteria, pag-eensayo para sa sayaw, obsesyon sa pagkapanalo sa intrams, antisipasyon sa resulta ng college entrance exams, at sa pangkalahatan, ang mga agam-agam ng yugtong ito ng kabataan, ay mahusay na hinabi ng maingat na direksyon ni Tarog.

Tinahi ng akto ng pagbabaliktanaw ni Henry Dalmacio (RJ Ledesma) ang kuwento ng kaniyang batch (senior batch 2010) sa high school. Naghahanap siya ng dahilan upang tumayo at lumabas na mula sa kaniyang sasakyan, at makisalamuha sa mga dating kamag-aral, para sa kanilang high school reunion. Sapagkat ilang taon makalipas ang kanilang high school graduation, hindi na nakiugnay pa si Henry sa mga kamag-aral. Aminado siyang hindi na niya lubusan pang nakikilala ang mga ito, o may mga sama ng loob at lamat sa mga ugnayan, na hindi na nakuhang bigyan pa ng artikulasyon, at resolusyon, hanggang pagkatapos ng kanilang graduation. Sa mga gunitang ito nakipagbunuan ang karakter ni Henry, na nagtawid sa mga pangyayari at magkakalingkis na buhay ng mga mag-aaral sa pelikula.

Kahanga-hanga kung paano ginawan ng pagbubukod-tangi ang bawat tauhan sa pelikula, nang hindi ito lubusang nauwi lamang sa mga istiryotipo, o representasyon ng mga istiryotipo. Higit pa sa nakakahong imahen ng popular na campus heartthrob ang tulad ng mga tauhan nina Bridget, Solenn, at Briggs, o komikerong bading tulad ni Carlo, o “ugly duckling turned beautiful swan” tulad ni Sofia, “batch bully” tulad ni Ian, at iba pang pamilyar na mga karakter ng high school. Masinsin ang ginawang pag-usisa sa mga tauhan, at pagsiwalat sa lahat ng detalye ng kaselanan ng mga ito. Maselan, pagkat nakapanlulupaypay naman talagang harapin at aminin ang mga palpak na diskarte at mga inakalang grandiosong plano (para sa sarili man, kapwa mag-aaral, o buong batch) pero hindi naman pala mapaninindigan. Ang mga inisip, ginawa, at inisip nating gawin noong high school, yaong mga gusto na lamang nating ilihim, pagkat kahiya-hiya, yaong mga ipinapalagay na nakatago na lamang dapat sa ating gunita at mga personal na journal, ay sensitibo ang pagkakabitbit at pagkakalatag sa mga manonood, na parang mga bagay na babasagin.

Nakatas din mula sa pelikula ang pamamangka sa pagitan ng mabibilis at maiikling eksena at masigla at orihinal na soundtrack, at tunay na masasapantaha ang high school bilang, ayon nga sa isang pahayag ng kritikong si Rabelais, “a maniacal scrapbook filled with colorful entries.” Mabisa ang paraan ng pagkakaedit sa mga eksena para umangkop sa kaligiran at temperamento ng high school---na pabugso-bugso, minsan pa-ekis, maraming kurba at paliko-liko at taas-baba—samantalang hindi nasakripisyo ang laman at linaw ng naratibo. Mainam na pinalaya ng pelikula ang sarili sa tradisyon ng mga palabas na halaw sa kulturang “teeny bopper” ng Hollywood, at nalampasan ang kombensiyonal na paglalahad sa mga karanasan ng mga bata sa paaralan. Sariwa at kaaya-aya ang pagiging natural ng pelikula, mula sa pagtatanghal ng mga artista, pagsambit sa mga diyalogo at gamit ng wika, at palitan ng kuro-kuro sa klase. Ibang-iba sa mga nakapapagod nang palabas sa telebisyon at ilang pelikula na batbat ng artipisyalidad, na ang layunin ay itanghal lamang ang pisikal na anyo ng mga artista nito.

Dumistansya ang pelikula sa tonong nangangaral, lalo na sa pagtalakay ng mga isyu hinggil sa uri at sexualidad, mga domestikong suliranin, at pagharap sa mga dilema ng realidad ng pagtanda. At ang birtud ng pelikula ay naging lunsaran ang magaan na teknik ng pagsasalaysay nito para sa mga nabanggit na paksa. Hindi lamang mga tagiyawat at maling postura ang simbolo ng mga angst ng teenager; sa mga tiim-bagang at buntong-hininga ng kabiguan ng mga kabataang karakter nagtunggali at nagsanib ang kani-kanilang kubling kamalayan.

Sa paggawa ni Henry ng valedictory speech noong high school ay naitanong niya sa sarili kung may kakayahan ba silang punan ang mga pagkukulang ng nakaraang henerasyon, sa pamamagitan ng pagsisikap ng kaniyang henerasyon. Lumulukob pa rin sa kaniya, kahit paano, ang bilin ng dating guro, na minsang naghimaton sa klase nito hinggil sa pangangailangan ng mga mag-aaral na isangkot ang sarili para sa pagbabago ng lipunan. Sa paglabas niya mula sa kaniyang sasakyan, at sa pagharap sa dating kamag-aral, naipamalas sa eksena ang kabatirang kayhirap pa ring makapa ng indibidwalidad, na alam nating labag sa ating loob ang magpanggap, ngunit laging may pangangailangan para rito. Ikinukubli ang sariling hindi naman pala malaki ang ipinagbago, nakatali pa rin sa mga nakamihasnang salimuot ng pandama, at nangangambang sa kabila ng lahat ng pagdanas, kimkim pa rin ang mga alinlangan ng hindi mabitiw-bitiwang kamusmusan.

CRITIC OF THE MONTH: In the Name of Love

2011-07-04T19:31:00.000-07:00

In the Name of Love: Mga Komplikasyon sa Pelikulang Kilig ng Star Cinema

YCC Critic of the Month (JULY) JOEY BAQUIRAN reviews three films from Star Cinema

Forever and a Day

Starring: KC Concepcion and Sam Milby

Writers: Art Marcum, Matt Holloway, Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby

Director: Cathy Garcia-Molina

Babe, I Love You

Starring: Anne Curtis and Sam Milby

Writers: Margarette Labrador, King Palisoc

Director: Mae Zcarina Cruz

In The Name of Love

Starring: Aga Muhlach, Angel Locsin and Jake Cuenca

Writer: Enrico Santos

Director: Olivia Lamasan

Malakas na puwersa naman talaga ang pag-ibig. Nailalagay ang mangingibig sa nakakakilig at kung minsan komplikadong sitwasyon na malamang na hindi magagawa ng taong hindi umiibig. Sa romance mode ng mga kuwento sa Filipinas, walang kamatayang puhunan ang temang ito. Sabi nga, hahamakin ang lahat masunod ka lamang. Kumita na ito sa totoo lang pero patuloy pa ring pinagkakakitaan.

Sa mga kapapalabas lamang na mga pelikula ng ng ABS-CBN and Star Cinema Entertainmnent Pictures tulad ng “Forever and a Day,” “Babe, I Love You,” at “In The Name of Love” patuloy ang tradisyong ito ng pag-ibig na kilig at pag-ibig na komplikado. Kung maglalatag ng ispektrum ng tatlong ito: puro kilig ang una, may halong kilig at komplikasyon ang ikalawa, at may kaunting kilig habang maraming komplikasyon ang ikatlo.

Sa “Forever and a Day,” parehong may tinatakasan sina Miko (Sam Milby) at Raffy (KC Concepcion) sa Maynila. Nagkataon na sabay silang biglang nagbakasyon grande sa Cagayan de Oro at doon nagkainteres sa isa’t isa habang nag -eenjoy ng zipline, white river boating, at buggy racing. Nagmukha tuloy travel and living channel ang unang hati ng pelikula. May kasamang mga supporting friends na walang papel kundi tuksuhin at itulak sa ligawan ang dalawa. Sa dulo, mawawala ang pagiging matatakutin ni Raffy at magiging mas mabait naman si Miko sa kaniyang running shoes staff. Pero heto ang peak ng formula: may kanser pala si Raffy at naghihintay na lang ng kamatayan. Lalo lamang maiinlove si Miko dahil nadiskubre niya ang sobrang kabaitan at pagiging mapagmahal ni Raffy sa kapuwa cancer patient. Kung kilig ang pag-uusapan, umani ng sandamakmak nito mula sa mga fan ng mga bidang Sam Milby at KC Concepcion. End of story.

Mas komplikado ang plot ng “Babe, I Love You.” Mas nakakaaliw ang pangungulit ni Sasa Sanchez (Anne Curtis) kay Prop. Nico Borromeo (Sam Milby). May gaspang ang mga detalye na mas nakakaakit panoorin. Pati ang mga tagasuporta ay may mga makatotohanang eksenang napakakaswal, tulad ng mga harutan, pero nagpapakita ng mga relasyong malalim ang pinaghuhugutan. Sa yugtong hinog na hinog na ang anggulo ng pagmamahalan nina Nico at Sasa saka papasok ang mapait na bahagi ng kaniyang pagiging promo girl. Hindi siya inosente tulad ng superpisyal na naitanghal sa maraming eksena kundi pumapatol din sa kliyente. Sa madaling sabi, pumayag na maging kerida kundi man bayarang babae. Ito na ang peak ng pagiging pormula ng istorya pero dahil sa performans ng mga artistang parte ng pagiging glossy ng produksiyon, tumatakbo ang plot. Siyempre magugulat sa umpisa ang nobyo pero sa bandang huli, matatapos na happy ang pelikula. Peace time pa kumita ang ganitong istorya pero malakas ang tradisyon at kahit bagong milenyum na, patuloy ang kilig at pagsindi ng kleig sa ganitong mga eksena.

Pinakamalapot sa maraming aspekto ang “In The Name of Love.” Habang tila iniiwasan ng naunang dalawang pelikula ang kontemporanyong global at politikal na konteksto at gusto lamang manatili sa bakuran ng romance, ang kuwento nina Emman Toledo/Garry Fernandez (Aga Muhlach) at Mercedes Fernandez (Angel Locsin) bilang mga japayuki ang mismong humatak sa kanila patungo sa kapahamakan. Nanghihiram ng inspirasyon mula sa mga diyaryo, sa madaling sabi, mula sa realidad ang kanilang buhay bilang mga protagonista. Susuungin ni Emman ang money laundering dahil ayaw niyang mapahamak si Mercedes pero matitiklo sa airport at makukulong nang pitong taon. Nang makalaya, magbabagong buhay sana siya pero hindi inaasahang makakasalamuha muli si Mercedes na naging nobya ng isang anak ng maimpluwensiyang dinastiyang politikal sa isang probinsiya. May alusyon sa mga pelikulang politikal ng mga naunang dekada ang iskrinpley ni Enrico Santos, lalo na sa mga obra ni Brocka at Lamangan. Pinakakapal pa ito ng dagdag na alusyon sa level ng disenyong biswal at detalye ng karakterisasyon. Sa isang shot, makikitang may mga alagang eksotikong hayop ang gobernador, at hindi na kailangang banggitin na mayroong ganitong karakter sa lokal na politika. Ang asawa ng gobernador na si Chloe Evelino (Carmi Martin) ay imahen ng tila masaya pero nagtitiis na asawa ng patriyarko. Nang masaksihan ang away ng anak at ni Mercedes, nabuhay ang pait ng hindi nakamit na tunay na pag-ibig kaya nang magkaroon ng pagkakataon, pinayuhan ang babae na tumakas na bago matulad sa masaklap niyang sitwasyon. Bumubuo ng interesanteng triyanggulasyon sina Dylan Evelino (Jake Cuenca), Garry, at Mercedes sa maraming level: personal, sexual, sining, at politika. Ang gahum ng dinastiyang politikal ng pamilyang Evelino ay sumusuot kahit sa mismong kondisyon ng maagang paglaya ni Garry. Nabigyan siya ng parole dahil sa koneksiyon ng pamilya ng gobernador kapalit ng sexual na pabor ni Mercedes at pagiging fiancee nito kay Dylan.

Hindi makawala sa trawma ng nakaraan ang dalawang ex-japayuki lalo na sa kanilang muling pagkikita. Tagabuhat na ng isda sa palengke si Garry pero nang mangailangan ng mga dance instructor ang opisina ng gobernador, nag-audition at nagperform siya sa harap ni Mercedes at mga amiga. Ito ang umpisa ng muling pagkakalapit ng dalawa at pagtatanggal sa buhol ng nakaraan. Lilitaw na patuloy na nagmahal at hindi lumimot si Mercedes. Pero hindi na siya malaya. Kailangan nilang muling sumayaw sa panganib. At siyempre nga dahil nakumpirma ang kanilang pagmamahalan, gagawin ang lahat para muling magsama.

Sa kalahatan, dramatikong naitatanghal ang mga posibilidad ng sitwasyongng inilatag. Hindi linear ang estilo ng produksiyon at epektibong nagagamit ang mga flashback at iba pang pamamaraang sinematiko. Halimbawa, sa eksena ng sayaw ng triyanggulo, naipahayag sa lengguwaheng biswal ang mga taktikal na kutsabahan, hidwaan, at pigil na sagupaan ng mga tauhan. Ang pagtuturo ng mga muwestra ng pagsasayaw ay pagkakataon din para palakasin ang koneksiyon ng pag-ibig at pagkamuhi tungo sa resolusyon.

Ang kalakasan ng produksiyong ito ay ang pagbibigay ng matamang atensiyon hindi lamang sa kilig factor kundi maging sa komplikadong makinarya ng lokal na politika at kung paano ito gumagapang at bumabalot sa pang-araw-araw na buhay ng mamamayan. Hindi palagiang teror ang ipinapakita at ginagawa ng mga gustong kumontrol ng poder kundi ang kabaitan at pagmamalasakit sa kapuwa. At kapag nalambat ka resiprokal na relasyong ito, mas malamang na sumayaw ka sa kapritso at poder ng nasa politikal na posisyon. Sa pelikula, ang pag-ibig ang pangunahing ahensiya para makahulagpos sa sapot ng korupsiyong ito. Sa daigdig ng romance, posible ang lahat. At karaniwan, hindi katulad ng tunay na buhay.

Nagtuturo ng malikhaing pagsulat at panitikan sa UP Kolehiyo ng Arte at Literatura si Joey Baquiran. Naglilingkod ding junior fellow sa UP Institute of Creative Writing at co-editor ng Daluyan, ang journal ng wikang Filipino ng UP Diliman.

Film Review: Pink Halo Halo

2011-06-11T14:59:00.000-07:00

YCC is currently choosing the best films to cite for 2010. On the run-up to short listing, we are posting review by members. In this essay, Tessa Marie Guazon shows why she favors Pink Halo Halo.

Life’s vast skies and ports of call
Tessa Maria Guazon

Pink Halo-Halo
Joselito Altarejos
2010
Cinemalaya and Beyond the Box Inc., in cooperation with Voyage Studios

Grief is impending doom in Pink Halo-Halo, written and directed by Joselito Altarejos. Imminent loss is the quiet tension that binds the clear skies of the film’s locale and its mostly, austere central characters. At the heart of this moving narrative is a young boy at the cusp of life, a moment when its tempo is decided by events that fate brings. Nearing adolescence, we regretfully see him leave behind the joyful frolic of childhood to face life’s looming despair, the greatest burden would be the death of his father, Lino Bolante a corporal suddenly recalled to Basilan. Filmed in a Masbate town on a good harvest season Pink Halo-Halo embraces its locale fully, eloquently capturing on screen the rhythm of town life and its inhabitants. The film avoids the nostalgia and skewed romance of place that so entraps many local films, whether these places are impoverished towns or blighted cities. Humor and grief, polar opposites so difficult to bind are handled with quiet compassion. The sutbleties so despairingly missing in the postcard stills and stilted narratives of most other movies are refreshing finds in Pink Halo-Halo.
It opens to a game of pretend war among young boys brandishing their wooden toy guns. Their play is disrupted by the arrival of a dead soldier’s body from Mindanao. They walk home and lingered at the wake, seeing grief still unknowable to hearts unblemished by loss. Natoy and a friend stop to eat halo-halo at a local cafeteria. We see the refreshment served, and against the stark, summer sun its colors transform from enticing to ghastly. On shaved ice, the red syrup eerily looks like blood on snow while the yam’s violet black hue appears like the land for which blood is spilled. While the boys enjoy the refreshment, the cafeteria owner lovingly lingers on photos of a dead soldier in a coffin. We then surmise that army enlistment is both salvation and plague in this town, and in mute horror realize that perhaps these boys will also choose to risk their lives in far-off places of war when they become men.
The meager salary from the army helps build Natoy’s home and fence their lot, support aging grandparents and a younger brother studying to be a teacher but who looks forward to being an army colonel. The boy regards these with a mind unclouded by complexity. He does not dream to be a soldier, he is amused and even beguiled by the vanity of women and his mother’s pregnancy is a prospect both alien and inviting. He makes doll paper cut-outs while his parents debate over his father’s wanting to stay in the army far longer than planned.
Gloom creeps into the house’s dark and cool interiors on the day his father is to leave. The camera moves to the boy scanning his school books on the polished wooden floor while adult life hovers above him, his mother Sonia busily ironing shirts, his uncle polishing to gleam his father’s army boots.We overhear the parents planning for the coming of another child and settling payments to be made on the motorbike and the fence, matters far from the mind of a child now playing with his father’s army dogtags. They saw him off to sea and like most scenes of parting, the vast waters however blue and serene presage loss. It struck me how inured we have become to these many partings, often with little hope of reunion and return. Risk, it seems is the only constant in these leave-takings
Pink Halo-Halo evokes grief as it encroaches on the mundane, as inescapable as night turning into day. Over halo-halo, son and mother hears of an encounter in Basilan. A war so removed from their lives, news delivered through the grainy screen of a television set lending an unreal cast to mourning. Tragedy is often received with disbelief. The void between knowing and proof , between the image of a bloodied father and the arrival of his cold body is met with quiet, severe sorrow. This community knows bereavement and confronts its onslaught with courage. Prayers are said amidst the drone of the evening news, tears are silently shed and they face the inevitable arrival of the box from Basilan draped with the national flag. Their loss is ours as well. Yet the film avoids the histrionics that beset the depiction of grief and despair, reminding us that like heat and rain, misery and joy make life in equal measure. This fact is presented beyond artifice, and a contained, measured tranquility prevails throughout the film. No doubt, the film owes this to its eloquent handling of time and its thorough knowledge of place. Little is forced and when we witness these (such as the news of impending death and the image of the wounded father/soldier calling out to son across television), we know these constructions are deliberately chosen metaphors.
Indeed, the dead do not wholly depart and the living exists with them. Berger writes that the dead surrounds those who live. The living he says “are the core of the dead” and that only “timelessness surrounds this core”. We endure not merely sorrow, we live with reminders that death brings- the fragility of life and the tenacity of the human heart, of the choices we can make and the battles we opt to win. Pink Halo-Halo ends with the family tensely awaiting the boat that brings to shore a loved one’s corpse. We share their silence as the camera pans to the skies and clouds gather to cast shadows on an ordinarily bright summer day.
Cited work
Berger, John. 2007. Hold everything dear: Dispatches on survival and resistance. New York: Vintage, 3.

Tessa Maria Guazon is assistant professor of Art Studies at the University of the Philippines-Diliman.
She writes about cities, film and contemporary public art practice.
Recent publications include reviews in Humanities Diliman and Asian Art News, essays in the Agham Tao Journal, the Suri-Sining anthology, and Pananaw 7. A forthcoming essay in the International Journal of Urban Research examines art's mediation of urban conditions.

Critic of the Month

2011-06-07T18:58:00.000-07:00

The YCC critic of the month Jaime Oscar M. Salazar, comments on a timely topic, the question of where and how to bury the remains of a dictator.

Honor vacui
Jaime Oscar M. Salazar

That Vice President Jejomar Binay, who was tasked to confront the vexing question of where and how the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos should be laid to rest, has been quoted in Manila Bulletin as calling his recommendation to bury Marcos in Ilocos Norte with full military honors a “Solomonic solution” indicates, at the very least, that Binay’s understanding of the Bible is deficient in the extreme. Were he to review the relevant passages in the Old Testament, Binay would discover that the judgment of Solomon—who, by virtue of divine munificence, is supposed to be one of the wisest men in the world—did not result in a formulation that either satisfies or gave justice to no one.

According to the story, which is told in the first book of Kings, Solomon is asked to preside over a dispute between two women, each of whom claimed to be the mother of an infant. Both women lived in the same house, and each, within days of the other, had given birth to a boy. One of the babies, however, died in the night, prompting his mother to switch the corpse for the still-living son of the other woman, who was asleep. As there were no witnesses to the substitution, the women are reduced to trading accusations before the king.

After a moment, Solomon calls for a sword and orders that the remaining infant be cut in two, in order that each mother may receive half, thus settling the issue. It is when one of the women protests at the verdict that Solomon’s true intention is revealed: by threatening the destruction of the child, the king is able to determine which woman is the real mother—the one who would rather see her baby alive, if brought up in the care of another, than killed. “Give the living baby to the first woman. Do not kill him; she is his mother,” Solomon declares.

The outcome, it must be emphasized, is not a compromise at all: the Solomonic solution involves neither tortuous hair-splitting nor the invocation of a mythical “middle ground”. Instead, it is a bold move animated by the desire to do the right thing, no matter how apparently impolitic.

To be sure, few problems can be laid to rest quite as quickly or as neatly as that brought before Solomon, but Binay’s proposal for the Marcos burial, despite what he may believe (or professes to believe), merely partakes of the same dangerous, because morally vacuous, logic that led over 200 legislators to sign House Resolution No. 1135, which says that Marcos deserves to be interred at the Libingan ng mga Bayani, owing to his “invaluable service to his country as soldier, writer, statesman, President and Commander-in-Chief”.

Even if Marcos is buried in his native soil rather than in the heroes’ cemetery, he would, following Binay’s plan, still be buried with distinction unearned and undeserved—and, once bestowed, virtually indelible. More, it would propound notions of honor and heroism that are so thoroughly destitute as to become meaningless. What does it imply about ourselves when we seek to memorialize and glorify a man who was unapologetic to his very last breath for the massive graft and corruption, plunder, and human-rights abuses that he orchestrated over the course of two decades in power? Where now is the sword that will cleave political expediency and ineffectual posturing away from responsible, courageous partisanship?

Jaime Oscar M. Salazar teaches with the Literature Department at De La Salle University-Manila, where he teaches art appreciation and literature. He is working toward his master's degree in art studies at the University of the Philippines Diliman.

YCC Critic of the Month: Flaudette May Datuin’s Nowhere Near (On Ganap na Babae)

2011-04-02T01:18:00.000-07:00

Nowhere Near

Flaudette May Datuin

Ganap na Babae (Garden of Eden)/Hubo Productions/Rica Arevalo, Ellen Ramos and Sarah Roxas, Directors

Before the film unreeled at the University of the Philippines Film Center on the night of March 8, International Women’s Day, we had to go through a parade of real-life “Ganap na Babae” – women achievers – the sponsoring sorority’s pride: these year’s Ten Outstanding Women of the Nation or TOWN. Images of these beautiful, multi-talented success stories were flashed again and again onscreen. Larger than life, in full color, pretty women in well appointed surroundings flashed alongside those of images of deprivation, the most offensive of which was of a skeletal, perhaps dying child the broadcaster Kara David – one of the awardees - was cradling in her arms. It was part of a series of pictures showing the awardee in her social work among poor communities. As the film finally unreeled after a tedious mini TOWNs awarding ceremony, more offensive images followed, but the one that made me squirm all the more was that of the “Cannes Most Beautiful Actress” being “gang raped” beautifully in all her voluptuous glory amidst and wrapped in linen of screaming red – the image that happens to be on the film’s publicity poster.

Rape aestheticized, violence made tender, women as a spectacular objects transforming themselves into sight, and in the case of the skeletal child, a success story fed by poverty. Private troubles transformed into a freak show. In other words, what reeled before me was yet another example of so-called indie film staple: the “obscenification of life,” a term I borrow from Martin Amis via the sociologist Les Back, who describes the condition as one that leads to a kind of “moral cannibalism” wherein the viewer is “invited to nourish their moral probity by consuming images of badness, crime, vulgarity and degeneracy” – in short, poverty porn.

Crackling with controversy and salacious details, the film abounds with fast food clichés rehashed through an intrusive empiricism framed by revelation (e.g. the whore’s confessional), and an excess of picture perfect moments. Texture is flattened and glossed with belabored and drawn out scenes of creaking pumps, and other forms of pumping implied and explicit, fodder for “kilig” moments such as Boots Anson-Roa’s much-touted bed scene. We knew the bottom line, the destination, but the directors took a long time telling the tired story, inflicting us with contrived shots better off as stills, bad transitions, sloppy sound and visual cues and overall bad editing. As a fellow viewer-YCC critic Tessa Guazon puts it after emerging from the experience with a migraine, the cinematic telling was “nowhere near ’ganap’ as we waited for things to happen…the film spelled everything out for the audience but there was nothing to expect, no sense of anticipation. “

The delectable whore is always abused and battered; the probinciana is always hungry and pining to be a mail order bride and coming home in a box; the fading middle class matrona is always lonely and sex-starved enough to be a “cougar” – a role that is hyped as an out of the box first for the goody two shoes “legendary” Boots Anson Roa – herself a TOWNS awardee of long ago, as she pointed out in her speech before the screening. These are the “ganap na babae” of Philippine cinema, reel and real. From the past century to the present, being a “ganap na babae” is synonymous with women’s preordained destinations as temptresses, sinners, pining virgins, abused mothers and saints in the Garden of Eden and where “ganap” is not a form of coming into being, a process of fulfilling a potential, but as “Pilipinas,” the whore, abandoned by her children, penniless, spent. At the end of the day, International Women’s Day: a parade of success stories, a film by women about women, women at a dead-end but nowhere near.

