Three Decades of Philippine Shorts

Three Decades of Philippine Shorts

Perhaps the most exciting entry to the Philippine New Wave program of the 66th edition of the Edinburgh International Film Festival is “Three Decades of Philippine Shorts,” a collection, curated by Khavn dela Cruz, of vastly diverse but intriguing short works from some of the greatest talents that emerged during the waning years of Lino Brocka, Ishmael Bernal, and Mike de Leon. If one is to carefully pinpoint a running theme from selected films, one can sense that all of the films resonate a strong affinity for Kidlat Tahimik’s brand of experimental but deeply personal oeuvre.

There seems to be something in the no-budget, guerrilla, and largely impromptu style of filmmaking that Kidlat Tahimik committed to in response to the overblown and star-filled spectacles that his contemporaries were dabbling in that arouses depth in creativity. All of the films in the program are but seeds of the ingenuity and the resilience of the filmmakers, then disenfranchised by capitalist studios and their bamboozled mobs, who are now marking their roles in the nation’s cinema as both old and new pioneers of the ongoing Philippine new wave.

Jet Leyco’s Patlang (Blank, 2011) starts seemingly as a run-of-the-mill melodrama, covering what possibly is a young girl’s heartbreak. From there, it jumps into a wormhole, transporting the film to various places. The short’s both an exercise of style and rhythm, and a mystifying document of the personal and the political converging in the most intriguing of ways. Jon Lazam’s Nang Gabing Maging Singlaki ng Puso ang Bato ni Darna (Darna: A Stone is a Heart You Can’t Swallow, 2012) was made for a short film competition that focused on works that lament the sorrowful state of film preservation. In the film, Lazam weaves together his penchant for pop culture via the understated romances of Filipino Wonder Woman Darna and her boy-toy Nardo and his concern for the rapid disappearance of such pop culture because of film decay. In one of the short’s most memorable scenes, Nardo rides his boat from the imperfections of decades-old film to high definition, a connection was sparked, elusive but real, just like love.

Like a Murakami fiction, John Torres’ Hai, They Recycle Heartbreaks in Tokyo so Nothing’s Wasted (2009) treats Tokyo with both a resident’s familiarity and a foreigner’s curiosity, displaying outdoors bathed in warmth and indoors of strange shapes and sizes. He eventually tells a story, and allows us a view from what seems to be the nostrils of a father, peeking into the beauty of a concerned loved one, into forgotten regrets, and perpetual memories. The genius of Renei Patricia Dimla’s Anomie (2008) does not lie in the social ills it attempts to expose but in the way they are exposed. Animated in a way that belongs more in children’s shows than social commentaries, the film enunciates the absurdity of the Philippine situation, where the rich and poor are both miles apart in the human condition and inches close when interacting with each other.

Antoinette Jadaone has an adman’s efficiency, an indie filmmaker’s resourcefulness, and an artist’s wit and advocacy. In Saling Pusa (Tag-along, 2006), she displays all three traits with fascinating finesse. A young girl plays cards and gambles with neighbourhood thugs. As the stakes get higher from random change to the tools of their trade, the little girl becomes more like young Jadaone, a severely talented newbie in an industry of big guns and cutthroats. In Apple (2005), Sherad Sanchez’s crafts his very own version of purgatory that is pretty much close to home. Prayers and novenas are heard in the background, ultimately drowned by the ominous noises of the night. An atrocious scene happens behind closed doors, cementing the depravity that’s draped in Catholic faithfulness. Everything else is just a faint and flimsy excuse to escape the ironies of a compromised humanity.

R. A. Rivera’s Chicken Soup II (1999) is a treasure trove of the weird and the strange that only becomes artful and meaningful after severe bouts of the laidback boredom that’s shared by the jobless and dormitory students. There’s wistful wisdom and hapless humor to Rivera’s sometimes impenetrable methods for those willing to swim with his madness. A satire on the past and present state of Philippine politics where the power players are quick to swear on lightning striking them from above should they be caught lying, Joey Agbayani’s Kidlat (Lightning, 1989) is replete with visual metaphors and wry humor that make the film relevant beyond the peaceful 1986 Manila revolution that inspired it.

Like an ungodly chant, the words “botika,” or drugstore, and “bituka,” or stomach, are spoken over and over again while images of food and drugs in overpopulated Manila are rapidly displayed in Cesar Hernando’s inimitable Botika Bituka (1985). As the sounds and visuals eventually meld, the connections and disconnections are established, evoking a social irony that is so apparent in the Philippines, it is even observable in its people’s everyday vocabulary. The Great Smoke (1984), Roxlee’s anti-atomic bomb agitprop, both shocks and tickles at the same time. While the juxtaposition of the realities of the dangers of nuclear war and the director’s animated sketches and cartoons can be seen as insensitive and uncalled for, it can also be regarded as bold and brash as it is the same marriage of the very real and the very absurd that drives the point of abject stupidity in some nations’ maintenance of these weapons of mass destruction.

Finally, there’s Raymond Red’s masterpiece, Ang Magpakailanman (Eternity, 1982), which at first glance seems to be the authentic thing, a Filipino silent film salvaged from decay. However, the film’s more modern sensibilities betray its borrowed form. Its concern for history and the present, its self-conscious dictates in its aesthetics, the abundance of style, all of these point towards an art that is more grounded on the anti-establishment and truly independent sentiments that drove the Mowelfund filmakers where Red was a very prominent figure and some of the present independent filmmakers where Red remains to be a consistent source of inspiration.

A Date with Jao Mapa (1999)

A Date with Jao Mapa (Quark Henares, 1999)

If one is to examine the characters Quark Henares has written in his films, one can readily see their strong affinity to Filipino pop culture. Keka, the vengeful heroine of Keka (2003), imagines a world unlike hers that follows the rules of 80’s cinema, where dilemmas end as soon as a musical number concludes in a fantastic freeze frame. The teenage superheroes of Super Noypi (2006) engage in banter about present music fads whenever they are not saving the world and fashion themselves as the more economically challenged counterparts of their comic book idols. In Rakenrol (2011), Odie, consumed by heartache, is salvaged by a dues ex machina in the form of rock legend Ely Buendia who happens to pass by the convenience store where he is busy sulking. Henares’ characters live in a world where pop culture isn’t a mere diversion but a way of life.

Alexa Lindo, from Henares’ early short film A Date with Jao Mapa, is perhaps the prototype of this Henares character. Normal-looking but apparently stricken with an obsession for popular matinee idol turned legendary has-been Jao Mapa, Alexa has deviously planned for herself a date with Mapa, who in the film happens to be an easy-to-get and sex-crazed jerk. The film primarily explores Alexa’s indefatigable fanaticism through what seems to be a not-so-personal video diary where Alexa, speaking directly to the camera, reveals the extent of his insanity.

She belittles the efforts of ordinary fans, declaring her interest for Jao Mapa as “more profound.” The profundity of her adoration is expressed via her stalking the former actor at work, which inevitably leads to him bumping into her, date proposals being offered, a dinner date in an expensive restaurant where what’s spoken is not exactly what’s thought, and an all-nighter that is not as romantic or erotic as what’s expected.

A Date with Jao Mapa has all the faults and all the charms of a student film. Shot in a typical consumer level video camera, the short is not exactly beautiful to look at. There are efforts to make the film look more than just a university project, such as when the camera slowly zooms to show Alexa’s patient face as she waits for Jao Mapa in the restaurant while the rest of the room are idly doing their own business, or when during the film’s climax, clever camera angles manage to add some suspense in the quick surprise. Editing’s functional. Dialogues are too self-aware, too self-consciously witty. Clearly, the film was made with as little money as possible.

The capital spent was mostly composed of wile and creativity, and perhaps, Henares’ very own obsession over the quirks that made Filipino pop culture Filipino. Unlike Henares’ later films which are all plagued by budgetary constraints, studio influence, the burden of expectations for him to be great, or the baggage of being already too involved in the pop culture he delights in, A Date with Jao Mapa is pure and concretely a product of unadulterated ingenuity. One can easily forgive the amateurish qualities of the video because the short has an energy that is still unmatched by any of Henares’ better-produced features.

