By EMMA KATE SYMONS

Real to Reel

Philippine cinéma vérité: Acclaimed abroad, banned at home

MANILA - Brillante Mendoza, the fearless director at the forefront of a new wave of Filipino independent cinema, is accustomed to extreme reactions to his films.

When "Kinatay" premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May, the movie critic from National Public Radio in the U.S, John Powers, refused to attend because he said the film promised "no fun at all just brutal nastiness." Veteran critic Roger Ebert from the Chicago Sun-Times pronounced it the worst film ever shown at Cannes. Other critics denounced "Kinatay" ("The Butchered") -- which follows a day in the life of a young criminology student who gets caught up in the rape, murder and cutting up of a prostitute's body -- as "wretched" and "unwatchable."

View Full Image

Center Stage Productions/Swift Productions

But Mr. Mendoza was vindicated. The festival's programmers compared him with cinéma vérité legend, the late American actor and film director John Cassavetes, and awarded the Filipino the best director prize. He edged out such established names as Hollywood's Quentin Tarantino and Ang Lee, and Spain's Pedro Almodovar, as well as South Korea's Park Chan-wook and China's Lou Ye.

"It's a tough film to watch and a tough film to make," Mr. Mendoza concedes of his latest work. The film revolves around a criminal gang of police officers who answer to an ex-convict. It features a lengthy scene shot from inside a moving van as the gang prepares to rape, stab and dismember the woman before scattering her body parts around Manila. The director says he deliberately set about unsettling the audience by bringing them on "a journey into darkness" alongside the main character, Peping, the criminology student. "It was not because I wanted them to go home terrified. I want people to be disturbed...by making them see that the world isn't as safe as it seems. Here is a normal person like any one of us but at one point he is trapped."

View Full Image

Agence France-Presse

Mr. Mendoza's film is the first from the Philippines to snare an award at prestigious Cannes. The victory is another sign that the nation's thriving independent filmmakers -- who made about 50 films last year -- have arrived on the global silver screen.

He is also the first Asian director to be included in the official competition two years in a row after his film "Serbis" ("Service") was nominated in 2008. While "Serbis" missed out at Cannes, that year Philippine independent films garnered at least 28 awards for everything from scriptwriting to acting at other international festivals from Korea's Pusan to Paris.

Behind their red-carpet success lies a combination of factors. For a start, the Philippines, with its mix of cultural influences from Spanish and U.S. colonialism, ethnic diversity and distinction as Asia's only largely Catholic country, offers a vivid backdrop for creative filmmakers. An often corrupt and colorful political and business elite presiding over a nation beset by poverty, violence and a separatist conflict on the southern island of Mindanao adds to the rich pickings for story lines. Consider the tale of Joseph Estrada, a one-time action movie star who built his political appeal on playing scrappy underdog roles. He won the presidency in 1998 and was ousted in a military-backed popular uprising after serving less than half his six-year term. Convicted of taking kickbacks from illegal gambling rackets, a charge he denied, Mr. Estrada was then pardoned by his successor -- and now wants to make a political comeback.

View Full Image

Center Stage Productions/Swift Productions

In recent years, digital technology also has played a crucial role by lowering the costs of filmmaking, enabling a wave of new young indie directors to flourish. Plus, they have forged ties with French film production companies, with their access to state funds, and French festival organizers, which has helped bring their work to international attention. Yet, ironically, the Philippines' strict censorship laws prevent most of these edgy films from being shown in commercial cinemas at home.

All the acclaim from abroad comes as the country's film industry celebrates the 50th anniversary of its first recognition at an international festival. Once home to a big film studio system, today there are only two major studios left. Documentary-style films by notable Filipino directors as Lamberto Avellana began winning international awards in the 1950s. But it was really with the emergence of socially and politically conscious filmmakers such as Lino Brocka in the 1970s that the Philippine independent cinema took off.

Mr. Brocka's powerful melodramas depicting poverty and political resistance put him in conflict with the oppressive regime of former President Ferdinand Marcos, who tried to ban some of his films including "Insiang" and his Cannes-nominated "Bayan Ko" ("My Country").

Influential French producer and director Pierre Rissient brought Mr. Brocka's work to Cannes in the late '70s, kickstarting a film movement in the Philippines that is independent both for its lack of backing by the big studios and for its controversial subject matter.

