MANILA, Philippines - The ‘90s kids are lost. They find themselves filled with hopes that somehow they can change this authentically-torn system. They rebel by shrieking to an Eraserheads single, embodying the original Wall Street sense of the word “yuppie” and still finding it flattering a term, or insisting that Takeshi’s Castle is “safe” entertainment. But the truth is they’re totally clueless, alienated, left out.
And that’s the problem.
In the middle of this crisis, Joaquin Valdes finds a solution. Project Raincloud, he discloses. The film artiste and enthusiast then expounds on the independent art venture, which he produces and directs, as an attempt to answer back what his fellow pre-postmodernism spawns continuously ask for: A representative culture.
“Look at us, we’re so scattered. We’ve been pining so long for something to look up to, a dream that we would want to live up to. We’ve been waiting in a limbo,” he says of what drew him to mull over the brainchild that he claims the generation can strongly relate to.
Project Raincloud is a tri-media production that consists of a film, a graphic novel and a website — an outwardly odd but appropriate choice of art array. It is altogether an idea that sprang from Valdes’s Golden Duck award-winning Bulong (2008), a hobbyhorse of his passion for speculative fiction. The Project seeks the need to mind-wank with local pop culture taste, through a contemporary rural horror folk story that encompasses all three youth-targeted avenues.
The Film
The major slice of the production is Dagim, a mystifying flick that revolves around two perspective-conflicting brothers, Jun and Diego. Set in a fictitious ‘90s barrio, they wake up one day with their father disquietingly missing. They then go to the boondocks to look for him only to cross the territory of a bizarre, yet welcoming, tribe of young punks. They realize that the latter is not what meets the eye, and they uncover more ghastly (read: cannibalistic) details eventually.
Dagim (archaic Tagalog term for “raincloud”) opts to be very Filipino with all the shrewd aswang lore that lurks in the countryside. “Apart from ghosts, animism is what people really believe in. If you go to certain
The film also rocks, as the chap sought brainwaves from the styles of Wong Kar Wai, Tomas Alfredson and Fernando Meirelles among others, at a “pace (that) is more primal and intuitive, for it does not spoon-feed.” It follows what Valdes thinks as enthralling to the generation — a plot with “a lot of holes intentionally kept.” Furthermore, it demands intense production design including tribal body tattoos and hairstyling care of Republic Tattoo and Grupo Barbero, respectively.
Dagim is part of Cinema One Originals 2010, as one of the seven films with a giveaway budget of P1 million each. The official small-screen launch is this November.
The Graphic Novel
The Project also tries to harvest the sketched aspect of the story through a, yes, graphic novel. The 10-chapter publication basically reflects a broader viewpoint of how Jun and Diego unravel the mysteries of the tribe tantamount to their father’s disappearance.
Renowned comics illustrator Andrew Drilon is currently keeping the novel, under the working title Black Clouds, under wraps. Prior to this, he had already made a name for himself via local publications such as Philippine Genre Stories, Philippine Speculative Fiction, and The Philippines Free Press. Drilon has his first graphic novel, sheltered under the speculative fiction format, in Black Clouds.
All the same, the novel attempts to jibe with other popular media, says Valdes. That’s what made him consider putting out a printed adaptation vis-à-vis Dagim. “Apart from it being cool, I would like people to still remember the whole Project 10 years from now,” he declares.
The Dotcom
Seemingly a staple in full-blown art to-do’s, the indie Project also requires a promotional website (http://projectraincloud.com) which will feature snippets from both film and novel. Valdes says that aside from increasing buzz around the country’s scenesters, this also functions as an interactive venue for those who would want to talk about the Project and get in touch with the creators of the entire work.
The Fuss
Altogether, Project Raincloud — the film, the graphic novel and the website — will unleash itself come November this year. It will engulf the metaphor of the misplaced ‘90s progeny, the producer-director points out. This will endeavor, not judge, to resolve the identity crisis through familiarity with the generation’s own horror pop culture story.
Ultimately, the Project arrives as a compass among the age band, leading them to not just withstand, but to at least fight in the struggle, Valdes believes. “This Project is what I feel (our generation) would want to say. We will finally have the hope to aspire for,” he’s betting.