Tag Archives: independent cinema

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OTC: on the contrary (OTJ, Transit & the indie)

The truth is that while we celebrate local films, especially independently-produced ones, it seems important to point out that many other things come into play at this point as far as declaring any movie a critical success. That is, there is the social media bandwagon, where “public perception” is deemed powerful, and no one is allowed to think differently about a movie lest one is pounced on like some enemy.

(more…)

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Layang Bilanggo frees us from the indie!

the discussions and debates on local indie films come from a place of uncertainty and spectatorship: who views these films, and therefore are we making them for those viewers? is the prevalence of sex and poverty and violence in the indie something that’s overly used to feed the first world’s need to validate themselves?  after all to insist on seeing the bowels of third world Philippines and saying bravo bravo! could also mean yehey! they’re still as poor as we’d like to think!

and then there are stories that are about poverty with some violence and some sex, that just get out of the rut that too many indie films are in. Layang Bilanggo directed by Michael Angelo Dagñalan and written by him with Ma-an L. Asuncion, Melchor DF. Escarcha (Kuwentista Productions), is exactly this story, without it being too self-consciously pa-artist or pa-difficult. instead what it is becomes what an indie should be able to do: speak of the times in a way that deems it as important as the past and the future, in situations that might be cliché but which are handled with a new perspective and a different voice.

because on the one hand, it’s clear that we know of the ex-con story, yet we rarely speak of how corruption within the police allows for the probability that the ex-con is freed, kept under the radar, and used as a hitman. because on the one hand, we’ve seen the story of the ex-con father seeking the abandoned child, yet we don’t know of the probability that this child’s life is so affected by the palpable absence that abandonment creates, making a reunion just impossible.

in Layang Bilanggo this basic story has a layer of what is both funny and tragic about age and aging, within the spaces of a provincial home for the aged, where the exchanges between nurses and boarders are always truthfully painful, making fun as they do of the absurd situation(s) that aging creates, that those who think they haven’t aged actually subsist on. it’s difficult now to think of any movie or TV show that has dealt with senior citizenship in the way that Layang Bilanggo successfully did, where the conversations, the moments of distress and anger, the emotional rollercoaster that abandonment and loneliness wreaks, are all so real. if not in our faces, reminding us of our own inabilities and incapabilities, reminding us how much of ourselves is in the ways in which we let our old get old, our senior citizens deal with age by themselves.

having said this, it must be said too: Jaime Fabregas, Pocholo Montes, Pen Medina, outdo themselves in the roles of senior citizenship, where the witty repartee is layered with a whole lot of disgust and distress at the way(s) they’ve aged, and why they’re within the space they’re in, where friendships are tongue in cheek, where the end is dealt with as a matter of fact, and not as something that’s unsaid.

that later on it is the ex-Metrocom officer who helps out the ex-con, that later on, this friendship will be tested in the decision to be captured again, do not run away it is said, becomes one of the more touching moments in the film. soon after, we are faced with an ending we don’t like or want or expect, and yet seems to be the only way a movie like this could end, with redemption only in the way of death, only the way that the person who survives holds a gun to someone’s head, and runs away through the forests that are unfamiliar.

and on concrete lies the man who only wanted to be forgiven, more for the crime that is abandonment versus any other one that the law speaks of. down the street, an old man is reading what’s left of the one who could only be a father until the end. within the gates of the old people’s home, a daughter doesn’t know the truth just yet, and will die a couple of deaths upon finding out who her father is.

and right in front of the movie screen, as the strains from the Johnoy Danao original theme song began, it was difficult to hold back tears. because there is no redemption, there is no happy ending. all that there is, we realize, is a world where abandonment is truth but rarely spoken of, a space where love can only be possible given a blanket of lies, where fathers and daughters are unbound but aren’t free, and the freedom we seek isn’t about walls or limits, but about what we aren’t allowed to become given the past we cannot shake off, given the future that can only be uncertain.

and then we realize that maybe the point isn’t to forget, nor is it to be forgiven. the point is to live now, and know to look peace in the eye, and take it on, even when we have yet to think we deserve it. the universe has its own way of judging us worthy. and letting us free.