Today, the 49-year-old Mr. Mendoza is the brightest star in what French film director and scriptwriter Rebecca Zlotowski calls the "constellation" of Philippines art-house film. Following Mr. Mendoza is a diverse band of mostly younger directors, ranging in age from early 20s to early 50s, who often collaborate and have helped confirm their country's status as a darling of the international festival circuit over the past few years. Among them are Raya Martin, Adolfo Alix Jr., Sherad Anthony Sanchez and Lav Diaz, the so-called father of this family of experimental filmmakers who eschew traditional narrative techniques.

"Despite the youth of most of these directors, they are making very mature cerebral radical films," says Ms. Zlotowski, a member of the selection committee for this year's Cannes Director's Fortnight, which runs parallel each year to the festival and spotlights full-length feature films, short films and documentaries. "The common denominator of all these films is their attention to social problems such as homosexuality, adoption, delinquency and poverty and their documentary style." The Filipino filmmakers, she adds, "are actually contributing to the ongoing breaking down of the distinction between documentary and fiction" that is occuring in movies globally.

View Full Image

Agence France-Presse

Three Filipino films were among the official screenings at Cannes this year including Mr. Martin's "Independencia," a film about colonialism and independence in the Philippines, which was chosen for the Un Certain Regard or experimental section.

Also in the special screenings lineup was "Manila," a joint project by Messrs. Alix Jr. and Martin. The film is a tribute to cult Philippine directors Mr. Brocka and Ishmael Bernal, another leader of the earlier wave whose extraordinary 1982 epic tale of rural religious hysteria "Himala" ("Miracle") last year won the CNN Asia Pacific Screen Awards Viewers Choice Award for best Asia-Pacific film to date. It stars local heartthrob Piolo Pascual, who also co-produced the film.

Arleen Cuevas, the producer behind both "Manila" and "Independencia," contends that Filipino film is currently "the most exciting in Asia" because of its diversity ranging from the experimental style of Mr. Martin to the socio-realism of Mr. Mendoza. "Filmmakers are doing different kinds of cinema and there are different kinds of vision and style, but all are coming from one country," she says.

Unlike the younger directors such as Messrs. Martin and Alix Jr. who went to film school, Mr. Mendoza is self-taught. Often labeled neorealist in style, he left a job in advertising production design in 2004 to work on his first film "Masahista" ("The Masseur") set in Manila's male massage parlors. It won a Golden Leopard Award at the Locarno International Festival in Switzerland in 2005.

Committed to telling the stories of what he terms the 90% of Filipinos who "don't live in decent conditions," Mr. Mendoza offers no apologies for making his critics and audiences uncomfortable with his detailed explorations of the seamier side and double standards of life in the Philippines.

View Full Image

Agence France-Presse

In 2008, "Serbis," about a dilapidated family cinema turned porn-screening hall that has become a market for rent boys and their clients, garnered awards at international film festivals. After it opened at Cannes, there was outrage in some quarters over its graphic sex scenes and a notorious moment of the lancing of a festering boil on the buttocks of one of the characters.

"You can't always please everyone especially with my kind of stories," Mr. Mendoza says. "They are not really entertaining stories. They make you want to think."

It isn't just programmers and audiences at continental European film festivals who are taking notice of the innovative cinema coming out of Manila as well as the provinces. Mindanao native Mr. Sanchez, 24, won the top prize at the Korean Jeonju International Film Festival in May for "Imburnal" ("The Sewer"). The film was produced by Ronald Arguelles.

The jurors praised the film -- which opens with a nearly eight-minute single shot of a boy lying in one of the sewers -- as an "innovative, experimental, even miraculous work." They also called it a "unique blend of documentary and fiction, which returns us to the fundamental question of the past and the future: What is cinema?"

Mr. Sanchez's poetic four-hour meditation on the lives of delinquent teens hiding out from vigilante murderers in the sewers of Davao also received the Netpac prize, awarded by the Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema at Jeonju.

Festivals in North America, including New York's, now frequently feature Filipino filmmakers' works and the UCLA Film & Television Archive recently ran a retrospective of Mendoza films in Los Angeles. Last year, the Paris Cinema International Film Festival, a mid-tier event on the annual global festival calendar, gave Philippine films a boost by featuring them exclusively as the country of honor.

