THE wheels of our tricycle skidded over the railroad tracks and then we were back on the paved road and then on the grassy part of the route we were taking. Kristian Sendon Cordero and I were in Iriga City one hot August morning.
Are we on the tracks? My question was not about the manner of our journey; I wanted to be convinced that our tricycle was on the old railroad tracks. Nora’s house must be along this area, I asked Kristian, who directed the great actor in Hinulid. In the film, Nora speaks for the first time in her mother tongue, the Rinconada Bikol. Where was the wall against which the tiny home of the Villamayors (the actor’s real family name) leaned and from whose window she listened to the neighbor’s radio. Nora would tell her audience the year Ateneo de Naga gave her the highest award a Bikolana artist could receive from the Jesuit institution, how she would rely on her memory of the songs as they were played over the radio that was in another house. Humbly and with candor, she regaled everyone how she ended up memorizing songs with the wrong or different lyrics.
I was feeling sentimental with these thoughts when the tricycle lurched and swerved suddenly leaving the railroad tracks. I looked back checking for any phantom train but the trains were long gone from this place. Many more things would be gone.
Soon, we found ourselves on the busier part of the city, with stores huddling each other, their front a forest of plastic cans and pails, and bakeries seemingly unmindful of competition. “Remember this?” Kristian was asking me. We were entering a bakery, the display windows bisecting the entrance. It was Nadal’s Bakery. “Of course I do,” I replied, insisting on my greater memories and reminding Kristian I was the older guy.
In the 1970s long lines filed up in front of the bakery. Everyone was there to buy Pan de Nora, a bread with a dot on its face, a celebration of that mole on the cheek of Nora Aunor. She was the biggest personality of that period. She had not done her serious roles yet but her music and the movies that carried her songs dominated the airwaves, the box office and the consciousness of the entire Philippine islands. Nora graced all the covers of magazines, some of which were purposely created to document her phenomenal fame. The frills and bows of her dresses were copied by mothers who believed those could bring magic to their young girls when they wore them. It was, thus, unusual that even the flour and doughs were exploited just so products could have the power of Nora Aunor.
We’d discover there was no more Pan de Nora. The salesladies did not know anything about that bread.
We would locate Nora’s presence in another place in the audio-visual room of the University of Saint Anthony. Kristian was invited to screen Hinulid. The title takes off from the Three Dead Christ, which could be found in the small town of Gainza, just outside the city of Naga. The film, more than a reimagination of so-called folk religion, is dense storytelling that combines poetry and the pageantry of life, death and people’s notion of the eternity. At the heart of the narrative is the tale of a mother’s love for her son, and of her memory, which is greater than all the pains and tragedies, than all attempts to destroy villages and kill its people. At the heart of this complex mother-son plot could be the subtlest and the quietest of the performances of Nora Aunor’s, whose genius like her history of rise to popularity remains unparalleled.
We had gone around Bikol already. In Albay, with education majors of the Bicol University, the reception was heartwarming. The students stayed after more than two hours. They knew about Himala but most of them had only read about the film. They knew Nora Aunor but they had not seen her in any film. Hinulid would be the first time they would see the actor, and they were amazed. They also liked the idea there was this film and the dialogue was in Bikol.
Cordero had embarked on this roadshow to test the market for the region. He asked me to be present to facilitate the discussion that took place after each screening. We both were interested to find out how Hinulid would be received by audiences who understood the language and who wouldn’t need the support of subtitles. Interestingly, even the Bikolano viewers needed sometime to refer to the subtitles to understand certain passages. It’s because the dialogues in the film are a mix of the various languages in the region. This interesting problem would never be present in audiences that are non-Bikolanos, who wouldn’t be aware it was only Nora Aunor who was using her Iriga language. The rest were allowed to use their own Bikol language.
In Buhi, where some of the gorgeous landscapes were shot, the audience readily recognized their bridges, river and lake.
Toward the end of the film, Nora as Sita walks on a bridge to meet up Death, a skeleton dressed in bright satin and velvet and pulled by a woman in Black who is Death herself. No one would notice they were walking on a colgante or a hanging bridge. Found near an isolated village, the bridge not only swung dangerously, it also had holes and gaps through which you could see the rapidly running waters of the river.
After several screenings, mostly with college and high school students, we realized one lesson: regional films should be marketed first in the region. That films from the region are really intended for the audiences of the region, as these are about the issues that grip the people, the themes running like a current through local geographies.
The suggestion doesn’t mean films from the region should not be marketed outside it. They should be released, as well, to those outside, but they must be seen first by the majority of the people whose lives these films depict, subvert or problematize. This is very much like the old crisis faced by filmmakers who make films for festivals abroad. Their products reek of pretension and false histories.
Regional films are read differently in the region from which they come. Language is one factor for this difference. If the regional films are to be read and viewed locally first, then there’s a need for critics who could appraise the films without the filter of subtitles, politics and geographies.
At this point, there’s no question as to who has the right to imagine the region.
It was childish and foolish for Kristian and I to search for the bread that symbolized the fate of Nora Aunor. Who would ever think the young girl who could only gape at the bread on display because she didn’t have the coins to buy them would be celebrated by that which was denied her?
The baker has tired of Nora Aunor, perhaps. Many reporters whose origins are all due to Nora’s phenomenon may have dropped their loyalty. No worries there. Young people, young Bikolanos are seeing her. They don’t need her as a lump of dough, but as this thespian who can speak their language with ease and grace in tones that rediscover the depth and breadth of words that they never dreamt they would one day see onscreen.