Category Archive for: iconography

kultura

The Truth and Raya Martin

Though admittedly not the best of speakers, it was difficult not to be enamored by young independent filmmaker Raya Martin on a Saturday afternoon at the Lopez Museum. Even when he sometimes lost his train of thought, and dared speak of filmmaking as an ultimately personal thing – almost a refusal to consider us as audience.

What Martin had going for him wasn’t just his youth and its contingent rebellious streak, but a consciousness about his craft that was surprising. Here, Martin proved he wasn’t just your run-of-the-mill indie filmmaker who’s wont to churn out the now familiar movie on slums and sex, violence and volatility. For this lecture, which had a mix of film practitioners and students as audience, Martin revealed why he was more than just a kid with a digital camera.

Because he spoke of history and the personal. Cinema as image. Sound as a distinct element. There is the interest in film versus the digital. There is the project of the anti-narrative. There is the reinvention of genre – from documentaries to the autobiography. There is the dream of making a commercial film.

It is clear that Martin has more than just all those international grants going for him and his films. There is a thought process to Martin’s creativity that he admits comes from his upbringing, but also is borne of wanting to go against this upbringing and everything that this requires.

No rebel without a cause

And yet this is no stereotypical rebellion. In the case of Martin, this is about a critical mind’s resistance to the conventional ways of seeing and speaking. He hated the way in which history was taught in school, where his grades were dependent on how many names and dates he could memorize. The product of this has been a conscious effort at creating films about and of history, with a very personal perspective. (more…)

radikalchick.lit

cory and (lost) memory

the only thing that links me to Cory Aquino is really memory. because while yes, it has been about these images of yellow my grandfather and mother carried, as her death sinks in it’s also about many other images in my head.

of Butz Aquino and ATOM, and an uncle who was part of it. of Kuya at 13 asking that he be allowed to go with our older cousins to EDSA because, as he told my mother, what if there are 999,999 people there? he would make it one million! of a lola who scolded my lolo waving a huge foam laban sign at helicopters hovering over their house: friend! baka mabaril ka!

of being 10 years old, and not knowing much, really. except that three years earlier, Mama was so depressed that Ninoy Aquino was murdered. of finally seeing Cory, his widow, and of watching her campaign with Doy Laurel, and of the yellow and green fighting it out with the red and blue. of crazy elections, and walking with my father to Sto. Domingo Church to see who was winning in our district.

but too, i remember how at a certain point, there were no bottles of San Miguel Beer at our reunions. and the blue tubs of Magnolia Ice Cream were conspicuously absent, too. i imagine now that the adults must have had some Gold Eagle Beer, because what the kids had were Selecta Ice Cream, the less famous, therefore we presumed, less tasty choice.

but it must have tasted the same. after all ice cream is just ice cream to a kid.

what was different, i realize now, was how that unfamiliar tub of ube ice cream was a symbol of a nation coming together. of supporting this woman battling it out with the masculine dictatorship. of believing that it was possible to change things by choosing a different ice cream — or beer — brand. i realize now that this belief in Cory’s call for a civil disobedience campaign, did bank on innocence. a naivete about how capitalism works, and how a boycott rarely does.

that it was successful is also so telling of why our collective memory as articulated by the media has yet to remember this aspect of Cory’s rise as the widow who beat a dictatorship. maybe we have become afraid of remembering that it is possible to hold capitalism by the balls. maybe we have also ceased to appreciate our capacity at believing in one person enough, to change our lifestyles around her cause. maybe we have lost all innocence.

and with Cory dying, in the midst of another dictatorship, maybe even all hope.

kultura

seeing yellow

last friday, along katipunan avenue, ugly pink MMDA street dividers had yellow ribbons. today, driving through The Fort, lampposts and trees adorned with the same. on GMA 7’s sunday noontime variety show earlier today, all artists had yellow ribbons and pins on their shirts, Judy Ann Santos was in a crazy yellow bustier.

the UAAP’s main game between U.P. and Ateneo this afternoon had all basketball players and coaches with yellow ribbons attached to their uniforms.

and as in 1983, when mama had a yellow ribbon tied to our car, i found myself tying a yellow ribbon on my car last friday. it was meant to disappear, which it surely did by late that evening. but it was also meant to fly with the winds of the University of Makati, where the car was parked the whole day, the only car that was yellowed.

my love for cory isn’t so much about what she did for country as president — my activist-self keeps me from appreciating her in that way. but her icon is replete with memories. (more…)

kultura

KC and skin whitening

That we are enamored by KC Concepcion is understandable. It’s not so much that we saw her grow up, or that she’s the girl born with a silver spoon in her mouth – many other young stars are the same. We find her interesting because in the past, she remained distinctly resistant to the idea of the limelight, having one-foot-in-one-foot-out of the showbiz industry she was born into. (more…)

kultura

dreaming of difference

To re-introduce the second season of reality show Pinoy Dream Academy, ABS-CBN showed reruns of the first season on Studio 23. So everyday last week, we were reminded of how great the talent actually was last year. Too, it was a reminder of how many of them turned out: those who haven’t become near-extinct have been forced into becoming “actors” instead of just singers; those who are seen more regularly on television have been forced to fit into the mold of the “acceptable” TV star. (more…)