Gigi, the teacher that I know

MANILA, Philippines - INT. In the kitchen. A man and a woman engage in small talk while eating ice cream. She tells him that a common friend is in town and tries to conceal her suspicion. The woman remains mum and suffers in silence.

This is a quiet yet moving scene from Flames of Love, a far cry from confrontational and melodramatic scenes Juan dela Cruz is accustomed to watch on the big screen.

Orchestrating the mise-en-scéne is University of the Philippines Open University (UPOU) Chancellor, Grace “Gigi” Javier Alfonso. Ma’am Gigi to students or Chancy to colleagues is debuting as film director after doing numerous drama anthologies on TV. This is another side of Ma’am Gigi which is new to those who have known her as film educator and critic, painter, sculptor and administrator.

“I want to encourage anybody to independently produce a film,” shares Ma’am Gigi with The STAR her reasons of accepting Flames of Love. “That’s why I supported Baby (Nebrida, the movie producer). I want to support people who are going into independent producing and independent filmmaking.”

Distributed by Solar Entertainment, the film stars Christopher de Leon, Lani Mercado, Dina Bonnevie, Ricky Davao, Valerie Concepcion, Megan Young, Rina Reyes and Allen Dizon. It will open on Dec. 12 in  theaters. 

Flames of Love is also Ma’am Gigi’s way of creating “space for women and women sensibilities to come out,” she says. The movie, which also revolves around the four female protagonists and their families, will help people understand women well and their complex life. This speaks of her being “very particular with women’s voices.” After all,  melodrama is a genre “created for women,” Ma’am Gigi shares.   

“A film is a collaborative work,” she says. “You either start with a good script or you don’t start with a script. If you’re doing a documentary, you start with a footage. (With Flames of Love), the script was well-written. I had to translate that into film which means (elevating it) to another medium. Film has its own language, has its own syntax, has its own grammar… Words are the shots. The sentences would be the sequences.

“You have a director of photography. You also have a sound designer (Michael Idioma). You have (a musician Diwa de Leon). You work with these creative people. I’m a combination (of authoritative and collaborative). I look at the formalist side of doing (film). They think if you’re an artist, you’re just looking at the form. It’s not necessarily so. I deal with the form and the contents and the process.”

Part of that creative process is “to empower those who work with you,” Ma’am Gigi says. The director should make his actors comfortable and become their characters. He has to capture their performances which are the actors’ interpretations of the scenes.

The film, she adds, is the microcosm of life and a unique medium, where millions watch the same text (story) and will have shared meanings.

Off cam, Ma’am Gigi, who is also a painter, lives up her collaborative spirit as sculptor and school administrator.

When she did the UPOU Oblation, Ma’am Gigi worked with seven engineers overseeing her own design. But the process, she recalls, was different from her other interpretations of The Oblation at UP Manila and UP Palo, Leyte.      

“No. 1 rule, for me, is being true to the material,” she says. “You don’t want to be pretentious. You’re not hiding anything.”

Her being “a people-person” has contributed to her success. “I like people very much. I see your strengths and your weaknesses. And I accept them. In everything that I do, they are all related. What I believe in, (being an administrator,) being a teacher, being an artist are like one and the same.”

Asked how she intends to bring UPOU to the fast-changing world, Ma’am Gigi replies, “(The University) has its mandate to widen access to quality education. This is where I feel very strongly. The vision is still there but maybe we want the approach a little different because of the changing technologies. You’re talking about contributing to higher education in the country. You’re also talking about academic excellence. Putting that together with what the University of the Philippines stands for, where (UPOU) is a graduate and research university, you have to make sure you create in the disciplines new knowledge.”

She adds UPOU “looks at students and teachers” as co-creators of texts. “It is important that we create new knowledge and do the text and share it to those who will make use of it for social transformation.” The cyber campus invites everyone to take part in “creating a more humane society and respect for diversity.”

Ma’am Gigi may be known for her artistic outputs or texts, but to her students, she will forever be their teacher.  

“I always want to share,” she says. “Even my set is like a classroom where I exchange (ideas with actors) and I tell them (what to do) and I think they appreciate it.”