Flaudette May Datuin is Associate Professor, Department of Art Studies, University of the Philippines. Young Critics Circle Member, Founding editor of Ctrl+P, Digital Journal of Contemporary Art (www.ctrlp-artjournal.org). 2008 Visiting Fellow, the Australian National University; Visiting Research Fellow, 2010-2013, University of New South Wales (Sydney, Australia); Asian Public Intellectuals fellow (2005); Asian Scholarship Foundation Fellow (2004). Author: Home Body Memory: Filipina Artists in the Visual Arts (2002, UP Press) and Editor, Alter/(n)ations: The Art of Imelda Cajipe Endaya (2010), UP Press.

YCC bares winners of annual film awards for distinguished achievement in 2008

2009-02-20T00:15:00.000-08:00

YCC AWARDS
YCC bares winners of annual film awards for distinguished achievement in 2008

The Film Desk of the Young Critics Circle formally bares its choices for distinguished achievement in films of the past year. Adolfo Alix Jr.’s “Adela” made a clean sweep of all the honors for all the categories of the annual awards.

The gritty dumpsite drama of a grandma awaiting a visit from immediate family members on her 80th birthday was voted Best Film of the Year and conferred recognition for Best Screenplay, Best Cinematography and Visual Design, Best Film Editing, Best Sound and Aural Orchestration and Best Performance for veteran actress Anita Linda in the title role.

Established in 1990, YCC is the academe-based critics group with members coming from various disciplines. Through the years, they have become attentive observers of Philippine cinema constantly bringing into the analysis of film an interdisciplinary approach.

The organization departs from many conventions of other award-giving bodies both here and abroad in bestowing cinematic honors. For instance, the award for Best Film of the Year is reserved for the director such that no separate prize for direction is needed. The Best Performance award is most coveted as it is conferred on a screen performer whether male or female, adult or child, individual or as part of an ensemble, in leading or supporting role. To uphold a more dynamic and encompassing way of looking at films, technical honors refer to fusion of outstanding efforts in fields otherwise deemed apart. In this case, the Best Cinematography and Visual Design recognition covers both camerawork and art direction. Similarly, Best Sound and Aural Orchestration encompasses not just sound engineering per se but musical score as well.

“Adela’s” clean sweep of YCC awards is the third time for a film to achieve such honor after “Masahista” (2005) and “Inang Yaya” (2006). It won over the only other nominee—Brillante Mendoza’s “Serbis”—in the topmost category. Joining “Serbis” is “Yanggaw” in the roster of nominations for all the three technical categories while nods for Best Screenplay also counted “Imoral”—another Alix megger written by Gerry Gracio—aside from “Serbis” as scripted by Armando Lao. Anita bested nominees in the singular acting category that shows her to be the only female. Said nominees are Paolo Paraiso in “Imoral,” Ronnie Lazaro in “Yanggaw” and Carlo Aquino in “Baler.” “Adela’s” victory also marks the second time for a digital feature to clinch the Best Cinematography and Visual Design prize after “Death in the Land of Encantos ” (2007).

In picking “Adela” for top honors, YCC cited the film’s departure from the usual catastrophic and sensational depiction of poverty in terms not only of economics but also of emotion and imagination. The here-and-the- now small sufferings of a senior citizen living independently are set against the backdrop of the greater suffering of a nation plagued by corruption scandals in high places and a social system that generally neglects the welfare of constituents in the margins of society.

Awarding ceremony with forum to follow is set on Wednesday, 11 March 2009, at 2 o’clock in the afternoon at the Pulungang Recto of the Faculty Center in UP Diliman.

A list of complete winners and nominees for this year’s YCC film awards by categories is as follows:

Young Critics Circle Film Desk Awards
19th Annual Circle Citations for Distinguished Achievement in Film for 2008

Best Film of the Year
Winner: Adela directed by Adolfo Alix Jr. (Bicycle Pictures and Visitfilms; Noel D. Ferrer and Adolfo Alix Jr., Executive Producers; Arleen C. Cuevas, Producer; Maxie Evangelista, Line Producer)
Nominee: Serbis directed by Brillante Mendoza (Centerstage Productions and Swift Productions; Didier Costet, Executive Producer; Ferdinand Lapuz, Producer; Antonio del Rosario and JC Nigado, Supervising Producers; Renato Esguerra, Associate Producer)

Best Screenplay
Winner: Adela (Bicycle Pictures; Visitfilms) – Adolfo Alix Jr. and Nick Olanka
Nominees:
Serbis (Centerstage Productions; Swift Productions) – Armando Lao
Imoral (Videoflick; Bicycle Pictures) – Gerry Gracio

Best Achievement in Cinematography and Visual Design
Winner: Adela (Bicycle Pictures; Visitfilms) – Albert Banzon, Director of Photography; Adolfo Alix Jr. and Jerome Zamora, Production Designers
Nominees:
Serbis (Centerstage Productions; Swift Productions) – Odyssey Flores, Director of Photography; Carlo Tabije and Benjamin Padero, Production Designers
Yanggaw (Cinema One) – Herman Claraval and Lyle Sacris, Directors of Photography; Donald Camon and Michael N. Español, Production Designers

Best Achievement in Film Editing
Winner: Adela (Bicycle Pictures; Visitfilms) – Aleks Castañeda
Nominees:
Serbis (Centerstage Productions; Swift Productions) – Claire Villa-Real
Yanggaw (Cinema One) – Borgy Torre

Best Achievement in Sound and Aural Orchestration
Winner: Adela (Bicycle Pictures; Visitfilms) – Mark Locsin and Jojo Jacinto, Sound Engineers; Ditoy Aguila and Junel Valencia , Sound Designers
Nominees:
Serbis (Centerstage Productions; Swift Productions) – Emmanuel Clemente, Sound Engineer; Gian Gianan, Musical Director
Yanggaw (Cinema One) – Joey Santos and Eduardo Velasquez, Sound Engineers; Von de Guzman, Musical Director

Best Performance by Male or Female, Adult or Child, Individual or Ensemble in Leading or Supporting Role
Winner: Anita Linda in Adela (Bicycle Pictures; Visitfilms)
Nominees:
Paolo Paraiso in Imoral (Videoflick; Bicycle Pictures)
Ronnie Lazaro in Yanggaw (Cinema One)
Carlo Aquino in Baler (Viva Entertainment)

Film Desk of the Young Critics Circle 2008-2009: Dr. Galileo S. Zafra, Dr. Patrick D. Flores, Prof. Eloisa M. P. Hernandez, Dr. Gerard R. A. Lico, Nonoy L. Lauzon, Dr. Flaudette May V. Datuin, Eileen C. Legaspi-Ramirez, Romulo P. Baquiran Jr., Noel D. Ferrer, Eli R. Guieb III, Dr. Jerry C. Respeto, Prof. Neil Martial R. Santillan, Jason P. Jacobo.#

YCC bares winners of annual film awards for distinguished achievement in 2008

2009-02-03T05:52:00.000-08:00

THE Film Desk of the Young Critics Circle formally announces the winners of its annual film awards.

Best Film - "Adela" directed by Adolf Alix Jr.
Nominee - Serbis

Best Screenplay - Adela
Nominees - Imoral and Serbis

Best Cinematography and Visual Design - Adela
Nominees - Yanggaw and Serbis

Best Editing - Adela
Nominees - Yanggaw and Serbis

Best Sound and Aural Orchestration - Adela
Nominees - Yanggaw and Serbis

Best Performance - Anita Linda in Adela
Nominees - Ronnie Lazaro in Yanggaw
Carlo Aquino in Baler
Paolo Paraiso in Imoral

The awarding is set on March 11, 2009, Wednesday, at the Conference Hall, Faculty Center, University of the Philippines Diliman.

Details about the films to follow.

Romansa sa mga Pampublikong Espasyo Ni Galileo S. Zafra

2008-12-07T22:20:00.001-08:00

from the 2002 YCC citations

Romansa sa mga Pampublikong Espasyo
Ni Galileo S. Zafra

Isang romantikong pelikula ang Ikaw Lamang Hanggang Ngayon. Kuwento
ito ni Katherine, isang empleado sa Manila Post Office.
Kasingrutinaryo ng kanyang trabaho ang kanyang buhay: papasok sa
trabaho, magsasalansan ng sulat, sasagot sa mga tawag sa telepono,
manananghalian sa isang bangko sa parke sa tapat ng gusali, at sa
gabi, uuwi sa bahay. Mahiyain, takot sa tao, walang tiwala sa sarili
si Katherine. Ang malungkot niyang buhay ay hindi itinatago ng
kaniyang anyo: nakasuot ng malaking salamin, mukhang matanda kung
manamit, laging tulala. Isang araw, nang manananghalian siya,
matatapon ang kaniyang pagkain. Gagamitin niya ang tinidor para
ukitin sa bangko ang mga salitang “Malungkot ang buhay ko.”

Isang makisig na golf instructor, si Ryan, ang mauupo sa bangko.
Mababasa niya ang inukit ni Katherine at susundan niya ito ng tanong
na “Bakit?” Kabaligtaran ni Katherine, exciting ang buhay ni Ryan.
Dahil sa kaniyang high profile na trabaho, marami siyang nakikilang
babae at nakakarelasyon. Subalit tulad ni Katherine, malungkot din si
Ryan. Nararamdaman niyang handa na siyang pakasal ngunit hindi pa
niya mahanap ang kanyang gustong makatuluyan.

Magtatagpo at magkakakilala ang dalawa nang minsan, isang gabing
umuulan, magkakasabay silang sumakay sa iisang taxi. Hindi nila alam
na sila ang nagpapalitan ng maiikling sulat sa bangko, ngunit simula
sa maulang gabi ng kanilang pagtatagpo, bubukal ang isang maarugang
pagmamahalan. Kahit simpleng babae si Katherine, makikita ni Ryan ang
kaniyang ganda sa labas at sa loob. Mabubuo ang tiwala sa sarili ni
Katherine dahil mayroon nang nakapansin sa gandang kanyang itinatago.

Kung tutuusin, tulad ng pangunahing tauhang babae, napakakaraniwan at
madaling hulaan ng pelikula. Pinalaki tayo sa kuwento tungkol sa
simpleng babae na mamahalin sa bandang huli ng makisig na lalaki
dahil taglay niya ang malinis na puso at dalisay na pagkatao.

Subalit hindi lamang sa naratibo masusumpungan ang kuwento ng
pelikula. Ginamit nito ang kapangyarihan ng pelikula bilang biswal na
midyum at kinasangkapan ang mga pamamaraan at estratehiya ng
sinematograpiya upang gawing pelikula ito ng mga karakter at lunan,
ng tao at espasyo. Hinuli ng masinop at mahusay na sinematograpiya
hindi lamang ang salaysay ng pag-ibig nina Katherine at Ryan, kundi
pati ang mga makasaysayan at lumilikha-ng-kasaysayang pampublikong
espasyo ng Maynila: ang episyenteng LRT na naghahatid-sundo sa mga
pasahero, ang mataong simbahan ng Quiapo, ang buhay na buhay na
eskinita ng mga pangunahing lansangan ng Maynila, ang makakapal at
matitipunong pader ng Intramuros, ang makapangyarihan at matitikas na
poste ng gusali ng Post Office, ang maalamat na tulay ng Ayala habang
binabaybay ang maalamat na Ilog Pasig, at ang romantikong Liwasang
Bonifacio (dating Plaza Lawton).

Ang mga ritwal mulang pagkakaibigan hanggang pag-iibigan nina
Katherine at Ryan ay naganap sa mga espasyong ito: ang pag-ukit ng
kalungkutan at pag-iisa sa mga bangko ng Liwasan, ang aksidental
nilang pagkikilala sa sakayan ng taxi, ang muli nilang pagtatagpo sa
harap ng simbahan ng Quiapo, ang pagdalaw ni Ryan kay Katherine sa
gusali ng Post Office, ang pagpapalalim ng kanilang relasyon,
paghihiwalay at muling pagkakasundo sa Liwasan. Sa mga situwasyong
ito, ang pampublikong espasyo ay hindi lamang mga lugar na tinatayuan
o nilalakaran, kundi mga lunan kung saan ang mga tao ay pinagtatagpo
at ang mga ugnayan ay binubuo.

Ipinakikita ng pelikula na ang mga pampublikong espasyo ay mga bukas
na lugar na may buhay at may kasaysayan na hindi hiwalay sa buhay at
kasaysaysan ng mga taong dito ay dumaraan at nananahan. Isang ironiya
na ang pelikulang isinadula sa Maynila ay maaaring magsilbi kapwa
bilang pagkilala, gayundin, ng pagtuligsa sa pamahalaang lokal na
puspusang nagpapatupad ng mga infraestrukturang proyekto sa ngalan ng
kaunlaran. Ginawa at ipinalabas ang pelikula sa panahong
nagbabagong-bihis ang lungsod ng Maynila para sa kampanya ng
kasalukuyang pamunuan ng lungsod na buhaying muli ang dating
kadakilaan ng Maynila. Ang pelikula sa gayon ay parangal, kundi man,
propaganda pa nga, sa ganitong kampanya. Ngunit sa kabilang banda,
nagtatanong at nanghahamon din ito. Ilang buwan bago ang pelikula,
kinuwestiyon ng mga art conservationist ang proyekto para sa urban
renewal ng pamahalaang lungsod. Tinutulan nila ang pagwasak sa isang
makasaysayang landmark sa Taft Avenue, ang Jai Alai Building, na
pagtatayuan ng Hall of Justice ng Maynila. Ang gusali na itinayo
noong dekada 1930 ay saksi sa maraming mahahalagang pagtitipon lalo
ng mayayamang pamilya at siyang natitirang art deco building sa bansa
kundi man sa buong Asya. Ang pelikulang nagsasadula ng pagbubuo ng
personal na kasaysayan sa pampublikong espasyo, kung gayon, ay
paalaala rin na may panlipunang kasaysayang binubuo sa at binubuo ng
mga pampublikong espasyo.

Sa pagtatapos ng pelikula, magtatagpong muli sina Katherine at Ryan
na pansamantalang pinaglayo ng pagdududa sa sarili at pag-aagam-agam
sa hinaharap ng kanilang relasyon. Nalutas sa pelikula ang mga
kontradiksiyon ng mga personal na ugnayan. Ngunit ang mismong
pelikula ring ito ang nagtatampok ng di natatapos na mga tunggalian
ng mga may magkakaibang interes sa lipunan, ng usapin ng modernidad
at ng mga pinangangalagaang espasyo ng ating buhay.

The Spirit of Voice By Patrick D. Flores

2008-12-07T22:19:00.000-08:00

from the 2002 YCC citations

The Spirit of Voice By Patrick D. Flores

In Mga Munting Tinig, directed by Gil M. Portes, a young teacher,
brimming with idealism, plays the role of a messianic reformer in a
remote town, but walks away from the middle-class sojourn chastened
by the realization that the work of civil society is bound to fail if
it merely foists its vision of change on passive people perceived to
be needing relief. The film resists the temptation to promote a
panacea of social ills. Rather, it intimates a keen analysis of the
social condition of a milieu wracked by corruption, insurgency, and
the seduction of flight. Arising from this commentary is the
well-considered effort to recover the repressed voice of potential
change through music, an allegory of art as an agent of
transformative expression that is collectively performed as a choir
of deliverance.

The tendency for this type of film is to subscribe to what can be
called the “primitive imaginary” in which the reformer-or perhaps,
the reformist-descends on a savage territory in order to colonize it.
Such disposition is clearly imperialist in orientation as it pursues
the trajectory of development as the privileged strategy of progress.
What emerges from this sort of project is a neo-liberal
interpretation of inequity and its solution. The people pictured as
requiring liberation or amelioration, or in some cases even humanity,
are nearly catatonic and merely wait for benevolence to endow them
with intelligibility as subjects of a domain. The film Mga Munting
Tinig departs from this convenient practice by:

investing its heroine not with the full and complete rationality of a
redeemer, but with an enabling ambivalence that allows her to, on the
one hand, doubt her own place in the setting and, on the other, to
act on the condition before her in the manner that her experience
predisposes her. In the end, person and place, self and other
mutually change each other;

putting in place a dialectic that analyzes social reality as at once
a corrupted condition and a transformable possibility. In this
situation, the idealism of the heroine is undercut as an illusion by
a jaded, but nevertheless sensible, colleague, who in turn opens
herself up to a revision of consciousness. This dialectic, or
reflexive reflection, is important to scan the contradictions of
milieu and to probe the context of whatever human action plays out.
Without such dynamic, which eludes some films which dare to tackle
historical reality of epochal significance, all manner of practice is
ultimately facile, sterile, and anomalous; and

rendering the voice as a vital agent in the articulation of
difference, the engagement with a higher force, and the summoning of
a spirit that transcends the limitations of official speech,
comfortable silence, or conspiratorial cacophony. In this scenario,
the recovery of voice in the context of a coming together in a
community that is the choir transposes into some allegory of art as
an interventive gesture of affective power.

A film nourished by this premise cannot fail. The personas of
teachers are rounded out. Students are located in the thicket of
social struggle as apt pupils, children of the revolution, and
singers of their songs. And society is a charged terrain of armed
revolt, State control, tutelage, and resistance. Direction,
screenplay, cinematography and visual design, editing, sound, and the
performance of a sensitive cast contribute to the comprehensive
competence of Mga Munting Tinig.

Diskarte Ni Ariel N. Valerio

2008-12-07T22:18:00.000-08:00

from the 2002 YCC citations

Diskarte Ni Ariel N. Valerio

Halimbawa ng isang well-made film ang Diskarte. Kumpleto sa
rekado-sandakot na sex, kumukulong aksyon, isang kutsarang luha,
tatlong kutsaritang romansa, isang kurot na komedi. Tinimpla at
niluto ayon sa panlasa ng Hollywood. Pinakete para sa takilya ng mga
sinehan sa Pilipinas.

Walang duda, natugunan ng Diskarte ang mga teknikal na rekisito ng
isang pelikula.

Masinop at sadya ang editing. Naikamada ang mga eksena nang walang
sinasayang na sandali sa pagpapaigting ng aksyon. Gumugol ng panahon
upang bumabad sa mga erotikong tagpo, alinsunod sa tinataya nitong
kahingian ng manonood.

Kapansin-pansin din ang bihasang paglalapat ng musika at tunog.
Bihirang gamitin ang opera sa pelikulang lokal. Subalit sa Diskarte,
ilang beses narinig ang makabasag-salaming tinig ng koloratura-habang
nagtatalik sina Jake (Rudy Fernandez) at Amanda (Ara Mina), habang
nagpapakamatay si Col. Montero (Tirso Cruz III), at habang
nakikipagpatayan si Jake sa mga kasapi ng sindikato ng droga.

Sa madaling sabi, tinangka ng Diskarte na maging mahusay na pelikula.
Ngunit malaking katanungan kung sapat na ang technical competence
upang matawag na mahusay ang isang pelikula. Kung matawag mang
mahusay, ano ang halaga nito sa manonood?

Pampalipas-oras? Libangan? Tapyas ng buhay? Repleksyon ng realidad?
Kritik ng lipunan?

Sa unang tingin, tinangka ng Diskarte na magbigay ng kritik sa
lipunang Pilipino sa pamamagitan ng pagtuligsa sa militar bilang
lunsaran ng katiwalian at, kung gayon, ng panlipunang diskurso.

Matalas ang patutsada nito kay Col. Montero bilang “hari ng droga.”
Kasabwat ang mga sindikato, ginamit niya ang mataas na posisyon sa
pulisya upang humamig ng limpak-limpak na salapi. Pero mahina pala
ang dibdib kaya nang madiskartehan ni Jake na ipahuli, ipalitis at
parusahan ng batas, nang-agaw siya ng baril at pinasabog ang sariling
bungo.

Nakapanghihinayang. Hindi si Col. Montero kundi ang nabilasang
pagtatangka tungo sa panlipunang kritik. Maaaring ipagpalagay na sa
pagkawala ni Col. Montero, malinis na muli ang militar. Ganoon lang
kasimple ang problema-may ilang indibidwal na naliligaw ng landas.

Nasa serbisyong militar din dati ang grupo ni Jake. Ipinaghiganti
niya ang asawang pinaslang ng sindikato. Nabilanggo siya at natanggal
sa serbisyo.

Kakatwang hindi nakulong o nalitis ang mga sibilyang kasapi ng
sindikato. Sa halip, kailangan silang lipulin ng mga taong tulad ni
Jake na may matinding personal na galit sa kanila. Bakit hindi sila
pinarusahan ng batas? Dahil hawak daw ng tagapagpatupad ng batas
tulad ni Col. Montero. Nang magpakamatay ang numero unong
tagapagtanggol ng sindikato, tinapos na ang kwento.

Kailangang tapusin ang kwento sa yugtong iyon dahil delikado na ang
susunod na hakbang-ilantad ang katiwalian sa militar bilang
sistematikong panlilinlang sa taumbayan. Hindi ito sinugba ng
pelikula. Sa halip, pinanatiling malinis ang institusyon ng militar
maliban sa ilang indibidwal na batik sa serbisyo. Nabigo ang Diskarte
na tuligsain ang institusyong tinutukan ng kritik nito at sa gayon,
nakabig ng dominanteng propaganda ng estado ang pelikula.

Iyon ang diskarte nila kaya pasensya na lang ang manonood kung
patuloy na mambibiktima sa lipunan ang mga galamay ng panlilinlang.

Legal Action By Patrick D. Flores

2008-12-07T22:15:00.000-08:00

repost from the 2002 YCC citations

Legal Action
By Patrick D. Flores

If only for its queer and quirky appeal, the news that the director
and a financier of one of the films that competed at the recent Metro
Manila Film Festival are suing the jury of the competition on the
grounds of artistic misrecognition merits a once-over. It could be
dismissed, of course, as just another turn in the silly routine in
the business, but this particular case leads to an interesting
paradox. We remember that the Festival was heralded by a controversy
having to do with the manner in which the entries would be selected,
and it expectedly culminated in an awarding ceremony marred by
walkouts, production glitches, sour graping, and the proliferation of
bad taste. Still and all, its chieftains gloat that the Festival
raked in a lot of profits. Between criteria and cash, it is obvious
which one is paramount.

The crux of the problem at the outset pertained to rules and how they
were, let us say, modified to accommodate certain vested interests.
These were guidelines set by the organizers, who unfortunately found
themselves incapable of strictly abiding by them. With such infirmity
and lack of moral nerve defining the tone of the Festival, it came as
no surprise that the jury, unremarkable by all indications, would be
hailed to court for not honoring one film, which is made to appear as
an important motion picture on Philippine history, and for
complimenting others which, as the spin goes, dwell too generously on
the Chinese and the razzle-dazzle of visual effects. The aggrieved
film is Lapu Lapu, whose hero undoubtedly is of stalwart spirit,
being the slayer of the first person to circumnavigate the globe.
Many doubt, however, if the film may share the same stance of
artistic integrity.

It is, therefore, worth thinking about how a community that trifles
with the policy it prescribes could possibly come before the
institutions of the law with clean hands, and consequently subject
itself to regulation. Such disrepute carries weight. In fact, much of
the fear of government in letting the industry police its own ranks,
which incidentally is propped up as an argument against censorship,
stems from the perception that it simply cannot be governed, or that
it cannot govern itself, at least. The scenario occasioned by the
Festival offers yet another evidence that the film establishment and
the sector it represents do not only glorify outlaws in their
merchandise; they also prosper in a state of lawlessness. This proves
to be doubly worrisome because the captain of the Festival’s ship was
both an elected official of a city known for dirty politics and a
movie actor of meager credentials. Or, on second thought, does this
vital detail actually sort it all out?

The foreign press has cited this sense of general lawlessness
prevailing in the country as one of the burdens wearying the
President, an impediment to the strong republic that she envisions
and a reason to sacrifice her political ambitions. Many of the action
films released last year render this lawlessness visual and
cinematically ubiquitous. Consider how the following titles allude to
the usurpation of the powers of the State to dispense swift and
inexorable justice: Bro, Kahit Saan Enkwentro; Batas ng Lansangan;
Hari ng Selda-Anak ni Baby Ama 2; Pistolero; Sabayan sa Laban;
Hanggang Kailan Ako Papatay Para Mabuhay; and Hula Mo, Huli Ko. It
may seem on the surface of this rhetoric that government has ceased
to monopolize the instruments of violence and that violence has
reached a point of excess that is beyond measure. On closer look,
however, we glean from these stories how the military structure, or
the bureaucracy of government in general, is implicated in the
creation of this condition at the same time that it is also viewed as
being responsible for peace and order.

The film Diskarte, directed by the well-known film editor Edgardo
Vinarao, is able to acutely depict this taxing situation. The plot
revolves around a big drug deal that is intercepted by a band of
police scalawags. The operation is, however, hijacked within the ring
by a double crosser who had wished to reap everything for himself.
The brains of the syndicate, who is likewise hoodwinked, is an
official of the force whose role in the massive network of organized
crime is exposed in the end.

The film redeems the genre from its stock methods by presenting a
complicated social reality the way it knows best. Central here are
the concept of crime and the system that allows it to be committed
systematically and, as we realize soon enough, systemically.
Well-directed and well-made on the whole, though not without its
totally understandable compromises, Diskarte comes at a time when
critics have almost given up on a genre that is held hostage by the
spectacle of fire power, the obsession with ammunition, and the
prowess of the male hero. It reminds us of an earlier Rudy
Fernandez-starrer Romy Suzara’s Pepeng Shotgun and Jose Antonio
Perez’s Mumbaki. While it strays from established norms of mainstream
storytelling, it still significantly subscribes to the action
narrative. The rare effort thoughtfully locates “action” as a social
process that arises from the tension between the control of the
institutions, on the one hand, and the struggle of the ruled to
challenge the very claim to power, on the other.