Henares’ casting of Marie-France Arcilla, or more popularly known as Marnie of the very popular gag show Ang TV, as Alexa is an acknowledgement of his fascination for resurrecting his childhood heroes. Apart from seeing Jao Mapa not as a swoon-worthy leading man but as a man whose glorified past is but a lingering shadow used to bed women, there is a certain excitement seeing Marnie all grown up, acting sophisticated and sexy like some femme fatale from an obscure noir. Perhaps, this is Henares’ self-therapy to absolutely cure him of being swept away by the film and television-fed fantasies of his childhood.

Perhaps the anger that dominates the film’s finale is due to his frustration in seeing and eventually accepting those fantasies that are the cornerstones of the happiness of his growing up dissipate into the very boring reality that all adults have to face and be content with. Rather than making out and making love with just dull fragments of those wondrous icons of the past and quietly accepting them as disappointingly ordinary, he’d rather just kill them, and preserve their greatness as intact and untainted memories.

(Cross-published in Lagarista.)

Ang Maikling Buhay ng Apoy, Act 2, Scene 2: Suring at ang Kuk-ok (1995)

Ang Maikling Buhay ng Apoy, Act 2, Scene 2: Suring at Kuk-ok (Auraeus Solito, 1995)

English Title: The Brief Lifespan of Fire, Act 2, Scene 2: Suring and Kuk-ok

With only the entire nine minute-running time of Ang Maikling Buhay ng Apoy, Act 2, Scene 2: Suring at ang Kuk-ok (The Brief Lifespan of Fire, Act 2, Scene 2: Suring and Kuk-ok), filmmaker Auraeus Solito was able to convey the components of Palaw’an culture that ensured its survival amidst the allure of modern culture. Solito, whose mother was one of the few descendants of the shaman-kings of Palawan who were sent to Manila for education following the efforts of the government to reach out to indigenous tribes in the Philippines, was gifted with stories from his wealthy heritage. The short film, which is merely an excerpt from Solito’s own play, is but one of the thousands of tales transmitted aurally from generation to generation. With the power and reach of cinema, Solito has ascertained the preservation of his treasured culture, along with it, the virtues and values his own culture holds dear.

The short film tells the myth of Suring, who casts a spell of immense beauty but is still judged by humanity. She retreats to the forests where she is far from the prying eyes of humans, and there, she befriends the Kuk-ok, a creature who can transform into any form. Solito, acknowledging the essence of the stories conveyed by his mother to be the act of telling and listening, withholds from turning the film into merely a package of visual pleasures founded on the supernatural foundations of the story. The myth is actually told by Suring, relaying with precise emotions her very own tale to the film’s audience. In a way, the audience becomes the direct heirs of the Palaw’an oral tradition, inheriting the knowledge of such tale straight from the being.

The sacred act of storytelling is preserved in the film. Solito only adds visual inflections. Using very crude stop-motion animation which turns Suring’s environment into a troupe of swirling and spinning performers that enunciate the highs and lows of the plot, Solito evokes a definite stance of enchantment in his recreation of how the legend was imparted to him. Leaves conspire to form a magnificent headdress for Suring, turning her into a terrifying presence. Tattoos are magically painted on her face, beautiful blues and yellows to represent her relationship with nature, and black and red to express the corruption dealt by humanity’s cynicism. Seashells, flowers, twigs and branches are turned into delicate brushstrokes and punctuation marks, tools in imparting the subtle complexities of the seemingly simple creation story.

Because of the dazzling colors and movements in the film, one can only surmise Solito’s wonderment when his mother tells him the story when he was a child. In a very mundane city such as Manila, these stories, especially to a boy whose imagination is not limited by the browns and greys of the metropolis, are sure to be sudden bursts of colors and textures. The film is successful in turning Solito’s very personal and private joys as a child astounded by his mother’s beautiful stories into something universal, where anyone can find himself trapped in the pleasures of being transported in a different place and era with only the power of voice and practical cinematic effects, without need of the excesses provided by computer-generated fakery.

Solito has always been a filmmaker who mines his unique circumstance in the world to etch his life as an artist. Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros (The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros, 2005), although based on a lovely screenplay written by Michiko Yamamoto, is grounded on Solito’s own childhood experiences in his Manila neighborhood. Pisay (Philippine Science, 2007) on the other hand, situates his creativity within his own academic and political coming-of-age in a peculiar science high school. Boy (2009) is a peek into his sexual awakening. Basal Banar (Sacred Ritual of Truth, 2002), a documentary that dutifully details his rediscovery of his Palaw’an roots, lays the groundwork for his narrative films on the bevy of stories he has learned through the years. Busong (Palawan Fate, 2011), the first of the several narrative films he plans, finds Solito in that situation where he returns to Palaw’an, not as a child fascinated by that missing link, or a traveller searching for that missing link, but as an advocate, tasked to perpetuate, the same way his mother and his ascendants did, their heritage through the art of storytelling.

(Cross-published in Lagarista.)

2011: Philippine Shorts

2011: Philippine Shorts

Criminally overlooked perhaps because their commercial value is limited, short films are like really effective pick-up lines. Within a matter of a few carefully selected words, emotions are captured, leading to what the pick-upper hopes would be a night of satisfying orgasms (or delectable conversations, depending on the moral barometer of the suave pick-upper). Limited to a running time of less than an hour, short filmmakers have the daunting task of creating worlds, forwarding ideas, convincing cynics, and expressing long-repressed feelings, while establishing an aesthetic and motivation that would set them apart from other audio-visual campaigns.

Raya Martin’s Ars Colonia, which was commissioned by the Hubert Bals Fund, was shot in hi-8 analogue video. Starting with the image of the silhouette of what seems to be a Spanish conquistador backdropped by an a mountainous isle surrounded by raging sees, the film suddenly explodes in what is either a blazing battleground or a fireworks celebration (the dazzling visual of colors bursting resulted from Martin drawing over the actual film with markers of various colors). Also shot in analogue film, Gym Lumbera and Timmy Harn’s Class Picture features various schoolchildren whose yearly class photographs are being taken in the beach. The film, beautifully faded like a memory stored for decades and suddenly rediscovered, evokes the fragile pleasures of reminiscence. Martin’s Ars Colonia, Lumbera and Harn’s Class Picture, and Shireen Seno’s Big Boy has turned analogue film into time machines, transporting viewers to places and events remembered from a respectable distance.

Jon Lazam’s Hindi sa Atin ang Buwan (The Moon is Not Ours) was filmed from a consumer-level video camera. A sequence of images of travel connected by ingenious editing (at one point, the moon bursts into fireworks before putting the audience within the alienated safety of the interior of a taxi with the unnamed protagonist in a moment of longing), the short converts the randomness of vacation shoots into a document of the heartbreak of distance, starting from rapid movements and ending in solemn quietude, as if to visualize what a sigh of romantic ache would sound in a silent film.

In Walang Katapusang Kwarto (The Endless Room), Emerson Reyes mercilessly focuses on the faces of his two outstanding actors (Sheenly Gener and Max Celada) who portray two lovers wasting idle time after what is presumed to be a bout of intense lovemaking. By invading the private spaces of his performers, Reyes concocts a document of voyeurism, where the audience takes intense pleasure in listening to the humorous banter of two persons engaged in an illicit relationship, the same way these two persons take intense pleasure in invading into the private lives of their neighbors, who we will only know through the way they shut their doors.

Filmmaker Jerrold Tarog was commissioned by an advocacy foundation to create a documentary on the Agusan Marshlands, an area in Mindanao that is famed for its various animal and plant life. Neither familiar nor armed with any emotional attachment with the place, he conceived the assignment as an adventure, seen from the eyes of his avatar, Gaby dela Merced. The result is Agusan Marsh Diaries, a delightful documentary that could have been just another tourism ad but ended up as an experience like no other. Unlike Tarog, Cierlito Tabay and Moreno Benigno do not have the task of reinventing the wheel. Undo is a documentary like any other. The only difference here is that Tabay and Benigno’s subject, an artist whose drug addiction is funded by his art and whose art is fuelled by his drug addiction, is more than enough to carry the film. Knowing this, Tabay and Benigno fills the minutes with only the subject, drowning it with his art, his life, even his music.

