Category Archive for: kultura

kultura

Tweeting EDSA1986

It came to me on the evening of February 21: why not “live” tweet the events of the EDSA People Power Revolution of 1986 as it happened?

How hard could it be, I thought. I remember one year when the now defunct (but quite missed!) communications office of the previous government, which had Manolo Quezon in charge of history, actually sought to “live” tweet EDSA 1986, too. Besides, the original chronology of EDSA’s four days by Angela Stuart-Santiago is online (www.edsarevolution.com). All I had to do was sit and schedule tweets by the hour or minute, as the chronology unfold.

Sure the 140-character per tweet limit would take getting used to, but it was a challenge worth taking on if it meant getting a new audience “reading” about EDSA, albeit through a different medium, in a different way. (more…)

kultura

Dear Miss Canada Siera Bearchell,

First, an aside. I steered clear of writing about Miss Universe, any more than I already had long before the pageant even started its activities in this country.

I stood and still stand squarely against holding the pageant here, especially at a time when we face the crises of poverty and need, of climate change and intermittent floods, when the dead are being collected off our streets, when the promise of change has yet to even be felt in fundamental, important ways.

There is little reason to believe that our government did not spend a single cent on this pageant as they had promised. When so many government agencies and offices were in charge of ensuring the safety and comfort of international guests, it is ridiculous that they even expect us to believe that public funds were not spent on Miss Universe in Manila. (more…)

kultura

Taxes, freelancers, cultural work: Amnesty and kindness

One of the more critical battles that any cultural institution should be waging at this point is the one against the unjust taxation of freelance cultural workers.

This was one of Daang Matuwid’s most unkind tax policies, which was put into effect by former tax chief Kim Henares, for whom it didn’t matter how much a person earned, what mattered was that government could collect taxes on those earnings.

I had hoped President Duterte’s men would take a look at this tax policy, and realize that freelancers and cultural workers are in a category of employment that is unlike “self-employed professionals” (doctors and engineers and lawyers), and unlike workers who suffer through contractualization.

At the very least, I wished they would declare a tax amnesty, just to bring back freelancers and cultural workers into the tax system, no questions asked, no penalties to be paid for honest but foolish mistakes. It’s just the kinder thing to do. (more…)

kultura

Good news, bad news for culture

Ever since President Duterte came into power, the only time(s) we’ve ever had a sense of what he thinks of arts and culture is when he appoints people to cultural institutions.

And then there are those instances when we just hear people speaking as supporters of the President.

Say, Freddie Aguilar saying he had been promised a Department of Culture and in place of that, the chairmanship of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA). Or that time last year when we were told about an arts and culture agenda being built through the funds of someone who had campaigned for the President. This was an arts and culture agenda based solely on cultural organizations, none of which could stand for the collective needs of cultural workers. There was no transparency as far as building that arts and culture agenda was concerned, and even as we were told that the documents would be released, it’s been months and we’ve seen absolutely nothing. (more…)

kultura

Selling relevance, using current events

The family drama is … ahem … a Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) tradition, one that’s produced some interesting enough versions from the Tanging Ina series to Mano Po. And so it was no surprise that the purported / sold / imagined “change” via MMFF 2016 would deem it necessary to have a “family drama.”

It was “Kabisera.” And while it did fulfill all the requirements for a family drama, i.e., there was a family, and there was a crisis, and the family pulled together — sitting through the convoluted loop-holed narrative made one think it was particularly chosen not because of artistic merit but because of elements that might have rendered it relevant … or at least “more relevant” than the family movies of MMFFs past.

Apparently all it takes these days is to throw in some corrupt politics, play around with images of impunity, and then engage in a discussion about these as superficially as possible. Have I mentioned the caricature of a human rights Chief that was obviously a jab at De Lima? Yup, one that didn’t work at all.

(more…)