The action film, therefore, is more than just car chases, blasts, and
exchange of gunfire. It is about violence in society and the heroism
that must be mustered to overcome it. It is also about the futility
of putting too much faith in the law, which has become increasingly
indistinguishable from crime. When last week a cluster of houses was
raided by the police for illegal electric connections, it was
reported that the Barangay Captain himself was one of the violators;
he maintained a car wash service and a gym through such ingenious
means. In the midst of terrorist threats, road rage, hazing in a
military academy, and everyday tragedies, we cannot help waging an
infinite number of “just wars” just to preserve ourselves. And we as
a desperate people are no strangers to these transgressions and
instances of exception; we liberally depose leaders and always
exercise our so-called rights whenever the enjoyment of our
convenience is threatened. Surely, in our times, action is nothing
but “taking liberties” and something like diskarte: a stroke, a modus
operandi, an exit strategy. (Reprinted from Manila Standard)

Babasaging Daigdig sa Itlog Ni Romulo P. Baquiran Jr.

2008-12-07T22:14:00.000-08:00

repost from the 2002 YCC citations

Babasaging Daigdig sa Itlog
Ni Romulo P. Baquiran Jr.

Umaasa ang katinuan ng tao sa makataong pagtrato mula sa kapwa, lalo
na sa pinakamalapit na kaanak at kaibigan-ama, anak, at kasintahan.
Sa marupok na pag-iral ng ibat’ibang pagmamahal at paggalang, ang
pinakamatinding banta ay nagmumula rin sa mismong nagsasagawa ng mga
pagpapahalagang ito. Sa daigdig na nabuo sa Itlog, ang ugnayang
ama-anak na nakasalikop rin sa karupukan ng ugnayang tao-sa-tao ay
nabigyan ng masalimuot na pagsasapelikula.

Mumurahing sex-drama ang pagpapakete sa Itlog (sa titulo pa lang)
ngunit ang produksiyon ni Jun Posadas at Romy Vitug sa iskrip ni
Gerry Arcega-Gracio ay lumilikha ng mga signifikasyong makabuluhan
lalo pa sa ganitong genre. Sa pelikula, ginalugad ang isyu kung sino
ang makapagbibigay ng tunay na pagmamahal? Ang sariling anak o ang
sampid? At mapapalitaw sa dramatikong paraan ang pagtugon sa temang
ito, sabay ng pagtaliwas sa de-kahong karakterisasyon. Alibugha ang
tunay na anak na si Eric (Rodel Velayo), mabait na ama si Tonio
(Celso Ad. Castillo), at gustong magbagong-buhay ang ex-convict na si
Dennis (Winston Elizalde).

Sabik sa pagmamahal ng ulirang anak si Tonio kaya laking tuwa niya
nang makatagpo ang bagong laya at estrangherong si Dennis nang siya’y
atakehin sa puso minsang nagmamaneho patungo sa bayan. Iniligtas ng
estranghero ang kanyang buhay. At bilang ganti, kinuha niya itong
katulong sa itikan. Unti-unti, dahil sa kabutihang loob na nabuo sa
kanila, halos tunay na anak na ang turing ni Tonio kay Dennis.
Samantala, nagtungo sa lungsod si Eric dahil kinamumuhian ang gawain
sa itikan. Pinangarap nitong makapag-artista. Ngunit walang nangyari
sa pangarap at bumalik sa lalawigan kasama ang bagong nobyang hangad
maangkin ang yaman ng pamilya. Magiging komplikado pa ang pangyayari
dahil naakit si Dennis sa batang asawa (Diana Zubiri) ni Tonio na
nagbalak ding makuha ang kayamanan ng matanda. Sa wakas, nasira ang
lahat ng makataong ugnayan dahil sa pagkatukso sa salapi at sa tawag
ng laman

Ang daloy ng naratibo ay angkop na nailatag ng pelikula. Ang galaw ng
buhay sa itikan ay mahigpit at natural na naiugnay sa tunggalian at
karakterisasyong tinutumbok ng paksa. Naibunyag kung gayon ang mga
pagkatao ng mga protagonista sa paraang sikolohiko at
kapani-paniwala. Sa Itlog, hindi bulagsak at lantarang manipulado ang
pangyayari at tauhan para lamang maitanghal ang mahahalay na tagpo.
Hindi tulad sa ibang pelikulang sex-drama, kung saan higit na
mahalaga ang pagtatatanghal ng katawan ng mga bold star, dito’y
masasabing may balanseng naisakatuparan. Habang hindi naman lumalabas
sa genre na kinabibilangan ang Itlog, lumilikha rin ito ng mga
pakahulugan na siya namang ikinauungos nito bilang pelikula.

At hindi matatawaran ang pagganap bagama’t hindi pumapailanlang ang
mga ito sa kaganapan ng sining. Maliban na lamang kay Celso Ad.
Castillo na nailahok sa nominado. Naging kapansin-pansin ang simple
ngunit malalim niyang pagdulog sa kahingian ng papel na kanyang
ginampanan.

Patunay lamang ang pelikula sa kasabihan sa industriya na ang husay
ng alinmang produksiyon ay nagsisimula sa konsepto: sa iskrip. At ang
husay ng iskrip ay lalo lamang lilitaw kung mahusay ang produksiyon.

Turning a New Leaf By Patrick D. Flores

2008-12-07T22:13:00.000-08:00

repost from the 2002 YCC citations

Turning a New Leaf
By Patrick D. Flores

Uro de la Cruz’s Buko Pandan opens with a winding road that leads its
audiences through the heartland of Southern Tagalog, coconut country
of lush vegetation that glistens in the drizzle. A jeepney takes a
young woman to a remote neighborhood of tall plants and cool springs,
where she casts off a prisoner’s garb into the current of its storied
waters.

The film is marketed as being of the bold genre, and certain
conventions and codes bear this intention out. The evocation itself
of a milieu blessed by bounty and relatively unspoiled by the
corruption of the city and its mores builds up the image of a
virginal domain waiting to be explored and consequently ravaged by
the prurient eyes of the camera. But formula is one thing, and
expression is another. A certain style of filmmaking, based on genre
or other considerations, is taken as any distinct mode of creating
form in film, and it is made possible only against a background of
options that makes a particular choice significant, meaningful, and
therefore recognizable stylistically. Film artists work within these
possibilities in the process of making art, but are never limited to
custom and habit. As an erudite art historian puts it: “The style
forbids certain moves and recommends others as effective, but the
degree of latitude left to the individual within this system varies
at least as much as it does in games.”

We can glean in Buko Pandan traces of both rule and risk in the realm
of style. Apart from its captivating visual sweep of the countryside
peopled by farmers and police, it has for its main characters two
sisters on the cusp of womanhood, so to speak. They live with their
grandmother who is stricken by tuberculosis. Their father had drowned
in the river, which also had earlier claimed the life of their
grandfather who, in a freak accident, would be smothered by what
could well have been an eel. At the outset, the rustic province is
wracked by tragedies that lurk behind its deceptively benevolent
flora and fauna.

But besides natural adversities, our heroines also confront threats
posed by culture and civilization, a mode of modernity that
challenges tradition. The young women are portrayed as innocent
maidens traipsing across their little land in flimsy dresses,
obviously a concession to the genre. Their ways are girlish and
charge nary a malice even against the most lascivious, the better for
the men of the town to take advantage of them and indulge in their
guile. They are exposed, in other words, in more ways than one to the
conditions of labor as they weave palm-like fronds from seemingly
giant bromeliads into wide-brimmed hats, and to urbanization as they
deal with the bid of the son of a wealthy neighbor, who comes back
from the city, for the spring that they own. The man wants to build a
resort. We observe from these complications that the lives of Bining
and Esper are not trapped in a vacuum, but play out in social
situations. We see them going to school, listening to vapid radio
serials, and also dreaming of a future beyond Luisiana-Laguna.

As in tales of this streak, there is the moment of sibling rivalry.
We witness the sisters vying for the attention of the rich kid next
door, who exploits their varying vulnerabilities and aspirations for
mobility. The elder, Bining, is circumspect, refusing to sell the
spring down the river. But the younger, Esper, is impulsive, somewhat
rebellious, and less discerning. Both of them lust after the same
man, but it is the latter who musters up enough nerve to go up the
stone house. This single act of indiscretion steers the film toward
sharp turns that end up in murder and sacrifice.

Buko Pandan moves headlong by snaking into the memory of Bining who
does time for a crime Esper had committed out of a fatal combination
of guilt and rage. We see both of them in the end reunited, with
Esper tending their humble homestead in the contented arms of her
loving husband, her former childhood beau, and daughter, and with
Bining steeled by experience and insight. In this passage from purity
to pollution, from seduction to danger, from death to renewal, from
departure to homecoming, the “bold” film redeems itself. Instead of
abusing the theme of the rape of a virginal colony represented by
virginal women baring the abundance of their flesh and the poverty of
their mind, it bothers to understand what it is that women want and
why they want it under circumstances both within and beyond the
control of their limited reckoning.

This cinematic redemption keenly condenses in the metaphor of the
pandan whose leaf gives off a uniquely sweet scent, especially when
mixed with boiled rice, and whose fiber lends itself well to the art
of weaving. The buko or coconut is a more typical reference to rural
clearings and its limpid juice that drips across the bodies of women
is without doubt stock in trade.

All things considered, Buko Pandan is almost but not quite a bold
film. While it is true that its cast-Maricar de Mesa, Pyar Mirasol,
and Paolo Rivero-are packaged as bold stars, they hold out more than
their anatomies for autopsy. They perform very well, given the
parameters of the genre, and are sincere in infusing life into roles
that they, from the looks of it, are familiar and sympathetic with.
Moreover, while it is true that the film meets its quota of industry
requirements, it is able to go beyond its predestined outcome. The
director, with a degree of compassion for the material, carries the
seeds of the story to fertile ground, tilling a field of fruitful
images, motifs, symbols-and wistful music from Coritha. If what
hobbles Philippine cinema is the failure of imagination and
initiative, Buko Pandan, which echoes Claude Berri’s Jean de Florette
and Manon of the Spring, proves the cynics wrong to some tolerable
degree. For framing a bittersweet horizon of the Philippine pastoral
and its promise of plenty and perdition, the film, like the leaf it
lovingly invokes, is at once filament and fragrance. (Reprinted from
Manila Standard)

Rekompigurasyon ng Lipunan Alinsunod sa Pananaw ni Amanda ni Ni Ariel N. Valerio

2008-12-07T22:12:00.000-08:00

repost from the 2002 YCC citations

Rekompigurasyon ng Lipunan Alinsunod sa Pananaw ni Amanda
Ni Ariel N. Valerio

Pinaksa ng Dekada ’70 ang isa sa mga pinakamaligalig at pinakamasalimuot na yugto ng kontemporanyong lipunang Pilipino. Sa pagtatangka pa lamang na halughugin ang lalim at lawak ng naturang panahon, isang mabigat na atas na agad ang ipinatong ng pelikula sa
sarili at sa manonood nito. Sa pamamayani ng Batas Militar, maraming realidad ang siniil (suppressed), itinatwa (ignored) at binaligtad (inverted) ng estado upang panatilihin ang status quo; bagay na lubusang nagpahirap sa mga historyador upang kumpirmahin ang
makabuluhang kilos ng kasaysayan.

Mas mahirap ang naging gawain ng mga alagad ng sining sapagkat sila ang tuwirang target ng mekanismo ng kooptasyon. Ilang libro ang ipinalathala ni Marcos sa pangalan niya upang sustinihan ang propaganda ng “rebolusyon mula sa gitna”. May mga manunulat na kinabig ng estado upang magpalaganap ng “magandang balita” o ng
“bagong lipunan”. Itinatag din ang Cultural Center of the Philippines, Folk Arts Center, at ang Film Center upang umawit ng osana sa rehimen.

Sa huling bahagi ng dekada sitenta, polarisado na ang lipunan. Dalawa lamang ang pagpipilian ng artista: maging instrumento ng propaganda ng gobyerno o maging mapagpalayang tinig ng sambayanang Pilipino. Sa ganitong uri ng tunggalian, walang panggitna o nyutral na posisyon.

Isa ang nobelang Dekada ’70 sa mga likhang sining sa panahon ng Batas Militar na tuwirang tumuligsa sa diktadura ni Marcos. Ito ang pinagbatayan ng pelikulang dinirihe ni Chito Roño. Mula sa indibidwalisadong proseso ng produksyon (literatura), isinalin ang materyal sa isang mala-kolektibong proseso ng paglikha. Sa una, kontrolado ng manunulat bawat titik na gagamitin sa nobela; sa ikalawa, walang iisang pwersang maaaring magdikta ng direksyon.

Itinuturing na mala-kolektibo ang paglikha ng pelikula sapagkat kawangis ng proseso ang kolektibong pagdesisyon ng isang grupo ng mga indibidwal na nakatuon sa isang produkto. Ngunit hindi ito lubusang kolektibo dahil may de-kahong papel ang mga taong sangkot sa proseso-halimbawa, hindi maaaring pakialaman ng sinematograper ang editor-kaya wala ring nagaganap na palitan at negosasyon ng mga ideya. Sa halip, nagiging dominanteng pwersa ang prodyuser na may pangunahing interes hindi sa sining ng pelikula kundi sa kalansing ng pera sa takilya.

Kung gayon, tatlong pangunahing balakid ang agad matatagpuan sa landas ng paglikha ng pelikulang Dekada ’70: 1) paggagap sa kontekstong historikal, 2) pagsalin sa anyong pampelikula, at 3) pagtugon sa kahingian ng industriya nang hindi ikinokompromiso ang sining.

Paano humulagpos ang pelikula sa mga balakid na ito?

Paggagap sa kontekstong historikal

Mayaman sa historikal na alusyon ang pelikula. Pinagsikapan nitong isabuhay ang mga pangkalahatang katangian ng panahon-rali ng mga estudyante, pag-alis ng writ of habeas corpus, pagdeklara ng Batas Militar, pagpataw ng curfew, human rights violations, paglawak ng kilusang protesta. Tumatahi sa mga ito ang mga mumunting pangyayari
sa pang-araw-araw na buhay ng pamilya Bartolome-pamumundok ni Jules, pagsali ni Gani sa US Navy, pagkapatay kay Jason-na walang humpay ding nagpatahip sa dibdib ni Amanda at nagpatingkad sa tunggalian nila ni Julian.

Nagbukas at nagsara ang pelikula sa tila dokumentaryong film clips ng multi-sektoral na kilos-protesta laban sa diktadura ni Marcos. Isa-isang tinalunton pagkatapos ang mga insidenteng nagpamulat sa isang ordinaryong maybahay tulad ni Amanda. Mapapansing hindi hiwalay ang pagtalakay sa pangkalahatang sitwasyon ng lipunan sa partikular
na kondisyon ng pamilyang Bartolome. Maipagpapalagay, kung gayon, na
itinaguyod ng pelikula ang paradimang “ang personal ay pulitikal.”

“Ang mga kamay na nag-uugoy ng duyan ang mga kamay na nagpapaikot ng mundo,” wika ni Amanda sa simula ng pelikula. Ito ang tesis na binigyan ng kontra-tesis sa patriarkal na pananaw ni Julian. “It’s a man’s world,” mayabang na bigkas ng lalaki habang nasa hapag ang buong pamilya. “Every man must have something to die for,” uulitin niya sa ibang okasyon, “para matawag siyang lalaki.”

Nagsalimbayan ang kontradiksyon sa tatlong lunan ng lahi, uri at
sari. Walang linyar na pokus ang pagpapatampok sa mga ito. Sa halip,
dumaloy ang buong kwento sa kamalayan ni Amanda. Nagtapos ito sa
personal na rekompigurasyon ng babae sa kanyang lipunan habang
patuloy ding nagbabago ang kanyang materyal na kondisyon.

Paghulagpos sa anyo

Sa isang pormalistang suri, bagsak talaga ang Dekada ’70. Buhaghag
ang naratibo. Hindi nakatulong ang ibang eksena para patindihin ang
kasukdulan. Palipat-lipat ang punto de bista sa loob at labas ng
tahanan, kamalayan at lipunan ni Amanda.

Ngunit kung babakasin ang pelikula mula sa nobela, napakalayo ng
narating ng Dekada ’70. Mula simpleng pagsipi ng mga taludtod mula sa
The Prophet ni Kahlil Gibran, napatingkad ng pelikula ang kabuluhan
ng mga ito sa pamamagitan ng mga tauhan. Mula pagsipi ng datos sa
Ibon Facts and Figures, isinabuhay ng pelikula ang sanhi ng paglawak
ng protesta. Gayundin, mula sa mga larawang iginuhi ng mga salita ni
Lualhati Bautista sa nobela, nabuhay ang mga karakter upang patuloy
na ipagunita sa manonood ang pinakamadilim na yugto ng
kontemporanyong kasaysayang Pilipino.

Humulagpos ang pelikula mula sa nobela. Sinubukan ding humulagpos ng
pelikula sa sarili nitong genre. Sinimulan ni Lino Brocka sa
Orapronobis ang pagpasok ng documentary film clips sa pagitan ng mga
eksenang dramatiko. Itinuloy ito ni Joel Lamangan sa ilang pelikula
tulad ng Flor Contemplacion. Mas pinong bersyon ang matatagpuan sa
Dekada ’70-binuksan at isinara ang naratibo sa taas-kamao at
multi-sektoral na kilos-protesta ngunit hindi nagpatali sa
preskribtibong pormula ng mapagpalayang kilusan.

Suma total ang isang pelikulang bakubako tulad ng mga lansangan sa
kanayunan, humahampas tulad ng mga alon sa batuhan, humuhugong tulad
ng hangin kapag may sigwa.

Humulagpos ang pelikula sa anyo at nilalaman, tulad ng paghulagpos ni
Amanda sa mapaniil na lipunang patriarkal.

Pagtugon sa gusto ng takilya

Gayumpaman, hindi nagbulag-bulagan ang mga lumikha ng pelikula sa
kahingian ng industriya.

Nariyan ang mabentang tambalan nina Christopher de Leon at Vilma
Santos. Binigyan ng sapat na espasyo ang matinee idols na gumanap
bilang mga anak ng mag-asawang Bartolome. Kalakip din ang masisidhing
eksena ng personal na tunggalian upang magpaluha, magpasaya,
magpagunita at magpamulat kung kailangan.

Maliban sa paggamit ng mga elementong panghatak sa manonood-na
talamak sa industriya ng pelikulang Pilipino ngayon-sinubukan din ng
pelikulang gamitin ang mga elementong ito upang makapagbukas ng mga
bintana sa kamalayan ng madlang manonood.

Sintesis ng salimbayan

Ilang ulit nang inokupa ng iba’t ibang uri ng lipunan ang EDSA bilang
tarangkahan ng kapangyarihan ngunit hindi minsan man naglingon-likod
sa mahabang panahon ng pakikibaka mula huling hati ng dekada sisenta
hanggang unang hati ng dekada otsenta.

Sa halip, laging ibinabaon sa limot ang panahong iyon ng pagpupunyagi
upang maipundar ang isang kilusang mapagpalayang nakaugat sa
Rebolusyong 1896 at nagtataguyod sa mga mithiin ng higit na
nakararaming Pilipino.

Kamakailan, inamin ng isang mataas na opisyal ng US ang pakikialam ng
kanyang bansa sa EDSA 1986. Isang bagay na agad itinatwa ng ilan sa
mga tagapagtaguyod ng naturang rebelyon. Isang bagay namang ikinatuwa
ng anak ng dating Pangulong Marcos dahil lumabas din daw sa wakas ang
katotohanan na ang Rebelyong 1986 dinesenyo ng Amerika. Samakatwid,
hindi ito maituturing na lehitimong rebolusyon kundi isang kudeta.

Hanggat patuloy na inililibing sa puntod ng kasaysayan ang panahong
ito, patuloy na magmumulto ang mga Pilipinong itinimbuwang ng
karahasan sa gitna ng pambansang pakikibaka laban sa diktadura.

Ito ang halaga ng pelikulang Dekada ’70 na hindi kayang igpawan ng
mga kaalinsabay nito-pagbalik-tanaw sa panahong nagluwal sa mga
bayaning walang pangalan tungo sa paglaya ng bayan. Habang
nagsasawalang kibo ang maraming Pilipino sa tunay na kabuluhan ng
panahong ito, patuloy na gagamitin ng iba’t ibang pwersa ang kilusang
naipundar ng luha at dugo ng mga Pilipinong nagmahal sa sariling
bayan. Isang testimonya ang pelikula sa kamalayang hindi magagapi at
patuloy na magsasatinig sa katotohanan.

Mahalaga ring bigyang-pansin na isinagawa ang balik-tanaw sa
kamalayan ni Amanda at sa pagkilos ng kanyang mga kamay na nag-ugoy
ng duyan. Sa madaling salita, muling sinipat ang kasaysayan sa
pananaw ng babae. Ngunit sa halip na baligtarin ang katotohanan upang
mangibabaw ang kababaihan-tulad ng madalas gawin ng radikal na
feminismo-itinuring ni Amanda ang asawa bilang kahati, karugtong ng
buhay, kaisang-dibdib.

Sa multi-sektoral na pakikibaka, kapit-kamay ang lalaki at babae
gayundin ang iba’t ibang uri ng lipunan upang isakatuparan ang
rekompigurasyon ng lipunang Pilipino. Ito ang resolusyon ng
kontradiksyon. Ito rin ang siyang tutunguhin ng Pilipinas sa mga
darating na panahon.

A handful of gems by Nonoy Lauzon

2008-12-07T22:01:00.000-08:00

repost from the 2002 YCC citations

A handful of gems
Nonoy Lauzon

FOR Film Year 2002, the Film Desk of the Young Critics Circle reviewed a total of 94 films that comprised the full output of local cinema in the given period. It was no less a daunting task. Dying it may seem, Philippine cinema remains one of the most prolific motion picture industries in the world. Sadly, what it delivers in quantity, it cannot in quality. Out of scores of homegrown productions last year, YCC found just a handful that could be considered meritorious and deserving of the critics' honors.

The local film industry has patents for plenty hoaxes and they cloud the truthful pursuit for recognizing cinematic excellence. Luckily in its incessant commitment to foster an alternative and emergent articulation of the practice of criticism, YCC-never falling prey-is not to be duped. For the 13th Annual Circle Citations for Distinguished Achievement in Film, YCC had to overturn the decisions of two festival juries and uphold the integrity of certain films
whose worth the industry with its twisted standards and through its coterie of apologists and paid hacks would readily dismiss.

Foremost of the films YCC holds in high regard is Chito S. Roño's Dekada '70 (Star Cinema)-adjudged Best Film of the Year. As any work of art, the film is not perfect. But its tale of a plain housewife's political and social awakening is not to be resisted. It came at a time when the industry mainstream had rendered out of vogue the making of films of this sort-the better to distort the moviegoing
public's notion of good films and manipulate them into patronizing exclusively mediocre and seemingly innocuous fare instead. Apparently, the merchants of the celluloid are too consumed in self-preservation that they wouldn't want the status quo shaken and the order of things altered even a bit. They are afraid of truly good films as these have power to transform society simply by illuminating
reality and providing enlightenment to the viewing throng. For them, some things in the past are best forgotten. When certain films lead viewers to a remembrance of things that they should rather forget in keeping with the designs of the powers-that-be, it's bad for business and there is cause for alarm.

From the screenplay of Lualhati Bautista based on her Palanca award-winning novel, Dekada '70 is one of those films that are to be dreaded and its critical and popular rejection is one of those elaborate schemes that have to be hatched if the existing order of things had to prevail. In the interest of the status quo, the film has to be shunned, subdued and suppressed. As it enjoins audiences to
revisit the horrible episode in the country's past, it opens a can of worms that could spell disaster for the current state of affairs and jeopardize in effect the high stakes waged by the present dispensation's very overlords.

In this sense, the ultimate triumph of Dekada '70 lies not so much in recounting the horrors of Martial Law but in taking into account how one can embrace social change and follow the path towards struggle. This is dramatized in the metaphorical odyssey taken by the film's central figure, a wife and mother named Amanda Bartolome. At first, she would think that pleasing her husband and raising her five boys are all that matters in life. When monstrosities entailed by the turbulent times would prove otherwise, she would come to realize that to be a dutiful wife and loving mother means nothing amidst the
social landscape without the wheels of justice, suffused with the spilt blood of oppression and severely debilitated by rampant poverty. The abiding wife and caring mother would then stop just tending to her home to reach out to the larger society that she would find in need too of her cradling. The symbolic trek Amanda would set out to embark on could nevertheless be hers alone. It must also be the inspiring odyssey involving countless others that audiences may
do well to emulate for the valor and resolve they exemplify in taking up a cause. Dekada '70 pays homage to them as well. The film is also recognized for Best Screenplay, Best Achievement in Sound which includes music and Best Performance by the mother-and-son team of Vilma Santos and Piolo Pascual.

In addition to Dekada '70, YCC also honors more titles that encompass a gamut of fulfilled cinematic possibilities. They complete YCC's roster of top films for the year. Gil M. Portes' Mga Munting Tinig (Teamwork Productions; Maverick Films; CAP Philippines)-to the shallow mind-is a poor ersatz film with a lofty dream to break into the world market. But lost on its jaded detractors is the supreme value of the film in igniting the flames of idealism embodied by the
character of a remote barrio's novice teacher who shall exhaust all means for her deprived wards to gain a chance in life. Music would be the key to their salvation and it would be compellingly demonstrated how the pursuit of art could prod hapless innocents to surpass Third World squalor.