The Philippines' strict censorship rules and a distribution system that favors safe Hollywood films or local commercial blockbusters mean most of the indie films making their mark abroad won't be screened in the cinemas of this country of 90 million people, more than half of whom are under the age of 25.

Mr. Sanchez's "Imburnal," in a dialect of the Visayan language spoken in Davao, was given an "X" rating before its canceled premiere at the Cinemanila International Film Festival last year, upsetting international jurors and festival-goers alike. It was eventually shown in a censored version but has never received general distribution. The film was rejected for distribution three times by the censorship board because of its "objectionable presentation of poverty."

"Every time a Filipino film director wins an award somewhere, we always go back home and share the same sentiment -- frustration that our films can't be distributed back here," says Mr. Sanchez. "It's strange because you don't fulfill your main objective, which is to share your film with the people of your own country."

Marlon Rivera is president and chief creative officer of Publicis advertising agency in the Philippines and the producer of "100," which shares the same premise as the popular 2007 Hollywood film "The Bucket List." The Philippine film focuses on a terminally ill woman who decides to do 100 things she has always wanted to do before dying. With its slick production style, and focus on the milieu of wealthy young professional Filipinos in Manila, "100" is considered more "mainstream" than most Philippine independent cinema. It was screened at the Marrakesh International Film Festival and experienced critical and commercial success in the Philippines.

Mr. Rivera says a "new Puritanism" has overwhelmed the Philippines in the past decade resulting in much heavier-handed censorship rulings. For "100," directed by Chris Martinez, to be shown at a commercial cinema, a sex scene in the film had to be limited so that only a small portion of the naked back of a woman could be seen.

"Aurora," a new film by Mr. Alix Jr., 30, hasn't been released in the Philippines because it was slapped with an "X" rating by the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board, which was created by decree under former President Marcos. "It is about a social worker who is kidnapped in the south by bandits but in the middle part of the film she is raped. Well the censors said it was too explicit so they banned it."

Independent filmmakers also are criticized for their "negative" presentations of the hard lives of ordinary Filipinos. After Mr. Mendoza won the best director prize at Cannes, a columnist in the daily Manila Bulletin railed that "Kinatay" might dampen tourism to the Philippines.

"I don't think I'm showing a bad image of the Philippines," Mr. Mendoza says in response to such criticism. "I think I'm showing the reality of life in Manila and in the Philippines. This is really happening."

Somewhat unexpectedly, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, known to be a social conservative in the Philippines, applauded Mr. Mendoza's Cannes success. She even tried to draw a parallel between his art and her brand of "moral" politics.

"Director Mendoza's winning movie depicts social realities and serves as an eye-opener for moral recovery and social transformation, which my administration has been pursuing even early on my presidency," Ms. Arroyo said in a public statement, without commenting on the censorship that keeps Mr. Mendoza's films off local screens.

The annual French Film Festival in Manila held this month hoped to avoid confrontation with the censors with a plan to "bring Cannes to Manila" by screening local films and international films that had been shown at the festival. Instead, organisers saw one of the French films, Benoit Jacquot's "A Tout de Suite" given an "X" rating so it couldn't be shown.

Festival organizers wanted to show "Kinatay" for the first time to a Filipino audience but backed down before an inevitable battle with the censorship board. Mr. Mendoza refused to subject his film, which is in Filipino, or Tagalog, with English subtitles, to the censor's cutting room. "I don't want to give them the privilege of cutting my film again," he says, referring to earlier cuts made to his "Serbis" film.

Marc Fabian B. Castrodes, a lawyer who is a member of the censorship board says films screened for noncommercial, limited use such as for private educational purposes aren't subject to classification. So, Mr. Mendoza is taking another tack: "I am taking ("Kinatay") to universities and schools where I can explain that there is such a thing as alternative cinema in the Philippines."

—Emma Kate Symons is a Bangkok-based writer.

