Shining a light on the Sinag Manila Film Festival

I was one of the jurors of the Sinag Manila film festival which closed last week. It is my second time to be a juror in a film festival. The others were Bien Lumbera, National Artist for Literature; Armando Yabin Lao, screenwriter/director; Paolo Bertolino, Italian producer and film critic; Tito Valiente, anthropologist, poet and art critic; and John Badalu, Indonesian film producer. Brilliante Mendoza, the young and distinguished film director, was chair of the board; he did not vote.

The festival limited the entries to Balut Country, directed by Paul Santa Ana, Ninja Party directed by Jim Libiran, Bambanti (Scare Crows) directed by Zig Dulay, Swap, directed by Remton Siega Zuasola and Imbisibol, directed by Lawrence Fajardo.

The prize-winning entry was Imbisibol.

Imbisibol’s story revolves around four Filipino workers in Japan and the Filipina wife of a Japanese. The couple own an apartment building where the Filipinos reside. As mother hen, she serves as a unifying element in this compelling story of the four OFWs, their sorry fortunes, personal anxieties and their interaction with one another and with the Japanese. Shot in its entirety in Japan, it illustrates vividly the tiny pleasures, the quandaries and travail of these Filipinos. The result is a haunting story. Bernardo Bernardo plays the memorable role of an aging and lonely man. Ces Quesada is the warmhearted mother hen. The well-plotted and narrated story is the joint effort of John Paul Bedia and Helen Gail Alegre.

These are my personal observations, not just on the entries but on the festival itself, and what I perceive are some of the major problems of the cinema industry.

A film’s ending is usually a summing up of the film’s story, or message: it can be very dramatic, a final statement which will linger in the mind. The fireworks, the street dancing do not make a proper ending for Bambanti.

For Imbisibol, the fleeing Filipino chased by Japanese cops in the snow is a fitting symbol of the plight of illegal Filipinos, not just in Japan but all over the world where they are always running, takbo ng takbo. So is the ending of Balut Country when the main character watches the hatching of an egg to symbolize the birth of his understanding.

The ending of Ninja Party is very disturbing and negative. The portrayal of reality is no excuse. I think that artists in our time have a duty to help make this nation and people ethical. I would change the ending of the film completely; I would have the girl who refused to attend the orgy stigmatized and ostracized by the other girls, even to the point where they physically abuse her. She does not betray them, and in the end, in spite of all those wounds, she triumphs to illustrate the value of virtue over immorality. Ninja Party is superbly produced but is an ethical disaster.

Acting for the screen

This is so basic but it is not recognized by the young moviemakers themselves. So many of the actors and actresses in these five entries have wooden faces. The face is the mirror of emotion; in close-up, it reveals so much of the characters, their reactions. This is why Nora Aunor is such a great actress because her face is so mobile. These actors and actresses require a lot of training in facial expression. This is the great difference between stage and screen acting.

In the Cebuano movie Swap, in Balut Country — there is so much drivel in the dialogue that does not contribute to the forward movement of the films. Tighter editing is necessary.

Story

It is obvious from these entries that the major fault of our movies lies in their scripts; they are not well crafted. All too often, directors think they can imitate Charlie Chaplin. They write the story themselves. The narrative is the core of any film — it is what propels the movie; the introduction of tension and the resolution of that tension compels the viewer to see it through. Alesandra de Rossi’s superb performance — she won the Best Actress Award — did not help the plot of Bambanti, which is flawed. The subplots muddle the main theme. The scarecrow symbol did not work. Ditto with the Swap story. Why wasn’t the big man’s child kidnapped, instead of the son of his employee? There is a flimsy attempt to include the disappearances during the Marcos regime, but the attempt fails because it is not integrated into the main story. Again, a failure of plotting.

As I see it, the greatest need today in the making of superb Filipino films is, first and foremost, skilled scriptwriters who know how to create and sustain credible tension. Within the framework of the narrative, the director will then be able to express philosophy, politics, or whatever message he wants to espouse. This requires the scriptwriter to possess a background not just in stage drama, but more so in literature. This does not mean that literary writers automatically make good scriptwriters, but their advice is crucial when the story line of any movie is being contemplated.

We have excellent photographers, and yes, directors like Brilliante Mendoza who are able to venture out of the box, who know not just the mechanics of moviemaking, but also the difficulties that go with production and distribution.

The brief festival afforded me an opportunity to talk again with Dante Mendoza who is now busy at work on several projects. His latest, Tacloban, is scheduled to be released soon. I was surprised to learn that neither his Kinatay nor Serbis, which were appreciated abroad, made any money; in fact, he said none of his movies really made a pile.

But one development gladdens him: he has found his audience. SM’s media manager Millie Dizon helped him locate it — the young, the college students. With the cooperation of SM malls, his young audiences have realized that it is possible to make great movies without the name stars of the big studios. And they are interested in the technical details of production. Mendoza deserves a wider audience than he is getting now and one of the obstacles to this is the paucity of outlets for independent producers like himself.

In this regard, Dante is fortunate to have an avid supporter in the person of Wilson Tieng, the tyro businessman who manages Solar TV and many other television and commercial enterprises including the Sinag Manila festival. He wants our movies to “tell the stories” of Filipinos so that they will get to know themselves and their country better. Tieng is impressed with the work of the independent moviemakers. I hope that Sinag Manila, which he financed, with its impressive beginning, will continue well into the future.

Without government support, we need visionaries like Wilson Tieng who, at great odds and almost assured financial loss, has initiated a vigorous, creative and original program that assures the country quality movies. If there are more Wilson Tiengs nurturing the cultural growth of this nation, we will then breed a thinking people. And as a bonus, our art — particularly our movies — will finally be appreciated globally.