Winner of Best Achievement in Film Editing, Edgardo "Boy" Vinarao's Diskarte (Maverick Films)-a fast-paced action film-is a sprawling indictment of the country in the pits. It postulates that chaos and disorder in the land persist with a useless bureaucracy overrun by thieves and scalawags. Diskarte is alright a cops-and-robbers story. But the line dividing the good guys from the bad guys is gray. The hero himself is not a good and honest cop. There are good and honest
cops but they are not the stereotype of the good and honest cop. Meanwhile, the robbers are hoodlums in uniform, law enforcers dabbling in all illegal activities and high police officials who as private people are interesting and colorful in their own right. One is a doting father to a little girl completely clueless of the evil deeds of the man who sired her. Another gets loose bowels when
cowering in fear. Then there is a police asset who is gay. A disadvantaged senior citizen who makes a living as a scavenger and loves listening to opera music as a hobby would play the Good Samaritan to the aggrieved protagonist in a most poignant enactment of commiseration and solidarity. Joining the fray are two
contrasting sisters both engaged in the sex trade and would be entangled in the crossfire between warring camps of corrupt police.

Francis "Jun" Posadas' Itlog (Seiko Films) seeks to recast the patriarchal system and strip it of its pretensions for benevolence as well as its illusions of omnipotence and invincibility. The film engagingly interweaves the individual histories of five people-a daughter forced into marriage to pay the debt of her late father; an egg farm's kindhearted patriarch married to her; a prodigal son with film ambition; a reforming ex-con who would serve as surrogate son to
the abandoned father and a scheming screen starlet bent on reconciling the feuding father and son with motives not exactly altruistic. A bonus attraction is the appearance of a homecoming japayuki to act as some oracle that would lend the voice of wisdom and foresee the denouement of one household's tragic fall.

Uro Q. de la Cruz' Buko Pandan (World Arts Cinema) is very much a tale of female empowerment masquerading as a skinflick that appears, on the surface, to capitalize on the naked female body and some steamy sex to generate fast bucks at the tills. In truth, it shows the clear road to retribution for victimized and violated women away from what conventional moralizing dictates and the penal code stipulates.

One last film has to be added to YCC's short list of gems for the year. Although not cited in the best film category, Yam Laranas' Ikaw Lamang, Hanggang Ngayon (Viva Entertainment-winner of Best Achievement in Cinematography and Visual Design) is to be celebrated for casting a cinematic eye at some of Manila's old landmarks to serve as backdrop for the bittersweet affair of a pair of vacillating lovers. It offers quite a reprieve and is a rare departure from the
usual inane and antiseptic romance pics drenching local screens all year.

The Young Critics Circle Film Desk 18th Annual Citation for Distinguished Achievement in Film for 2007

2008-12-02T17:12:00.000-08:00

View the publication here :)

http://eloindigoart.multiply.com/journal/item/134/The_Young_Critics_Circle_Film_Desk_18th_Annual_Citation_for_Distinguished_Achievement_in_Film_for_2007

Unmoving Cinema

2008-08-14T21:32:00.000-07:00

Eileen Legaspi-Ramirez

The year 2007 saw Lav Diaz’s cinematic argument for Malay time embodied in the lingering musings of his Venice Biennale special prize winner, Death in the Land of Encantos. In the film, poet-philosopher Benjamin Agusan’s homecoming from a scholar-exile’s jaunt through Europe occasions his reckoning with abandoned relations—blood-filial/creative and ideological comrades, earthly and otherwise. The lead character’s self-referenced taking stock interlaced with the off-cam presence of a journalist shooting footage of the desolate spaces of by-then boulder-strewn Padang in Bicol occasionally comes interrupted by Benjamin’s brooding encounters with fellow poet Teodoro and erstwhile partner, the visual artist Catalina. Their verbal tussles over their own and collective pasts and futures thicken the layers of dredged up tales of spirits entombed in a terrestrial radius wiped out by typhoon Reming topped off by the subsequent surging ecological comeuppance of Mount Mayon.

As in previous projects like Batang Westside, Ebolusyon ng Isang Pamilyang Pilipino, and Heremias Book One: The Legend of the Lizard Princess, Diaz plants his camera statically for most parts of the meandering journey taken by Benjamin alongside spirits haunting places within which seminal events in his life occur--such as his mother slowly lapsing into insanity, a lover leaving him behind on the streets of Kaluga, Russia even as he mourns the loss of a child, etc. Diaz’s camera here is terra firma, playing counterpoint to the heady roundabout, floating-in-the-ether exchanges one could easily eavesdrop on in run-of-the-mill artist-activist haunts and drinking sessions. In Death in the Land of Encantos, the camera comes cast as pensive anchor, a stoic, unobtrusive presence that never hurries viewers unto narrative turns nor neatly tidied up resolutions. It makes for a virtually motionless cinema congruent with a time and place rendered immobile by ingrained inertia, tragedy, betrayal, and blasé state inaction.

Encantos’ visual scape is in fact as sullen and still as Diaz’s camera, with scenes so subtly lit that they keep to the grey, barren, and pared down tone painstakingly throughout the 538-minute cinematic engagement. Within it, the image rhythm is dissonant, congruent with the weaving together of memory, myth, and presumably unedited truth, cutting in and out of what is framed as documentary footage and the intimate moments between Benjamin and personas of his past.

Much has already been said about Diaz’s particular streak of endurance cinema coaxing anything but neutral reactions from viewers opting to either sit through entire or even disjointed segments of his lengthy films. This high-stake cineaste-go-the-distance taunt that underlines his film-making unarguably demands earnest investments of dedicated viewing and stretched cognitive skills. And yet while Diaz makes the case for an alternative regard for time and space (alternative that is to the rigid formula of moviehouse ticket turnarounds triggering the humming of cinema tills) ironically, it is the large proportion of Malays in his own immediate backyard that may still be the least able to watch his most recent cinema. While successfully and dramatically departing from his early mainstream work (Burger Boys, Serafin Geronimo: Kriminal ng Baryo Concepcion, Hesus Rebolusyonaryo) which arguably kept to studio stipulations vis-à-vis running time and casting, the truth remains that it would be supreme sacrifice for a Filipino living off a daily wage of P382 to opt into a day-long Lav Diaz filmic tale, assuming they would want to watch this sort of films in the first place.

So apart from earnest affinity with his work, it may still well be, the utter auteurial and indie groupie conceit, of nearly zero accountability and maximum self indulgence that keeps a niche audience aligned behind Diaz. With his obvious disavowal of the mass audience, and apparently employing this tactical dogma/tism as shield to keep market demand at bay, Diaz’s viewers may continue to imperiously pause, revel in their exalted notch above the festival throng, while making much of their trying to make sense of these films. And while it may precisely be Diaz’s tortuous, stream of consciousness shot-making which challenges fastfood cinema provisos, this will also play very much into which voices will get to weigh in on the contentious place Diaz’s films will ultimately be accorded in critical film history.

Yet in the specific case of Death in the Land of Encantos, it is indeed a yawning pace of a story that imaginably comes together in real time in the writer’s mind as it unfolds as leisurely onscreen. And with all that the luxury that that contemplation presupposes, the film’s organic, non-linear working out of questions on art, life and ultimate survival options are pondered upon in plain view with the alternately somber and heightened emotional tension milked rather than truncated. And this is perhaps why there appears to be no middle ground in the appreciative spectrum in relation to Diaz, with his films engendering either a welling up of empathy or sheer indifference, if not disgust. It is after all, for all intents and purposes, a solicited engagement, one that makes viewers wager a position rather than hibernate in nonchalance.

Abetted by the user-friendliness of digital cinema-making, much of Diaz’s latter work unfolds in the D-I-Y pace of read text. Shot and re-told in this vein by an artiste striking out on his own terms and squarely facing the begrudging for it, Death in the Land of Encantos makes for a small-big film, simultaneously epic on many counts yet visibly spartan in other respects as in its production design made manifest in Diaz’s apt banking on nature’s givens.

By intelligently siting Encantos in physical reference to his own notion of home, that is, in the locale of typhoon- and landslide-ravaged Bicol, Diaz ably invokes stasis and silence as key metaphors. In the film’s stifled landscape of a tenuously stilled volcano looming over stilled lives woven into a virtually still narrative, we find our characters and selves perennially waiting, on the precipice of stupor and turbulence. In this particular made-up world, every character apart from nature, is infinitesimal, dwarfed or literally washed out by boulders and surging topsoil; all apparently disposable in the midst of personal and shared grief, where all are left pining—a partner-model, fellow artist-comrades, and finally an abandoned land itself-–all left fallow, wanting for the returning of waylaid heroes toting a glint of redemption. All this, while Encantos’ dystopic desolation translates into a blank slate yearning for alternate endings.

Undeniably writing and weaving stories primarily for himself and any other soul with the wherewithal and stamina to journey with him, Diaz, like most of what makes up the indie world was reared on a type of film education that stuck its finger against what was trite and popular. The irony is that the film crowd that gravitates to work such as this today, while indisputably growing in numbers, still exists as seductive niche to marketers hunting down the next big juiciest milking cow. While still primarily talking only to each other, the onset of Indie Sine Cinemalaya-Cinemanila-Cinema One festival ad infinitum notwithstanding, filmmaker and audience in this ragtag cosmos will ultimately need to reckon with how wide an orbit it will actually drift within particularly since there is nothing intrinsically incorruptible about the films coming out of this as-for-now still alternative economy.

In fact, Diaz’s case may be instructive particularly because of the artist’s perceived stature in the eyes of emerging film makers in this burgeoning environment. And so perhaps what is precisely behind the unsettled critical response to Diaz and his ilk consists of a requisite navel-gazing, of an independent cinema slowly coming of age.

Unapologetically wrapped up in his own poetics nuanced by years of crafting images hewn in police beat-pop culture journalism and TV writing, Diaz renders Encantos with a confident visual impeccability. With most scenes coming to bear on the viewer as stubbornly unflinching stares unto a grey world of unanswered questions and nagging ambiguities integral to Encantos’ filmic un/reality of toned down art, Diaz serves up an upturned dialectics of beauty and terror of uncompromising visual integrity which the Young Critics Circle Film Desk cites this film for in year 2007.

In the end, Diaz and his film engineer their own small deaths, failing to leave the embattled landscape unbruised nor unscathed. By juxtaposing the physical torture of Benjamin Augustin with his military assailant’s rabid mouthing of an upended national anthem, Encantos implicates both state and storyteller apparently succumbing to the pathos of cast-off promise and imposed disappearance.

YCC Awards 2007

2008-08-03T07:42:00.000-07:00

YCC AWARDS
True big guns of Philippine cinema gather for one whole afternoon

The Film Desk of the Young Critics Circle finally holds its formal ceremonies to honor the elite circle of winners for the 18th Annual Circle Citations (YCC Awards) for Distinguished Achievement in Film for 2007 this Thursday, 7 August 2008, from 1 to 5 p.m. at the Pulungang Recto of Bulwagang Rizal (Faculty Center Conference Hall) in UP Diliman.

Brillante “Dante” Mendoza, Lav Diaz and Nick Deocampo are the truly great guns and symbolic tycoons of Philippine cinema gracing the affair. Mendoza (Best Picture for Foster Child) and Diaz (Best Achievement in Cinematography and Visual Design for Death in the Land of Encantos) lead this year’s YCC honorees. Deocampo delivers the keynote address—signaling the first time a filmmaker is handpicked for the annual pivotal task that has now become YCC tradition. Scholars, academics, critics in different fields of fine and liberal arts not alone cinema have previously done the honors.

Heavy star power is provided by Jason Abalos—this year’s Best Performance winner for Endo which also won Best Achievement in Film Editing and Best Achievement in Sound and Aural Orchestration. Aside from bagging the top plum—the Best Picture prize awarded in the prestige style of international film festivals to the director, Foster Child won Best Screenplay.

A list of complete winners and nominees for this year’s YCC film awards by categories is as follows:

Best Film of the Year
Winner: Foster Child directed by Brillante Mendoza (Seiko Films; Robbie Tan, Executive Producer)
Nominee: Endo directed by Jade Francis Castro (ufo Pictures; Ned Trespeces, Michiko Yamamoto, Emmanuel de la Cruz and Raymond Lee, Producers)

Best Screenplay
Winner: Foster Child (Seiko Films) – Ralston Jover
Nominee: Endo (ufo Pictures) – Jade Francis Castro, Michiko Yamamoto and Raymond Lee

Best Achievement in Cinematography and Visual Design
Winner: Death in the Land of Encantos (Sine Olivia) – Lav Diaz, Director of Photography; Dante Perez, Production Designer
Nominees:
Foster Child (Seiko Films) – Odyssey Flores, Director of Photography; Ben Padero, Production Designer
Still Life (Sining Ko Ito Productions) – Dan Villegas, Director of Photography; Cris Silva, Production Designer
Tirador (Centerstage) – Brillante Mendoza, Julius Villanueva, Jeffrey de la Cruz, Gary Tria, Directors of Photography; Deans Habal, Harley Alcasid, Production Designers

Best Achievement in Film Editing
Winner: Endo (ufo Pictures) – JD Domingo
Nominee: Tirador (Centerstage) – Charliebebs Gohetia

Best Achievement in Sound and Aural Orchestration
Winner: Endo (ufo Pictures) – Corinne de San Jose Cruz and Mark Locsin, Sound Engineers; Owel Alvero, Musical Director
Nominees:
Still Life (Sining Ko Ito Productions) – Joey Santos, Sound Engineer; Wincy Ong, Musical Director
Tirador (Centerstage) – Ditoy Aguila and Junel Valencia , Sound Engineers; Tere Barrozo, Musical Director

Best Performance by Male or Female, Adult or Child, Individual or Ensemble in Leading or Supporting Role
Winner: Jason Abalos in Endo (ufo Pictures)
Nominees:
Cherry Pie Picache in Foster Child (Seiko Films)
Eugene Domingo in Foster Child (Seiko Films)
Ron Capinding in Still Life (Sining Ko Ito Productions)

Established in 1990, YCC is the academe-based critics group with members coming from various disciplines. Through the years, they have become attentive observers of Philippine cinema constantly bringing into the analysis of film an interdisciplinary approach.

The organization departs from many conventions of other award-giving bodies both here and abroad in bestowing cinematic honors. For instance, the award for Best Film of the Year is reserved for the director such that no separate prize for direction is needed. The Best Performance award is most coveted as it is conferred on a screen performer whether male or female, adult or child, individual or as part of an ensemble, in leading or supporting role. To uphold a more dynamic and encompassing way of looking at films, technical honors refer to fusion of outstanding efforts in fields otherwise deemed apart. In this case, the Best Cinematography and Visual Design recognition covers both camerawork and art direction. Similarly, Best Sound and Aural Orchestration encompasses not just sound engineering per se but musical score as well. #

Cinemalaya 2008 at the UP FIlm Institute

2008-07-22T23:28:00.000-07:00

CINEMALAYA 2008

UP Film Institute

July 28 Mon

Manuel Conde Retro: Genghis Khan 2:30 p.m.

Baby Angelo 5 p.m.

Concerto 7:30 p.m.

July 29 Tue

Cinemalaya’s Past Best Pictures Showcase: Pepot Artista 2:30 p.m.

Jay 5 p.m.

Huling Pasada 7:30 p.m.

July 30 Wed

Cinemalaya’s Past Best Pictures Showcase: Tulad ng Dati 2:30 p.m.

Brutus 5 p.m.

Namets 7:30 p.m.

July 31 Thu

Cinemalaya’s Past Best Pictures Showcase: Tribu 2:30 p.m.

100 5 p.m.

My Fake American Accent 7:30 p.m.

(Aug 1 Fri

Ishmael Bernal Gallery Night with Film Premiere of Adolf Alix’s Imoral 7:30 p.m.)

Aug 2 Sat

Endo 2/5/7 p.m.

Aug 4 Mon

Anita Linda Tribute: Tambolista 2:30 p.m.

Boses 5 p.m.

Ranchero 7:30 p.m.

Aug 5 Tue

Manuel Conde Retro: Krus na Kawayan 2:30 p.m.

Cinemalaya 2008 Competing Shorts A 5 p.m.

Cinemalaya 2008 Competing Shorts B 7:30 p.m.

Aug 6 Wed

Anita Linda Tribute: Sisa 2:30 p.m.

Cinemalaya 2008 Special Jury Prize Winner 5 p.m.

Cinemalaya 2008 Best Picture 7:30 p.m.

Aug 7 Thu

Donsol 2:30 p.m.

Kadin 5 p.m.

Anita Linda Tribute: Sisa 7:30 p.m.

KAPAG HUMUSGA ANG BATAS NG PUSO

2008-06-27T01:33:00.000-07:00

KAPAG HUMUSGA ANG BATAS NG PUSO
Joey Baquiran
REPOST

Puwede bang ma-inlove ang matrona sa binata?Puwedeng-puwede naman pero tiyak na makatitikim ngmaanghang na mga pasaring ang di-karaniwang relasyon.Ganito ang nangyari kina Judge Dorinda vda. deRoces (Ms. Nora Aunor) at Noah Garcia (Yul Servo) saNaglalayag (Silent Passage) ng Angora Films. Sang-ayonsa pelikula, “paglalakbay sa dagat” at “dahan-dahangpagtigil ng regla” ang “naglalayag.” Sa unang eksena,tinagusan si Dorinda; nakita ang mantsa ng dugo nanghubarin niya ang togang simbolo ng kapangyarihan.

Hindi na bagong dugo si Ms. Aunor ngunit inaasahang marami pa siyang dugong puwedeng ibuhoskung pag-arte ang pag-uusapan. Bagay sa kaniya angpapel na ginagampanan dahil kaedad niya ang tauhan.Pero batayang kahingian na ito sa casting.

Pagod na raw si Ms. Aunor sa sining ng pag-arte natatlong dekada na niyang binubuno. Para sa ilan pa,nakakapagod na ang panonood sa kaniya. Pero nagdedeliber pa rin si Ms. Aunor ng inaasahang dapatideliber ng isang ikono ng pelikulang Filipino na katuladniya.

Sa Naglalayag, may ningning pa rin ang mata ni Ms.Aunor; nagpapahayag ng masasalimuot na damdamin ngbabaeng may gulang, may hawak na kapangyarihan, at iginagalang pero unti-unting bumigay sa alon ng bagongpag-ibig. Nakakaalibadbad, nakakaasiwa, nakakadiri panga para sa iba ang isiping ma-inlove ang gurang sabata.

Ang mahigpit na paghahatakan ng pag-ibig at reputasyonsa lipunan ay magiting na isinakatawan ni Ms. Aunor sabawat eksena. Ang mga lambingan nila ni Yul Servo aykomiko pero nagpapabigat din sa pagbabadya ng daratingna batikos sa kanilang relasyon. Sa mga eksenangtrahiko, ang pagtirik ng mata ni Ms. Aunor (nangibalita sa kaniyang napatay ng mga holdaper si YulServo) ay lumalagom na sa pagbagsak ng buong daigdigng huwes (na nagdadalantao pa mandin).

Isang matingkad na pagganap ang inihain ni Ms. Aunorsa Naglalayag. Gayunman, hindi nito ganap na mahahangoang naratibo sa mga kakulangang sosyolohiko atartistiko. Naghihintay pa ng higit na karapat-dapat namateryal ang di-nauubos na talento ni Ms. Aunor.Patuloy ang paglalayag. Romulo P. Baquiran, Jr.

Cinema as Caterwaul

2008-06-27T01:29:00.000-07:00

Cinema as Caterwaul

by Patrick D. Flores

REPOST

A tarpaulin poster accosts you as you enter the movie house where Pusang Gala is screened. Printed on it are ecstatic endorsements of the film from mainstream scribes, broadsheet and tabloid regulars who are long on their praises but short on their scrutiny. The hype of this recent release is typical, inflated by all sorts of claims: that it was shot digitally then transferred onto film, that it dares speak the sub rosa voices of dissident sexualities, and that it is an independent film from filmmakers who have other things to say besides platitudes. There is an implicit heroism in this posture, a stance against the common and the known.

This ploy, which heavily trades on the prestige of the much-abused term alternative, psyches up uninitiated viewers and earnest cineastes to be impressed, maybe even inspired by the sheer flair and temerity. They will also be inclined to like and cherish the film, read some profound insight into it, walk away from it feeling good about their part in the heady movement of new cinema in the Philippines.

In this situation, film is sort of wrought to become an instrument of national development and global competition. Here, an industry is saved by reforms within the system so that it could function properly in the trade and contribute positively to the general economy. Such is the premise of government investment in a national cinema, aside from its interest in its effective channels for ideological engineering. Cinema thus ceases to be an artistic defense against prevailing untruths and degenerates into a tool of the survival of an order under the banner of the “alternative.” This is what the vogue of independent cinema in these parts is all about: an alibi of the business to make itself over, to take on another guise, to trick viewers into believing they are witnessing new visions whenever they behold reformatted apparitions.

This is why films that do not secure the blessings of the gatekeepers of the State and the market, who conspicuously promote independent cinema in easy mantras, are more interesting. For instance, Yam Laranas’ Sigaw and Brillante Mendoza’s Masahista, which were scrupulously appraised in Los Angeles and Locarno respectively, were largely unheralded, almost weaned away from the publicity machinery of cultural and media brokers who trumpet the advent of independent cinema in very arriviste ways. They might prove to be the more textured specimens of a different breed of films, their spirit more genuine, if only because they have been able to resist the stage management of the hired hands of the establishment who continually sit in juries, get quoted as arbiters of taste, and even teach courses in filmmaking at the height of self-importance and self-perpetuation.

This is, of course, for the most part fantasy, which is a fitting complement to the seriocomic Pusang Gala, helmed by Ellen Ongkeko-Marfil. It conveniently blurs the borders between “reality” and “fiction,” the better to mask its inability to cross the gaps between these poles, granting they exist, and to come to grips with the complications of a dense social context. The film makes it appear that its agenda is complicated; actually, it is simple-minded. The scenario: Two friends and neighbors, a gay man and a single woman advertising executive, go through the travails of love and lust. He houses a lover of the working class, who finds him predatory and thus treats him as fair game for reciprocal predation. She keeps an affair with a lothario who takes her for granted, lies to her face, but makes her deliriously blissful in bed. Both coveted lovers, swines among pearls, betray them; proletariat sodomist rips off romance-writer benefactor, who incidentally takes under his wings a stowaway, and vain stud tells his pregnant damsel, after not seeing her for three months, he could not marry her. All this leads to loss: Boy toy kills street kid and lady-in-waiting tries to kill herself. They endure by indulging their affectations: roses in the garden, gayspeak gossip, whining and dining, and even a lapse of sexual liaison.

Whether in fantasy or waking life, the hapless victims of failed aspirations become murderous, their drama and laughter ultimately overcome by trite grief, their decisions shaped by questionable psychosis to which the film caters with tiresome solicitude. Like the fictions in their minds that do not sell because the public allegedly subsists on more exciting tales, the pair sells out but nevertheless wallows in the conceit of correctness and the righteous indignation against discrimination, which is alluded to polemically and not thought through with care. The eccentricity that the film tries hard to simulate – complete with hectic cinematography, self-conscious inter-cutting, and tiresome parallel editing – could have yielded gains had it been presented as a foil to the rationality of heterosexist habits; its edge could have been sharpened had it been engaged with more friction and tangential resistance from wayward creatures, as well as with the realization that while gays and working women who stay away from their families give full play to romance and sentiment, this reckless, unruly, and potentially radical energy also needs to be tempered by reflection and a keen sensitivity to excess and malice.

That the cast responds to the film’s cavalier demands with alacrity does not help. Ricky Davao’s depiction of gayness is stock-in-trade and Irma Adlawan, unloading her full thespian weight, is eternally existential, as if her character did not emerge from a social condition. The rest of the ensemble are textbook fixtures. This overall failure stems from the haphazard direction of an irresponsible script, based on a play by the co-writer of one of Philippine filmography’s debacles, Marilou Diaz-Abaya’s Jose Rizal.

If this flick of no charm is the face of independent cinema that embodies the much-needed transformation in Philippine filmmaking and if digital technology is chiefly used to refurbish an obviously worn out commercial furniture, then it is safe to declare that the box-office raid of D’Anothers is richly deserved. My friend quips that Pusang Gala is a stray film about stray cats, to which I retort that this tedious exercise is a long drawn caterwaul. Or is it merely a whimper – and the putative Philippine independent cinema a sorry purr?

Aishite Imasu, Mahal Kita—1941

2008-06-27T01:28:00.000-07:00

Aishite Imasu, Mahal Kita—1941
Nonoy L.Lauzon
REPOST

Gay presence in Philippine cinema has always been problematic. More often than not, the homosexual is depicted as a marginalized and disempowered entity, a cardboard character, a caricature that is an object of disdain or ridicule if not a source of comic relief or simply a fixture in aid of slapstick.

It is not the concern of Joel Lamangan’s Aishite Imasu, Mahal Kita—1941 (Regal; Basfilm) to depart from such tradition of portraying gays. In developing for the screen its central figure, there is no clear effort to picture the homosexual being beyond its projection as some exotic grotesquerie fit for the carnival. It doesn’t help that the main protagonist dies towards the end of the film as the filmmakers’ probable notion of gay lib is fixated on professing a testament to one gay’s martyrdom for the sake of an occupied motherland.

Needless to say, such standpoint advances no good cause and in fact is inimical to the very interest of the marginalized gay sector whose contribution to the society at large that represses it must always be properly highlighted whenever an occasion comes around if only to serve the purposes of empowerment. Thus, the fundamental flaw of films like Aishite Imasu lies on the very opportunities it wantonly wasted precisely to make a difference in throwing positive light on the gay plight in general.

Fortunately not everything is bleak for Aishite Imasu in terms of critical merits. Its salvation is carried out with the brave performance turned in by lead actor Dennis Trillo. The fact that his is a debut all the more magnifies the most distinguished achievement especially in the context of a domestic industry made barren by rampant corruption, marked breakdown of intelligence and sheer shortage of talent.