The stories and messages conveyed by the short films released in 2011 are all diverse. Their methods of conveyance are to say the least, intriguing. From Marianito Dio, Jr.’s Sarong Aldaw (One Day), which tells the all-too-familiar tale of young man leaving the provinces for Manila with immense lyricism, to John Torres’ Mapang-akit, which recounts from visual and aural textures of salvaged footage from another film the tale of a man who is seduced by an aswang, to Chuck Hipol’s Man of the House, which conveys the skewed image of the perfect Filipino through the ads that these families consume, to Nica Santiago’s Awit ni Maria (Song of Maria), a gorgeous tale of a man who falls for a prostitute and lives that admiration through the music he imagines for her, to Jason Paul Laxamana’s Timawa (Free Man), which weaves together fashion photography, filmmaking, impossibly beautiful people and the theme of marital infidelity to come up with a comedy with Lynchian awkwardness, these shorts are not limited by the stories they attempt to tell. Instead, they create stories from the way they tell stories, adding layers upon layers, creating a treasure trove of information within the very short span of mixing creativity, indulgences and everything else that make films more than just a succession of moving images.

Below are eleven notable shorts released and seen in 2011:

1. Ars Colonia (Raya Martin)
2. Hindi sa Atin ang Buwan (The Moon is not Ours, Jon Lazam)
3. Mapang-akit (John Torres) 
4. Class Picture (Gym Lumbera & Timmy Harn)
5. Walang Katapusang Kwarto (Endless Room, Emerson Reyes)
6. Sarong Aldaw (One Day, Marianito Dio, Jr.)
7. Undo (Cierlito Tabay & Moreno Benigno)
8. Awit ni Maria (Song of Maria, Nica Santiago)
9. Man of the House (Chuck Hipol)
10. Agusan Marsh Diaries (Jerrold Tarog)
11. Timawa (Free Man, Jason Paul Laxamana)

Aliwan Paradise (1992)

Aliwan Paradise (Mike de Leon, 1992)

Mike de Leon’s Aliwan Paradise, one of the four shorts featured in Southern Winds, rings truest in this present age where poverty, as explicitly depicted and as source of an unquenchable desire for escape, has turned into an embarrassing necessity in our entertainment.

De Leon’s view of the future is both hilariously fantastic and uncomfortably real. Although obviously inspired by the near-fascist regime of Ferdinand Marcos, the film’s setting can be read as a caricature of a Filipino society that is addicted to the pleasure of illusions, to the fleetingly amusing, to the ephemeral and the unreal. The Philippines is obviously in a state of grave penury. People are crowded outside the theater of the Impresario (brilliantly played by Johnny Delgado) to take their chance at impressing him and his inutile jury to land a job. The Impresario, under strict orders by her superior (a woman who appears only as a sketch that looks a lot like Imelda Marcos), is looking for a new type of entertainment, something that has not been seen before, and something that will and should sell.

Outside, Julio Madiaga (Julio Diaz) and Ligaya Paradiso (Melissa de Leon), characters from Lino Brocka’s Maynila: sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag (Manila in the Claws of Neon, 1975), reunite under more heartbreaking circumstances. While Brocka uses the characters as symbols for the Filipino’s tragic search for happiness, De Leon infuses the characters with biting cynicism. Julio, although still madly in love with his former sweetheart, is more aware of the world and its inhumane devices. Ligaya, on the other hand, has totally abandoned romanticism for fatalist worldliness. Their reunion, in rebellion to Brocka’s grappling with a certain sense of hopefulness although futile, becomes more of a resolution to ideals that have become insignificant in a world where survival is the lone virtue that is worth fighting for.

And survival seems to be the only virtue worth fighting for. As a former human rights bureaucrat blows fire while lecturing on literature and eats shards of glass while teaching basic arithmetic and a nurse strips down to her underwear while taking care of an elderly man, the nobility of profession is quickly abandoned by the very basic need to earn a living. Dignity is forgotten. Ligaya’s performance, a song and dance number that fancifully narrates the downfall of the Filipino woman, sums up the distance of how far society has been corrupted by poverty. Her private dealing with the Impresario only reinforces the abject desperation.

De Leon however mixes his cynicism with timeless wit and humor. Doy del Mundo’s screenplay is essentially a satire, resting more on the ingenuity of the idea rather than the lives of its characters or the depth of the narrative. However, the film graduates from the limitations of its being merely a satire. Like its thesis as to how entertainment has lorded over the Philippines from prior to it being colonized up to the present, the film’s prophetic observations as to how entertainment has turned from being a source of respite to a parasite that lives on woe and suffering is evidenced by reality.

Willie Revillame, whose sudden rise to fame happened decades after Aliwan Paradise, has the same wile as the Impresario, acknowledging the wealth in both feeding from and feeding the poor. Star Cinema and other mainstream studios, who would never have raised funds to produce such an enlightening piece of entertainment as Aliwan Paradise, has the same muteness as the Impresario’s jury, ignorant of their being conspirators in creating an economy out of the Filipinos’ ignorance by coming up with products that are comparable to instant noodles, filling but deadly. Independent filmmakers, who subscribe to Mike de Leon’s ideals but are inevitably trapped into mining stories from the fringes of society not by the noble need to expose but by the personal need for acknowledgement, are the Julios and Ligayas of our time, aware of the gnawing injustice of it all but have become knowing parts of that awful but inescapable system.

(Cross-published in Lagarista.)

When Silver is Better than Gold: Silvershorts

When Silver is Better than Gold: Silvershorts

Once every few years, silver is worth more than gold. From the hundreds of short films, ranging from powerful advocacies to mystifying experimentals, ten films were chosen to represent the best of digital short filmmaking this side of the world.

Alvin Yapan’s Panibugho (Jealousy) is a parable that is inspired by a quotation on jealousy and envy from Jose Rizal’s famous first novel. Shot and designed like a moving painting with otherworldly colors melting into rural landscapes, the short film weaves the unreality of local folklore and the reality of the human condition into one of the most astounding cinematic adaptation of a Rizal text. Gym Lumbera’s Dahil Sa’yo (Because of You), on the other hand, situates its melancholic romance between an old man and a banana tree set in the director’s native Batangas. Lyrically shot, sparingly paced, and thematically succinct, the short film makes use of very relatable human emotions as expressed through the popular ballad sung by the old man to his beloved tree to depict the despair in humanity’s relationship with his environment.

Timmy Harn’s Panty is at first glance, just a joke, admittedly a very funny one. At second glance, when the joke’s effect has worn off, the film readily reveals itself as an astute observation of gender roles within a marriage in an age of empowered women and lazy men. Jet Leyco’s Patlang (Blank) starts seemingly as a run-of-the-mill melodrama, covering what possibly is a young girl’s heartbreak. From there, it jumps into a wormhole, transporting the narrative to different places. The short film’s both an exercise of style and rhythm and a mystifying document of the personal and the political converging in the most intriguing of ways.

Jon Lazam’s Hindi Sa Atin Ang Buwan (The Moon is Not Ours) is even more mystifying than Patlang. Shot with a consumer-level video camera over a holiday in Bohol, the film is completely without sound and in black and white. It is mostly footage of travel, chaotic and rapid at first before settling into a more relaxed pace, relaying the feelings of distance, resignation and sadness through sheer imagery. Sharing its adoration for elusiveness with Lazam’s silent short, JP Carpio’s Coverage seems to be more experiment than anything. A multi-cam set-up, a couple preparing and eating breakfast, and an indecipherable rationale, the short film is a puzzle that is more alluring to behold than to solve.

Richmond Garcia’s Numbalikdiwa, a thesis film from the University of the Philippines, attempts to paint the pains of a writer in the process of creating his story. As his imagination literally forms into characters that move, communicate, and hurt him, he learns of the sacrifices of his craft. Also a thesis film, Chuck Hipol’s Man of the House opens with a portrait of a perfect family, the type that only exists in television advertisements. Slowly but surely, it unfolds to reveal a reality that seems to be more normal than strange in a society that fantasizes about perfect families.

The two short documentaries in the program both tackle artists. Mark Mirabuenos Gupit (Cut) centers on a barber gifted with a golden voice. It is a film that charms because the subject is charming, all too willing to belt out a pop classic while parading his skills with the scissors and telling his all-too-familiar story of his very modest life. Cierlito Tabay and Moreno Benigno’s Undo tackles a very unique individual, a very talented painter whose very fuel for his art are the drugs that would inevitably lead to his death. If Mirabuenos’ barber sings to enchant his customers, Tabay and Benigno’s painter sings to express the burdens of his overextended life.

Ten brave short films, all different in their methods, but all similar in their goal to maximize the medium of digital filmmaking in relaying truths, expressing emotions, and forwarding the form of cinema.

(Cross-published in Lagarista.)