***

note number 1: Layang Bilanggo won the Cinema One Originals 2010 best picture and best screenplay, with its director winning best director and lead actor winning best actor. and yes, the redundancy is killing me. Miriam Quiambao deserves some praise for acting that was truthful, she seems to be over her learning curve. Pen Medina as lead actor here isn’t just the best, he outdoes himself too, requiring a whole lot of bad words that only the most admirable would know to be about being overwhelmed.

note number 2: the last day of the the Cinema One Originals 2010 film fest was on a non-working holiday (November 16), and the filled theaters for Third World Happy and Dagim were unexpected for someone like me who’s been watching in half-filled theaters for most of the festival. suffice it to say that i was happy for these indie movies, but sad that i didn’t get to watch both movies.

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war and wonder in Tsardyer

it might be easy to dismiss Tsardyer a reenactment of the Ces Drilon hostage taking, except that you’d have to be stupid, and half-blind, to see only that in this movie. because if its connection to the Drilon hostage taking is to even be discussed, it must be seen only as a spoiler here, i.e., so now you know that there will be that in this wonderful movie by Sigfreid Barros-Sanchez.

but it isn’t what all of it is about. there is a journalist, Leslie, and her two companions. they are kidnapped in the middle of Maguindanao because the journalist was careless about getting a story, thinking that all they had to worry about was whether or not their cameras’ batteries were charged enough. the layers of this story though happen extraneous to these media people, and within the lives of people within the war torn land that is Sulu. here we are shown how families aren’t just torn apart by death and violence and disorder, but also by the fact of two extreme poles that exist within it: the Muslim who wants peace Ahmad (brilliantly played by Neil Ryan Sese) is up against his brother-in-law Karim (hauntingly played by Pipo Alfad) who heads an Abu Sayyaf splinter group that holds their area of Sulu captive. a little boy Shihab is what links these two, son to Ahmad and nephew to Karim, who finds that he is tied down by his father in a way that his uncle would free him: let him run through the jungles of Sulu, give him a role in the fight against government soldiers.

the soldiers that Shihab had seen kill his mother, the one soldier whose face he remembers is the face of the military officer who enters their house without permission or warrant. it is clear why Shihab would rather be on the side of his uncle Karim.

but he arrives there and finds himself in the face of a kindness that is unknown to him, that he lost when his mother was killed by the evil face of the military that has remained in his head. all that Shirab is required to do in the terrorist camp is to go down the mountain, run to the nearest home with electricity, and charge the cellphones — the lifeline of the hostages, the line to money of the hostage takers.

and then Tsardyer becomes the story of life and death, the dynamic between family and childhood, the familiar and the strange, making the possibility of death even more stark, the loss of life even more possible. the hostages are forced to reckon with their own carelessness, their lives at real risk, their need for freedom. Ahmad goes on a journey to recover his son, get him back as a matter of being father, as a matter of life. Karim is static, but remains the main reason for action, his demands make the world of the hostages’ families move, his phone calls the reason for hope. Shihab goes up and down the mountain for the task of charging the phones, thinking it crucial to his role on Karim’s camp, but later and slowly seeing it as reason for keeping Leslie alive. all these happen with music that changes and shifts depending on whose perspective we are seeing; all these are given life through music, one of the many reasons to watch this movie, one of the many reasons its storytelling succeeds. it has imagined the way it would sound if these characters had a soundtrack in their heads, the songs that would make for their particular journeys to be only their own, separate from everybody else.

but maybe the most wonderful song here is one that speaks of the change in Shihab’s relationship with Leslie. this is unspoken and silent throughout the movie, and just might be the most beautiful thing to come out of it. because elsewhere in it, we are shown how war gives space, if not creates, the crazies, be they from the terrorist group or the military. because elsewhere in it, we are given a sense of how women are necessarily on the losing end, in the face of two other men taken as hostages. because elsewhere in it, we begin to know of the tragedies in war that we rarely see, given the truth of violence and how it affects the psyche of the people within it. in the midst of these, Shihab’s actions allow for a fact of love and compassion for a woman who could be his mother, and who spoke to him as if he deserved the conversation, as if he was the most important person in that terrorist camp.

in the final scenes where the one who was happy with the existing notion(s) of peace, the violent terrorist, the crazy military all kill and are killed literally and/or figuratively, the realization is painfully clear: in wars like this one, where the money transfers hands between the two sides, there is no one who is free.

Tsardyer in fact tells us that everyone, including us who are farthest away from it, is held captive in a war. that war knows no age, no position in society, no space: when it happens elsewhere in this country, it is ours to stop. when it happens in our faces, it is ours to demand peace, right now. otherwise, Tsardyer reminds us, war just continues to senselessly kill. as it has all this time.

