A Finer Reflection
It’s been all about evolution in Cinemalaya ‘07, the indie film festival ending at the Cultural Center of the Philippines on July 29. As most everyone knows by now, “indie” is shorthand for independent film – both for its financing and a whole new freedom possible in the eighth and liveliest art, thanks to popularly affordable digital technologyThat a new Filipino generation has taken to indie and is speeding with it towards expansive new horizons would be an understatement. This early in the development of technology that’s democratizing filmmaking worldwide, we’re regularly jolted by a new Pinoy indie global prizewinner or contender in a lengthening list of foreign competitions – possibly one of the best things happening to this nation’s image at home and abroad today.
Ed Cabagnot, who runs the CCP’s media arts division, wasn’t kidding when he said that 2007 would outdo the rousing first two years of Cinemalaya. Indeed, not a rain but a torrent of fresh and exciting new film work by Filipinos is upon us, made possible by digital cameras, editing and projection, with film grants kick-starting projects.
It’s a whole new ballgame of serious challenge to the old studio system local and foreign, its stories largely picked and crafted by exploiting lower human emotions, the highest value given exclusively to money, and film stars with a lion’s share of the budget as studio property with the equipment and machinery for media hype, all derisively labeled “show biz.”
You could touch and smell the opposite pole at the CCP this week –indie as a matrix for a new way of film, filmmaking and film-going. All ages, though mostly young and middle class, came trooping in – lining up for tickets, huddling in lively circles of critique between showings, applauding onscreen dialogue and film director in contagious enthusiasm that brought many “feeling-rally” moments.
Here’s an overview of Cinemalaya 07 – modern film classics in exhibition, new films on premiere, competition entries in the short-film and full length feature categories, the winners to be announced in the evening of July 29.
If there’s been a downside to the banquet, it’s the old festival syndrome - too many things to see and too little time to see them without suspending the rest of your life, ready to turn catatonic from an overload of fascinating micro-universes in film, unable to remember the title of the 6th film you saw that day.
Vowing a leisurely catch up with future showings of gems that cineastes and culture eagles have begun gurgling about at this writing, I saw only three full-length features. First, the two-hour competition feature Endo, a luminous first try by the 28-year old balikbayan director Jade Castro; next Auraeus Solito’s Pisay, also a competition feature; third the exhibition film Kaleldo by Brilliante Mendoza, another young director bidding for a global reputation (marred, however, by overly mannered cinematography and editing of this otherwise richly textured film in Tagalog with snippets of Pampango, subtitled in English for global audiences. )
Close-up on Pisay
Lyricism, honesty and originality in Solito’s Cinemalaya ‘05 winner, Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros, and daring theater of stunning visual quality in Tuli, , a Cinemanila winner later that year, made it easy to gravitate to his latest in Pisay - slang for the Philippine Science High School founded in 1964 as a seedbed for young Filipino scientists.
However the competition judges evaluate this film, what I saw was another milestone faithful to both art and life. Even better, from the germ of the plot to the finished film are a series of lessons in authenticity – pagpapaka-totoo, indie’s most telling hallmark.
A Story Behind a Story
Pisay literally began on the road when Auraeus, fresh from the Rotterdam Film Festival with Maxi, dropped by Ultrecht, that famous safe haven of Filipino communist officialdom. Who else would fate have him bump into but Ludy, an old classmate who had mysteriously dropped out in their sophomore year two decades back? For the first time, Auraeus discovered why – her parents, both CPP members in the military’s Order of Battle, had fled with her into exile.
That encounter between two classmates, part of their generation’s “cream of the cream,” lodged a stubborn bit of sand in an artist’s oyster. Their batch of state scholars entered high school in 1982 and graduated in 1986 - a pivotal historical period mirroring the beginning of a previous generation’s revolution in the late 60s.
Ludy was a passionate and eloquent political animal. Auraeus was a history champ in grade school, just the oyster to be stung into secreting a new pearl. Ludy’s story haunted Auraeus on more festival trips with Maxi, becoming a compulsion as he bumped into more Pisay graduates all over Europe and America.
He had grappled with conflict in Pisay as a government scholar discovering that he preferred to do theater. How did the rest of their batch fare? Thus began a filmmaker’s e-mail dialogue with his high school classmates, one contact leading to another as life stories poured into his inbox, fragments in interlinked patterns of an autobiographical story – youth in a time of revolution, just begging to be told afresh.
Following the feeling, Auraeus wrote a story-line and a shooting script, then asked his old Pisay classmate Henry Grageda to “play my left brain” and write the dialogue. That turned out to be the easy part. What followed was indie’s built-in obstacle course - mostly defined by money and the organic solutions artists are compelled to discover to enflesh a creative dream.
When his Cinemalaya filmmaking grant ran out in mid-production, Auraeus turned to a now global Pisay community for rescue. The way the Philippine Science High School Foundation and Batch ’86 here and abroad came through brought back their teen years together in inspiring poignancy. But like true love, the path of true film never runs smooth. A crash followed, with new post-production obstacles and money running out again in looming deadline. It almost had Auraeus giving up.
Enter producer Robbie Tan and the Roadrunner Network with its state-of the-art editing facilities. Tan’s name was already attached to Dante Mendoza’s “Foster Child” as producer of a film favorably reviewed at the last Cannes Film Festival, now Cinemalaya 07’s inaugural feature.
And Robbie Tan’s original billing as profit-churning producer of Seiko Films’ skin flicks and his new role as indie convert became part of the making of Pisay and the rest of a whole new chapter of Filipino film history.
Unforgettable Reflection
On the path of the liveliest art, off-screen drama lent Pisay the movie its tone and spirit. Youthful charm and pathos in Bisayan, Tagalog, Taglish and American English accents unfold a tapestry of first love, steep challenge, early death, failure, hope and heartbreak as individual moments of revelation flow into the larger rhythms of history.
Briskly woven into personal lives is documentary footage of the Aquino assassination, Cory’s acceptance of the draft for her candidacy and Mr. Marcos swollen on steroids in the barely disguised agony of lupus, all nudging the film to climax. Implosion and explosion leap from the screen as they sweep Pisay’s students and teachers into a historical tide that ends in a moment of reflective silence, just before a festival audience burst into applause. Once more indie had dived deeper and etched life more sharply in art.
This one’s definitely a must-see.