The Short Films of Kidlat Tahimik

Orbit 50: Letter to My Three Sons (1992)

The Short Films of Kidlat Tahimik

For the 12th edition of the Jeonju International Film Festival, the focus was on Kidlat Tahimik, a rare talent in filmmaking whose works are beacons of uncompromisable vision. While most famous for his long works like Mababangong Bangungot (1977) and Turumba (1981), he has made several short films which attest to the singularity of his creative process and the integrity of his perspective and creativity, traits which have become essential in the Philippine's burgeoning new cinema.

Ang Balikbayan (Memories of Overdevelopment, 1980-2011)

Perhaps one of the greatest films that will probably never get made is Kidlat Tahimik’s account of the first circumnavigation of the globe by Enrique, Magellan’s Filipino slave. Ang Balikbayan (Memories of Overdevelopment), a thirty minute collection of scenes from what could have been the film, is, for the moment, the closest the world will ever get to the non-existent film. Kidlat Tahimik narrates the events of Enrique’s voyage in a surprisingly straightforward fashion, more descriptive of how the final film would be than anything else, lacking the usual fanciful and humorous wit that defines most of his films. The film is a work that is too long in progress. Enrique’s circumnavigation of the globe is hardly a product of skill. It is however a mixture of many things, of skill, of ingenuity, of friendship, and of luck. The film that is in progress, as seen from this narrated version, showcases everything of those traits, except, sadly, luck.

Orbit 50: Letter to My Three Sons (1990-1992)

Made for his fiftieth birthday, Orbit 50: Letter to My Three Sons reveals the source of Kidlat Tahimik’s filmmaking powers. He is a father first, and a filmmaker second. Structured like almost all of his films where found footage are playfully edited together and provided sense and substance by his honest and often humorous narration, the short film appears to be a dedication to his three sons, Kidlat, whom he acknowledges to be his creative father considering that his filmmaking name is borrowed from his son’s birth name, Kawayan, whose artistic impulses rival his father’s, and Kabunyan, whose youthful playfulness reveals his father’s own joyous unpredictability. Seen today, the film performs as an enduring ode to the beautiful simplicity of family life in the midst of the more alluring world of arts. That he chose to honour his children instead of his career in his fiftieth orbit around the sun reflects the very unique attraction of his life’s creative work.

Celebrating the Year 2021, Today (1995)

In the year 2021, it will be the 500^th anniversary of the circumnavigation of the world of Magellan’s slave, a Filipino. Starting from the Philippines where he was captured, he was brought to Portugal via the Indian Ocean, sailing off the coasts of India and Africa. When Magellan went to the Philippines from Portugal, crossing the Atlantic Ocean to South America and crossing the Pacific Ocean to the island of Mactan where he was killed by the island’s chieftain, he brought with him his Filipino slave, who at that moment, is the first person to have circumnavigated the globe. The story was supposed to have been a film by Kidlat Tahimik. However, budgetary limitations have halted the project. A few clips from the terminated project make their appearance in this short, a testament to Kidlat Tahimik’s creative resourcefulness. Undaunted by the hindrances to making his film project, he instead has planted trees in various places around the world. By 2021, the trees would have all grown, and would be steadfast testaments to Filipino ingenuity as well as markers for the historical footnote of Kidlat’s filmmaking fantasy.

Bahag Ko, Mahal Ko (Japanese Summers of a Filipino Fundoshi, 1996)

The tragic tale of the bahag, then a garment of respect and now a mere costume that is treated with ridicule and shame, is one that has colonization and its effects of extreme Western influence as antagonists. With Bahag Ko, Mahal Ko (Japanese Summers of a Filipino Fundoshi), Kidlat Tahimik takes the garment as a symbol of everything we have forgotten as a result of being the subjects of imperialist powers for more than three hundred years. The film starts as a conversation between Kidlat and his son, Kabunyan, where idle chatter about Marilyn Monroe’s immense sex appeal transforms into a discourse on the malleability of concepts of beauty. The film then transports the discourse to Japan, where the tragic tale of the bahag, or fundoshi, is shared. At that point, Kidlat Tahimik, makes the adverse effects of modernization and its requirements of cultural homogeneity, an international concern.

Our Film-grimage to Guimaras (2005)

In August of 2006, an oil tanker sank off the coast of Guimaras, an island famed for its pristine beaches and nearly untouched natural beauty. Almost immediately after, the Independent Filmmakers Cooperative of the Philippines spearheaded a project where several of its filmmakers, which include Khavn dela Cruz, Raya Martin, and Roxlee, are to make a film in reaction to the oil spill. Kidlat Tahimik’s contribution, aptly titled and brimming with the director’s trademark levity amidst the heaviness of his themes and topics, humorously starts off with his promise to his cat to bring home fish from Guimaras. The “film-grimage” is documented with hardly any frills, and fuelled primarily by Kidlat Tahimik’s unrehearsed and therefore veritable wit. The resulting film has all the marks of an impromptu project. Notwithstanding its obvious simplicity and probably all the more because of the unlikely humour that surrounds the humble production, the film resonates with a mature understanding of the gross repercussions of the oil spill.

Some More Rice (2005)

The Philippines and Japan are linked in so many ways. However, Kidlat Tahimik, ever the idiosyncratic artist, explores the connection via rice, staple food for both nations. However, what Kidlat Tahimik explores in this short documentary is hardly relegated to rice as food, but rice as a way of living. Narrated by Kidlat Tahimik from letters he wrote to a Japanese rice farmer and Akira Kurosawa, whose Seven Samurai (1954) serves as starting point of the film’s discourse and also as the source for its curious title, the film details the several similarities and differences between the two cultures. As the film goes on, as its discourse moves from the facile to the intimate, it reveals a sympathetic heart for farmers, and more importantly, a fluent understanding of the human condition. Notwithstanding physical, cultural and economic distance between the two nations, Kidlat Tahimik convinces that the connections are more real than hypothesized.

Bubong (Roofs of the World! Unite!, 2006)

Kidlat Tahimik’s always curious creativity is now focused on shelter. Starting with a hike up the Himalayas where he notices his guides carrying heavy roofs to the villages up the mountains, the film moves around the world, depicting various roofs, from the ornate bronze domes of Buddhist temples to the humble bamboo structures of Kidlat Tahimik’s Baguio home. Much more than a document on anthropological details on roof-building, the short film only makes use of the detail to forward the resilience that is shared by humanity, no matter how different in terms of culture. Although carried heavily by the utilization of the roof as a metaphor to the virtues that connect cultures, the film, like most of Kidlat Tahimik’s works, is fuelled not by a need to prove a logical flow or predictable sense. Thus, the film follows no structure and instead persists like a collage made from footage collected through the years. Despite its lack of form, the film is a masterfully conceived and joyously executed essay on the fundamentals of human living, as seen through eyes that have travelled and witnessed the world.

(The reviews in this article were commissioned for the programme of the 12th Jeonju International Film Festival)

Ateneo Video Open 11: Short Narrative Finalists

Abijoyce Padilla's Pigil Hininga (Bated Breath, 2009)

Ateneo Video Open 11: Short Narrative Finalists

Abijoyce Padilla's Pigil Hininga (roughly translated as Bated Breath, 2009), the winner of the Short Narrative competition in the 11th edition of the Ateneo Video Open, is an undeniably witty piece of work. Imagine television hit Heroes without the end-of-days scenario, or the conspiracy theories, or the complex relationships, or the convoluted character arcs. Just leave one character, the Japanese time stopper, and demote that character from unremarkable salaryman to an even more unremarkable deliveryman, replacing his suit and tie with a dull blue jumpsuit. Relocate that character in an impossibly busy Manila-like metropolis that is populated by employees who thrive within an informal and incomplex caste system --- with the unseen capitalists safely tucked inside their offices on top of the grey concrete buildings; below them, their employees, like the stern receptionist and the gorgeous yet indifferent secretary; and even below these employees are the deliverymen, whose never-ending need to rush to catch deadlines leave keep them separated from everybody else.

It is indubitably a grand premise. However, the tale that springs from that grand premise feels lacking and inconsequential. It is as if the premise and the story were all in the service of the production details, which is quite spectacular considering that Pigil Hininga is a student film, whose budget was raised, I infer, from generous sponsorships from relatives and friends of Padilla. The film looks coolly beautiful --- muted shades of grey, blue, green, black and white in constant movement. When the main character uses his power and freezes time, the special effect is exquisitely applied, with everything, except for the main character, is at a sudden stop. Pigil Hininga feels it can use another hour just to completely flesh out what it is attempting to say. At its current length, it feels incomplete, more like a portfolio of spectacles and other visual treats that Padilla can do with very little rather than an actual workable film.