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the saddest of dreams in Ang Damgo ni Eleuteria

on the surface, there isn’t much to deal with in the movie Ang Damgo ni Eleuteria written and directed by Remton Siega Zuasola (Panumduman Pictures). it is the story of Terya and her family’s struggle with her impending departure for Germany to marry an old man found through a mail-order bride service in her province of Cebu. the struggle begins and ends in Olango Island where she and her family live, one of those islands that’s removed from the cities that are familiar to us from Manila, a space that reminded me of Cuyo Palawan in the indie Ploning.  we see this stretch of space, with idle land and waters as two things: on the one hand the place of a rut, the rut that Terya’s mother speaks of; on the other, the space of possibility — surrounded by waters there is reason to leave, go with the tide, let it bring you elsewhere.

but Terya didn’t want to leave. the story begins with Terya missing, pretend-drowning in water, or maybe really wanting to drown herself, and her mother screaming at her father for having lost her. the father meanwhile is a funny guy, cracking jokes but also making fun of his wife, in the midst of the crisis that was in front of them, the one that involves the daughter who just refused to eat, refused to speak, refused refused refused.

save for showing tenderness and love for the younger sister, the one who didn’t know what was going on for most of the movie, but turned out to be crucial. save for showing compassion and friendship for the crazy man of the town, the one who was the literal crazy in the midst of the Baliw-Baliw Festival that the town was celebrating with, what else, but a bunch of crazy boys making like they’re pregnant women.

in the midst of this, Terya and her family kept on walking walking walking. the beauty of this movie lies in the fact that we don’t even realize how far they’ve walked, or how long. the point being this: Terya had walked from saying no to leaving, to saying yes. she had walked from the space that was familiar, to one that was unfamiliar and scary. she had walked from what was hers, to what she did not know.

in the course of this walk Terya meets up with the boy she loved and who loved her back. she thought of going off to elope, and then backs out: the town wants to talk to her, wants to say goodbye. she’s leaving, she’s one of them, and she’s leaving to become somebody else. her parents look for her and find her, but do not know her. the recruiter thinks she’s like every other girl who’s ready to leave, ready to become rich and send her family money. she doesn’t realize Terya can walk with no slippers, and can walk in her mother’s slippers, as her mother walks barefoot, hot concrete notwithstanding.

this heat was something that the visitor would complain about. but Terya and her family took it as default. on screen, the heat translates to an unbelievable brightness, as if we are being made to see this stark reality of making our young women’s bodies an export product, as if we are being made to see this spotlight on what is a sad sad dream of leaving. as if we are being challenged with its absurdity, if not its insanity.

because there is a dreamlike quality to this the story of Terya. the camera moves with the walking, moves with the people whose roles are important and relevant to Terya’s leaving, with the community small and impoverished and “crazy” as it was as they walked through it. the camera is always in the people’s faces, or highlights a group dynamic. the discomforts within the family, the refusal to deal with the recruiter, the need for Terya to stand with an old friend from school and reckon with both past and future in the face of her present, all telling of the kind of life she was to live, she was to leave.

when Terya finally gets on that boat that was to bring her to the city then to Germany, she is sent off by family, by a friend who’s just passing through, by a cousin who’s done it before and wants her to know it will be hard. and the town’s crazy sends her off, scaring the recruiter who stands for everything that’s horrid about the business of sending our people elsewhere. Terya is made to look at her small provincial town as the boat floats away, as they are all forced to see her leave.

and when the little sister looks to her ate with only the innocent sadness that the young can have, what could only become sadder is the mother telling her to grow up quickly so she can leave, too. and then you know that the mother’s dream, the family’s dream, that which Terya decided to fulfill as her dream, is the whole town’s dream.

it’s the saddest of dreams that we’ve come to think right and just, even when what it actually is, is tragic. and in Ang Damgo ni Eleuteria we are reminded of all this, without being all about poverty and oppression, because it actually also is ultimately about dreams. that one that’s about leaving to live and sacrificing self to survive. this movie reminds us that this is a dream we cannot begrudge the dreamer, a dream we cannot judge. and there is also our tragic existence as the ones who watch it happen.

