Postscript to a systemic madness

Twenty-two editions later, the Cinemalaya film festival is still pushing the envelope for independent local cinema, despite the weather being uncooperative as usual and rains, floods turning the metropolis into a muddy, not-so-virtual waterworld.

It has come a long way, no doubt, from the maiden jury prize winner “Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros” in 2005, which went on to reap international fame and awards for its director Aureaus Solito (a.k.a. Kanakan Balintagos) and stamped in memory the performance of supporting patriarch Soliman Cruz (a.k.a. Mokyo of Batibot), which in the festival’s first year at the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) left the audience wondering about the further possibilities of dirty realism.

Long since vacating the CCP premises due to ongoing, prolonged renovation, the festival continues to draw cinephiles and the plain curious in different venues across the city in select malls that provide ample shelter from the monsoon.

On the last day of this year’s run, I was able to catch two of the big winners, or at least the most talked-about films of the nine entries:
“Mag-iina” or the Mothering which won Best Picture and Best Director for Giancarlo Abrahan, and “2 Valid IDs” which rightfully copped the audience choice and jury prize, chronicling as it does the everywoman’s travails in the mad bureaucratic system found only in the Philippines.

It’s not every day that you come across a film like “Mag-iina,” surely one of a kind even by local standards. Some critics remarked that difficult as it was to grasp its post-surreal, post-structuralist mode, somewhat vaguely described in the teasers as a “psychological horror” complete with instantaneous possession and a seething matriarchy courtesy of melting wax prosthetics, the film was a cut or two above the rest.

The three generations of women inhabiting a decaying rundown house in their intertwined fates that drew in an adopted boy and a groped house help beleaguered by her surroundings, “Mag-iina” is quite a brave foray into a world run by women, visually compelling with narrative twists lurking around every corner, always at the risk of perhaps sounding misogynous.

The Cinemalaya film festival is still pushing the envelope for independent local cinema, despite the weather being uncooperative as usual and rains, floods turning the metropolis into a muddy, not-so-virtual waterworld. It has the wherewithal to give voice to the voiceless and make sure that every picture tells a story and not go to waste.

That scene where a woman performs cunnilingus on another while her sister sways hanged nearby is unforgettable, even traumatic in an offbeat way, unlikely to have been seen before in any movie. Ditto the unweaving of the lola painter character as if from a horrific cocoon, to preserve the existing rot in a kind of evil rebirthing. Or the last sequence where the maid played by Ness Roque steps back into the fields of her hometown as a last exit to sanity.

Scriptwriter Guelan Luarca, a multiple Palanca winner, was also cited for Best Screenplay, and the transposition of such material into cinema won for Abrahan Best Director of the festival, with the actors Agot Isidro, Janine Gutierrez, Jackie Lou Blanco, Cherry Pie Picache and Roque comprising a worthy ensemble, careful not to outshine each other, in fact feeding off the other’s brilliance and steering clear of stereotypes. The ward Lucas Andalio was Best Supporting, shifting from innocent to diabolical and back in the flip of a switch. Bart Guingona, in an almost non-speaking role, was the epitome of the absent father.

“Mag-iina” seems to offer another rollercoaster take on the millennial worldview, unapologetic, and as the film festival has been known, breaks ground both narratively and visually.

Aside from the Jury Prize and Audience Choice, Ma-an Asuncion and Abet Raz’s “2 Valid IDs” won for Marietta Subong (a.k.a. Pokwang) the co-Best Actress award along with Ruby Ruiz of “Status: Rejected” (Netpac Prize or Third Best). Subong essays another seriocomic role in Sylvia, whose husband (played by Joey Marquez) is confined in hospital and needs funds for surgery. Not since the pre-pandemic “Oda sa Wala” of Dwein Baltazar has Pokwang been cast as the lead, which at the time also won for her the prime acting plum at the QCFestival.

By the title alone and random glimpses of reviews, coupled with our experiences of dealing with government agencies notwithstanding such innovations as the Onegov app, we can get a drift or gist of the story, how in order to get an ID one has to present some form of ID, ad infinitum and ad nauseam, like Sisyphus pushing the rock up and down the hillside until no need for spoiler alert and to mix metaphors like a badly taken snapshot, horse has died.

Only that particular horse has a name and cannot be reduced to mere statistic, which is why Cinemalaya has survived after all these years, through flood and pandemic, drug wars and assorted scandals, the festival has the wherewithal to give voice to the voiceless and make sure that every picture tells a story and not go to waste.

The ID is the message but not in its entirety. Years ago, a group of Muslim women were discussing how they would board a ferry when they had no identification with them. When someone suggested a national ID, they laughed.