Sheen Seeckts's Baranggay Maligaya (2009) is lovely to look at. Each frame is delicately detailed, from the production design, the lighting, to the color grading, to please the eyes. Unfortunately, its story, a sort-of Coraline derivative, where a young boy, discontent with the unpredictability of his life, accidentally walks into the mirror of the local wizard he befriended, and discovers an alternate life where there is only happiness, betrays its consistently pitch-perfect aesthetics. There is hardly any hint of mischief, nary any sense of danger. The result is quite uninteresting, something that feels better suited in daytime children's television than anywhere else.

Bianka Bernabe's Promo Girl(2009) , about a little girl whose dream of getting rich afflicts her with an unhealthy compulsion to purchase shampoo sachets, on the other hand, fares worse. In the guise of characterization, it indulges in needless special effects, narrative clichés, and an ending, borne out of the desire to romanticize the little girl's ambition, that is both predictable and unremarkable.

Mackoy Adriano's Taguan (Hide and Seek, 2009)

On the other hand, the surprise ending of Mackoy Adriano's Taguan (Hide and Seek, 2009), about a young gigolo who unwittingly discovers something distressing about his beloved father, is entertainingly overwrought. The purposely hammy acting of its two leads (Bor Ocampo and Bembol Roco) fills the frame for a few minutes, lending over-the-top credibility to the incredible affair. Clint Mansell's Lux Aeterna (from the soundtrack of Darren Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream (2000)), most probably used without the composer's permission in true no-budget filmmaking fashion, aptly backdrops the more-than-operatic revelation. To top off the already incredible surprise, Adriano piles another damning surprise to this gender-bending and incestuous pseudo-melodrama, turning his modest short film into a tasteless yet utterly memorable guilty pleasure.

If Taguan is deliciously malicious in its lack of limitations, Louella Suque's Sapatos (Shoes, 2009) is commendable for telling so much within the limits of its introverted character, played by a clearly restrained Ping Medina. Suque has interesting concept: a photographer that tells other people’s stories through their shoes. My only complaint with the short film is that the photographer, as a character and probably because of Suque's abstained treatment, seems to be an empty shell, if not totally devoid of any true human motivation, is too opaque to convey any identifiable emotion. Ping Medina can only do so much to occupy a character that is really only an idea. Moreover, that final scene, with the photographer going home with his walls full of photographs of shoes, is quite inconsequential, and is therefore, a bit of an indulgence.

Much of what is currently known as Philippine cinema in film festivals abroad is predominantly composed of handheld long takes that last more than a couple of minutes. Brillante Mendoza, Jeffrey Jeturian, Pepe Diokno have used the handheld long take to immerse their viewers to the reality of the environments that they seek to depict. Charlie Coralejo's Assignment (2009) makes use of the same technique to tackle the very current issue of government-allowed killings of journalists.

Charlie Coralejo's Assignment (2009)

Assignment is directed seamlessly, allowing you a clear view by using the point of view of one of the unfortunate journalists as the audience's. However, for a film that insists on showcasing the grisly truths of government-sponsored murders of journalists, it lacks any drama, that somewhat withholds me from buying the supposed immediacy of the real-time filmmaking. Other than showing you the abject horror (which is actually unfelt since what you actually witness is quite tame compared to what you would have imagined reading the newspapers) of the practice, there is nothing else to be gained from the film. Mendoza, Jeturian, and to a certain degree, Diokno proposes and utilizes immersion, yet much more than immersion, there is lyric and poetry to their filmmaking. That is what is lacking or absolutely absent here. Definitely a good start, though.

Of all the finalists of the competition, Whammy Alcazaren's Masidhing Kaligayahan (Intense Joy, 2009), in my opinion, had the most to tell and is the most fluent in its manner of telling. The film plays like a murder mystery. There is clearly a death. The clues about the death are then carefully laid out: a man, a woman, a blunt weapon, and sex. Much more than the identity of the perpetrator, which becomes very obvious early on, it is the motive for the murder that is most elusive.

Yet, Alcazaren only suggests a motive, again, carefully putting up various clues: the rosary hanging on the rear-view mirror of the car, the various Catholic icons, the incessant ramblings of the radio evangelist that serves as discomforting soundtrack to the film. Yet, despite the clues, you are left with no motive, just a slight inclination to point fingers at the asphyxiating atmosphere of dogmatic religiousness, an atmosphere that tends to, if not always, twists and warps moral hierarchies. By film's end, nothing is actually solved, except that a certain distaste to the numbing badgering of faith is made apparent. Masidhing Kaligayahan insists on not only entertaining via its ingenious ways of storytelling. Like religion which relies on icons, sounds, and other visual and aural representations for its propagation, Alcazaren relies on images (the dimly lit interiors of a car on its way to nowhere; the man and woman in intense embrace as rice pours from the sky, etc.) and sounds (as mentioned, the radio evangelist and his impassioned lectures) to provoke discourse, a much-needed element in this year's batch of short film finalists.

Walang Alaala ang mga Paru-Paro (2009)

Walang Alaala ang mga Paru-Paro (Lav Diaz, 2009)
English Title: Butterflies Have No Memories

The picture that Lav Diaz paints of an island decades after a mining company that brought to the island temporary prosperity left its shores is one draped in astounding bleakness and melancholy. As Martha (Lois Goff), the daughter of the Canadian CEO of the mining company, returns to the island she regards as her home, as according to her, she was practically born and raised there and that its residents are essentially her second family, she brings with her reawakened memories of a former abundance that is all replaced by penury and idleness. The past becomes an unhealthy preoccupation as the villagers repay her fondness with shame, indifference, and bad intentions, with three of the most affected of the mine's unrepentant beneficiaries, Mang Ferding (Dante Perez), former head of security of the mine, Willy (Willy Fernandez), Martha's childhood friend who now sells salt bread for a living, and another one of the mine's former employees (Joel Ferrer) whose yearly ritual of having himself nailed to the cross is for the return of his wife, conspire to kidnap her for a hefty ransom.

The village is deceptively quaint. The villagers go about their daily chores and vices, idly gallivanting or selling their wares during the day and drowning their dilemmas with alcohol at night. There is a sheen of normalcy, one that is ready to give way to madness should it be disturbed. It is this quaintness, this suspicious quietude, that makes Martha's visit a particularly awkward one, one that is birthed from good intentions but due to the intertwining of communal and personal histories, circumstances, and a hopeless longing for a distant prosperous past, can only result in bringing out the worst from humanity.

Diaz's Walang Alaala ang mga Paru-Paro (Butterflies Have No Memories), a short film commissioned by the Jeonju International Film Festival for the tenth edition of its annual digital project, while a mere fraction of the director's famously long films in terms of running time, is equally potent in its depiction of fractured souls struggling within a world broken by men and their acts. Diaz's depiction of a town suddenly left blighted with the departure of a lucrative mining project is reminiscent of the typhoon-ravaged provinces of Kagadanan sa Banwaan ning mga Engkantos (Death in the Land of Encantos, 2007); Diaz, in one sequence, surveys the ghostly town, littered with abandoned barracks and offices, and dead quiet with the trees and other growth seemingly afraid to move with the wind, and this particular sequence has the same gloomy energy of a sequence in Kagadanan sa Banwaan ning mga Encantos where Diaz exposes the landscapes left barren by typhoon Reming.

However, the desolation in Walang Alaala ang mga Paru-paro, much more than physical, is psychological, deeply rooted into a community promised of certain comforts only to be betrayed and left in a state of destitution and dejection. In a way, the devastation is graver because there are no clear edifices and structures to construct and repair, as the discontent of a community that once enjoyed the benefits of the progresses promised by capitalism and free trade is far more difficult to remedy. As in Melancholia (2008), where the depression of losing loved ones and not knowing where their bodies are if ever they are already dead is only temporarily mended by traveling to a faraway town and completely transforming themselves into various characters, the mental and psychological torture of the characters in Walang Alaala ang mga Paru-Paro seek to repair their sorry lots in life with an act that echoes the desperation that has been repressed since the mine's closing only to be awakened by Martha's visit.