Independencia review 2 (http://cinefilipinas.blogspot.com)

For, with a strong indigenous cultural life, foreign
domination cannot be sure of its perpetuation.
-- Amilcar Cabral

Everyone of us is channeling Americans. For over a hundred years now, we have imitated and internalized their smallest tics and their thickest twang; we aren’t called Little Brown Americans for nothing. Our assimilation of all things American is there to see – though perhaps too self-evident to notice. We eat Kentucky Friend Chicken and McDonald’s burgers and wash them down with swigs of Pepsi or Coca-Cola. We wear the latest shoes from Nike and listen to the latest songs by American Idols. We watch the latest movies churned out by Hollywood, starring our favorite state-side actors. These are our everyday realities. We are, in truth, not as independent as the history books would like us to believe; we are living in the shadow of these insidiously neo-colonial times.

Raya Martin’s Independencia, making its Philippine premiere on Independence Day ironically in a French film festival, may not espouse up-in-arms revolution (how, when the enemy is within us?) but delivers a subtly hortatory message: the Filipino should endeavor to rediscover his pre-colonial roots. It’s the first small step in his long journey towards recovering true independence. Set in the early 1900s and onwards, Independencia avoids, perhaps by default, the grandiosely-scripted and astronomically budgeted depiction of an epical and heroic era: the American occupation. Instead, writer-director Raya Martin astutely focuses on common folks, non-comnbatants: a mother (Tetchie Agbayani) and her son (Sid Lucero) who flee to the forest as soon as the threat of war encroaches on their town.

Here, in this forest, reality seems refracted through a strangely allegorical and magical prism. Birds dart out of the bushes like shimmering bullets; breezes blow unceasingly; ferns and palm fronds sway and bend; a stream ripples and flows through it. In the conversations that will transpire within its bosom, this forest will be alluded to as the object of greed, and two towns go to war for it. This is where mother and son seek refuge. Soon (no one knows the nature of time here) they are joined by a woman (Alessandra de Rossi) who has been raped by American soldiers. In due time, she gives birth to a fair-skinned child.

Independencia, however, is not about a family’s insularity. What this retreat from the outside world ultimately means is a symbolic return to the Filipino’s bedrock strength, a revalorization of his indigenous culture, his pre-colonial past. Within this film’s family, the oral tradition of myths, proverbs, legends and general folklore, is reenacted and passed down from one generation to another. Talk of talismans, giant wild boars, and the aswang circulate among this family in the woods. And the realities in the forest – e.g. the son finding his way home only after turning his shirt inside out, the appearance of wood spirits – don’t seem to contradict what this family partakes in.

Not unlike South American and other Third World writers employing magic realism in their works, Martin harnesses the inherently surreal/fantastical aspects of our folklore in order to mirror the under-emphasized and misrepresented aspects of our culture. Circulated in the deep of the night, circulated during meals, the stories exchanged in the depths of the forest are a kind of nourishment, a defense mechanism that both diverts and fortifies.

And yet in Independencia, Martin has fashioned out one of his least confounding and more accessible films to date. Independencia is not unlike a well-told legend: there are moments of facile objective reality combined with moments that ask us to suspend disbelief. Much of Martin’s unconventional and unpredictable narrative techniques are becoming familiar to us, it seems. He has also decided to meet his audience halfway: much of the counter-intuitive filmmaking we’ve seen in movies like Autohystoria and Now Showing is kept to a minimum. (But perhaps these are just the strictures of this particular film – to be displaced by the stylistic demands of the next film.) Instead of unknowns and non-professionals, he casts well-known, professional actors for this, and they invariably deliver.

Conceived as the second entry in Raya Martin’s cycle of films set during periods of national struggle (A Short Film About the Indio Nacional being the first), Independencia may not mention America once in any of the film’s dialogue but its pernicious presence, its colonizing threat, is palpable. There is a newsreel-like sequence at midpoint of Independencia that brings this home: an actual atrocity by American soldiers shooting a boy suspected of pilfering is reported in quasi-provincial, faux-American accent. The film finesses its point with humor. There are no strident anti-American slogans here. That the American atrocity mirrors what happens in a 1976 film (Lupita Aquino-Kashiwahara's Minsa’y Isang Gamu Gamo), only seems to suggest the currency of the Americans’ unchangingly contemptuous, subhuman regard for Filipinos.