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impotence in Astro Mayabang

Jason Paul Laxamana was obviously overwhelmed when he welcomed the audience to the gala screening of his movie Astro Mayabang, as was the crowd most of whom were in t-shirts with the movie’s title, Philippine flags (which i couldn’t understand), and banners for Aaron Villaflor who plays the title role. this is the difference between an indie with Ronnie Lazaro and an indie with a young commercial star.

i would wear a t-shirt with Ronnie Lazaro’s name anytime.

maybe Aaron Villafor’s name too, but let me give him a couple more indie films, and a decade more? in the movies. because if there’s anything that saves this movie it’s Aaron’s existence as Astro Mayabang. he is effective as the Kapampangan boy who walks in no direction other than the literal, who lives the days one at a time, who only cares for nation in as superficial a way as wearing his shoes. Aaron here is actually a surprise given his youth, and it was difficult not to feel for him when things fell apart, and think him crazy by the time the story ended.

and yes, i get ahead of the story because other than what happens, there isn’t much to say about this story other than it is brave, yes, in its use of Pampanga as context, the Kapampangan language throughout the movie, a look at contemporary Kapampangan culture. that is what’s brave about this movie. but the storytelling, the narrative, the world that was of Astro Mayabang’s, living in the bowels of Kapampangan society, is farthest from being special.

it’s like a soap opera really. Astro has a drunkard father and catatonic mother, one friend, a tiny room, and too many Pinoy pride paraphernalia. but what he owns figuratively is the park and people’s attention: Astro is called mayabang for a reason. he talks about his sexual experiences with the other park tambays, he fights with a white guy who refuses to give a beggar some coins, dances in the middle of the park by himself, makes and flies a kite like he owns the place. he walks through the streets as if he owns it, scolds the boy at the pirated dvd stall for not having more OPM, is easily irritated and seems to always be in a rush. which is a surprise because Astro Mayabang actually has nothing urgent going on in his life, save for buying Pinoy pride merchandise to celebrate his, uh, Pinoy pride.

but easily the question has to be about money and where he gets it, and in this movie Astro earns it via a relationship with a homosexual man who does nothing but sit in front of his laptop playing games. periodically, a man dressed as a holy week ritual flagellation sacrifice arrives in a mask, no shirt and loose pants, dances for him and gets some viagra. and always, after these instances, Astro holds money in his hands. of course this masked man is Astro, but that was suppose to be a surprise later on in the story, when Astro actually comes not for the money but for the viagra because he’s got a girl Dawn who he met in the park (where else?), and the movie reveals that he’s actually impotent. of course as with the masked dancing boy, this too was suppose to be a surprise. but given the way the story was told here, none of it was.

there was no big reveal here, and that is what made the story impotent. it could not be anything other than a superficial story about a boy who’s mayabang, who has a false sense of nationalism, and a false sense of his value to the world, and whose motivations are unclear, his anger at the Lord unexplained. when Dawn talks to Astro and tells him being Pinoy ain’t about what clothes one wears, and what one says, because what matters is what’s in the heart, this is almost an explanation for the movie’s whole point, and yet.

and yet, it also seemed so pointless here because when Dawn finally articulates these smart words (no matter that they are cliche), it’s barely important in the face of their hormones, the possibilities in an empty house, and Astro’s, uh, extra challenge of impotence. then it just become absurd: Astro travels from one end of the city to another, gets some viagra from gay fag then leaves him waiting, goes back to the other side of the city, forces Dawn to get it on with him because he’s ready, and suddenly a fight scene: Dawn throws him out of the house, he asks for everything he ever gave her, including a tiny bag of butong pakwan. and then Astro’s already non-life falls apart: he wants one of the limited edition jackets at the Pinoy pride store, finds out that the old fag now doesn’t care for him, he gets into a fight with the other boys in the fag’s house, loses the money he had to buy the t-shirt with, all this come to a head and he breaks down, tearing off all the posters of world famous Pinoys from his room’s walls, screaming “Wala ka, Astro!” over and over again, at some point hitting his thighs hard over and over again.

then Pacquiao has a fight, but he isn’t there. he’s in church talking to God saying that he’s unfair because he didn’t create men equal. and cut to next scene: the park, people murmuring about Astro, and him as loud as always, talking about the Lord. yabang transformed into preaching.

the point of course is that Astro shifted gods from nation to, well, God. the point of course is that he has found himself, but at this point this cannot be literal at all. it just becomes as absurd as the rest of the movie. and i don’t mean that in a good way.