what is being brought to light too, i find, is that while Lito Zulueta’s biases are questioned precisely because of the place he occupies in the Philippine Daily Inquirer vis a vis UST, his engagement with this issue has not happened in the broadsheet he works for. whereas Luis Teodoro’s attacks on him have happened in a regular Business World column.
the discussion, thankfully, continues. (more…)
Tito Jorge would’ve laughed out loud, would’ve teased that this 35-year old was bawling like his widow under the watchful eye of Mother Teresa and an oven called Serenity. The 68-year old man had taught humor well. Irony, too. It seems it took him long enough.
In 1994, Tito Jorge was working at the UP Film Center and on the last day for submission of UPCAT applications, arrived in the rain carrying with him – rolled up under his shirt – an application for this 17-year old. It needed to be filled up within the amount of time it would take him and Angela to catch up on projects ongoing. This would be less than an afternoon, and more like an hour, during which this teenage girl could only be overwhelmed by possibility. (more…)
two weeks since the discussion that had most everyone ganging up on UST and Lito Zulueta and siding with Marites Danguilan Vitug ang rappler.com, where is the discourse on media (online and otherwise) at this point? rappler has quietly revealed itself to be about helping out government instead of being a critical voice that at the very least asks: how much was paid BBDO for this campaign and is it worth it? i guess no questions like that for “uncompromised journalism” now tagging itself as “citizen journalism.”
and i guess it’s not surprising. if there’s anything the lynch mob that was the middle class / educated online world revealed then, it was that a love affair exists among those who are holding the fort of “new media” | “online media” — self-proclaimed and otherwise. if anything i am reminded that in media, as with the literary world, and maybe every aspect of this Pinoy culture, what keeps the status quo are friendships: ones that run deep, ones that are unquestioned from within. the question for Ressa and Teodoro really is whether or not they could have at any point disagreed with Vitug on this and any story? the question for all of us who blindly want to be invited into the bubble of middle class media and sort-of-NGO work is how many questions will we then fail to ask?
congratulations are in order: the DOT after all has triggered a meme of itsmorefuninthephilippines and its campaign has functioned exactly the way they imagined (with the help of a media enterprise now admitting its bias, yehey!) it is not without its critics, myself included, but i don’t mind letting it have a life all its own, commentary included about as much as unthinking celebration: if we can trip on the DPWHere, how can we not trip on this one?
which is not to agree that we should be blinded by all this fun. which is to hope that we all know — we all agree — that tourism in itself, as an industry is a sharp and double-edged sword. one only needs to look at Boracay and Tagaytay and find that foreign investment has meant congestion and pollution and the slow but sure killing off of local industry.
Poor entrepreneurs have generated their own capital over time, by starting small and reinvesting profits over several years. However, they may be squeezed out if outside investors drive rapid growth in the industry – as occurred at Boracay Island in the Philippines (Shah, 2000).
one only needs to walk through Makati Avenue on any evening, or Greenbelt 3 on a weekend to find that here are forms of tourism like we don’t want to talk about. go off to Angeles and find the industry of girlie bars that have been brought back to life by the middle-aged Caucasian man who has decided to disappear quietly in the Philippines upon retiring from wherever in the world he comes.
“The Department of Tourism is treading on dangerous waters. Marketing the Philippines as a destination for divorcees is practically synonymous to marketing the Philippines as a destination for sex tourists” (gabriela website, 2011)
The Philippines is one of the favored destinations of paedophile sex tourists from Europe and the United States. (“Global law to punish sex tourists sought by Britain and EU,” The Indian Express, 21 November 1997)
The tourism program of the government which aims to project the Philippines as a major tourist destination has increased the number of prostituted women. As more and more areas of the country are targeted for tourism, more and more women are driven to prostitution in desperation to ensure their family’s survival. (“Women Evaluate the State of the Nation,” GABRIELA, 24 July 1997)
these statements might be decades old, yes. that these resonate in the present? it is everything and telling of what any tourism program has to care about. it’s also to point to this fact: the reality has got to get better for the majority in this nation, so that they might know of those fun images, too. the goal has to be about making those witty taglines real for all of us.
because let us not even talk about tourism and this campaign, as if it is something that will save us from anything at all. know that this campaign in particular is replete with the limitations brought on by social class: more than who would even say “it’s more fun…” here, who exactly can afford to think about fun in this way? who has the wherewithal to be putting together memes, to have photographs of nation that are deemed worthy for being tagged “fun”?
know too that in the narratives of tourism across the world, it is the poor that suffers for it. they are the ones who lose access to their own resources, because they are not equipped to negotiate with the programs of tourism that exist.
there are many other examples where a few private entrepreneurs exclude local people in order to gain key assets, often through unauthorised land-grabbing. For example, Sabang is the gateway town for St Paul’s National Park in the Philippines, and 20–30 years ago contained much public land, almost all of which has now been privately exploited. The local authority lacks effective power to prevent breaches of planning regulations (Ashley, Boyd, Goodwin 2000).
know that “Tourism development has not <…> incorporated poverty elimination objectives. It remains driven by economic, environmental and/or cultural perspectives at national and international levels” (Ashely etal., 2000).
and in the philippines it is driven now by the notion of fun: which is always and only fleeting. which is only true for a few of us.