Handicapped by the film’s poor writing, Trillo is left to his own devices to nevertheless allow his breakthrough performance to soar. He has to practically struggle against the veiled attempt governing the making of the film to downgrade his role and strip it of its efficacy in order not to take the limelight away from the more favored members of the cast. The ill design tremendously fails and it is Trillo who ends up outshining everyone and outsmarting the very film rendered puerile by its filmmakers’ inability to pursue to the fullest the bold premise of their material.

By way of Trillo’s method, the quintessential Pinoy gay hero gets to rise not merely to assert presence but more so to protest the aberrations of history. There is poetic justice in all this. For all of human history as gays are despised and denied their basic rights, it turns out that there are far worse than gay sexuality that the world must dread and guard against such as exactly the evil that men do to their fellow men in the form of wars, the slaughter of entire races, the subjugation of whole nations. It is ironic that the point is brought home as embodied no less by a most unlikely tragic figure—an accidental querida of war who happens to be a cross-dressing gay but not completely of war’s making. #

Filipinas: Vigil for a Lost Nation

2008-06-27T01:18:00.000-07:00

Filipinas: Vigil for a Lost Nation
Patrick D. Flores
REPOST

In the more instructive instances of Philippine melodrama, the family serves as the microcosm or analogue of the nation and initiates the allegory of its history. In an allegory like Francisco Baltazar's Florante at Laura, the realism of the plot does not make sense if severed from the moral agenda of an alternate or alternative reality, so that the characters, for instance, in Filipinas become social types that enact the narratives of a nation in pieces.
The film's tendency to broaden the dimensions of this material needs to be encouraged, if only because it harnesses the potential of the practice of moviegoing as a collective act of “reviewing” society. In Filipinas, the crest of a middle-class family is also the name of the country -- the nation is wracked by crisis and is ultimately rendered comatose – as materialized in a diseased matriarch fighting for dear life. The gesture of the family awaiting her (and the nation's) awakening is a moment that effectively synthesizes realism and allegory in a prefiguration of salvation in a milieu on the verge of a total breakdown. This is a vigil that may inaugurate a renewed moment of nation in the hands of subjects divesting themselves of identities that have become inutile because of the malfunctioning and ultimately failed nation-state and its nationalism.
What is of substantial interest in Filipinas is its task, and this need not be a thoroughly fruitful or even a satisfying one, to work out an allegory in cinematic terms and within the domain of melodrama. In this modality, the film is able to address the desires of melodrama, which usually redound to a search for authenticity of claim, as coextensive with the suffering of a nation besieged by social discrepancies. Here, the family and the nation become co-sufferers and share in intimate relations that dispose them to oblige each other to reciprocate acts of kinship: succor, sustenance, sympathy.
It is within this perspective that the characters in Filipinas are not only dramatis personae, but also discursive subjects who inscribe in human action the political economy of a particular condition. We, therefore, identify various levels of what is called the “social thickness” in the film: the level of the plot, the level of the allegory, and the foregrounding of a third level of possible transcendence that is an augury of a revivified lifeworld in the throes of death but also in the bloody hour of conception. This is an achievement in Philippine cinema that merits critical appraisal for its temerity to confront the aporetic impossibility of nation: of Filipinas.

Last Films Standing (2004)

2008-06-02T22:45:00.001-07:00

Last Films Standing

by Patrick D. Flores

Of the few but not precious 55 films released by the local industry in 2004, only a paltry number merits a closer look, and of these leavings only one stands a chance at serious scrutiny. This opinion, of course, sharply contrasts with the rosy projections of apologists who have taken pains to declare that the trade is not dying; they have even doled out tax incentives to films they have found excellent. Subjecting these sanctified titles to keener analysis, we will realize, however, that the public has been misled and that the system of supposedly revitalizing the industry is not only not working, it basically rests on a mistake. Subsidy given to off-the-shelf productions made by people whom granters cherish as friends and associates is entirely wrong, though it is only half of the story. The other half is this: subsidy that does not guide the development of a project, from the selection of the material, its research and refinement, and on to its actual filming is useless and wasteful endowment.
We have been on this road before and there are those who do not tire in treading it because the routine rerun is not without its gains. Take the exemplary case of Laurice Guillen’s Santa Santita, which was conferred an A rating by the Cinema Evaluation Board, an office well within the realm of the Film Development Council of the Philippines, the Chair of which is the director of the film. Before the film could be released commercially, a well-known reviewer of a mainstream daily, a member of the said Board by the way, praised it lavishly, short of naming it the most beautiful film on the face of this earth, and this is just based on the trailer. Further inquiry reveals critical connections among director, producer, reviewer, and other abiding relations that lead all the way to the Academy Awards in Los Angeles. Surely, these links do not make a straight line of conspiracy or corruption, but they hint at the system of intricate relationships that tend to compromise, either in perception or in actual deed, the independence of the very task of “evaluation.” The Spanish have a term for it, and it is not sin verguenza.
To be fair to Santa Santita, it builds its premise around an argument, a rare element in many local films, which insists on the possibility of miracle. To a certain extent, it offers itself as a foil to the discourse of Himala, the master narrative of the critique of the miracle yarn, and purveys the notion that, in fact, miracles can transpire and that they work through “flawed humanity.” The film seems to tell us that not because the institutional church is corrupt, its faithful could not achieve the grace of conversion, which is the basis of the miracle work performed by what Guillen would regard as a “modern Magdalene.” The allusion to Mary Magdalene is problematic, if only because the persona is actually a composite of so many rounded women figures in the Bible and was flattened by popular consciousness as a prostitute. Angelica Panganiban’s Malen is not a prostitute, but a young woman of typical mischief who is tormented by the guilt that she had caused the death of her mother, a prayer peddler in Quiapo church. A cult forms around her after several believers had testified to her fraudulent power to intercede, a turn of events that threatens the church and forces it to banish her from its hallowed ground. To dramatize this mystified conversion, Malen, now conscious of sin and the surveillance of the gods, confronts a priest in distress and her lover, a diabolical lumpen hustler who is duped by a matron and who tempts the heroine to revive his dead child. In crucial encounters with them, Malen comes out with a beatific smile, as if to mark epiphany. All told, the film sends vague signals of an emerging theology, initiated in the more tenable Guillen outing, Tanging Yaman. It seeks to lodge faith firmly in the individual, release it from the collective, and paradoxically, create casts of mind hospitable to the seductions of charismatic rabble-rousers.
Another A-film inflated without justification is the sorry Panaghoy sa Suba of Cesar Montano, which exploits the locale of Bohol and its language to prop up a pan-Visayan local history against the texts of national destiny. But the lofty fantasy fails to craft a credible story to support the scheme. The technique is unmotivated, the characters nearly cardboard, and the outlook is for all intents and purposes faux pastoral, complete with tarsiers and fluvial funerals.
Jeffrey Jeturian’s Minsan Pa, another tribute to those dear Cebuanos who had installed a beleaguered President, is another sad accident. Perhaps on the level of literature, it makes the cut, considering that it is able to achieve the height of abstraction and metaphor and the weight of character. A tourist guide, who refers his Japanese clients to sex workers, falling in love with a woman who sacrifices everything for the love of a blind, unfaithful lover occasions complications, with which a director of timid imagination could not cope; he merely resorts to devices that signal spurious subtlety and even more spurious silence. Spurious because all the tensions evoked are settled without negotiation: couples get married, families are reunited, and love is ensconced as if nothing else mattered. In the end, we feel that the symbolic universe (through the memory of photography pretentiously submerged in the depths of the ocean) demanded by the script is forced on the film, and vice versa, and what this ambition with no vision leaves behind, after hours of calculated dramaturgy, is the belabored paean to the age-old illusion that love cannot see.
In this heap of letdowns, it is Sigaw of Yam Laranas that attains a degree of difficulty and, therefore, solicits significant artistic interest. It is interesting because it is sensitive to dimensions. A story of a haunted decrepit apartment that shocks a young man and his girlfriend out of their wits is only one dimension. For around this plot is the real history that is repressed by a seemingly comfortable order; it is the tale of a demented military man who batters his wife, terrorizes his daughter, and kills them. The only witness to this sordid affair is a witless handyman in stupor, drowning himself in liquor to forget the violence and admonishing trespassers not to interfere. It is this sediment of life that is embedded in the Kafkaesque architecture, which is represented not in realistic terms but in terms that prompt us to construe it as a nightmare, a hell into which the innocent is lured, an irrational and impossible place which could only be made contingent on fiction to render it necessarily real. It is this “real” that differs from the reality of the lives of the middle-class, represented luminously by the poreless and virtually vacant face of Richard Gutierrez and the cluelessness of Angel Locsin. This sort of reality is vexed until the protagonist decides to make himself complicit by opening the door, which the previous tenant had refused to unlock for fear of his life; his room is now inhabited by the unnerved hero who is faced with the horror of making a decision to amend a crime of another time and to disabuse the suspicion that he is doing the same to his beloved. That the specter of history, through the restless mother, persists to haunt the apoplectic couple even in the movie house, a futile refuge of the indifferent, where a comic film is playing deepens the dimension of Sigaw. And that at its resolution, an alternative narrative is permitted to play out – with the woman shooting her husband and the daughter being able to hide – invests this kind of cinema with the chance to intervene in the production of the “real” as opposed to the idealizations of an actually harrowing society; needless to say, it also guarantees it a germ for a sequel.
In a year of natural and political disasters and of imperial powers ever more entrenched in their thrones, the motion pictures could have been inspired to do more than fill up the production slates of an incorrigible industry, which in recent years has yielded only diminishing returns. From the looks of it, Philippine cinema was a casualty of the catastrophe of its own creation. It is terrifying that no one seems to be scared.

Feng Shui: Slick Discourse on Destiny and Avarice

2008-06-02T22:44:00.000-07:00

Feng Shui: Slick Discourse on Destiny and Avarice

Eileen Legaspi-Ramirez

No apologies are forthcoming for the palpably haphazard fusing of exoticized Chinese iconography and streetfolk superstition that frames Chito Roño’s ghoulish sub-urban tale, Feng Shui. In this filmic take on fate and greed set against the spectra of the mystic and the banal, Roño presumably resorts to hybridization to underscore the fact that no one paradigm governs how agency and subjectification come to tentative resolutions.

The screenplay by Roño and Mano Po writer Roy Iglesias places the bag-ua or bagwa squarely in the center of a series of givings and takings to drive home the notion that both crises and windfalls are mere realignments of power and resource. By employing this literally reflective device alongside Chinese lunar calendar icons to propel its storyline, Feng Shui’s creators pointedly implicate the voyeuristic gaze in the working out of personal plight. One looks and one accounts for looking. And since there is the matter of imposing chronology to the requisite morbidity this genre serves up, that is where filmic character birthdates come into play.

Feng Shui’s bagwa showers material and non-material come-uppance on its owner much like a genie-in-a-bottle affords three wishes to its clichéd master-finder. In this case, the battle-worn bagwa comes with its own caveats and this expectedly involves its owner’s belated but requisite taking stock of accompanying cataclysms. As text, the film’s premise interestingly brings forth nagging questions: of why the bagwa only kills reflected entities, thus effectively sparing the oblivious or passive who are implicitly rendered innocent; of how possession hedges against adversity; and how staking territorial limits paradoxically courts intrusion.

In the film, a young couple (Kris Aquino and Jay Manalo) begin living the Filipino middle-class dream--of moving into their own (usually sacrificially mortgaged) single-detached (ergo non-row) house in a gated, metropolitan suburb away from the panoptic sphere of overbearing in-laws and uber-congested city sensibilities. It is to this heavy-handedly production-designed suburbian paradise that Joy Ramirez (Aquino) comes home to after finding a bagwa tucked between the seats of a passenger bus. With this passing on of fortunes from one unwitting sojourner to another, Feng Shui sets up its narrative, hinting at how fate takes a meandering course across thought-to-be guarded, private biographies and imagined personalized space.

Like other tomes imbibed with the push and pull of power fetishes (Lord of the Rings, Spiderman, and a whole slew of animated productions based on personally tormented hero-centric stories), Feng Shui plays up the idea that acquisition comes twin-billed with corruption, a gnawing away of one’s soul and insensitivity toward reality outside the self; where personal gain comes with the loss of others; where economies are intricately woven through by relationships; and wealth is reallocated through dramatized flourishes and liquidations.

In the case of Feng Shui, the film unequivocally rides upon the fusion of two currently en vogue cinematic trends: that is, technically polished macabre serials perfunctorily given an Asian/orientalist-metaphysical spin. And while it is this filmic dalliance with chinoiserie punctuated by episodic accounts of self-inflicted tragedy that immediately invites charges of creative plundering of box-office wonders Ringu and The Sixth Sense, among others, we submit that other pertinent issues warrant discourse.

Briefly, we point to Feng Shui’s take on the dynamics of fate independent of knowledge. Perhaps inadvertently but decidedly nonetheless, the film posits an unproblematized, patently reactionary strain upholding the idea of personal redemption devoid of struggle. For even as Feng Shui attempts to locate the familial quest for an easier life within the real--pinched dual-income households, multilevel marketing schemes feeding-off quiet acts of desperation, the palatability of cure-alls and palliatives--the film still much too readily slips into escapist, fatalistic accountings of success. In the end, Feng Shui still comes across as a woven narrative of quick fixes, where flippant references to ”asenso” and “malas” are lightly tossed around and where the great Filipino dream remains a caricaturized Batangas resthouse or a mansion in Alabang—all considerations for macro socio-economic real politik and collective reckoning nothwithstanding.

Despite Feng Shui’s unarguable technical accomplishments (pulled off by Albert Idioma for sound engineering, Vito Cajili for editing and Neil Daza for photography), the film delivers backhanded jokes to its audiences: over and above the predictably comically morose performances delivered by its leads, Feng Shui’s noontime-gameshow rhetoric plays up chance and happenstance as the only viable avenues for financial and emotional respite. To the weary, overworked, stereotypically victimized Filipino, this film continues to serve up such continually perpetuated myths: that on this side of cinema paradiso the cards are always fairly dealt, and the divine always trumps the trite.

The Restive Condition (Sigaw)

2008-06-02T22:39:00.001-07:00

The Restive Condition

by Patrick D. Flores

The horror in the film Sigaw, conceived and nearly entirely executed by Yam Laranas, is the trauma that it presents at the outset as a dreadful effect. It is the trauma that disrupts the uneventful lives of the characters and initiates the audience into the causes of the distress, if not the abjection. The latter intimates itself in the tragic helplessness of a young mother who seeks succor from a neighbor in a rather decrepit apartment; she is trying to shield her daughter from the violence inflicted on her by her brutal husband, a military man who batters her thoroughly. The neighbor, a man willing to lend a hand but constrained by his own fear for his life, intervenes only to a certain extent, and refuses to go out on a limb to fully realize what could well be a fatal heroism. And so, it comes to pass: the man kills the woman and the child and then himself.

This is the sort of haunting that bedevils the innocent who trespass the threshold of the living and the dead and mingle with those who yearn to speak their graven hearts. And it is the specter of the past haunting the present that serves as our access to the “real,” which is repressed by the symbolic domain that purports to be the reality we must accept as customary and inevitable, if only because we cannot help it. Well, the spirits of this abode resist this disarticulation, and strive to perform the theater of their history across time, affording us a retroactive narrative of the trauma and pleading not only for a reenactment but a rehearsal of a different outcome, which in its course renders the entire tale poignant and melancholic as it traces the cause of the effect.

Such trauma is well-coordinated by highly accomplished and creative filmmaking, from its intriguing screenplay to its robust sound. But it is largely through cinematography and visual design that this is fleshed out with conviction. The scheme of horror is ingeniously embedded in the architecture, which is depicted without ethnographic detail inasmuch as it is conveyed as a nightmare, the house of the real that intrudes on a reality domesticated by such norms as the family, class ascendancy, and indifference. The camera of the film controls the chromatic climate, which shimmers through the spectrum of dark green, and takes us to ceilings stained by faces, elevators of menacing banality, and rooms cramped with vexing memory. There are also repetitive flashes of prey running the lengths of storied corridors.

Sigaw, therefore, plays around the vital element of horror: the uncanny return of the aggrieved and how it complicates the lives of those who have not committed. There is a scene in this film that is emblematic of its psychoanalysis: Gripped in terror, the couple battling the demons of their imagination find refuge in a movie house where a comic attraction unreels and where the audience laugh their wits out. But the two just sit there, as if apoplectic, whereupon the wandering woman torments them with another apparition. That the cinema is revisited creates another dimension within the scenario, as it finally implicates the institution of spectatorship as party to the conspiracy of representation, of making a particular language of the real utterable at the expense of its impossibility (not yet possible), which as we learn here can never be abandoned.

In the end, we become witnesses to the crime, to the spectacle of the irrational. And the film compels us to become complicit. This is why the hero had to open the door to terminate the horror. Such horror does not only stem from the havoc wrought by restless souls, but also from the need to acquit himself: her girlfriend’s parents have already suspected him of beating their daughter after she is badly whipped by the malevolent phantom, a reference to the dastardly deed of the police, which incidentally is an acute index of the excesses of military power, that now seemed to have rubbed off on the catatonic knight. This is the “real” that no liquor could drown, the recourse of the handyman who is the only person who could testify to the horror yet has chosen to deter himself and others from attesting to the truth. Sigaw, however, does not relent. It lures itself into a more inclement realm: the challenge to propose a symbolic resolution as the door of engagement is flung: not to repeat reality, but to change it, so that it is the woman who slays her tormentor and it is the child who eludes perdition.

The theorist Slavoz Zizek has told us that: “The real which returns has the status of a(nother) semblance: precisely because it is real, that is on account of its traumatic/excessive character, we are unable to integrate it into (what we experience as) our reality, and are therefore compelled to experience it as a nightmarish apparition.”

This is what Sigaw does: to compel a decision of confronting the trauma – of opening the door -- through the decisive device of a screaming cinema. It is hoped that it has our ear.

Moments of Love: Caller Waiting

2008-05-31T20:03:00.000-07:00

Moments of Love: Caller Waiting
by Jason P. Jacobo

While the title of the film can only promise the most prosaic of romanticist longings, the premise does fulfill a formidable romantic requisite: the possibility of transcendent love in a limited instance of longing. In the case of the lovers in the film, it is time, real time, that distantiates. Divina is from 1957 (Iza Calzado), while Marco (Dingdong Dantes) is in 2006. But however rehearsed its star-crossed love theme is, Moments of Love manages to offer surprising alternatives beyond its purported intertexts—the classic Somewhere In Time (USA, 1980) and the vanguard Sky of Love (Hong Kong, 2003)—by using the telephone as the medium by which love’s call is transmitted, that is, relayed, heard, and hopefully, answered.

What can be more tragic than lovers being in separate times? Can an encounter be possible between the present and its past? This is where the telephone becomes a “time machine” that makes the two times simultaneous and coexistent, rewiring affairs which normally do not survive the “long-distance.” With this mediation, the romance goes beyond the historical, but chooses to stay histrionic. Love, indeed, is no longer found in the passage of grand signs of affection and commitment. Rather, it is in the details: the curious picking up of an otherwise uninteresting receiver, the shock of hearing a stranger’s voice “out there,” a conversation that leads nowhere but nevertheless lingers. In these little gestures, love is still momentous, however momentary. All because of an “error” in the technology—sound waves can be tense vibrations of messages gone effete, wires function as veins in the circulation of fluid fate.

How the film finally sends out its message is another matter, for it is here where the wires of love cause more electrocution than electricity. At the outset, the screenplay’s decision to make the lovers meet in the present offers prospects for a radical love, which when translated into the filmic imaginary necessitates an encounter between the aged Divina (Gloria Romero) and the youthful Marco. But the film also contrives for the possibility of Marco and another woman (Karylle), whom we discover is Divina’s nubile kin. The second option is of course the right one. And Divina even ministers a laughable turnover rite towards the end. Most problematic in this choice is the text’s fear of itself. This is also one reason why we are saying that Moments of Love is indeed a major romantic film. When its luminous vision finally unfolds, it is denied of a full view, and eventually eclipsed, because the filmmakers realize how terrifying the visuals can be. If Vilma Santos and Aga Muhlach could occupy the same screen in the nineties, or Nora Aunor and Yul Servo last year, why not Romero and Dantes recently?

In this broken promise of a film, Iza Calzado nonetheless fulfills more than what is asked from a beautiful face: a voice that utters its pleas not just across the line, but across the time, of the calling. Between and beyond her deliveries, Calzado achieves nuance: the sense to lend texture to an otherwise flimsy sentence by means of careful phrasing, and the sensing of infinite possibilities for the precise film soundtrack After Aunor, Calzado is the only Philippine actress who knows how to make use of a sparse silence. How? By turning to the solid Gaze. But if Aunor has her stare reciting a defiant madness, Calzado has hers singing of a love that, perched in sweet surrender, waits.

Blue Moon: Trawling Memory and Loss

2008-05-31T19:57:00.000-07:00

Blue Moon: Trawling Memory and Loss

Eileen Legaspi-Ramirez

Quiet, unassuming films literally come once in a blue moon in this landscape teeming with shrill attempts at shabby humor and needlessly complicated drama. And so, given that, and Blue Moon's screenplay coming with a literary pedigree (2005 Palanca Awards Third Prize, Dulang Pampelikula), expectations were high this text would translate into at least above average filmic fare.

Allan Tijamo's story brings three parallel narratives of loss into play in a cross-generational telling of imperfect relations and equally flawed attempts at atonement. In what could easily be construed as a deathbed conversion, terminally-ill grandfather (Manuel Pineda played by Eddie Garcia) sets off to find one of two Corazons (allusion to split subjectivities obviously intended) he'd wooed in his youth. Son (Rod played by Christopher de Leon) and grandson (Kyle played by Dennis Trillo) come along for the ride through Baguio, Albay, Cebu only to end up back in Manila after Pineda's illness forces them to abandon chasing clues around the Philippines. These two initially hesitant but eventually gung-ho accomplices pack their own warped emotional baggage along for the compensatory journey—Rod's dimmed professional prospects and impending fall-out with his wife most definitely weighing down his sorry fatherly attempts at communicating with a son who has his fair share of commitment debacles.

At the onset, Blue Moon could easily be construed as a neatly laced-up saccharine bundle of a road movie (conflated with World War II reminisces) except that, despite its directorial lapses, it still manages to tug at major sympathetic chords—second chances, loves lost and rekindled, sins visiting several generations but forgiven nonetheless. Particularly so since it stands as one of the exceptional occasions when filmmakers (save for the upcoming I Wanna Be Happy) have considered the nuanced lives of elderly Filipinos worth the average two-hour film stretch, Blue Moon begs to be watched even as it is critiqued.

To begin with, since it is the long-suffering Corazon (played by Jennylyn Mercado who ages into Boots Anson Roa) and not the iconoclast Corazon (played by Pauleen Luna) who turns out to be the woman dying Manuel Pineda seeks, Blue Moon easily opens itself up to charges of further privileging and perpetuating the romantic myth of Filipina as martyr, ever demurring, and pliant to a fault. But then again this Corazon does her own journeying in this film, leaving as she does Pineda to tend to their son as she deals with her own personal grief compounded by post-partum depression and long drawn disappointment with a largely indifferent spouse.

YCC colleague Eli Guieb cites the film for “giving us a mature elaboration of the multi-layered and multi-scalar intricacies of what it means to nurture and recapture lost and fast-losing spaces of domestic accommodation under circumstances of emotional diaspora.” He adds: “Blue Moon delineates boundaries of domestic losses and probabilities of kin security without melodramatic pitfalls, albeit the film’s melodramatic genre. In it, family ties are given new dimensions and contemporary contexts of social ties are rendered as humane as the individual struggles of human links intricately tied to their search for wholeness. Travel served as an effective motif for the internal voyage of the film’s main characters.”

It is in response to this promised horizon of contending readings that the Young Critics Circle Film Desk, recognizes, for the first film quarter of 2006, Blue Moon’s screenplay, along with the performances of Eddie Garcia, Jennlyn Mercado and Dennis Trillo, noting how these thespians displayed restraint appropriate to the complexity and depth of characterization woven into this tale of emergence from past sins of self-indulgence (which at least in this particular filmic universe seemed to be the new be-all in the self-actualizing pyramid).

YCC bares winners of annual film awards for distinguished achievement in 2007

2008-03-04T07:12:00.000-08:00

AWARDS RITES SLATED IN LATE APRIL OR EARLY MAY

The Film Desk of the Young Critics Circle formally declares its choices for distinguished achievement in films of the immediate past year. Voted Best Film of the Year is Brillante Mendoza’s Foster Child. The Seiko Films production—about an urban-poor family who makes a living by providing for a fee a temporary home and care to abandoned babies pending their adoption—also won Best Screenplay.

Foster Child is joined by Jade Francis Castro’s Endo from ufo Pictures to be the only two films to slug it out for the topmost award. But in contrast to two major honors for Foster Child, Endo bagged a greater booty of triple plums: Best Editing; Best Sound and Aural Orchestration and the much coveted Best Performance for Jason Abalos. In what some may deem as an upset win, the heartthrob lead of Endo bested Foster Child stars Cherrie Pie Picache and Eugene Domingo and one other surprise nominee, Ron Capinding, lead actor of Still Life (Sining Ko Ito Productions) .

Best Cinematography and Visual Design went to Lav Diaz’s nine-hour digipic, Death in the Land of Encantos (Sine Olivia). The dramatic film won for the only category for which it was nominated beating Foster Child, Still Life and Tirador (Centerstage Productions) . The last—another megger from Brillante Mendoza—with strong nominations for three technical categories completed the elite roster of limited titles to figure in this year’s derby. Awarding ceremonies is slated sometime in late April or early May.

