Following on from the topic of my column last Saturday, I was able to watch three of eight entries to the Metro Manila Film Festival last Sunday, namely "Oro," "Ang Babae sa Septic Tank 2" and "Saving Sally." As expected, the film entries this year did not disappoint. Each was truly worth every penny spent.
By the way, why is the price of a cinema ticket more expensive than ever? But, as I said, the MMFF entries I've watched so far were worth the time and money. I'm planning to watch a couple more entries, probably "Die Beautiful" and "Seklusyon" which both received good reviews.
The films I have watched were a feast of visual and creative variety. But it was "Oro" that totally gripped me from start to finish. It is a story of an island community that is into small-scale mining. As in most plots, the peace was suddenly disturbed, in this case, with the arrival in the island of a shady paramilitary group called "Bantay Kalikasan" or environmental watch.
The film's tagline is "Dugo ang Kinang ng ginto." Before this piece becomes a movie review, let me just say that this socially-relevant film carries in a straightforward manner themes about injustice, poverty, corruption, and the corrosion of the rule of law. As usual in most realistic films like this, expect to see rows of empty seats inside the movie theater. In our case, there were only three of us inside.
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Has 2016 been a bad year for you? I can see friends in my social media feed who can't wait to say goodbye to the year 2016. I can't blame them. Who would not be shaken by a year that defied all political norms and certainties?
Well, not really for me. The political shakeup that we have been experiencing is simply a way for the established order to let off steam. While the victory of Donald Trump in the US presidential election, for example, is seen by many commentators as a march toward populist extremism, I do not share the view that the world is a more dangerous than ever because of that. The prevailing social system is and will still be in the near future largely intact. At play now are simply superficial manifestations of contradictions within that social order.
Casting aside caution, my advice to those who see Armageddon in the horizon is to start reading from the business pages of their newspaper all the way back to the front page instead of the other way around. Bestselling writer and entrepreneur Rolf Dobelli explains this in his book "The Art of Thinking Clearly." He wrote that the front page or primetime news usually contains scandalous, shocking, loud, people-based, fast-changing details that stimulate the brain. As a result, according to Dobelli, we walk around with a distorted mental map of the risks and threats we actually face.
So before you declare 2016 in your Facebook status as the worst year ever, think about what could have gone worse but didn't. Keep an ear to the ground and feel the drum beat of those in the fringes, the materially deprived and the politically excluded. Break free from the addictive allure of social media use and spend more time in real communities. Let your real-life experiences define your year and the years to come.