Make no mistake, Independencia is a sophisticated post-colonial film and Raya Martin, at least in this instance, a veritable post-colonial filmmaker. Making a virtue of meager funding from European institutions (in particular, the IFFR’s Hubert Bals Fund in 2007), he uses unconventional and postmodern approaches to film Independencia. Noteworthy is his reliance on distanciation techniques, which puts the stamp of its real provenance on the film. This film, shot in black and white by Jeanne Lapoirie, may look like an early 20^th century American movie, but it is unmistakably a product of its time. Independencia is a living, breathing film: its colonial discourse is not restricted to the past, but remains as valid as ever. Hence, the tell-tale markers like the theatrical acting and theatrical dialogue, the unnaturally thick make-ups, the hybrid sets (a fusion of natural, live elements and handpainted backdrops brought to life by production designer Rodrigo Ricio), characters talking straight to the camera, the effect of film seemingly running out of its reel are not unjustified instances. The presence of White Leghorns – not introduced to the Philippines until 1950 – in a film that is supposed to be set during the American era also tells us of the timelessness of the issues problematized by this film.

Independencia, however, ends in the most unambiguous terms possible. Orphaned and alone, the fair-skinned boy (Mika Aguilos) enacts the supreme gesture of self-determination. Pursued by American soldiers deep in the forest, the boy makes sure of signifying his true allegiances. His realization of who he is and where he belongs, paints the sky in different shades of brown. This is, after all, the brown man’s world -- his beloved country. Long live the Filipino!

Independencia review (http://cinefilipinas.blogspot.com)

Maverick filmmaker Raya Martin groped for words in an impromptu speech before the start of the June 12, 2009 Philippine premiere of the film Independencia. 'Anong sasabihin ko?,' he muttered to his companions. The 24-year-old director may not be the best speaker out there, but he speaks volumes with his consistently excellent films.

Independencia is Martin's latest masterpiece. The 77-minute film is the second in a trilogy of films depicting the Philippines under colonial powers. Martin uses dominant film formats and popular entertainment fare during each period to frame his stories. The first film Maicling Pelicula Nang Ysang Indio Nacional utilized kundiman, theatre plays, and silent films to depict the Spanish period. This time around, Independencia employs newsreels and early 20th century studio films with false backdrops to show the destructive effects of the American colonization.

The Americans saw the potential of films as propaganda. They utilized films in their battles. Popular newsreels shown in the United States depicted American soldiers stopping an insurrection in the Philippines. The fighting was pictured as an uprising against an established government and not as a war between two countries. Most of the newsreels were just re-enactments showing American soldiers in good light.

Martin is a young man obsessed with early Filipino films. Most of his films deal with silent films, early 20th-century newsreels, and pre-war Filipino films. In this film, he recreates a movie that counters the jingoistic intent of an American newsreel. He indigenizes the movie’s format and content. The movie features three dark-skinned actors portraying characters fleeing from American troops. The characters speak in an old-fashioned local language. Local myths and superstitions are depicted in the movie.

The false backdrops of the movie riled two viewers seated near me. They complained about the obvious studio sets, which they perceived to be a result of the producers' stinginess. Another one blurted out 'The film is boring.' I expected this kind of reaction from them because I've overheard them saying it was their first time to see a Martin film.

The film Independencia is Martin’s most accessible film so far but it is still arty fare for casual moviegoers. The film is in black-and-white. The film is not talky but speaks a lot about heavy stuff such as colonialism, propaganda, and native resistance. The film does not feature a popular actor. Vilma Santos was originally set to play the mother but later backed out. In hindsight, Tetchie Agbayani is the right and better choice for the role. She is a morena and closely resembles Sid Lucero, who plays her son.

The theme of native resistance was enhanced with the film's utilization or visualization of lines from protest songs such asMarangal na Dalit ng Katagalugan. The song Bayan Kodealt with an image of a caged bird crying and trying to break free. The film featured several released birds flying straight to freedom. The last line of the country's national anthem was enacted at the stunning, blood-stained ending of the film.

Martin may have stammered in his introduction but he managed to greet the audience with 'Happy Independence Day!' It was a happy day too for independent films and independent filmmakers. His courageous film was a perfect ender to a whole day of local film screenings at the 14th French Film Festival at Shang Cineplex.

Independencia review (http://thorsings.blogspot.com/)

Independencia plays like Cocteau Twins' Blue Bell Knoll, form and pattern are forefront while the rest---actors, dialogue, chickens---drift like ambient noise, the swirling layers of synthesizers if you will that wall the experience within the confines of cinema. Independenciaaims to capture the cinematic style of the period it depicts, here, the 35 mm films shot entirely in sound stages during the American occupation in the 1900s.