“Graceland” a film by Ron Morales is taking the online platforms for independent filmmaking and funding creative projects like no other Pinoy film has, indie and otherwise. At the award-winning film website Indiewire, the film got the most votes out of four films and was declared project of the week, which makes it eligible for the project of the month competition by January’s end. Over at funding platform Kickstarter, pledges for the film total over $15,000 dollars, more than half of what it needs to reach its $18,000-dollar goal; if the latter is reached by Friday, January 6 2012 at 11:56AM New York time (that’s 12:56AM, January 7, Manila time) “Graceland” will received funding for the last phase of post-production.
It is difficult not to be optimistic really, especially since this good news – and yes even just the amount of pledges it’s gotten should be considered as such – can’t have come at a better time. Because what is presumed to be a celebration of Philippine cinema through the annual Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) has become a foreboding of sorts with the usual bigger budget films being chosen for the festival, and questions of originality and currency and “new-ness” becoming default. Worse, this year it has brought about discussions on the commercial versus the indie, where a finger is pointed at the former’s lack of originality on the one hand, the latter’s apathy towards the market on the other. This is not to condone those who snub the MMFF and Pinoy film altogether, as it is to ask: is the MMFF’s goal anything else other than making money, taking advantage as it were of the fact that the movie-going public is not given the option of a foreign film? Ah but this year it launched its indie film counterpart which got nary a reaction, happening to as it did at the height of Sendong’s aftermath. Some movies have all the luck.
Meanwhile the old irony exists: while the commercial film rakes it in, a Pinoy indie film like “Graceland” (and I’m sure so many others) depends on a viewing public that might care enough to find out more about the project and watch the trailer, and give it some good ol’ loving. Except that of course there’s nothing old about the kind of loving “Graceland” demands: liking their Facebook page is one thing, spending time to vote for them at Indiewire is another. And yes, pledging whatever amount you can give via Kickstarter is the biggest thing to be done here.
What online poll and funding platforms after all point a finger at aren’t the projects that it chooses. Instead that finger is pointed at us, as audience and critics, especially of the Pinoy film, particularly when we demand of it creativity and originality, currency and relevance. Supporting “Graceland” across these platforms means becoming its patron, shifting the balance of power from film/maker to audience, and forcing the latter to take a stand for the possibility that a film will be exactly what he or she demands.
That possibility is in “Graceland.” At its most basic, it is the story of Marlon Villar, the family driver of a corrupt politician. Marlon’s daughter Elvie is mistaken for the politician’s daughter and is kidnapped. As Marlon is propelled by his search for his daughter, he finds himself deeper into the underbelly of society, and he and his employer unravel and reveal how much both of them are culpable for, and are capable of, the deception that the crisis demands.
From the perspective of someone who spends time watching commercial and indie films, what is most interesting about “Graceland” is that it invokes the notion of a documentary alongside, and merged with, the form of the film. As such there is a sense of a realness to it, one that doesn’t seem like the standard social realist trap of sex-violence-poverty that the Pinoy indie has to some extent become famous for. Instead “Graceland” banks on the premise of social class difference and struggle, using it to cut across the narratives of oppression, those that both the poor and the rich and everyone in between, suffer through. Here, the complexity of class is heavily and painfully layered with the foray into the underbelly of society, where notions of power and versions of corruption are not just unfamiliar, but also have its own set of rules.
If all we’re banking on here is the possibility of a good film, then “Graceland” does provide an endless set of possibilities.
Truth to tell, having seen some really bad local indie and commercial movies in 2011, and fresh from a foray into the MMFF films, only snobbery would keep from being excited about “Graceland.” Though maybe this is the bigger brighter truth: as with every local movie, the task of entering that cinema is always replete with hope. Hope that it will hold up to its promise based on its poster, or trailer, or press release; hope that it will at least be better than the last local film you saw.
That this isn’t always the case doesn’t diminish hope any. And in the case of “Graceland,” this hopefulness begets optimism. Then there is this: in light of the manner in which it engages its audience as supporters and patrons, given the way it has utilized existing online platforms for both promotion and funding, it is highly probable that optimism will finally get us a film that’s worth talking about.
And if not, then it can only still be worth it that “Graceland” forced us as audience out of the comfortable seat in the theater, and into being an audience that will literally take responsibility for the kind of film we want to see. Here is a chance to choose the possibility of a good Pinoy film. The writing on the wall says we should take it.
“Graceland, A Life for Every Lie” by Ron Morales can receive pledges via Kickstarter until January 7 2011, 12:56AM, Philippine time. It will also vie for Project of the Month at Indiewire at the end of January. “Graceland” stars GMA 7’s Starstruck Kids runner-up Ella Guevara as Elvie and Arnold Reyes as Marlon Villar. Their official FB page is here.
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