Established in 1990, YCC is the academe-based critics group with members coming from various disciplines. Through the years, they have become attentive observers of Philippine cinema constantly bringing into the analysis of film an interdisciplinary approach.

The organization departs from many conventions of other award-giving bodies both here and abroad in bestowing cinematic honors. For instance, the award for Best Film of the Year is reserved for the director such that no separate prize for direction is needed. The Best Performance award is most coveted as it is conferred on a screen performer whether male or female, adult or child, individual or as part of an ensemble, in leading or supporting role. To uphold a more dynamic and encompassing way of looking at films, technical honors refer to fusion of outstanding efforts in fields otherwise deemed apart. In this case, the Best Cinematography and Visual Design recognition covers both camerawork and art direction. Similarly, Best Sound and Aural Orchestration encompasses not just sound engineering per se but musical score as well.

The following is the roundup of complete winners and nominees for this year’s YCC film awards officially billed as the 18th Annual Circle Citations for Distinguished Achievement in Film for 2007:

Best Film of the Year
Winner: Foster Child directed by Brillante Mendoza (Seiko Films; Robbie Tan, Executive Producer)
Nominee: Endo directed by Jade Francis Castro (ufo Pictures; Ned Trespeces, Michiko Yamamoto, Emmanuel de la Cruz and Raymond Lee, Producers)

Best Screenplay
Winner: Foster Child (Seiko Films) – Ralston Jover
Nominee: Endo (ufo Pictures) – Jade Francis Castro, Michiko Yamamoto and Raymond Lee

Best Achievement in Cinematography and Visual Design
Winner: Death in the Land of Encantos (Sine Olivia) – Lav Diaz, Director of Photography; Dante Perez, Production Designer
Nominees:
Foster Child (Seiko Films) – Odyssey Flores, Director of Photography; Ben Padero, Production Designer
Still Life (Sining Ko Ito Productions) – Dan Villegas, Director of Photography; Cris Silva, Production Designer
Tirador (Centerstage) – Brillante Mendoza, Julius Villanueva, Jeffrey de la Cruz, Gary Tria, Directors of Photography; Deans Habal, Harley Alcasid, Production Designers

Best Achievement in Film Editing
Winner: Endo (ufo Pictures) – JD Domingo
Nominee: Tirador (Centerstage) – Charliebebs Gohetia

Best Achievement in Sound and Aural Orchestration
Winner: Endo (ufo Pictures) – Corinne de San Jose Cruz and Mark Locsin, Sound Engineers; Owel Alvero, Musical Director
Nominees:
Still Life (Sining Ko Ito Productions) –Joey Santos, Sound Engineer; Wincy Ong, Musical Director
Tirador (Centerstage) – Ditoy Aguila and Junel Valencia , Sound Engineers; Tere Barrozo, Musical Director

Best Performance by Male or Female, Adult or Child, Individual or Ensemble in Leading or Supporting Role
Winner: Jason Abalos in Endo (ufo Pictures)
Nominees:
Cherry Pie Picache in Foster Child (Seiko Films)
Eugene Domingo in Foster Child (Seiko Films)
Ron Capinding in Still Life (Sining Ko Ito Productions)

18th Annual Circle Citations for Distinguished Achievement in Film for 2007

2008-02-21T19:02:00.000-08:00

Best Film of the Year
Winner: Foster Child

Nominee:
Endo

Best Screenplay
Winner: Foster Child

Nominee:
Endo

Best Achievement in Cinematography and Visual Design
Winner: Death in the Land of Encantos

Nominees:
Tirador
Still Life
Foster Child

Best Achievement in Film Editing
Winner: Endo

Nominee: Tirador

Best Achievement in Sound and Aural Orchestration
Winner: Endo

Nominee:
Still Life
Tirador

Best Performance by Male or Female, Adult or Child, Individual or Ensemble in Leading or Supporting Role
Winner: Jason Abalos in Endo

Nominees:
Cherry Pie Picache in Foster Child
Eugene Domingo in Foster Child
Ron Capinding in Still Life

*more details about the winners and nominees will be released soon

(The awarding ceremonies will be in late April or early May 2008)

Movies released in RP 2007

2008-02-05T20:56:00.000-08:00

MOVIES—RP 2007

17 January (Wednesday)
Agent X44 (Star Cinema; ABS-CBN Film Productions) PG Comedy

24 January (Wednesday)
No RP regular release

31 January (Wednesday)
No RP regular release

7 February (Wednesday)
No RP regular release

14 February (Wednesday)
The Promise (GMA Films; Regal Entertainment) PG Romance
Troika aka Threesome (Daven Productions) R Sex Drama

21 February (Wednesday)
Faces of Love (Cinemanila; Seiko Films) PG Drama

28 February (Wednesday)
You Got Me (Star Cinema; ABS-CBN Film Productions) G Romance

7 March (Wednesday)
No RP regular release

14 March (Wednesday)
Happy Hearts (Regal Entertainment) G Comedy
Siquijor— Mystic Island (Centerstage Productions; Viva Entertainment) R13 Horror

21 March (Wednesday)
M.O.N.A.Y. ni Mr. Shooli (Onabru Films) G Comedy

28 March (Wednesday)
No RP regular release

7 April (Saturday)
Ang Cute ng Ina Mo (Viva Entertainment; Star Cinema; ABS-CBN Film Productions) G Comedy

18 April (Wednesday)
No RP regular release

25 April (Wednesday)
Rumbleboy (Apache Films) R13 Action

2 May (Wednesday)
No RP regular release

9 May (Wednesday)
No RP regular release

16 May (Wednesday)
No RP regular release

23 May (Wednesday)
No RP regular release

30 May (Wednesday)
Paano Kita Iibigin (Viva Entertainment; Star Cinema; ABS-CBN Film Productions) PG Romance

6 June (Wednesday)
Silip (Seiko Films) R13 Sex Drama

13 June (Wednesday)
Blackout (Unico Entertainment; Unitel Pictures) R13 Horror

20 June (Wednesday)
Angels (Eagle Eye Entertainment) G Drama

27 June (Wednesday)
No RP regular release

4 July (Wednesday)
Paraiso (Gawad Kalinga) G Drama
Tiyanaks (Regal Entertainment) G Horror

11 July (Wednesday)
No RP regular release

18 July (Wednesday)
No RP regular release

25 July (Wednesday)
Ouija (GMA Films; Viva Entertainment) PG Horror

1 August (Wednesday)
Casa (Artiste Entertainment Works) R Sex Drama

8 August (Wednesday)
No RP regular release

15 August (Wednesday)
A Love Story (Star Cinema; ABS-CBN Film Productions) PG Drama

22 August (Wednesday)
Indio Nacional (Raya Martin) PG Drama
Signos (Daven Productions) PG Horror

29 August (Wednesday)
My Kuya’s Wedding (Regal Entertainment) G Comedy

5 September (Wednesday)
Chopsuey (Silangan Pictures) PG Drama

12 September (Wednesday)
Foster Child (Seiko Films) PG Drama

19 September (Wednesday)
No RP regular release

26 September (Wednesday)
I’ve Fallen for You (Star Cinema; ABS-CBN Film Productions) G Romance

3 October (Wednesday)
No RP regular release

10 October (Wednesday)
Apat Dapat, Dapat Apat (Viva Entertainment) G Comedy
One Percent Full (Rocketts Productions) G Action Comedy

17 October (Wednesday)
No RP regular release

24 October (Wednesday)
No RP regular release

31 October (Wednesday)
Hide and Seek (Regal Entertainment) PG Horror

7 November (Wednesday)
Ataul for Rent (Artiste Entertainment Works) R13 Drama

14 November (Wednesday)
One More Chance (Star Cinema; ABS-CBN Film Productions) PG Romance

21 November (Wednesday)
Green Paradise ( New City Entertainment) R Sex Drama

28 November (Wednesday)
Pasukob (Octoarts Films) G Comedy

30 November (Friday)
Mona: Singapore Escort (Bandit Films; Outline Digital Films) PG Drama

5 December (Wednesday)
Batanes (GMA Films) PG Romance

12 December (Wednesday)
No RP regular release

19 December (Wednesday)
No RP regular release

25 December (Tuesday)
Bahay Kubo (Regal Entertainment) G Drama
Enteng Kabisote 4—Okay Ka Fairy Ko…The Beginning of the Legend (Octoarts Films; M-Zet) G F-C-Ad
Katas ng Saudi (Maverick Films) G Drama
Resiklo (Imus Productions) G Fantasy Action Adventure
Sakal, Sakali, Saklolo (Star Cinema; ABS-CBN Film Productions) PG Comedy
Shake, Rattle and Roll 9 (Regal Entertainment) G Horror

Digital Full Run
ICU Bed # 7 (Rica Arevalo; Mediarevolution) R13 Digital Drama 013107

Compound (Hubo LLC; Philippine Independent Filmmakers Multi-Purpose Cooperative) R
Digital Sex Drama 020707

Rome and Juliet (Creative Programs) R Digital Drama 021407

Imahe Nasyon (Digital Viva) PG Various Digital Shorts 022107

Pepot Artista (Doy del Mundo) G Digital Drama 022807

Saan Nagtatago si Happiness (Mediarevolution) PG Digital Comedy 030707

Batad (Mediarevolution) G Digital Drama 031407

Anak ng Tinapa (Creative Programs) R Digital Drama 032107

Ang Huling Araw ng Linggo (Mediarevolution, Red Door) PG Digital Drama 032807

Dilim (Creative Programs) R13 Digital Drama 041807

Tulad ng Dati (Echo and Mirage Multimedia Entertainment) Digital Drama 042507

Sa North Diversion Road (Creative Programs) Digital Drama 042507

Numbalikdiwa (Philippine Independent Filmmakers Multi-Purpose Cooperative) R13 Digital Drama 050207

Manoro (Centerstage Productions) G Digital Drama 050907

Sandalang Bahay (Creative Programs) PG Digital Drama 051607

Baliw (Redd5Luke Productions) R Digital Drama 052307

Metlogs (Creative Programs) PG Digital Drama 053007

Ang Daan Patungong Kalimugtong (Sampay Bakod Productions) G Digital Drama 060607

Moreno (Grupong Sinehan; Philippine Independent Filmmakers Multi-Purpose Cooperative) X/R Digital Drama 062707

Sindie: GMA Workshop Series for Short Films (GMA) R/R13/PG/G Various Digital Shorts 070407

Tuli (Digital Viva) R Digital Sex Drama 071107

Hanggang Dito Na Lamang at Maraming Salamat (Independent Filmmakers Cooperative) R Digital Drama 072507

Idol: Pag-asa ng Bayan (Jesuit Communications) PG Digital Drama 080107

Isnats (Independent Filmmakers Cooperative) R Digital Drama 080107

Haw-ang aka Before Harvest (Sizzling Gambas) PG Digital Drama 080807

Todo Todo Teros (John Torres; Independent Filmmakers Cooperative) PG Digital Drama 080807

Xenoa (Xion Studios) PG Digital Fantasy Adventure 082207

Tribu (Cinemanila) R13 Digital Drama 082907

Anino ng Setyembre (Muchachos Bravos Filmworks) PG Digital Drama 091207

Ligaw Liham (Independent Filmmakers Cooperative) PG Digital Drama 091207

Ang Lalake sa Parola (Digital Viva) R Digital Drama 091907

Gulong (Independent Filmmakers Cooperative) G Digital Drama 092207

Dagyang (Mowelfund Film Institute) PG Digital Drama 100307

Tukso (Independent Filmmakers Cooperative) PG Digital Drama 100307

Still Life (Independent Filmmakers Cooperative) PG Digital Drama 101007

Pain Things (John Red; Pelipula; Filipino Pictures) R Digital Drama 111407

Nars (Carl and Carl Productions) PG Digital Drama 121207

Tatlong Araw ng Kadiliman (Filmless Films; Khavn de la Cruz) R Digital Horror 121207

Vhagets (Sunflower Films) Drama 121205

Bagong Agos

Heremias—Unang Aklat: Ang Alamat ng Prinsesang Bayawak (Lav Diaz) R Digital Drama

Cinemalaya 2007 (072107)

Gulong
Ligaw Liham
Still Life
Tribu
Tukso
Endo
Kadin
Sinungaling na Buwan

Cinemanila Digital Lokal (080807)
Ala Muerte , Ala Swerte (Briccio Santos)
Autohystoria (Raya Martin)
Juan Baybayin (Roxlee)
Pain Things (John Red)
Tilted Screens and Extended Scenes of Loneliness: Filipino on High Definition (John Torres)

Moonrise Filmfest (081507)
Animahenasyon (112107)

Cinema One (113007)
Altar
Confessional
Maling Akala
Prinsesa
Tambolista

Cine Veritas (120307)
Tirador (Centerstage) Unrated Digital Drama

Kontra-Agos (120507)

Premiere/Qualifying Run

Pantasya (Viva Entertainment; Centerstage Productions) Unrated Various Shorts 032007

Stockroom (Two Lights Productions) R13 Horror 050107

Angkan ng mga Tagean aka Kapirasong Papel (Creative Image; Dependent Productions) Unrated Documentary Feature 060207

Ang Parol sa Aking Burol (Creative Futures) Unrated Comedy 073007

Pi7ong Tagpo (Creative Futures) Various Shorts 100107

Roxxxanne (Octobertrain Films) Unrated Digital Drama 101007

Ina, Anak, Pamilya (Morning Star Productions) G 111707

Death in the Land of Encantos (Sine Olivia, Hubert Bals Fund) Unrated Digital Drama112907

Sikil (New Life Cinema) Digital Drama 1212207

Nine Eleven (MMG Entertainment) 121007

Selda (Starview Productions) R Digital Drama 122307

up film institute /research and records/

Last updated 122507

YCC bares winners of film awards for 2006

2007-03-28T11:00:00.000-07:00

THE Film Desk of the Young Critics Circle formally announces the winners of its annual film awards. “Inang Yaya” directed by Pablo Biglang-Awa and Veronica Velasco makes a clean sweep of the YCC honors for all categories, namely, Best Film of the Year given to the directors; Best Screenplay; Best Cinematography and Visual Design; Best Editing; Best Sound and Aural Orchestration and Best Performance for lead actress Maricel Soriano.

From the past year’s total local film output of 49 regular releases and more productions including digitals that had multiple screenings in any public venue that a paying audience has had access, “Inang Yaya” produced by Unitel Pictures emerged as the sole nominee and ultimate winner for most of the categories for the YCC film awards.

Only two other films managed to figure in YCC roll of honor this year by scoring nominations: “Kubrador” (MLR Films) with nods for Best Cinematography and Visual Design and Best Editing and “Kaleldo” (Centerstage) with Cherry Pie Picache in the roster for Best Performance. Nominated as well for Best Performance is the entire acting ensemble of “Inang Yaya.”

Awarding is on Thursday afternoon of March 8 at 2 p.m. at the Faculty Center Conference Hall in UP Diliman.

Established in 1990, YCC is the critics group with members coming from various disciplines. Through the years, they have become attentive observers of Philippine cinema constantly bringing into the analysis of film an interdisciplinary approach.

The organization departs from many conventions of other award-giving bodies both here and abroad in bestowing cinematic honors. For instance, the award for Best Film of the Year is reserved for the director such that no separate prize for direction is needed. The Best Performance award is most coveted as it is conferred on a screen performer whether male or female, adult or child, individual or as part of an ensemble, in leading or supporting role. To uphold a more dynamic and encompassing way of looking at films, technical honors refer to fusion of outstanding efforts in fields otherwise deemed apart. In this case, the Best Cinematography and Visual Design recognition covers both camerawork and art direction. Similarly, Best Sound and Aural Orchestration encompasses not just sound engineering per se but musical score as well.

The following is the roundup of complete winners and nominees for this year’s YCC film awards officially billed as the 17th Annual Circle Citations for Distinguished Achievement in Film for 2006:

Best Film of the Year
Winner: Inang Yaya directed by Pablo Biglang-Awa and Veronica Velasco (Unitel Pictures; Tony Gloria, Producer; Wyngard Tracy and Maricel Soriano, Executive Producers; Jun Reyes and Tito Velasco, Co-Executive Producers; Noemi Peji, Line Producer)
No Other Nominee

Best Screenplay
Winner: Inang Yaya (Unitel) – Veronica Velasco
No Other Nominee

Best Achievement in Cinematography and Visual Design
Winner: Inang Yaya (Unitel) – Gary Gardoce, Director of Photography; Norman Regalado, Production Designer
Nominee: Kubrador (MLR Films) – Roberto Yñiguez, Director of Photography; Leo Abaya, Production Designer

Best Achievement in Film Editing
Winner: Inang Yaya (Unitel) – Randy Gabriel
Nominee: Kubrador (MLR Films) – Jay Halili

Best Achievement in Sound and Aural Orchestration
Winner: Inang Yaya (Unitel) – Mark Locsin and Angie Reyes, Sound Engineers; Nonong Buencamino, Musical Director
No Other Nominee

Best Performance by Male or Female, Adult or Child, Individual or Ensemble in Leading or Supporting Role
Winner: Maricel Soriano in Inang Yaya (Unitel)
Nominees:
Cherry Pie Picache in Kaleldo (Centerstage)
Entire Cast of Inang Yaya (Unitel

On the Verge by Patrick D. Flores

2007-03-27T20:36:00.000-07:00

On the Verge
Patrick D. Flores

It is interesting to observe that Kris Aquino, a lead star of one this year's success stories, was around two decades ago the herald of Philippine cinema's decline. If the industry today is totally moribund because of an array of problems plaguing it, in the mid- to late 80s, it was significantly unhinged. It is curious that Aquino's stint was a crucial element then, as it is an unnerving presence as we speak. The image of the daughter of the man whom the dictator deemed his rival and the woman who deposed a repressive regime inevitably became, at least to the more buoyant among the post-Marcos faithful, a foil to the promise of her forebears. Within the much-vaunted democratic space ordained by her mother, the art of film spiraled into final defilement. That she currently thrives is a sign of the fallout.

All by itself, is telling, a horror flick that defies logic, manipulates folklore, and thrills its audience with aimless technical automations. It is helmed by Chito Roño, one of the country's most inventive filmmakers who made his bid more or less in the same season when Kris Aquino was being propelled to the heights of inane stardom by titles like, which in the economy of those blighted days merited several sequels. But unlike the hacienda heiress, Roño manifested serious artistic intentions, and no one in the right mind would dismiss the efforts of his filmography. What could have possessed him to do something like?

Perhaps the variables of the time could not be explained and are no longer amenable to any form of sane analysis. If it is profit that must rule, then the twists and turns of the market pave the path to the bank. And here Aquino's antipathetic co-star Claudine Barretto lights up an alley. Barretto came into view at a moment when the trade was fading away from the map of the studios and was settling on the grounds of conglomerate interests, which amassed investments in media, utilities, and even insurance upstream, downstream, in the entire cycle of our lives rendered banal by soap operas, reality television, and a seemingly endless supply of amateur competitions. The landscape would become scary in the long duration, with many among the youth merely wishing to be in call centers and audition rooms, with only instant noodles and dreams of a make-over as sustenance. They form part of the public that the industry has diligently dumbed down for an eternity.

Indeed, in this century, the commerce of moving images is poorly placed to overcome the dominance of television, the tenacity of piracy, and the ravenous appetite of a global Hollywood; the 90s had sort of foretold this flaw. That Barretto had failed to become a movie queen like Nora Aunor or Maricel Soriano, who participated in making the 70s and 80s the allegedly new-wave phase after the first surge of modernism in the 50s, simply demonstrated that majesty was out of the picture and that self-styled stars have become but hapless statistics in the vagaries of ventures. And what about the ruin before us?

In the last two decades, the usual genre movies were concocted, with digressions here and there, but with no substantial innovations with both material and method. There were hybrid genres that combined melodrama, action, and sex as exemplified by the massacre movie, which made a killing at the tills. There were schemes on the theme of catastrophe, be it about a volcano or an epidemic. There were outings on overseas contract workers. And there were scenarios on Philippine nationalism to commemorate the centennial of the revolution against Spain, a remembrance by the way that intriguingly forgot the war against the Americans that had aborted the earlier revolution.

In the much-augured millennium, in light of the deterioration of the industry, only a handful of films deserved to be praised, and some of these were by figures from the 70s and 80s like Mario O'Hara, Laurice Guillen, Gil Portes, Jose Javier Reyes, and Chito Roño, they who have plodded on after the death of the era's luminaries Lino Brocka and Ishmael Bernal. Younger practitioners like Lav Diaz, whose conceit to make marathon movies is singular, Jeffrey Jeturian, Yam Laranas, and Brillante Mendoza have done interesting work. Complementing this emergence is a new circle of cinematographers, editors, musical directors that has thankfully stepped up to the plate, intimating a little hope amid the creeping disenchantment. Also, the face of the Filipino talent has mutated considerably, owing to immigration and intermarriage, deepening the dimensions of the local as irrevocably, from Spanish to Russian. We pray that the diasporic experience further chisels this already graven profile.

The rest of the aspirants are trying to express their ideals in a digital realm in which technology is more accessible and less cumbersome. Thus we witness, as a matter of routine, film workers who make films with minimal gestation, uninflected by the tension arising from contention and concession. The outcome is usually selfish, self-referential, and oblivious to the broader scale of society and ideology. This is what the problematic concept of independent cinema has bred: a self-absorbed exploration of ulterior motives that cannot seem to look beyond a certain zone of convenience, something that a truly popular cinema requires and guarantees. And it is not only selfish; it is also indifferent and, in fact, compromised by the fact that the patronage of this coterie comes from government, corporations, and the typical conduits of international film distribution through gargantuan festivals and those with dubious pedigrees. Surely, there are exceptions, and we laud them. But the garden-variety Filipino arriviste in world cinema revels in whatever screening in any gathering of reels or discs in any corner of this universe, forgetting that the process of selection is skewed, the agenda of representation is colonial, and the gains of inclusion are commercial. In other words, the digital technique in the contemporary immersive atmosphere of post-cinema is not necessarily radical as seen in many digital sorties that are more reactionary and stylistically bereft than so-called formula staple, which sometimes are surprisingly competent and enlightening.

In the mainstream, a much-derided word but a destination that mostly everyone would covet furtively, the waters are muddled by television/network-fabricated serials that are made into films, horror fodder from a hodgepodge of sources, comedy straight out of rather vulgar comedy bars, fantasy mimicking the technological advancements of western models, mestizo action forays starred in by politicians with sagging careers or also-rans with petty ambitions, erotic merchandise verging on white slavery and women trafficking, and effeminate romances featuring heartthrobs who, if half of what we hear is true, are closet homosexuals (or are they, as the chat rooms would have it, “discreet bi-male/straight trippers looking for same?”). In between this grind is, without doubt, ceaseless trans-media gossip, peddled by pseudo-glamorous personalities whose sense of self-importance, vanity, and self-righteousness is, to the more discriminating sensibilities, sheer vexation.

And so, at the end of every year, as we sit through the Christmas fare prepared for us by the local government-engineered Metro Manila Film Festival, another lamentable remnant of the failure of the industry, steered by an ilk chosen by the state as it is with all agencies concerned with the motion pictures, we would be treated to yet another spin cycle of generic detergent, dirty linen, and shrunken expectations. If we must believe, against all omens to the contrary, that our beloved film industry is still to expire, because it is kept alive by the triumphalist claims of the digital cohort and the dowager Mother Lily, then we could at least, to use an apt term, entertain the thought that it is temporarily laundered and will soon be hung out to dry.

This is the rear view mirror look at the horizon within which the Young Critics Circle situates the gains, or the leavings, of film year 2006. The Philippine film industry produced 49 films within the typical mode of production and circulation. Around 12 were released as digital output, and 28 more within the independent film festival circuits of Cinemalaya, Cinemanila, and Cinema One. It has been quite a while that digital films made and distributed within a distinct scheme have knocked at the doors of the YCC, an organization that has committed itself to generate independent film commentary and appraisal. When this type of films was brought to our attention, we thought hard how to respond to it and devices a method of accounting for its deeds. We did not immediately consider films without a regular run for consideration as this might force us to evaluate all types of films, including those submitted routinely in film courses for instance, something that are impossible to monitor.

But beginning this year, we have modified the parameters so that we could deliberate on all films that have had multiple (more than two) screenings to which a general paying audience has had access. This will address the emergence of a different typology of filmmaking and at the same time stress the popular potential of cinema as a collective practice and not an elitist obsession of a coterie. In the intervening time when we were trying to sort out ways and means in this regard, certain films passed through on our watch and we feel diminished for not being able to recognize the achievements of Mes de Guzman's and Neill de la Llana's and Ian Gemazon's , among others. That said, we refuse to be swayed by some in the industry that has hailed the advent of digital cinema as the
newest wave in Philippine history; this self-serving proclamation differs very little from the belabored prognosis that Philippine cinema is dead. Cinema can never die; only the industry as corrupt as the one Philippine cinema is in that deserves perdition.

And so, we at the YCC are very circumspect in acknowledging the efforts and initiatives of young filmmakers in what may well be a transitional cinema that has spawned a deluge of discourses in peculiar places and in the corners of cyberspace, where incidentally everyone seems to be a pundit sheltered by a rarefied blogosphere. We can only but persist to discuss and debate certain terms like independent and digital because these concepts are fraught and highly charged, embodying a stance and implicating modes of production.

It will also serve as well to be less wound up in declaring ourselves the pilgrims of a frontier and busy ourselves instead pondering critical aesthetic questions regarding the ethnographic tendency of digital films or their irresistible lapse into melodrama, the inclination to instill ideas through fable or to fulfill the obligations of fantasy. Of course, there is the irksome matter of indulgence, which we hope is a mere passing affectation and not a defining trait of this cinema in the wings, or in fact already in flight.

