Tag Archives: cinema

kultura

Refusing accountability: Liza Diño and PPP Year 2

President Duterte insists that there is no corruption in his government, because (1) just a whiff of corruption and you’re out, (2) there is transparency, and (3) there is an anti-corruption agency — that can even look into his bank accounts if they want (he of course appointed the people in that commission, so really).

But there are many instances in which this has been proven questionable, in fact many instances in which Duterte’s own people discredit the President’s pronouncements, not just because they are not held accountable, but also because they are far from being transparent. We could be talking about Wanda Teo and how she has brushed off even a major complaint against her by DoT employees — officially received and stamped by the Office of the President from June 2017. But it could also be as simple as Liza Diño, chairperson of the Film Development Council of the Philippines (FDCP), who cannot for the life of her respond properly to valid criticism and questions about her leadership and projects.  (more…)

kultura

Beyond the horror

I’m a sucker for the Pinoy horror film formula: a scary setting, well-done sound design, the gulat factor. I’m the person in the cinema who will scream first, and the loudest, the person who is so ready to be scared.

But of course the fear factor is only one of many aspects of the horror film, and one realizes given the effort that is put into a movie like Seklusyon (directed by Erik Matti, written by Anton C. Santamaria), that there is more to doing good horror than just getting an audience scared shitless. And certainly the cinematography, the context, the narrative itself of Seklusyon is enough to warrant some of the awards it has won: it speaks of the evil within us, the fears that haunt us, given the lives we live. It speaks of how in a Catholic country like the Philippines, the good is trumped by what is easy, and it is the false saviors that might be biggest enemy. (more…)

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Manila and the ghosts of directors past

The lady at the ticket booth asks me: “Ok lang po bang black and white yung movie?” When I say yes, she promptly informs me that they’ve received many complaints about the independent film Manila’s lack of color. Produced and starred in by commercial actor Piolo Pascual, this should’ve been expected. The world is in color after all. And all the films that Pascual has done so far have showed all his hunky glory in color.

And yet, there is more to grapple with in Manila than just its lack of color. Made up of two films both entitled Manila by today’s more productive independent directors, this movie had a lot going for it. It’s an ambitious project that wanted to retell classic Martial Law movies City After Dark by Ishmael Bernal and Jaguar by Lino Brocka. With Pascual as producer, Raya Martin became director for a shorter retelling of Bernal’s classic, and Adolf Alix for Brocka’s. Both films had Pascual in the lead, with a supporting cast to reckon with.

Old characters, old narrative

Martin’s and Alix’s Manila were to be distinguished not just by the films that influenced their existence, but by light. Martin’s Manila was mostly in daylight, and the bright lights of accidents and hospitals; Alix’s Manila was dark, noisy and dirty, figuratively at the dance clubs and the Remedios Circle and literally on side streets, squatters’ areas and garbage.

And yet, more than how these two films would’ve melded together into one big film on the urban landscape that is contemporary Manila, it is how they existed independently of each other that seems more important. As a whole, Manila says that its characters are based on the creations of the original movies’ writers.  The question then becomes, how do these characters – and their stories – change? (more…)

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…)