First-world agriculture, third-world poverty

CEBU, Philippines - No sugar coating.

This is how filmmaker Jay Abello would want to serve to the audience of the 1st Cebu Documentary Film Festival recently his three-years-in-the-making full-length (90 minutes) documentary film on the struggling sugar industry in the island of Negros and how a piece of crystallized grain could affect an island of three million people.

Contrary to the impression that hacienderos (owners of vast sugarcane plantations like his family) almost always are oppressive to the sacadas (migrant farm workers) and dumaans (resident farm workers), Abello finds every sacada's and every dumaan's story important to unravel how Negros Island wallowed in third-world poverty despite first-world agriculture.

The docu on the sugar industry started as a video project. "I don't do negative films. Having grown up in Isabela (Silay, Negros Occidental), I initially thought it's the best place to grow up, that Negros is the place in the country, and that we were special," he shared.

"I even think of it to be easy because I know Negros very, very well. I was wrong. When I started work on the project, the first person I interviewed was my dad. And at 37, it was the first time somebody has ever told me about the real story of Negros, what it's like when you're called an haciendero. I didn't like it. I became critical about my pride for Negros and in being a Negrense. What is there to be proud of, really?"

Abello even warned the audience that his very first docu (Pureza: The Story of Negros Sugar) is a "hard movie to watch - long and heavy - but nevertheless very important. If you get to the first 50 minutes of the film, you will be fine."

Abello is an industry disciple who has worked on over 25 feature films in the Philippines, countless TV shows including soap operas and TV commercials in a span of 10 years.

A movie fan by heart, he describes the movie set as "one of the most romantic places you can ever be in. You're in the middle of nowhere and you have all these lights and production people trying to make something out of nothing and it's a new world altogether."

He also believes that he is a film student at best and has always travelled and accepted projects based on this --- "I just want to learn more about film."

He has made of himself a dedicated filmmaker and cinematographer on production experience working under five different highly acclaimed directors (Erik Matti, Yam Laranas, Peque Gallaga, Laurice Guillen, and Mark Meily), paying his dues as property master to co-writer (Sa Huling Paghihintay and Dos Ekis in 2001 both released by Viva Films) and as assistant director in the course of seven years.

By 2002, he moved to television as floor director to three of the top rated television series (Ang Iibigin ay Ikaw, Te Amo, and Mulawin) under GMA-7 Network Television.

Abello's works are testimonies as to how much he values his light and composition. He took photography lessons via a correspondence course at the New York Institute of Photography in 1997 and has become an avid hobbyist since.

In 2003, he started apprenticing under Lee Meily for cinematography in television commercials and one feature film. A love for telling stories has lent existence to two of his best known short films 7-Cut (1998, writer/director/producer) and Beinte Siete (2004, writer/director/producer). Both are winners in the Crystal Piaya for Best Picture in the Negros Summer Workshops.

By May 2006, he attended the digital photography workshop at The Newberry Library in Chicago, Illinois; feature film lighting workshops in Rockport College, Rockport, Maine by July; and the Kodak 16mm cinematography workshop by September.

After his first feature film (as director/producer/co-writer) Ligaw Liham in 2007 (Cinemalaya Independent Film Festival), he went on to do mostly cinematography work for Mark Meily (Camera Café and You Women); Joanna Vasquez Arong (Amihan, Team Los Indios, Philippines for the International Documentary Challenge); Coreen Jimenez (Kano: The American and his Harem, a full-feature documentary, Arkeo Films) and directed a TV show Hush Hush for TV5.

His second film Namets! (Yummy) which he directed, produced and did associate photography for was also a finalist in the 2008 Cinemalaya Festival.

He has the following nominations to various award-giving bodies: Best Cinematography for Niño (2012, Golden Screen Award shared with Lee Meily); Digital Movie Cinematographer of the Year for Donor (2011, Star Awards); Best Cinematography for Brutus (2009, Gawad Urian);

Best Cinematography for Brutus (2008, Cinemalaya); and Bamboo Award for Ligaw Liham (2007, Kidlat Tahimik).

Pureza opened the four-day filmfest at Onstage in Ayala Center Cebu. Pureza is his bitter-sweet take on the industry that once catapulted Negros to the third spot for having manufactured the best sweetener/preservative in the world (after Java that's next to Cuba on the list). Pureza refers to that degree of sweetness in refined sugar that's of the perfect quality.

After 150 interviews and three years in making this film, he found out how well people can articulate situations and solutions to current and emerging challenges in the sugar industry. Yet, the sacadas and the dumaans continue to wallow in debt, in poverty.

He shares in the theory that the government is not even totally to blame for. "The problem is more cultural. The good life the workers have long dreamt of cannot be achieved by one farmer alone. The majority has to stand." (FREEMAN)