With these changes in standards and norms come changes in structure. Beginning this year the YCC will put in place a second tier of membership to be composed of members who have reached a certain age; they will continue to be a vital part of the YCC but will attend to other tasks and projects like publications and seminars and leave the award component to the succeeding generation of young critics. This will ensure continuity and movement as well as interaction.

Finally, after hours of assessing last year's harvest, we face the public with choices that are as vested as any other set of preferences.We do not apologize for our position, but will never own up to prejudice. In a field where award-giving bodies have become mere instruments of the industry, we pride ourselves on the independence that we try to defend the best way we can. We confer the highest honors on the film for its emotionally compelling tale and telling of a nurse mother's complex affection for her daughter and her ward or charge. Set in a social milieu of asymmetries, she toils but does not let go of her integrity, abides by her entitlement with grace, and refuses to reduce her plight to the ploys of sentimentality. It is uncanny that the title is contrived in such a manner that it recalls the more well-known phrase Inang Bayan. And in this convergence, thenurse mother distills the roles of contracted labor and authentic nurturer, a native maternal figure and a surrogate parent, a sharply faceted metaphor of the changing constitution of the family and the household in a time of migration and hybrid lineage. Its ultimate achievement is being able to calibrate commensurate dramatic impulse in varying situations and dispositions within an extended kinship: there is nostalgia for traditional roles, pragmatic responses to social advancement, and the realization that ties are contingent but intimate nevertheless. It is this intimacy and melancholy that steel the film's center.

Inang Yaya edges out the less provocative, though arguably relevant, Kubrador , which surveys the lay of the land of through the eyes of a dazed collector, and the overwrought , which unveils a chronicle of intricate conflict among siblings and their father in an uneventful cinematic excursion into an affectedly windswept but unlamented Pampanga.

Pagtagos sa Interyor ng Teritoryo ng KUBRADOR

2007-03-27T10:35:00.000-07:00

PAGTAGOS SA INTERYOR NG TERITORYO NG KUBRADOR
Sinematograpiya at Salaysay sa Looban
Ni Romulo P. Baquiran, Jr.

Itinatanghal sa Kubrador ang interyor ng looban at mga naninirahan sa sala-salabid na espayo nito. Ang interyor ng looban ay nailalahad sa pamamagitan ng pangunahing tauhang si Amy(Gina Pareño). Siya ang sentro, ang nagpapadaloy ng iba’t ibang salaysay ng pagkubra sa ngalan ng sinasabing bawal pero namamayagpag na laro ng huweteng.

Sumusunod ang lente ng kamera sa bawat pitik at pasag ng katawan at mukha ni Pareño, pati na rin ang mga nakakasalamuha niyang masa ng potensiyal na tagataya, habang ginagaygay ang pasikot-sikot ng bituka ng pook ng mga informal settler. Dahil siya’y katutubo ng lugar—katulad ng isang langgam sa malaking punso—nakapaglalagos siya maging sa mga natatabingang espasyo ng teritoryo na hindi basta nabubunyag sa
tagalabas. Pribelihiyado at nasa kuwadro ng atensiyon ng kamera ang kadalasang mardyinalisado sektor ng lipunan. Narito ang pang-araw-araw na kolektibong
tiyan ng siksikang mamamayan na sinisipsipan ng sustansiya ng mga walang pakialam na politiko.

Sa panahon ng bitbiting kamera at maliliksing sinematograper, nagiging moda sa kontemporanyong paggawa ng pelikulang independiyente ang teknik ng cinema verite. Halos dokumentaryo ang produksiyon. Hindi matagumpay ang ibang produksiyon sa paggamit nito. May ilan na parang ikinabit lamang sa likod ng mga tauhan ang lente at bahala na kung ano ang mangyari. Nasasabi pa ng ilan na ito na ang abanggarde
sa sining ng pelikula.

Mabuti na lamang at hindi naakit na sumadlak sa ganitong tendensiya ang sinematograpiya ng Kubrador. Bagama’t gumamit ng ganitong estilo ang pelikula, sa
katotohanan, lalong naitatanghal ng sinematograpiya ang panloob na realidad ni Amy (Pareno). Sa mga krusyal na mga sandali, maging ang mga nasa isip lamang niya ay nagkakaroon ng presensiya sa iskrin at ipinapahiwatig na naninirahan pa rin sa mga
sulok-sulok at patay na dulo ng looban. Emblematiko ang espektral na paglitaw ng binatang sundalong anak ng kubrador sa maipapalagay na sapilitang paglahok ng
pamilya sa mga kontra-taong proyekto ng estado. Katuwang na mukha ng militarisasyon ang pagkunsinti at pagsasamantala ng politiko sa huweteng na napagkukunan
ng limpak-limpak na ganansiya.

Ang nostalhiya para sa namatay na anak ang isa sa mga impetus ng buhay ng kubrador. Nang mabalitaan niya ang pagkamatay ng isang binatang kaedad ng sariling anak,
naging mabilis at natural ang kaniyang pakikidalamhati. Tulad niya, sumandaling nakiramay ang lente ng kamera sa pagtatanghal ng lamay at sumuot sa interyor ng naulilang lolo (Domingo Landicho).

At kahit nasa Bulacan ang lokal ng pelikula, nagkaroon ang probinsiya ng katangian ng dusing at sikip ng looban. Tila ba ang lugar ng malawak na espasyo ay nagiging ekstensiyon ng daigdig na kinabibitagan ng Kubrador.

Kung gayon, nasa ganap na pagkagapos sa galamay ng dekadenteng sistemang panlipunan ang nakaraan, kasalukuyan, at hinaharap ng kubrador. Kumunoy ng trahedya ang sitwasyon niya lalo pa’t tila wala siyang katiting na kamalayan sa kinalulubugan; kahit nagkaroon ng pagkakataon na harapang makita ang representante (Johnny Manahan) na humahamig at nagdidistribyut sa barya at salaping pinaghirapan niyang kolektahin. Pinalilitaw itong kabaitan at pagmamahal sa kapuwa kahit ang kapuwang minsan tinulungan ng kubrador na makalabas sa presinto ay naging maramot at walang pakialam sa kaniya sa mga unang eksena.

Kahima’t pinili ng mga prodyuser ang reaktibong trajektori ng salaysay at interyoridad ng isang taga-looban, nagtatagumpay ang plastik na kalidad ng
sinematograpiya at disenyong biswal na mailantad ang mga ugat at manipestasyon ng malalim na bukal ng korupsiyon sa lipunang Filipino.

(Appeared in Young Critics Circle Film Desk’s Sine-Sipat: Recasting Roles and Images-Stars, Awards and Criticism for 2006, March 2007.)

Kaleldo (Summer Heat) Loses Steam

2007-03-27T10:31:00.000-07:00

Kaleldo (Summer Heat) Loses Steam
Eloisa May P. Hernandez

Sizzling summer heat loses steam in Brillante Mendoza’s Kaleldo (Kampanpangan for “summer heat”). Mendoza’s directorial skills turn arid Pampanga into a beautiful setting for a family drama hampered by a problematic screenplay. A story about the Manansala family of Guagua, Pampanga, it stars Johnny Delgado as Rudy Manansala, a woodcarver and father to three daughters: Jess, wonderfully played by Cherry Pie Picache, is the eldest daughter and a lesbian who suffers the scorn of her father; Lourdes, played by Angel Aquino, is the favored middle child who is married to a weakling of a husband, Andy (Alan Paule); and the youngest daughter, Grace, played by Juliana Palermo, who is married to a mama’s boy Conrad (Lauren Novero).

Kaleldo is a movie in three parts; each daughter’s story is prefigured by an element. The first part, Wind, is Grace’s story and how she tries but fails to integrate with her husband’s family. Fire prefigures the story of Lourdes, her failing marriage and costly indiscretion. Water, the last part of this trilogy of elements, is the story of Jess and her girlfriend Weng (Criselda Volks), and is highlighted by the death of the father and ends with Weng walking out of Jess during the father’s wake. The fourth element, Earth, is the landscape of Pampanga. The importance and purpose of these elements in the narrative is never clear. Are these just devices to divide the narrative? Or are there stereotypical characteristics of the elements that are present in the stories of each daughter? Are the daughters’ personalities akin to the elements? The screenplay is out of its element. The three parts are not woven tightly and is far from seamless; the division is more disruptive than unifying. It is safe to say that the sum of the three parts did not achieve a cinematic whole.

Kaleldo created a buzz in the public’s imagination with a lesbian, Jess, as one of its central characters. Once marginalized and close to invisible, there has been an abundance lately of lesbian representations in Philippine cinema with Joel Lamangan’s Sabel, Connie SA.Macatuno’s Rome and Juliet, Auraeus Solito’s Tuli, and Babae by Sigrid Andrea Bernardo. Though films with lesbian characters offer a deeper understanding of the woman-loving-woman relationship, some representations are problematic (Carlos Siguion Reyna’s Tatlo…Magkasalo comes to mind as one of the most). Even if these films render lesbians visible in predominantly patriarchal representations in Philippine cinema, the discourse about lesbians that these films generate leaves much to be desired. Most lesbians are represented as drunkards (Jess’ lesbian friends in Kaleldo spend most of their screen time drinking or drunk), confused, criminals, evil, violent, and spurned by men they love and so turning them into men-hating lesbians.

Most films also dichotomize lesbians into butches and femmes (for lack of more appropriate terms). The butches are depicted as very macho and patriarchal, and the femmes are depicted as very feminine and subservient. At the end of the film, the lesbians are turned straight, made to go back to the altar of heterosexuality, and married off to the next available bachelor, thereby fulfilling the heterosexual happy-ever-after plot. Kaleldo places itself in this quandary. After exposing the flawed heterosexual relationships between Lourdes and Andy and younger sister Grace and Conrad, and portraying the lesbian relationship between Jess and Weng as a stable, loving, caring, and supportive partnership between two women, it chooses to break up and destroy the lesbian relationship and marry Weng off in a church wedding. Why deny lesbian love its much-needed and deserved happy-ever-after? Why succumb to the heterosexual and patriarchal notion of relationship?

A voice-over narration feebly attempts to explain that Jess had to let go of Weng because she loves her, unlike the kind of love her strict father had for them that left her scarred. Whatever happened to fighting for one’s love? Where is redemption here? Where is empowerment? Instead of liberating Jess from the scarring and stifling patriarchal love of her father, she succumbs and is defeated by it.

Brillante Mendoza, winner of last year’s Young Critics Circle Film Desk awards for his first film Masahista, creates some stunning picture-perfect scenes with sparkles of cinematographic brilliance that turns lahar-stricken Pampanga into a beautiful setting, albeit some scenes are devoid of context.

The acting is uneven and inconsistent, making it difficult for us to empathize with the characters. Johnny Delgado’s acting during his daughter’s wedding seems more lustful than loving. Angel Aquino, Alan Paule and Lauren Novero render forgettable performances. Liza Lorena is over the top. Juliana Palermo and Criselda Volks are competent.

The bright spot in this acting ensemble is Cherry Pie Picache who turns in the most subtle yet searing portrayal of a devoted and dutiful lesbian daughter that still does not command the love and respect she deserves from her father. Picache’s transformation is effective and detailed - in small quiet gestures, a painful look, a longing stare. Her characterization is intelligent and void of histrionics. Picache inhabits Jess in a convincing manner and blends with the landscape that is Pampanga. We ache as she strives for her father’s respect, acceptance, and ultimately, his love. We cringe as she is constantly berated and publicly embarrassed by her father for how she dresses. We cheer as she defends her sister from a rampaging husband with a leg of pig as a weapon. We experience her love for her girlfriend Weng with her intimate caresses. We flinch as she is slapped by her father for answering back and standing up for herself and Weng. We sense her fear as she ever so slightly recoils in the presence of her domineering and violent father. We empathize with her vulnerability as she mourns his death.

Contrary to prevalent, albeit erroneous, representations in film and other mass media where the lesbian is typecast as macho, brusque, uncouth, and abrasive, Picache’s portrayal of a lesbian is strong yet sensitive, willful yet tender and loving, and impenitent yet compassionate. Defying pervasive filmic and societal lesbian constructs, she intelligently captures the nuances of Jess’ character portraying her as a dutiful, hard-working and responsible daughter, a protective sister, and a loving partner. Picache does not characterize Jess solely as a lesbian, but more importantly, as a person. This is reminiscent of Jeanette Winterson’s musings on being a lesbian in Art Objects, “I am not a lesbian who happens to write. I am a writer who happens to love women.” Cherry Pie Picache’s Jess renders more depth and humanity into a lesbian character than most of lesbian representations in recent Philippine cinematic history.

Cherry Pie Picache is the saving grace of Kaleldo, and yet it is her character, Jess, that suffers the most tragic loss as lesbian love wilts under the sweltering heat of summer in Pampanga.

(Appeared in Young Critics Circle Film Desk’s Sine-Sipat: Recasting Roles and Images-Stars, Awards and Criticism for 2006, March 2007.)

Paghuhunos ng Melodrama sa Inang Yaya

2007-03-26T20:39:00.000-07:00

Paghuhunos ng Melodrama sa Inang Yaya
Leo Zafra

NAKABIGKIS sa isang ironiya ang pangunahing tunggalian ng pelikulang Inang Yaya.Kailangang arugain ni Norma (Maricel Soriano) ang anak ng iba para buhayin at itaguyod ang sariling anak, at dahil dito, nawalay at halos mapabayaan naman ang tunay na supling. Sa huli, kakailanganin niyang mamili bilang Yaya at bilang Ina sa dalawang batang kaniyang kinalinga, at nasa paglalahad ng dramatikong tensiyon at paggalugad sa mga konteksto ng bubuuing pasiya ang kabuluhan ng pelikula.

“Inang Yaya” na maituturing si Norma kay Louise, anak ng kareristang magasawa na ginampanan nina Sunshine Cruz at Zoren Legaspi. Abala ang magasawa sa trabaho at sa ibang obligasyon, kaya halos ang yaya ang tumayong ina kay Louise. Lumaki man sa layaw ang bata, makikitang mahal na mahal niya ang kaniyang yaya. Ngunit ang pagmumulan ng salimuot ng naratibo --may anak si Norma, si Ruby, na nasa probinsiya, inaalagaan ng kaniyang lola (Marita Zobel), at nangungulila sa kalinga ng ina.

Iigiting ang takbo ng kuweto sa pagpanaw ng ina ni Norma. Bunga nito, mapipilitan ang siyang bitbitin ang kaniyang anak pa-Maynila, at itira sa pinagtatrabahuhang pamilya. Bagaman kapiling na niya ang sariling anak, hindi pa rin magiging madali para kay Norma ang bagong sitwasyon. Bukod sa pagtupad sa mga responsabilidad sa pamilyang pinaglilingkuran, kailangan niyang hatiin ang sarili sa dalawang batang nag-aagawan sa kaniyang atensiyon. Masasaksihan din niya ang hirap ng paninimbang ni
Ruby kasama ng kaniyang alagang pinalaki sa luho at layaw ng mga magulang.

Pinatitingkad ang pelikula ng mga katangian ng melodrama na makikita sa ilang ipinamalas nitong kumbensiyon. Pangunahin samga katangiang ito ang pagtatampok sa katauhan ni Norma na tigib ng hirap at pighati sa araw-araw na pakikipagsapalaran sa pagtupad sa mga tungkuling iniatang ng lipunan sa babae. Bilang ina, kailangan niyang tiisin ang pangungulila sa sariling anak habang kinakalinga ang anak ng kaniyang amo. Bilang yaya, kailangan naman niyang hatiin ang hapong katawan sa samot-saring gawain ng pagiging katulong sa bahay at tagapag-alaga ng bata, at balikatin ang iba pang domestikong pasanin ng pinagsisilbihang pamilya.

Ngunit binibigo rin ng ang karaniwang ekspektasyon sa isang pelikulang melodrama. Isa na, maingat na binuo ang karakter ng mga tauhan kaya naman kumikilos sila hindi ayon sa paghuwad sa mga gasgas na karakterisasyon kundi ayon sa maingat at talinong paghimay sa iba't ibang tensiyong kinakaharap ng mga tauhan. Ang Lola (Liza Lorena) ni Louise na sa simula'y mapangutya't inaasahang maging dagdag na pasanin kay Norma
ay siya pang makatutuklas sa kalinisan ng budhi ng anak ng Yaya; ang dalawang batang tauhan, na mahusay at matalinong nagampanan ng mga batang aktres, ay nailarawang may kakayahang umarok atumunawa, mag-isip at dumama, magpasiya at kumilos tungkol sa iba't ibang hamon ng kanilang mga munting mundo, pati ng samot-saring komplikasyon ng mas malawak na realidad ngmga taong nakapaligid sa kanila.

Sa pagsapit ng kasukdulan ng naratibo, may magandang oportunidad na naghihintay sa pinasisilbihang mag-asawa sa ibang bansa, at iaalok din nila kay Norma ang pagkakataon para kumita nang mas malaki sa pangingibangbayan kasama nila. Ngunit mangangahulugan ito ng muling pagkawalay ng ina sa kaniyang anak. Kung maghahandog lamang ng idealistang pagtatapos ang ay madaling hulaan ang mga posibilidad para wakasan ang pelikula. Sasama si Norma, o isasama rin niya ang kaniyang anak sa pangingibang-bansa. Ngunit taliwas sa inaasahang masayang wakas ng anyong melodrama, yayakagin ng pelikula ang manonood sa pagninilay ni Norma, at sa bandang huli, sa paglilimi sa konteksto kung bakit magpapasiya si Norma na manatili sa sariling bayan, sa piling ng kaniyang anak.

Sa pagtatampok sa proseso ng pagpapasiya ni Norma, naipamamalas kung paanong ang melodrama ay nagagamit sa paglalarawan ng damdamin, ligalig,at iba pang aspektong personal, at kung paanong sa pagsasadula ng mga dinaranas na mga agam-agam at pighati ay mapatingkad ang pakikibaka ng mga tauhan samga institusyon at estrukturang panlipunan.

Hindi lamang ang paluhain ang manonood ang pakay ng pelikulang
kung gayon. Nagpapahiwatig din ito ng bagong kabatiran tungkol sa
pagkatao at lipunan, at ng posibilidad sa paghuhunos ng anyo ng melodrama
ng sineng Filipino.

The Young Critics Circle

2007-03-26T19:06:00.000-07:00

Established in 1990, YCC is the critics group with members coming from various disciplines. Through the years, they have become attentive observers of Philippine cinema constantly bringing into the analysis of film an interdisciplinary approach.

The organization departs from many conventions of other award-giving bodies both here and abroad in bestowing cinematic honors. For instance, the award for Best Film of the Year is reserved for the director such that no separate prize for direction is needed. The Best Performance award is most coveted as it is conferred on a screen performer whether male or female, adult or child, individual or as part of an ensemble, in leading or supporting role. To uphold a more dynamic and encompassing way of looking at films, technical honors refer to fusion of outstanding efforts in fields otherwise deemed apart. In this case, the Best Cinematography and Visual Design recognition covers both camerawork and art direction. Similarly, Best Sound and Aural Orchestration encompasses not just sound engineering per se but musical score as well.

The Film Desk of the Young Critics Circle

2007-03-01T21:06:00.000-08:00

Film Desk of the Young Critics Circle:

Romulo P. Baquiran Jr.
Flaudette May V. Datuin
Noel D. Ferrer
Patrick D. Flores
Eli R. Guieb III
Eloisa May P. Hernandez
Jason P. Jacobo
Nonoy L. Lauzon
Eileen C. Legaspi-Ramirez
Gerard Lico
Jerry C. Respeto
Neil Martial R. Santillan
Galileo S. Zafra

The Criteria

2007-03-01T21:00:00.000-08:00

Best Picture: refers to vision and direction that pay sensitive and keen attention to both the language of cinema (“presentation”) and social reality (“representation”), in the process refunctioning the possibilities of film as progressive art and popular culture. The Best Picture citation is awarded to the Director not so much because he or she is the auteur or the central intelligence of the film, but because his or her work lies at the conjuncture which coordinates filmmaking.

Best Screenplay: refers to the rhetoric of writing for film that articulates the complexity of social life and personal perturbation through narrative logic or
political conviction; or simply through well-thought out dramatic tension that explores contestation between the personal and the political, the individual and the collective, the private and the public. The Best Screenplay award is given to all the writers of the film.

Best Cinematography and Visual Design: refers to the mise-en-scene and its visual/plastic qualities production design, lighting, art direction, visual effects that lend form to whatever representation is projected on screen; and absorb the differences of social forces and cultures in instances of contradiction, confluence, contact, resistance, or affiliation with one another, as well as imbibe the relationship between people and the structures and institutions they mediate through social practice. The Best Cinematography and Visual Design honor is conferred on the cinematographer and the production designer.

Best Editing: refers to the configuration of relationships of time and space among scenes in a film that is able to synthesize, engage in collision, reconcile, or transgress connections through the complex interplay of mise-en-scene and montage. The Best Editing trophy is given to the editors.

Best Sound and Aural Orchestration: refers to the rendering of the auditory aspects of film music, natural sound, sound effects as these are counterposed against or harmonized with the language of image, and so become meaningful sign systems on their own. The Best Sound citation is awarded to the sound engineer and the musical scorer.

Best Performance: refers to acting, to the playing out of a role or character that implicates emotion, feeling, and experience in the social conditions of the personal and in the political economies of habit and gesture and how these forge the body politic. The Best Performance citation is handed to the Performer, whether male or female, adult or child, in major or supporting role, individual or ensemble.

Pagpasok sa lupalop ng limot at binahang komunidad (Paraiso)

2006-03-01T19:27:00.000-08:00

Pagpasok sa lupalop ng limot at binahang komunidad
ni Romulo P. Baquiran, Jr.

Ang paglikaw-sipat ng kamera sa nilikha/aktuwal na lugar ng Paraiso/Navotas ay pagsipat din sa buhay ng mga tauhang inilalantad ng naratibo. Pugad ng kahirapan ang tabing-dagat na komunidad na lalo pang pinalubha ng pagsakop ng tubig sa kinasanayang teritoryong tinatapakan ng tao. Nagsisikap mabuhay sa lubog na lugar ang mga tauhan, pangunahin ang tatlong mag-ina at ang mga lalaking naugnay sa kanila.

Tila siruhanong inilalantad ng sinematograpiya ang realidad ng kanilang kondisyon; walang kurap na tinitistis nito ang gangrenosong mga ugat at laman ng kanilang personal at panlipunang ugnayan. Malinaw ang alusyon sa naunang Insiang, hindi lamang sa balangkas ng kuwento kundi pati sa sityo ng pagdurusang panlipunan. Dito sa Paraiso, tumindi pa ang kalagayan ng kadahupan dahil sa paglukob ng likidong malapot at maitim sa batayang pamumuhay ng lahat. Lumulutang at lumulubog sila sa tubig na walang maaasahang malinaw na rabaw at malinis na kailaliman. Ang pagsisikap ng mga protagonistang makaahon o maglublob sa literal at abstraktong likidong impiyerno ay dramatikong naitanghal sa mala-sosyorealistang estilo.

Sa pelikula, ang produksiyon ng espasyo ay sabay na naglalarawan ng milieu at sikolohikong kondisyon. At transgresibo ang proyektong ito sa loob ng namamayaning pagbalorisa ng pangkorporasyong layunin ng industriya ng pelikunang Filipino sa mga romansang burges na sadyang nagsasalaylayan sa mga malawakang panlipunang realidad. Makikita agad ito sa mismong pagtuon ng Paraiso sa natatanging representasyon ng isang limot na komunidad.

At literal na “lumubog” ang sinematograpiya sa materyal na nais maitanghal ng pelikula. Hinuhuli ng mata ng kamera ang ritmo ng buhay-buhay sa looban. May mga eksenang nagpapakita ng herarkikal at nahahati-sa-uring kondisyon ng lipunan hindi sa lantad at didaktikong paraan kundi sa tila-simpleng presentasyong biswal lamang. Halimbawa ang kuha ng pagkukuwentuhan ng barkada sa isang gilid ng maruming ilog. Nasa unang antas ng kuwadro ang mga mukha at katawan ng mga kalalakihang taga-looban; nasa ikalawang antas naman ang kaligiran ng malawak pero basurahang ilog; sumunod ang tulay, at sa kabila ng tulay ang maunlad na siyudad. Ang neutral na kalikasan ay nagkakaroon ng dimensiyong pangkultura at pampolitika sa gitna ng kaayusang likha ng tao na nagsusulong ng paggamit ng kapangyarihan para sa opresyon ng kapuwa. Ang dating malinis na ilog na minarkahan ng dumi ng kaunlaran ang hidwang pang-espasyo sa literal at simbolikong antas na kailangang tawirin ng mga nasa laylayan ng lipunan upang marating ang siyudad ng tao. Kahit mayroong tulay na magagamit, hindi ito nagsisilbing pandugtong na panlipunan kundi isa pang uri ng demarkasyon ng may kapangyarihan at ng nagbibili lamang ng kanilang lakas-paggawa. Malayo at halos wala sa kuwadro ng realidad ng huli ang siyudad na katatagpuan ng modernong kaluwagan sa buhay.

Kasama ang anggulo ng kamera sa pagbubunyag ng ontolohiya ng lugar. Madalas na ang puwesto nito ay halos nasa ibabaw lamang ng tubig, at tinatanaw ang primal na tagpuan ng aksiyon—ang tahanan ng mag-iina na isa lamang sa mahabang hilera ng mga bahay ng naghihikahos. Madalas ring tulad ito ng ibong lumilipad para malapitang tingnan ang mga lihim sa kabila ng mga dingding at silid. Ang hidwaan ng mag-iina sanhi ng paninirahan ng bagong asawa ng ina ay naitanghal ng kamerang sumisilip sa kisame.

