THE laughter was raucous and infectious, as high-school boys and girls filled the screening room of the College of Science of state-run Bicol University in Legazpi City, Albay province. It really didn’t matter if the dialogue was in Cebuano and the whole story was taking place in Cebu province’s Camotes Island. The film was Iskalawags by Keith Deligero, himself a Cebuano.
It was the second day of Cinema Rehiyon Reloaded, a project of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts’s (NCCA) National Committee on Cinema. The project’s aim is to bring to different places short and full-length feature films that were shown in various film conferences, called Cinema Rehiyon. It also aims to solve the problem of the NCCA and other institutions championing the cause—and effect—of independent cinemas and, ultimately, finding out that, in many parts of the Philippines, there are students majoring in communications and other related studies who have not been updated about independent films.
At Bicol University, Kei Tan, the NCCA film curator for Luzon, arranged a cluster of short films and two full-length films. The short films ranged from hilarious send-ups to award-winning animated works from Xavier University and Ateneo de Naga University.
Iskalawags particularly engaged the young audience, as it is a coming-of-age film set not in Metro Manila or in big cities, but in a rural environment. The wit of the film is attributed mainly to a group of boys who emulate Jeric Raval, an action star of the 1990s. The fact that Raval did not make it to the big league makes for a realistic and poignant story about this group of boys who, it seems, are not cut out to become big deals.
The Q&A session that followed the screening was an indication of how much we do not know our children, the young audience. We remain protective of them, but, in the end, these “kids” have developed a capacity to understand films about them. One young man was concerned about how the parents have disappeared from the film. The boys in the film are able to get away with anything. As the young critic asked, where are the parents who would tell them that what they are doing is bad?
A young lady asked Deligero if there were influences in his cinema production. The very young filmmaker replied he was not aware of any, but added that, indeed, he noticed how American director Wes Anderson—the name mentioned by the student—seemed to be present in his works.
I told the audience that this characteristic of cinema to remind us of many things is called “referential” and/or “derivative.” Young filmmakers are so awash in sensory overload that, when they write or make films, the so-called influences slowly creep onto the surface of their completed works.
Two other full-length films were shown: Alvin Yapan’s Debosyon and Arnel Mardoquio’s Riddles of My Homecoming. While I was not around during the screening of Yapan’s film, I could almost imagine the response of the audience as they witnessed their own Mayon Volcano not merely being postcard-pretty, but become an element in the film’s narrative. The audience, I was told, was particularly curious how actor Paulo Avelino, who plays the role of a Bikolano named Mando, learned to speak the Rinconada language, which has a reputation for being different and difficult to learn. Even stranger to them, perhaps, was the notion that Rinconada is used in a scene that first takes place in Naga City—the residents of which use a different language—and then shifts to the purported woods of Iriga or Buhi, and ends with Mando surfacing at the foot of Mayon. Languge and geography are conflated in cinema.
Riddles of My Homecoming was the more difficult film to show. We expected resistance from the crowd, given that the film is almost silent. There are no words to connect visually arresting and disparate images. Scenes do not follow each other in terms of cause and effect. Logic is absent, if one is looking for a hold on the narrative. What the film shows are like tattered memories of a catastrophe that befell on the Mindanao of Mardoquio. The filmmaker has been consistent in exploring that island’s landscape. In Riddles, he places layers and layers of historicity and reality. A boat goes in and out of the water. A man who preaches about and lures men and women to a god that looks like him feeds the fish with peso bills that he had stolen through religion and politics. There is a heap of dead people that serves as a backdrop to men and women escaping the land. A huge backhoe is a fixture on the horizon, as it summons the elegiac memory of the November 23, 2009, massacre, the Ampatuans and how they may actually escape punishment.
A hermaphrodite appeared onscreen. There was a chorus of shock from the viewers. The fluidity of gender is difficult to understand, whether it is presented in Luzon or Mindanao. The film reloading, however, has already aroused the interest of the audience. They are ready for anything. They are ready to watch the Other Philippines.
E-mail: titovaliente@yahoo.com.
Image credits: Jimbo Albano