Free Form: A short rambling on history and why Jose Nepomuceno and co. are probably throwing a party in filmmaker heaven

The first picture with sound reached the Philippines in 1910, and in 1912, New York and Hollywood film companies started putting up offices in Manila to distribute films. The lukewarm reception led two American entrepreneurs to make a film about Jose Rizal's execution. With the curiosity of the Filipino audience piqued, Jose Nepomuceno produced the first Filipino movie, Dalagang Bukid, in 1919, which was based on a highly popular zarzuela piece by Hermogenes Ilagan and Leon Ignacio.

The U.S. colonial government then had already been using films for propaganda (in the guise of education and information dissemination) and locally-produced films---early film producers included American businessmen and local politicians---were only allowed to tackle "safe" issues of reconciliation among classes, religiosity and repentance, themes that prevailed in zarzuelas and theater. Ironically, the people who encouraged the Filipino film industry to grow were also the same people who limited its growth by setting rigid rules on expression.

The 35 mm film was a haunting reminder of our colonial past.

Independencia took that format, and the history that came along with it, and squashed the years of silence that the 35 mm format represented. Premiering in the Philippines on Independence Day makes the realization even more poignant.

I have only seen Japanese World War II propaganda films shot in 35 mm (courtesy of the Filipinas Heritage Library) but I could deduct that director Raya Martin celebrated and challenged both format and form. Independencia is stunning, a black and white magic eye that draws you with hypnotic visuals---look closely and details surface. And just as you get used to the shadowy reverie, Martin slaps you with sex and that clever bit of dialogue spoken to the audience.Apichatpongian in the dreamy texture of the jungle, and in the reveal of the darker side of nature reminescent of the tiger shaman inTropical Malady, what Independencia lacks in momentum it makes up for with seductive mystery.

Raya Martin, whether consciously or not, has handed the 35 mm film back to the hands of early film makers Julian Manansala, Nepumoceno and everyone else who attempted to say something, say anything, but weren't given the chance to capture it on film. Pretty heroic stuff in my book.

Prisoners of Pattern: Thoreau and why that Robots in Disguise song never left my head.

A mother and son run to the woods to live deliberately, to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life. The struggle for independence from the American colonial government is mere context to a romantic existential exploration of the absurdity of the concept of freedom. The family (along with the viewers) is plucked from everything familiar and is thrown into a disorienting tangle of trees, shrubs and rivers where they thrive in an illusion of freedom---the jungle itself is a prison of patterns and cycles, the world outside it more so.

Martin seems to say that freedom is not liberum arbitium where we can do as we please even if we are isolated from the rest of society and where values are insignificant to decisions made. In the jungle, there are no societal norms existing, but the values the family holds dear from folklore to, yes, their concept of freedom, is immutable, cultivated from the society of which they were a part of.

The crucial decision that the child makes at the end was dictated by the values he learned from his brief life with his parents.

Could our own values restrict our freedom? (Yes. Hello, Board of Censors.) Or does it dictate what we are free to do? Freedom and responsibility seem to be entwined; there is no freedom from being responsible for one's action. It's a cycle.

Keep moving, keep doing, keep breathing, stay living. Robots in Disguise's Cycle Song in a loop in my head while I am writing this. The mechanical absurdity of patterns, the "unfairness" of the world.Independencia is unabashedly arthouse in form but its thoughtful encounter with the absurd, whether mustached or veined leaf, is all too candidly angsty.

And just because I am free to declare this: It is fucking brilliant.