Ang pagsasaayos ng espasyo-panahon sa takbo ng naratibo ay mainam na naisasagawa lalo na sa maiigting na eksena. Nabanggit na ng kasamang Lauzon ang magkaagapay na tagpo ng pakikipagtalik ng tauhang ginagampanan ni Renee Summer sa pulis (Roldan Aquino) para makaganti at ng pagsalvage sa lalaki (John Regala) na dahilan ng pagdurusa nilang mag-iina.

Marungis ang disenyong biswal sa pelikula dulot na rin ng kahingian ng materyal. Malikhaing natimpla ito ng produksiyon at nalikha ang Paraiso na bagama’t may malaking kahinaan sa pagbuo ng makatwirang delineasyon ng katauhan ng babae, ay nakapaglatag pa rin ng obrang sumasalungat sa higit na palsong pananaw-sa-daigdig ng burges na pelikulang namamayagpag sa mga mall ng ating panahon.

(Appeared in Young Critics Circle Film Desk’s Sine-Sipat: Recasting Roles and Images-Stars, Awards and Criticism for 2005, March 2006)

Exercises of Commencement (Let the Love Begin)

2006-03-01T19:26:00.000-08:00

Exercises of Commencement

by Patrick D. Flores

While the restoration of conflicted love to its harmonious ideal is de rigueur in the genre of romance in popular cinema, all is not lost in terms of the potential of an alternative mode of restoring it. For it is not solely the restoration that must inform the critique of film, but the restorative gesture; and that romance is not necessarily the fulcrum on which the freight of affection strives for poise: the romantic possibility in the face of lovelessness, indeed the initiation into love amid the despair nurtured by social inequity, might be the proper axis. We appreciate Let the Love Begin to the degree that it resists the temptation merely to repeat the script of restoration, so that it could work through (but not inevitably work out) the romantic process. It is in the latter that we begin to grasp the necessity of the love that is almost already reduced to a commodity or fetish in the alienating habits of the media. It is the production of this love, with the impediments of both station and sensibility, that renders everything heartfelt and moves us to sigh because it relieves.

The plot is from a distance barren. But inasmuch as the screenplay is attentive to the details of emergence, the landscape flourishes in the course of the viewing experience. The problem revolves around a poor young man who works as a janitor in a school where he studies at night. The predicament is not poverty in its abstract sense, but the material conditions bred by this dispossession, a vital aspect of which is the intimate longing to love, to release those dams of feeling, that is held at bay. In other words, this earnest character cannot afford to culture what is made to appear a natural disposition because the said conditions militate against it, or at least restrain its indulgence. That said, the film plods on still because it is interested in the exercise of commencement: of how the hero could let the love begin. This pursuit is consequently deferred; it is, in fact, such deferral that frustrates certain expectations for the romantic resolution to return to normalcy (and normativity) and thus transforms facile enamoration into an exasperation of sorts: the film shifts its gears unhurriedly, no rush to completion here, as if love is painfully protracted, defended against the delusion of unconditional devotion. It is deferral that fulfills the promise of cinema as both annunciation and anticipation.

Implicated in this suspension are the people around the protagonist: the beloved, a wealthy scion whose father wants her to be in business and to forsake all aspirations to be an artist; confidantes who work in a fast-food chain and the pedicab circuit; a grandmother who serves as singular parent who solicits prayers from the forlorn faithful of the church to keep body and soul together; and a rival suitor who masquerades as the damsel’s savior. Integral to the narrative’s humanist inclination is the ethic of the young man, who is pictured as a diligent, persevering, talented, compassionate, generous, and sensitive male who achieves success through sheer determination. But this success is verisimilarly delayed, in step with his patient, sentimental romance: he continues to sweep floors after college while his peers have become cloying careerists. In the end, the working class knight receives a scholarship from a well-known university in the United States, courtesy of a global firm, a dream that, in the vein of pervading extensions, is likewise put off again – interestingly, in the era of late capitalism and in the full efflorescence of belated desire.

All told, in spite and because of the routines of genre, the screenplay of Let the Love Begin merits discussion. It carves out a different space for class contradictions to reveal much-vaunted strife and at the same time to glimpse the prospects of internal critique. For it is not outside love that these antagonisms fester, but within its sanctum. There is a scene in the film that captures this intricate perturbation, and thus captivates. Seated inside a car, the hero is confronted by the origin of his adoration, who preens before the window that reflects in mirror-effect her image, oblivious to his presence. He is unsettled because he fears of being seen by someone who is actually at the end of his gaze. This is an uncanny moment in which misrecognition finds its screen: the agents of romance become at once object and subject that are inhibited from consummating their encounter, estranged partly by the vanities of their sight and the illusions of a deceptive glass. One sees herself on a surface that conceals the man who surveils and espies her beholding herself while staring at him. The other gains bliss by coming face to face with his intractable fantasy but is concomitantly agitated by his disingenuous technique of supervision and the peril of being found out. This only reminds us that love is a plane that can never be transparent, mediated as it is by the asymmetries of life and the compromises that a project like Let the Love Begin can conjure only in dilatory disguise.

(Appeared in Young Critics Circle Film Desk’s Sine-Sipat: Recasting Roles and Images-Stars, Awards and Criticism for 2005, March 2006)

Desertion (Dubai)

2006-03-01T19:23:00.000-08:00

Desertion
Jason P. Jacobo

How dry can a film shot in a desert city be?

Take away the setting, and Dubai’s story is staple love triangle: two brothers (Aga Muhlach and John Lloyd Cruz), the woman who comes in between (Claudine Baretto), and the sacrifices each must offer to love and live!

Director Rory Quintos should have learned from the blunders of her colleague Olivia Lamasan, whose concept of doing a Filipino production in Milan was making her characters speak, eat, wear things Italian! What we are saying here is the film fails to play out its setting as the ground of conflict. And we only know it’s Dubai we’re seeing on screen because of the obligatory sequence where John Lloyd tours himself around the First World cityscape. Had the producers thought well of their project, they would have had better use of their capital by shooting in Ilocos. Anyway, what they wanted was just desert.

Our audiences have yet to see a competent love-in-the-time-of-diaspora film. Sana Maulit Muli (an Olivia Lamasan work) could have just been the piece, save for the last scene where Lea Salonga, after going through all the works of the American cosmopolis, becomes Dalagang Filipina all over again. But unlike Lamasan, Quintos (es)chews politics. Remember that nationalist discourse amid dayami in the Bicolanesquery that was Kailangan Kita? Well, she does it again in Dubai, with a little help from Ricky Lee’s laborious labor rhetoric. And this time, in a wedding banquet hosted by the Aga Muhlach, the mouthpiece of overseas Filipino work.
But in an attempt to give the film its due credit, we still ask “Why Dubai, of all places in the ‘Middle East?’” Why not depict Filipinos struggling to pick up the pieces of their lives in post-Saddam Baghdad? What’s so particular about Dubai? Is it the prospect of striking gold in that wealthy state that gilds a character’s dreams with so much hope as well as regret? Or is it the co-existence of “tradition and modernity,” as city publicist Michael de Mesa would claim? If so, can we really see the cohabitation in the menage-a-trois? How strange can the bedfellows be? Just because they are family?

While the sensitive viewer may see the possibilities of the said themes in the film, the apparent drabness in the style cannot lead her to a clear understanding of the director’s vision, if she is indeed capable of it. In a Quintos production, never hope to see an object transformed into a symbol nor an image. Let’s just take her word for it—a desert is a desert is a desert.

Nonetheless Dubai is not all sand in John Lloyd Cruz. Like any other Lee character, John Lloyd’s is traumatized, because of a series of losses which causes an unrealized sense of self/personhood: the mother leaves him for Canada, dies there; then his elder brother tries his luck in the Middle East. In Dubai, Cruz is made to confront the neurosis of infantilism in a triangulation of desire, where he fails, but nevertheless emerges as a survivor, with his heart still in the right place. What is astounding here is how Cruz sheds light on the Oedipal conflict with so much daring in spite of an innocence that insists on its glare on the one hand and a self-knowledge that casts its shadow on the other. The maturity Cruz displays in this role may not be as quiet as Trillo’s or as determined as Rosales’s, but this Dubai performance secures his position as an actor of his time, an arrival long awaited yet still sighted—like that of a true oasis.

(Appeared in Young Critics Circle Film Desk’s Sine-Sipat: Recasting Roles and Images-Stars, Awards and Criticism for 2005, March 2006)

Tactile/Tactical : Masahista

2006-03-01T19:19:00.000-08:00

Tactile/Tactical
Jason P. Jacobo

Surveying the settings of local cinema’s sex films, we can say our audiences have quite traversed many a zone: street corners, public parks, fishing villages, and all that lush vegetation. But since no meat could ever matter in the sole depiction of current perversions, exhibiting the said areas only furthered myths about the sin city, as well as the sad tropics. Before we can say that a filmic locale is legitimate, the space must fully flesh out a context, one that marks out the passage of identities, they who are unsettled, or are simply stranded—lost and struggling for another, if not a better, place. And even if a film’s aim is to simply uncover a site of struggle by showing bodies stripped of their human dignity, the divestments must not only lay bare the devices that coerce subjects to accept the wearing down of their whole and parts and discard the possibility of redress by holding on to their pedestrian habits. The cinema of such variety that strives to be truly interventive must avoid the mere spectacle of a striptease by envisioning a spectrum of embodiment beyond the nude and the naked. After displays of the burlesque, a film is also hoped to reveal new designs of refashioning disfigured, because disproportionate, social anatomies.

Thankfully, Brillante Mendoza’s Masahista has its context, one that maps out what we can call a “tropical traffic.” Shuttling between the metropolises of Angeles and Manila, the film locates the transactions of the flesh not just on the level of anonymous bodies but on the plane of familiar subjects—familiar, as the encounters plot out the prosaic itineraries of corporeal selves negotiating affects which are by turns sensible, sensational, and of course, sensory. Familiarity is a condition the film aspires for so that what can only come to the fore is a vision of the “concrete,” revealing the various “social thicknesses” deep down a seemingly dichotomic (country-city) surface. Once a city that catered its “women of excess” to American military officers, Angeles in the film now provides the “surplus” of male sex work to a capital region whose homosexual herd seems to need tending from an ever-willing pack of virile virgins.

The American moment in Angeles is a significant incident in understanding the contemporary history of sexuality that the city has come to represent. Anecdotes tell us that as a “contact zone,” Angeles has allowed a “cultural coitus” that only allegorizes this country’s miscegenational tendencies (or are they techniques?) with foreign sojourners, the colonial paramour most especially. The fruit of the said dalliance is most evident in the birth of an Amerasian generation, the “G.I. babies” of yesterday’s lonesome songs. But the fair fathers of these love children had no choice but to abandon them and their mothers, local economy’s “service women,” turning them into cashless casualties of a war they once wished would last beyond their years. Against their will but with the movies in their mind still reeling, these women coaxed their swearing sons to carry on the “heritage.” After all, these men, demigods boasting of hybrid physiognomies, could only be ripenesses ready for the picking. We are not saying that the masseur (Coco Martin) in the film is of the said lineage, nor we are suggesting that the mother (Jaclyn Jose) is a retiree from civilization’s oldest trade. Such readings would only defeat our efforts to contextualize the filmic locale. What we are trying to point out here is that the choice of the milieu makes the film tread a path paved with the stuff that constructs history. Nevertheless, Jaclyn Jose as the masseur’s mother is a point to consider. In her youth, Jose archetypicalized the prostitute in films like Macho Dancer and Olongapo: The Great American Dream. The irony of this detail only thickens the texture of Masahista’s historicizing.

Manila completes the erotopolitics of a post-American Angeles by providing the new “base” from which the “trafficking”of flesh is negotiated. Instructive in this discursive field is the notion of “excess,” as it names the diasporic movement of male sex work from the country to the city in legionary terms, ascribing to the flight a force best expressed in the idiom of “swarm,” “horde,” and yes, “stampede.” In the metropole, the excess of male bodies need not threaten the “balance of trade.” If we consider the clientele, who in desiring only produces a surplus of longings, the omnipresence of male sex work will no longer astound us, for we finally come to understand why there is a “mass production” of male sex work in the city—because the “service men” perceive the setting as one overflowing with the capital that would free them from a condition of economic scarcity.
Masahista particularizes the male sex worker that services the metropolitan context by singling out an expert—the masseur. The choice to identify the said type answers our question of why the film dwells in the familiar: to make more palpable (but not necessarily palatable) our reckoning with urban estrangement, social immobility, and albeit elaborately, spiritual retreat.

How does the alienation take place? With the massage as both the medium and the message of the “service,” maleness becomes an indefinite undertaking for our expert; if his performance falls short of the expected display of prowess, then musculature need not be a primary criterion in purchasing the goods of masculinity. If the pleasure of the visual matches that of the performative, only then can man preserve his mythic wholeness. But how can one reconcile a view with a gesture? How does a quiver (or its absence) fail a gaze? Such a struggle “the boys” must contend with even after they have been chosen as “finalists.” In the bedroom, there is the real pageant. Nonetheless, probing the grotesque male body does not necessarily valorize the bearer of the gaze. The rather typical depiction is necessary to critique, not the gay, but the consumptive machinations of a libidinal economy in which the gay participates.

Brillante Mendoza’s critique departs however from the imaginings of Lino Brocka (in Tubog sa Ginto and Macho Dancer) and Mel Chionglo (in Sibak and Burlesk King), who have worked through the question of male sex work under the social realist paradigm. A film leaning towards the latter will have to dramatize a range of social forces which restrain and finally disable the individual to rise out of the condition of (what else but) poverty. With or without the dream of the “good life,” Macho and Sibak portray the male sex worker as someone left without any choice but to sell his body. The pathos that this premise conjures is obtuse, for it rests on a false humanism: the bourgeois lamenting the perils of the lumpen throng, as if the former has not contributed to the latter’s dispossession. Such philanthropic guises are not found in Masahista, whose society works out its poignant tragedies in the humble energies of the everyday, and not through the grand forces of messianic history. The film’s settings are open milieus whose unruly arrangements tangentially capture political terrains, and not cordoned locations whose insularity exaggerates, by way of allegory, the (un)likelihood of politicized and politicizing landscapes. Residing in these locales are locals inhibited by the imbalance in the social ecology and not just non-initiates stripped of their virtues in a morality play. Portrayed is human interaction; conflict only arises because of the clash of desires and interests, and not just because of individual mores and manners sticking out of the social fabric.

In other words, Masahista is significant because it evinces the ethnographic, a mode that most aptly configures a context, breaking down familiar experience into the perceptive and the perceptible—those details, patterns, and motions of “local knowledge.” The critique that such a framework yields goes beyond the defiles of exposé (as in tabloidal television) and the shame of exposure (as in circulated private telephonic video), but remains within the bounds of the cinematic exposition, or the visual essay.

But the film chooses to emphasize certain disruptions in its ethnography by juxtaposing the trades of the flesh with the rituals of bereavement, a feat achieved through a tour de force parallel editing. This technique infuses the masseur with a certain sentience, enabling him to confront the limits to prowess, the insistence of finitude, and the redemption in filiality. But how does the film build up these thematic possibilities? This is where criticism functions as a rhetoricization of the filmic anthropology.

As the hotbed of desires in the cold Third World night, the massage parlor allows one to weather the heart—well, for a dear price. But while the quasi-panoptic cinematography explores the scenario to its minutiae, granting the audience almost total access to the dark skin and its darker schemes, the production design dares to evoke synaesthesia, making the visual and the tactile copulate. Masahista lets our eyes come into contact with the various senses of touch, from the habits of the busy flesh to the rites rendered to one’s wretched remains. This is where art moves us, in spite of a genre’s bare necessities. And this is also where Mendoza tries to remind us that while labor is alienated (forced by the customer into sodomy, the masseur doesn’t get his expected fees), the reification is not total, for the masseur’s work is, despite his sex, affective.

We are told that in a massage, one lets another’s hands touch one’s body, and allows the forager full entry to that landscape. But with the transaction involved, the erotic remains the customer’s fantasy. The tactile one, we are told, is a master of tactics. He may be numb to the nakedness before him, but with each stroke, he knows he can close the deal and get more out of it. So Iliac, the masseur, touches the customer’s core by weaving a pathetic life story, which varies from one night to another, depending on the moment’s need. But the film tells us that the masseur’s narrative, even with altered references, is a self-allegory, a confession even. Well, almost, for the sinner leaves out the gravest offense. On the night of his service, Iliac finds out that his estranged father has already passed away, but the former only ignores the news, letting his romance novelist customer (Allan Paule) finish his parable. However, at the height of abandon, Iliac is haunted by his own abandonment. Before a phantom of death, that is where the fictive, however tangible, renders itself futile. The film owes these levels of abstraction to a screenplay whose ambiguity is made brusque by an attentive sound recording, allowing Puigesque chatter to commingle with Pinterian silences.

Hence, the spectator is no longer a voyeur but a fellow sufferer. Brillante Mendoza sees to it that the sensual detail will not lead to an alienation from the image, but a filiation to it. So when Iliac is made to dress his father’s corpse up, the latter’s touch is already charged with irony. Here is a character left without any choice but to confront what the event, absurd as it may seem, can intimate about mortality. What does the masseur do with the cadaver that he detests but needs to reclaim by means of a dignified apparel, while remembering how he surrenders his own manhood, or what is left of it, each time he undresses for the survival of his kin? What touch can he offer when the warmth of his hands has already been taken by a stranger’s body?

The vulnerability presented by the masseur’s encounter with death is made more palpable by a motif of ruin (or the neglect that causes it) running through the film’s lyrical images: a bicycle’s mishap with a karitela in a street of broken earthen pottery; demolished buildings which surround the hospital where the dead father is lain; the widow’s rough face; and a customer whose skin sags with every breath he catches just to enjoy the night’s lease.

So why resolve the metaphysical dilemma in terms of the melodramatic? At one glance, the scene where Iliac discovers the shoe sizes that his father kept is not in keeping with film’s rhythm. The said revelation simply disrupts the contemplative pace the film has maintained because of the director’s keen handling of the tropes of tactility. At that point, the narrative evaporates, condensing emotion only through Iliac’s tears. But the flatness of the rendition salvages the rest of the film from sheer campiness on the hand and ultra-poeticism on the other. It is in this tempo bereft of any affected cadence that one finally feels through it all; and melancholia descends, sinks in, stays. Then we realize that isn’t just a plot that can unravel, but also viscerae.

Speaking of the visceral, one performer almost vomits her gut out to claim it. Katherine Luna, whose concept of body acting is limited to a grimace, coupled with the most irritating shriek, can only arouse pity. We understand that her character is supposed to state an oxymoron: a sex-starved prostitute who happens to be the gilfriend of an overperforming masseur. But what the hell happened with the contradiction? Where has all the control in Babae sa Breakwater gone? Out to sea?
If there was any advantage Paule had as an actor in the film, it would have been hindsight. Unfortunately, Paule could not recall the 80’s, when he immortalized the role of the male sex worker. Instead of drawing from his Macho Dancer experience, Paule turned to his Sa Paraiso ni Efren role and repeated the Maryo J. de los Reyes motivation—sissiness as homosexuality! Had he looked farther, he would have understood why Mendoza chose him for the role—to complete the path he has traversed as an actor in the genre by playing the part of the client and providing an ironic twist to its typicality. Paule should stop accepting gay roles from this day on. His reading of the customer is just customary.

Jaclyn Jose carries a body that tacitly wishes to disappear. In the film, she is the untouchable, and she knows it.

Coco Martin, who switches from innocence to cunning to regret with conspicuous effort but with notable charm nonetheless, plays the eponymous character with utter vitality. Well, Martin is rather limited by his face, whose gentle features resist corruption, or a prospect of it. Stunted puberty also thwarts the erotics of his body, but the psychological restlessness Martin invests into the role glows, enabling him to release a persistent sexuality. At some point, we are convinced Martin is rather unsexed, and therefore, miscast as the masseur, but the hunger is there—an authentic one that makes him a “savage aesthete.” This understanding of emptiness must be the reason why Martin knows where to touch and when to go before he is singed by his own advances. In the end, tactility must be coupled with a movement, after the moorage. Martin’s seduction is by turns sly and timid, one that draws very near only to escape.

In the 16 years of the Film Desk of the Young Critics Circle, Masahista makes history by being the only film ever to be awarded in all categories. A total achievement most clear in the vivid urgencies of editing, sound, cinematography, and production design; in the calm eloquence of the screenplay; and in the thoughtful performances of Jaclyn Jose and Coco Martin. But above all these competencies is director Brillante Mendoza, who might just be the auteur Philippine Cinema has been looking for all these years. In this debut film, he is not just an assured visionary, but also a scrupulous worker, with hands so “full of grace,” that in the end, we say that a “sexual healing” can happen in and through film; and when it does, it seeks what lies beneath duct and pore, cutting through muscle and bone, to find what could be a harrowed soul, and salve it with love’s touch, caress, embrace.

(Appeared in Young Critics Circle Film Desk’s Sine-Sipat: Recasting Roles and Images-Stars, Awards and Criticism for 2005, March 2006)

The Hero in Let The Love Begin

2006-03-01T19:15:00.000-08:00

The Hero in Let The Love Begin
Eloisa May P. Hernandez

On the surface, Let the Love Begin appears as a run of the mill romance movie. A pretty actress and a handsome actor comprise the love team in a typical rich girl-poor boy story. There are the staple accoutrements of the genre: comic sidekicks for friends, a scheming and not so charming prince pretender, a popular song for the movie’s title, and the perfunctory celebratory scene in the end complete with raindrops falling on the protagonists’ heads. However, despite this rather stereotypical mix of plot, characters, and events, the film succeeds in that it provides a rather refreshing take on what it means to be a “hero” or “savior” in this day and age.

Our hero in the story has a mission – to win the heart of the girl he loves. He tries to do this by helping her out with schoolwork, specifically by leaving finished homework under a school chair they share, she by day and he by night. The girl is enamored with her “savior,” yet his true identity remains obfuscated from her. He is hesitant to reveal himself and his intentions, so he takes his time until events overcome him: she leaves for the United States after graduation. A few years transpire and they meet again; she is now a corporate executive, while he as a janitor in her office. A friendship develops between them, yet she remains ignorant of the fact that the janitor used to be her “savior.” In a moment of desperation, she prays for her “savior” to save her again. And once again, our hero comes to save the day. Finally, our hero decides to divulge his identity and intentions to his beloved, but a prince charming pretender steals the glory. As our hero’s beloved finally recognizes that the pretender is not heroic, she realizes that she loves the janitor. She sees in the janitor the heart of a true hero, ultimately realizing that the janitor is her “savior.” With this realization, our hero’s identity and intentions are finally revealed.

Working within the confines of the romance genre, the film triumphs in the characterization of our young hero. He is a typical teen-ager with teen-age concerns and angst, coupled with the fact that he is poor and orphaned. Yet, he is intelligent enough not to allow his poverty to deprive him of a good education. What he lacks in material things, he makes up for in kindness in that he is always willing to help, albeit anonymously, his beloved. His heroism shines in his willingness to sacrifice his chance to study in a top university abroad for his grandmother. He is a diligent, hardworking young man who, at the same time, is a conscientious and intelligent student. His heroism is in his every day life—in his capacity to overcome the temptations and vagaries of youth, in his efforts to educate himself out of poverty. No, he may not be our typical knight in shining armor on a white steed; but his intelligence and kind heart shine through, making him a knight in an armor all his own.

He is not faster than a speeding bullet, nor is he more powerful than a locomotive and he cannot leap tall buildings in a single bound – he is as human as he can get but is an everyday hero, a savior, who fulfills his mission set at the beginning of the film. Let the Love Begin ends with what most of us yearn for in life – a happy ever after.

(Appeared in Young Critics Circle Film Desk’s Sine-Sipat: Recasting Roles and Images-Stars, Awards and Criticism for 2005, March 2006)

Illicit

2006-03-01T10:14:00.000-08:00

Illicit

by Patrick D. Flores

The taboo of incest bedevils the family in Nasaan Ka Man. This is one peculiar family whose filial ties are veiled and intimated with disquieting vagueness at the film’s inception. Once these are disclosed, the entire venture slides into decline, then decay, and never recovers. But what amazingly holds it is the tension that the ensemble of performers sustains with unnerving intensity. No cast in recent years has been able to redeem a failed scheme like the one we witness in this film. As the strands of the frayed fabric unravel with no respite, as secret after secret is disentangled and illicit liaisons are unknotted in tatters, the nucleus of actors and actresses keeps at it, its energy not exhausted, its valence retaining its integrity.

Confined to a damned abode on a slope in a cold mountain, these hapless souls challenge the specters that threaten the basis of their contaminated kinship. Siblings of elusive origins fall in love; spinsters who become surrogate parents are repressed and raped; the covetous eldest films his trysts with a blind servant and violates the virtue of his own sister; the less favored son comes back as spirit to haunt his beloved; and the patriarch hovers to unfurl a lurid tale.

There is a substantial degree of adulteration here in which volatile elements of perversion and deliverance corrupt what we conceive as custom. And the chemistry of the drama is nearly organic; from Kisapmata to Paradise Inn, in-breeding causes ruin, the fall of the gothic house in the corner or on the hill.

It is a modest tribute to directorial guidance and acting mettle that Hilda Koronel, Gloria Diaz, Jericho Rosales, Claudine Barretto, Diether Ocampo, Irma Adlawan, Katherine Luna, and Dante Rivero rise to the surface of all this coagulation. It is the essential fluid of their performances and passions, specifically the bristling raillery between Koronel and Diaz and the reassuring competence of Rosales who infects the temperaments of the banal Ocampo and the antipathetic Barretto, that distills. It infuses this weary body of film with the blood that overcomes debilitating anemia. In the relentless struggle between what an anthropologist describes as the realm of “purity and danger,” these performers know no fatigue.

(Appeared in Young Critics Circle Film Desk’s Sine-Sipat: Recasting Roles and Images-Stars, Awards and Criticism for 2005, March 2006)