Although Diaz pinpoints the mines as culprit to the village's present state, he clearly does not absolve the villagers from fault. The villagers are perpetually suffering, seemingly trapped in a constant search for redemption: with Ferding relying on memories of a former wealth and glory to provide both fleeting comfort and frustration; Willy persisting in his meager livelihood; and the third of the trio relying on religion for alleviation; and all three of them washing their sins and memories with cups of cheap brandy and idle chatter. Walang Alaala ang mga Paru-paro has the trio in the middle of executing their devious plans, in a sudden halt. Wearing Moriones masks, handmade headgear worn by the faithful in a yearly festival as attrition for all the sins they have committed, the trio are met by a swarm of butterflies in the middle of the forest, leading to Willy to breakdown and give up.

Diaz does not explain further nor does he need to; the event, whether or not it stems from an authentic change or heart or a mere inconvenience of human emotionality, whether or not it foils the plan or not, articulates a power far greater than the social wretchedness, the poverty, and the environmental deterioration inflicted by the mines, and the relationship humanity has with that power. A palpable entity in all of Diaz's films (as the other party in Heremias' culminating pact in Heremias (2006) and whose complete absence has transported the characters in Melancholia into an infinite limbo of madness and sadness,) this power, whether it is the same entity that forces the religious man to lie face down inside the chapel or not, does not offer instant redemption but only reminds the characters of their humanity, even in the midst of corruption.

La Jetée (1962)

La Jetée (Chris Marker, 1962)
English Title: The Jetty

Memory is the thematic and aesthetic core of Chris Marker's masterpiece La Jetée (The Jetty). Set in the far future, during the aftermath of third World War, the film tells the story of a man haunted by a distinct memory from the past, a beautiful woman he has seen as a boy in the airport just before the eruption of the war. That memory makes him a unique and indispensable individual to the victors who in trying to connect with the past and the future to salvage the present from a scarcity of important resources, are experimenting on its prisoners who have concrete mnemonic images. This man's most persisting memory is represented by a still picture of a woman in a pleasantly feminine posture, her face beaming with comforting contentment, and her hair flowing peacefully with the wind. It is his last memory of peace.

It isn't highfalutin science fiction. Actually, La Jetée is simplistic in its science and entirely evasive of the details of time travel, but accurate in the atmosphere and the emotions of being confronted by a recurring image of the past. It is oddly romantic and fluently scary, especially in the way it belabors memory as a fathomable obsession and a manipulated resource. The plot's elliptical form only reinforces Marker's thematic quirk, the way the mysteries of time, of the human mind, and the human heart converge in a highly intimate tale of emotional longing.

La Jetée's aesthetic stance approximates a cinematically unconventional act of mnemonic recollection. While cinema has represented memories as elegant trips to the past through fluid flashbacks which are often granted the same clarity as the present, La Jetée takes a different course, visually experimental but still conventional in its storytelling methods. The film can accurately be described as a photo-montage, where black and white images are flawlessly stitched together. Guided by a narrator, the film takes the shape and feel of a storybook being told from start to finish.

Let not its unique form and style intimidate you. La Jetée showcases Marker as a filmmaker adept in the basics of filmmaking. The twenty nine-minute film is perhaps the most impressively edited film I've ever seen. The black and white stills magically move through the fades to black, the perfectly-timed cuts, and the transitions that are all the more made effective by pertinent yet bare sound effects and the memorably apt musical score. In one sequence, the man is first experimented upon by the victors. The rhythm of his heartbeat provides an unmitigated tension that fuels the ethereally ravishing photographs of the man suffering; his teeth sinking on the reed hammock which serves as his bed and his hands contorting in manifestly pained shapes.

There's a single moment in La Jetée wherein Marker decides to suddenly erupt from the confines of still memory, and allows one of his subjects to move, although very momentarily. It's intriguing because it is both startling yet magical, the way the girl awakes from slumber and truly awakes, blinking and smiling. It is as if the image has escaped from being merely encapsulated as a figment of memory but has become a part of the present, unlimited by the inadequacies of the human mind. But why did Marker choose that moment to break his unique style? It is perhaps it is only in that moment wherein the man has sufficiently let go of the memory, and believed it as a present emotion: of comfort and relief. In contrast, it is only in the museum where the animals of the past have been frozen for perpetuity did the man truly perfect the art of time travel (probably in acceptance that the past, like these frozen animals, need to be immobile for that is memory's most innate nature). That was exactly what the man's captors needed, a perpetuated memory not a fleeting emotion.

La Jetée is a film that is continually changing and evolving. It inhabits the very quality that makes photography a veritable art form, the way it captures a real moment in time for perpetuation and incessant interpretation. Similarly, La Jetée has the story of a man and his obsession with his memory of a girl waiting in the jetty made eternal. Yet beyond that story is Marker's art which plays differently every single time it is seen. The first time I saw it, it impressed me with how the narrative was perfectly told through mere photographs. The second time I saw it, I was left enchanted by its subtle tackling of the interconnections of time, memory, love, and obsession. The third time I saw it, I became fascinated by Marker’s fluency in his medium. Metaphorically put, La Jetée is as open as the clear skies that day when the image of the girl was engraved on the man's mind, and as tremendous and terrifying as the apocalypse that befell the world after it.

Cigarettes, Cues and Cinema: Filipino Shorts of 2007

Raymond Red's Anino (Shadow)

Over the years, there have been plenty of Filipino films that have screened in Cannes including Lino Brocka's Insiang (1976) and Jaguar (1979), Mario O'Hara's Babae sa Breakwater (Woman of the Breakwater, 2004) and Brillante Mendoza's Foster Child (2007). However, there has only been one Filipino film that has won an award from the prestigious film festival. That film, recipient of the Palme d'Or for Short Film in 2000, is Raymond Red's Anino (Shadow, 2000), a short film that details the encounters of an unlucky photographer in Manila. The short film, then thought of as inferior to the full-length feature, has finally gained respect and attention in the country. Moreover, the advent of digital video has made it much easier for filmmakers to experiment with the medium. The result is an influx of short film works, mostly from students of the many film schools scattered around the archipelago. The problem is to separate the bad from the good and from there, pick out works that are truly excellent. The many independent film festivals like Cinemalaya and Cinemanila has made the job easier by selecting a number of short films for screening or competition. Of course, there will always be undiscovered gems floating around in cyberspace or screening in some undisclosed viewing area. The short films reviewed are the ones I have had the opportunity to watch, mostly in this year's Cinemalaya Film Festival held in the Cultural Center of the Philippines.

Jerrold Tarog's Carpool won a short film competition held in the nation's cultural center in Manila. The story is mundane, perhaps inconsequential. Three girls, friends from high school up to college, are finally reuniting after an alleged boyfriend-snatching that ensued between two of them. Tarog sets his audience up with what seems like a banal in-car discussion of hurt feelings, juvenile romances and harsh betrayals. The setup is all too familiar; the reveal even more so in an off-putting, completely understandable and ultimately humorous way. The victim of the boyfriend-snatching has got everything wrong. Her fury should have been directed to the person she entrusted with her fiery private outbursts. It's classic comedy of errors, a mini-network film where characters aren't separated by cultural and geographic divides but by petty quarrels and one undisclosed yet vital information.


Tara Illenberger's Durog

The 2007 version of Cinemalaya has ten short films in competition. Included are Vic Acedillo Jr.'s Toni, a tale of a solitary boy finding unlikely friendship with a statue of the Santo Nino, Hubert Tibi's Maikling Kwento (Short Story), another tale of friendship between two kids, an enterprising Chinese and a Filipino, editor-turned-director Tara Illenberger's Durog, which details a druggie's exploration of mysterious shrooms that blur fantasy and reality, future and present, and Peque Gallaga-protege Lawrence Fajardo's Liwanag sa Dilim (Light in the Darkness), an exercise in stylistics while tackling the pitfalls of drug addiction. I was neither moved not offended by the entries. The short films were shown and ultimately forgotten. These concepts definitely looked better in paper.

Mark dela Cruz's Misteryo ng Hapis (Sorrowful Mystery) is easily the most well-made of the bunch. Set during the pa-siyam (the traditional nine days after the death of a loved one spent praying novenas), Misteryo ng Hapis is about a stage performer (Andoy Ranay) suffering through bouts of painful flashbacks of his hard life growing up as a homosexual in a strict Catholic household. Clearly, dela Cruz goes for atmosphere. Candle-lit interiors, theatric gestures, silent cries, and neverending prayers repeated with mantra-like dedication by the devout converge to detail a near-claustrophobic repression of sexuality dealt by adherence to the Catholic faith. The end, where Ranay goes on stage and performs, is a much-deserved release. Dela Cruz's sincerity is undoubtable but his embellishments could have been minimized; there's too much make-up in this gay film.

