Tag Archives: indie filmmaking

kultura

Optimistic about the Pinoy indie: Graceland campaigns for pledges

“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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kultura

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.

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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.

kultura

Livin’ Rakenrol!

a version of this was published in the 2Byou section of The Philippine Daily Inquirer on May 22 2009.

You don’t know rock ‘n’ roll – or in Pinoy slang rakenrol – until you’ve lived it. No, I’m not talking about turning back time and living in the 60’s and 70’s. What I’m talking about is going through a day of only surprises, being made to imbibe the enterprise of letting go and letting be: rakenrol! as Pepe Smith has told us countless times.

At the Red Horse Beer Muziklaban Media Challenge, this was the one thing that rang true. Kicking off the 11th Muziklaban amateur rock band competition, the media challenge was an introduction to the new and improved project of RHB. Happening too early in the morning for media people (a 7AM calltime at the Ortigas San Miguel Building), the day began with the realization that we were all participants in an amazing race that would bring us all the way to SMC’s Management Training Center in Tagaytay. I couldn’t help but imagine eating some creature I would rather step on and kill in a heartbeat. (more…)