kultura

Failing the figurative, a review of Bwaya

Fiction based on real stories – and especially ones that are of recent events – can easily fall into the trap of being like a cheap TV reenactment that seeks to teach the public a lesson or two about daily living. It also has to deal with an audience that has seen the same story unfold via sensationalist media, the kind that asks a mother who has lost a daughter to a freak accident: Ano pong pakiramdam ninyo ngayon?

All these come into play in watching “Bwaya” (written and directed by Francis Xavier Pasion). What surprises is that it seems oblivious to this dynamic, interweaving the documentary with the fiction. So it has interviews with the parents of the girl eaten by the crocodile Lolong in the Agusan Marsh, as well as footage of the exhumation and burial of the girl’s body. This was paralleled with a fictionalized representation of the same story.  (more…)

komentaryo

The National Historical Omission!

The mess that is the National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP) is something that’s become obvious not so much because of its involvement in Paoay Church renovations, or questionable engagements with heritage site reconstructions, but more because there seems to be no effort at all on its part to be more transparent about its projects, ones that the National Commission for Culture and the Arts has no choice but give it some money for. And this is the thing: we’re talking millions in taxpayer’s money. It’s a surprise that the President himself has not insisted that his appointee be more forthright about how her office is spending the cash, or whether or not it’s needed at all.

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komentaryo

the Marcoses’ embarrassment of riches

It is always with a heavy heart — yes medyo OA — that I read / listen to discourse about the Marcos’s wealth of art and clothes and shoes, the ones that history tells us we have paid for, but which is handled with nary care or creativity by the powers-that-be as we get these back from the Marcoses.  (more…)

kultura

Storytelling and Dani Girl

I tend to veer away from stories that are out to clutch your heart, and then measure success by how much you bawl while watching.

Elsewhere in the world texts like these are criticized for displaying sickness and passing it off as artistic work, or using a particular claim to an ailment and then celebrating the work as “new” or innovative.

And so I could but be skeptical about Dani Girl, as I came in to see it on its last weekend, knowing full well what it was going to be about.

But Dani Girl surprised. Not that it didn’t tug at heartstrings and had me crying like a mother who knows of sick daughters. And yes it was about this staging and these actors, but also and ultimately it was about the material itself. (more…)

kultura

No Junk In This Trunk*

Because there is plenty here that works: from the funky music to the fantastic lyrics, dramatic situations and imagery so vivid, emotions so raw it can only be yours.

I knew it when I heard “Kapit Mahal” via Billy B.’s now-defunct UR radio show, but I know it even more now: that was no fluke. Top Junk released its indie debut last year, but I count it as one of my early 2011 finds, literally: I bought it at Route 196 as I bobbed my head to The Purplechickens’ Here’s Plan B gig of reminiscence. Yes, it was like being fresh out of college that night, but that’s stuff for another story. (more…)