On the other hand, Tagapagligtas (Protector), Maria Solita Garcia's entry about an abortionist in Manila's most famous church district, has all the embellishments without Dela Cruz's onscreen sincerity. It's a heavyhandedly executed morality play, packing the valuable minutes with every abortion-related cliche conceivable. Emmanuel dela Cruz's Gabon (Cloud), like Misteryo ng Hapis, is set during the time of mourning. A Moro girl enters her classroom, and the rest of the students react to a mysterious stench. Two elderly Moro enter the room; one starts singing a native folk song, supposedly to appease the girl, who we find out is a spirit who continues her ambition to finish schooling despite her death. The short is heartfelt and sensitive. While it hints of politics (Dela Cruz's quaint visuals arbitrarily morph into what looks like black and white security cam footage, hinting of a connection to the government's military efforts in Mindanao pursuant to the so-called war on terrorism), the short doesn't attempt to push the envelope.


Nisha Alicer, Caren Crisologo and Nix Lañas' Doble Vista

Nisha Alicer, Caren Crisologo and Nix Lañas' Doble Vista, about a writer (Jake Macapagal) still in love with his muse (Lily Chu), is the audience award winner of the film festival. For the uninitiated, the short feels like a commercial for cigarettes (I remember one commercial where the token male lead jumps from one scene to another without any logical explanation). The filmmakers explain that the short is a serious product of their adherence to Godard's counter-cinema. The short, however, betrays their lofty ambitions. Instead of really countering the conventions of commercial contemporary Filipino cinema, the film feels like an consolidation of several popular influences (the cigarette-wielding writer is spirited away from Tony Leung's persona in Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love (2000), the jazzy rhythm from early Godard (or worse, Godard's numerous inferior advocates), the video-essay on death and cigarettes from de-intellectualized Chris Marker, same actor (Art Alicer) recurring in varying roles in what seems to be an attempt at surrealism from Luis Bunuel). It's unfortunate really, as the three filmmakers are great technicians (the writing is current, the editing is precise, the cinematography is wonderful given the restrictions of the digital format) and young; they will inevitably find their own voice, and will inevitably forget the counter-cinema excuse, something I believe has lost much of its meaning especially in an international film culture that has branched into so many categories.

The most fun short film is Enrico Aragon's Nineball, winner of the jury prize. It is rude, crass, yet absolutely hilarious. It first pokes fun at the indefatigable relationship between Filipinos and the game of billiards (the success of billiards champions Efren 'Bata' Reyes, Django Bustamante and other Filipino greats has inspired jobless vagabonds to take up the pastime as supposed livelihood). The center point is an obsessed billiards aficionado, his face covered by a horrid rag (it is the mystery that opens to the punchline) and is fed with raw potatoes (his obsession extends to his turning his eating utensils into cues and the potatoes into billiards balls); the punchline is that his misfortune is a freak accident in one of his usual games. The punchline of the punchline is the cameo of Efren 'Bata' Reyes, the aficionado's savior. Aragon prolongs the comedy through the end credits: the suspect nineball passed from one cue to another in shocking yet deadpan fashion.

Alvin Yapan, awarded fiction writer and lecturer on Filipino literature in Ateneo de Manila University, enters the filmmaking arena with much humility. His short film Rolyo (Roll), which tackles a provincial family trying to earn a living, won Best Short Film in Cinemalaya and in my opinion, is the most outstanding short film of the year. The film is technically crude (the visuals feel very earthy and natural, the sound design unabridged with background noise --- provincial breeze muffling the audio --- unedited from the final product). Yapan is obviously not a trained filmmaker, but what he possesses is a gift for telling a story with layers and layers of meanings, overcoming the banality of the mundane to dish out an engaging commentary.


Alvin Yapan's Rolyo (Film Roll)

The subject of Rolyo (Film Roll) is the titular film roll, used by the family as perimeter fence of their farm to protect their crops from feeding birds. The daughter is tasked to catch the birds, which her father will later on paint with cheap watercolors. The next day, the two travel to the town church where they will sell the painted birds to other children. The money they will earn from the sale of the birds will be used to buy home-made trumpets, crafted by rolling reels into a cone. The irony of the film is that the use of these film reels is anything but cinematic or artistic; the family uses the reels for economic purposes. Cinema to them is confined within the perimeters of daily survival and is mutated into a mere tool for livelihood (the art is removed from the substance (the negatives)), far detached from common precepts of what cinema stands for. The main character, the daughter stands in front of a cineplex showing the latest Hollywood blockbuster. Her father disapproves knowing that they cannot afford to purchase tickets to the screening and they proceed to walk (there's also a sublime sequence which showcases their detachment. The daughter exchanges glances with a kid inside a fastfood chain; the two of them separated by both the glass window and financial freedom. The kid continues to play merrily while the daughter walks along with her father to the church).

The short ends with an act that showcases Filipino innovativeness amidst the lack of economic power: the daughter against the candle light "watches" the movie from the de-rolled reel sourced from the homemade trumpet, just before it is converted into an anti-avian fence. It's a nuanced scene symbolic of the daughter's trying to infuse cinema back to the reels which have been commodified by human need. Here, she finds a semblance of what the reels are really meant for (to tell stories) despite being stuck in her harsh reality which does not provide her cinema. Rolyo really is a fascinating film, sufficiently turning the film reel (one also wonders which lost Filipino classic the daughter has seen that night) as a symbol of humanism against the face of a dehumanizing work-a-day world.

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This post is my contribution to the Short Film Blog-A-Thon hosted in Only the Cinema and Culture Snob.

Blow Job (1963)

Blow Job (Andy Warhol, 1963)

Traditionally, the value of the close-up is for emphasis. As opposed to the long shot or the medium shot wherein the visual frame allows a greater area for both space and movement, the close-up is constricted and limited but the degree of detail is vaster. The most famous close-ups in our cinematic history take advantage of this unique value of the close-up. The subject matter of the close-up is most often the human face or a selected portion of it since the subtlest of emotions can be most accurately displayed by the minute movements of the mobile contours of the face. Done correctly, the close-up is an invaluable tool for filmmakers most especially to connect at a more intimate level to their proposed audiences.

This traditional use of the close-up is mutated and experimented with by Andy Warhol in his short film Blow Job. The film consists of several reels, all totaling to around 35 minutes of footage filmed from Warhol's 16-millimeter Bolex camera. The footage is a close-up of a young man supposedly receiving the titular sexual activity. Warhol's black and white visual frame is cramped: we see the man's head, a portion of his clothes, the background of The Factory's brick wall. His camera is immobile; the only invocation of human wit in this short film is Warhol's inspired brainstorming. Everything else is mechanical --- from the offscreen oral sex, its natural consequences to the subject receiver, the act of capturing the receiver's facial reactions through the wonders of the recording machine.

The close-up, from being a tool for emphasis, intimation and relation, turns into Warhol's method for oppression, as artist to his audience. The audience is subjected to the repetitive footage, witnessing the reaction but unable to actually partake of the act, or at least witness everything in long-shot entirety. The close-up strictly limits the edges of the cinematic canvass. The camera's immobility is almost suffocating. The only clue to what is happening, the short film's title, only increases our painful curiosity.

The close-up of the face, far from revealing the subtleties of human emotion, is used to manifest the blunt and the already obvious --- that of extreme pleasure and sexual satisfaction derivedfrom the sexual act. Instead of emphasis, Warhol utilizes the limitations of the close-up for sensual deprivation. The deprivation results in what some viewers consider is irresistably and near torturously sexy to downright frustrating. In my opinion, that sensory deprivation is actually very funny, an ingenious way of subversion by Warhol of the restrictive norms during that time by sacrificing the exact thing that makes supposed indecent cinema indecent, but retaining the heart and soul of the act.

The anecdote behind the film proves to be more telling than the film itself (you can cheat yourself of the frustrating yet rewarding experience by treating the story as the long shot that precedes the close-up, betraying Warhol's experimentation to the comforts of conventional cinema). DeVeron Bookwalter, the recipient of the blow job, wasn't the original choice to be the subject of the short film (neither was Willard Maas, Warhol's co-filmmaker who gave the blow job). The original choice was Charles Rydell, significant other of filmmaker Jerome Hill, who was lured into lending his face with five handsome young men giving fellatio. Rydell didn't take the offer seriously and never showed up in time for the shoot forcing Warhol to get Bookwalter, who was in The Factory at that time, to complete the picture.

