The kidnappers of Philippine cinema
Everyone wants a piece of the local cinema, from the recently successful Sineng Pambansa to the latest edition Cinemalaya, from the dot mov digital festival to the CinemaOne originals and Cinemanila later in the year, not to mention the annual Animahenasyon animation expo, all want to bring the film movement as far away from the mainstream as possible.
Not that the industry will die from the so-called indies lack of trying; rather, there is a fresh wind blowing in the once-stagnant and repetitive theaters, and Filipino moviegoers finally realize that they have a choice other than the formulaic and hackneyed recipes being force-fed them by the major studios through the years.
Two giants by the names of Mario O’ Hara and Dolphy may have passed on — and Cinemalaya 8 had some tributes in its 10-day run at CCP — but there is hardly a dearth of possibilities to keep the audience excited, the revolution going.
Included in the Director’s Showcase in Cinemalaya this year is Raymond Red’s new work, Kamera Obskura, itself a tribute to the art and romance of moviemaking. Red was interviewed by Howie Severino in GMANews TV’s News to Go, and he didn’t want to give away many details lest viewing pleasure suffer, except to say that it is a film within a film, even if it harks back to the time when reels were first run in the silent era. The germ of the story, Red said, dates back to his first short film Ang Magpakailanman in the early 1980s during the days of Experimental Cinema of the Philippines, and the trailer suggests as much, with the fitting epigraph of how the light cannot be seen, only those which bounce off its reflection — not the exact words but you get the drift.
It stars Pen Medina and Joel Torre and a host of other perhaps familiar faces, full of humor, nostalgia and wonder. Before this Red had done Ang Himpapawid, the feature based on a news story several years ago about a desperate man whose doomed hijack leads him to jump off the plane. And before that, Anino, Sakay, Hikab, works so diverse and visually maverick they afforded not just a new way of perceiving things, but also spawned a kind of subversive cinematic philosophy. Yes, the once-upon-a-time enfant terrible of experimental shorts is now a middle-aged man, and it’s very possible that his best work still lies ahead, including the last of the trilogy with his scriptwriter collaborator Ian Victoriano, Makapili.
Another film this time in the New Breed section of Cinemalaya 8 that bears watching is theater director Loy Arcenas’ second full-length feature, Requieme, based loosely — as per his interview last year during the same festival that screened his remarkable debut Nino — on a short story by Gina Apostol, about the Filipino murderer of Versace. Arcenas and his associate Rody Vera, the veteran theater worker, certainly hold a lot of promise, if Nino is a gauge. Requieme could be digital fulfillment of the theater of irony.
I had interviewed Arcenas before for his direction of Tanghalang Pilipino’s adaptation of Chekhov’s Three Sisters, which cast Mario O’ Hara in a key role. In that lost conversation with Arcenas and O’Hara in the building behind the CCP, O’Hara had remarked how every stage performance is different even if you do the same play night after night, the variables and dynamic change every time, again not the exact words but you get the drift.
The tribute to O’Hara began with the festival opening film, Ang Babae sa Breakwater, about a decade after it was first screened in Cannes. It stars Katherine Luna and Gardo Versoza, with Yoyoy Villame providing the role of absurd Greek chorus and with a cameo by horror staple Lilia Cuntapay. The same characters exist to this day in that Manila Bay breakwater, with or without the dismantling by the present mayor of structures put up by his predecessor, and even if the structures are put back up or torn down yet again in the future those marginal fixtures such as that inhabited O’Hara’s film can never be erased.
Another of the new breed that could be interesting is rock and roller Marie Jamora’s Ang Nawawala, and if her music videos are any indication of the work’s compelling nature, then it certainly should be marked down for a look-see, if not a must-hear in the festival’s subsequent university run.
Cinemalaya 8 also screen the latest works by Mes de Guzman and Jose Javier Reyes, both writers who have discovered cinema as an extension of the written page.
So the film fest appears to be doing well and could be as strong as ever, despite the earlier controversy over MNL 143, which had the director Emerson Reyes standing firm against casting insinuations by the organizers. But there’s hope for bad boys yet, as one of the pioneer kickouts of the fest Sigfreid Barros Sanchez turned out to be the big winner in the Film Development Council’s Sineng Pambansa early July in Davao, his Mga Kidnapper ni Ronnie Lazaro running off with a number of awards including best ensemble performance by actors.
Mga Kidnapper took years in the making, before Willybog’s nephew finally found the wherewithal to finish it after being banned by Cinemalaya for reasons better consigned to speculation, and which script he submitted to the contest year in and year out, rumor has it, until the higher-ups could take no more and threw him (or the perpetually reworked script) off the premises like they did maybe Soliman Cruz and Khavn de la Cruz, but alas, such could also be another version of apocrypha. What is known is that Barros’ Lasponggols is already part of Cinemalaya annals as one of the features of the maiden fest in 2005, the same that yielded Maximo Oliveros.
What a past month it’s been for Philippine cinema, the indies so-called or otherwise, and not over yet. Sometimes you have to use equal amounts of force and patience to coax art out, and if the philosopher Kierkegaard once said that purity of heart is to will one thing, then imposing one’s will can be a joy forever: A century of birthing to feed the hungry flickering light.
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(DesidERRATA: Lani Maestro’s 1987 show at CCP was titled “Suspended Voices,” not “Silent Scream,” as reported some columns ago. Must be senior. Apologies to the artist, now back into the west)