Oppressive, playful but distinctly artful, Blow Job with its persistent close-up of Bookwalter's face is both mysterious and alarming. The depicted human quality is base and unspecial, yet it only mirrors something modern humanity has sought to hide for many decades --- our common and inherent ability for pleasure.

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This post is my contribution to The House Next Door: Close-Up Blog-A-Thon.

Imahe Nasyon (2006)

Imahe Nasyon (Poklong Anading, Yeye Calderon, Mes de Guzman, Emman Dela Cruz, Neil Daza, Lav Diaz, Tad Ermitaño, Rox Lee, Topel Lee, Milo Paz, Robert Quebral, Ellen Ramos, Raymond Red, R.A. Rivera, Lyle Sacris, EJ Salcedo, Sig Sanchez, Dennis Empalmado, Ogi Sugatan & Paolo Villaluna, 2006)
English Title: Image Nation

Twenty years after Ferdinand Marcos' regime was toppled by the EDSA Revolution, producers Jon Red and Carol Banuan Red pose a question to twenty of the country's digital filmmakers: What has happened since? Given five minutes each and absolutely limitless control to play around with the theme (and make use of actor Ping Medina), the result is Imahe Nasyon (Image Nation), an omnibus work which I thought was more interesting than it was groundbreaking.

Most of the short films are draped with cynicism; probably an indication of the rebellious character of the independent film community of anything authoritarian. Emmanuel dela Cruz's Imagining EDSA questions the validity of the EDSA exercises with Medina posing atop a fly-over imagining a metaphorical woman giving birth. Most cynical is Paolo Villaluna's One Take, a tale of a family spanning several presidential administrations ending in an upsetting tragedy (the entire five hour film is shot with one take, thus the title).

Experimental are the works of Lyle Sacris, Poklong Anading, and Roxlee. Sacris' Dibuho makes use of several digital photographs of Medina edited together to make a hypnotizing film that culminates in a rapid succession of the different faces of the Filipino people. Between Intersections, Anading's effort is a collection of several vignettes of normal Manila life; played in reverse; and multiplying successively until the entire screen is filled with the luminous chaos of the sights and sounds of post-EDSA Manila. Roxlee's La Pula mixed stop-motion animation, clever framing, and nebulous narrative to come up with a film that fancifully plays around with colonial ache and its repercussions to the Philippine psyche.

A disappointing pattern appears throughout the omnibus. There's a tendency for the filmmakers to downplay narrative and go for symbolisms --- Yeye Calderon's Silid (Room) and Emmanuel dela Cruz's Imagining EDSA are the biggest perpetrators of this annoying habit of belittling the power of five minutes. R.A. Rivera (Public Service Announcement) and Sigfreid Barros-Sanchez (Aksyon Star)'s MTVs are merely entertaining.

Tad Ermitaño and Topel Lee astound with their genre confections. Ermitaño's Local Unit brings us to a bleak futuristic Manila wherein computers make use of actual human brains to function (which totally makes sense since a human brain's memory surpasses any supercomputer's); enterprising Filipinos, as always, find a backdoor to earn an extra buck out of the new technology, paying real poor Filipinos for their brains to activate the computers of the Manila middle class. Lee's Ang Manunulat (The Writer) is a statement against the government's efforts to silence media draped in what seems to be a Lynchian horror piece.

Noteworthy is Raymond Red's Mistulang Kamera Obskura (Like an Obscure Camera) and Mes de Guzman's Tsinelas (Slippers). The former stars Medina and his father, Pen Medina looking at each other through a hole in their respective jail cells. It seems that Red is trying to compare how we view contemporary society from the point of view of the optical illusions created by photography; that for us to see life as it truly should be seen, everything should be topsy-turvy. De Guzman's cinema verite short shows a day in the life of a street sweeper who walks to Mendiola with his broken slipper. It turns out that that day is the day of the Mendiola massacre where rallyists are brutally mauled by the police; de Guzman continues his tale playing with the now-famous journalistic video of the rally, it seems like there's a belittlement of the value of the sacrifices of the past when the immediate need is the fixing of the street sweeper's slipper.

Most impressive is Lav Diaz's segment entitled Pagkatapos ng Ulan (After the Rain). His camera is motionless in a low angle position during the entire five minutes. An infrequent voice-over tells us that after the rain, the disconnected voice's mother left. Thereafter, the father left; and finally he saw himself: a jovial kid. My enchantment with this short film is the fact that the credits state that the actors are unknown, giving me an idea that Diaz merely placed a camera and filmed an everyday sequence, and building upon what he gathered during the entire five minutes of shooting, created a piece that evokes an uncontrollable emotion of separation and the difficulty for self-identification.

The omnibus is ultimately a mixed bag. A number of short films are quite forgettable, or perhaps too inappropriately dense to elicit real awe or an allure for further intellectual deliberation. In a way, the absolute freedom made the exercise slightly scattershot for the entire piece to actually speak something novel and moving about our present state.

How Wan-Fô Was Saved (1987)

How Wan-Fô Was Saved (René Laloux, 1987)
French Title: Comment Wang-Fo fut sauvé

Watch René Laloux's animation now with eyes trained to detect the individual strands of fur in a character or the realistic human-like movements of digitized children and your bound for disappointment. Laloux's animation is not about emulation of what's real. Animation is after all a means to release the restrictions of reality. Laloux's most popular feature The Fantastic Planet does not have anatomically accurate beings; it is sci-fi and its world is populated by blue skinned aliens, little humanoid creatures, a host of bizarre fauna, and a compelling environment that stretches the boundaries of human imagination. Laloux has made only three feature length films in his career; most of his other works are short films. How Wan-Fô Was Saved is his favorite among his works. Adapted from a short story of Marguerite Yourcenar, which is also rewritten adaptation of a Chinese parable, How Wan-Fô Was Saved is told in a simplistic yet thought-provoking manner that is quite absent from the mainstream animated cinema of today which seems to be more interested in mundane details than adept storytelling.

The animation is coarse. Laloux is not interested in smooth movements. His characters are limited in their mobility; most of the action is suggested by the narration which supplies a level of psychology to the immobile artworks. Yet with the little movement that is portrayed, the accuracy of human experience is felt. The air of alcohol intoxication is portrayed with deliberate accuracy by Laloux using the most economic of details. From the point of view of the narrator, the apprentice of master painter Wan-Fô, the entire tavern feels alive in a drunken man's perspective. Movement is slower; laughter is louder; visual points of interest are more profound (a lady roasting a pig; his master's finger painting spilled wine; personal musings of the depth of art).

With less than fifteen minutes, Laloux was able to manipulate a story to serve his philosophical interests. He details the master and his apprentice's capture and delivery to the emperor of the Han kingdom. He emotionally paints a background tale on the pale-skinned emperor; his character design establishes himself as a heartless villain, but his back story tells otherwise. He plants an indefatigable sense of loyalty in the apprentice's character for his master and his master's craft, to the point of lethal jealousy for his beautiful wife. In a sense, the characters of How Wan-Fô Was Saved are as alien as the humanoid citizens of The Fantastic Planet, despite being grounded on an exotic yet real Chinese culture, with their warped psychology that befits the constructs of its narrative genre.

The ending is even more brilliant. The apprentice is punished for loyally defending his master; the palace guards behead the defensive apprentice and Laloux does not shy away from the portrayal of violence. He nonchalantly depicts the beheading as mere background noise --- a thud accompanying the animated fall of the headless body. Wan-Fô is ordered to complete a painting that has been bothering the emperor since his childhood days. Again, Laloux insists on immobility. Bystanders and the emperor statically watch the master complete the painting of a vast ocean; then the painting bursts with life, a little boat inches closer and closer to rescue the old master from his fate. Laloux, before he did his first animated short film, worked for a psychiatric ward and has opted to describe his cinema as schizophrenic. In a sense, Laloux achieves an unfathomable excellence in planting imaginative unrealism in his animated works; he allows us to lose ourselves in our imagination and join the old master in his escape from the clutches of a tyrant who misunderstands the value of art.

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This post is my contribution to the Short Film Blog-A-Thon hosted in Only the Cinema and Culture Snob.