Rating: 5

Independencia (2009) Directed by Raya Martin
Produced by Arleen Cuevas
Starring Tetchie Agbayani, Sid Lucero, Assunta de Rossi, Mika Aguilos

Independencia review by richard bolisay (www.lilokpelikula.wordpress.com)

Written by Ramon Sarmiento and Raya Martin
Directed by Raya Martin
Cast: Tetchie Agbayani, Sid Lucero, Alessandra de Rossi, Mika Aguilos

The first thing you notice in Raya Martin’s Independencia is its color. Assuming that before you enter the cinema you see things in their usual hues, your eyes are quick to tell you that betraying them should be the last thing in your mind. The sudden adjustment of your eyes to its palette, as if revolting to the uncommon sight of moving black and white images in the big screen, suspends early judgment, for whatever it is that Martin has yet to prove to make his films “accessible” to “common” moviegoers only becomes relevant to people who consider themselves superior to the films they watch. I am not everyone, so I suppose if I may speak against the few whose bias is cultural, and whose thought balloons argue that if a recent French film is shot in black and white it is art, but if it is a Filipino film it is pretentious, my dear friends, I tell you, modesty is overrated. Let the film argue for itself.

Its color is not only noticeable. It is salient; it leaps out of the screen to claim your attention, to hold you still, as if bringing you to the setting of its narrative despite seeing its artificiality. There is consent, but it is not given sincerely. When one is not paying attention, there are many things that get lost, that are not appreciated, that are preempted by the fact that we are seeing a film that is clearly out of our league, whose world is some place we already left to move on. My first viewing of Independencia had me close my eyes because I could not stand Martin’s images. I was not disinterested; I just felt the need to close my eyes to focus more – - and it actually worked. There is an admirable effort to make the dialogues sound faithful to its time – - that is, during the early part of the century when the Americans took over – - and the stories of its characters bring to mind some childhood tales our friends used to tell us during recess, or legends our grandparents used to tell us to put us to sleep. The sound feels less natural, which like the painted backdrops used throughout the film, aims to mimic the filmmaking trend of its time: the use of studio and the theme of resistance. The disbelief is suspended, but other things are also cut loose.

One clever part of the film is when the narrative is interrupted by a newsreel, the partly tragic and the partly humorous account of a boy with “unquestionable motive” shot dead by a soldier, who supposed that the kid was stealing some fruits in the market. I find the reel particularly amusing, that aside from the fact that Martin uses it to simulate the period when watching movies in theaters also meant reading the papers in between and contrary to the fact that the news is not particularly amusing, it has also worked for the narrative, allowing us through the pause to follow more clearly the young man’s life as he bounces from his mother’s lap to his wife’s arms. The dream sequences and animation, which are also quirkily used in Indio Nacional, soften its uptight texture and provide humor to its somewhat humorless facade.

Martin is severely criticized in his previous films for his storytelling – - or as some would say, his lack thereof – - his indulgence to non-importance, his narratives that reek of boredom, his stubborn ambition. Independencia proves that he can do well with a plot as thin as a hair strand, a linear story that recalls early cinema, especially when the plot is only used to say other things, to suggest multitude of ideas, to bring to life a universe of histories. He tells the story the way his requirement needs it to be told, but he is still in touch with the style that he is hated for. While last year’s Now Showing really begs for walkouts, Independencia earns its right to be taken seriously, with less diabolic murmurs and more indicative silence (does sleep fall under silence?).

That he has put his four characters in isolation – - each portrayed wondrously by its actors (except for my complaint about the kid’s rather incredible tone) – - is both logical and ironic. Our geographical location gives the logical part away, and the thousand islands that constitute our land intensifies it even more. The ironic part is that we are also isolated within, that we are trapped in our own isolation, and that we are running away from that thought. Again, the use of color in the end becomes crucial in showing that.

But what becomes significant is not the story but the events that caused them to happen, which I believe Martin has the least concern to tell. In his films he has strived for the heart of subtlety by connecting with the tangled wires of our identity, not by untangling them but by going through them, following the knots till he reaches the end – - the understanding. I will not claim liking Martin’s style – - liking them will make it more complicated to explain, and liking them risks more dishonest statements – - but I am surely affected by them, confounded by their distinct voice, pained by their torturous storytelling, excited by their newness, amazed by their defiance. Independencia, all things considered, cracks open another feeling for me, and that maybe is the guilt in doubting it.

As an audience it is depressing to be hounded by questions instead of answers, that while films may not be entertaining they should at least be modest enough not to pain us emotionally, or confuse us to the point that even the simplest questions like Did you like the film? comes out like the most difficult question in the world to answer. In fact the question Did you like the film? seems rhetorical, and if one obliges to answer it he will soon realize that another question is required to be answered, like If you didn’t like it because it is not entertaining, I wonder, should films be entertaining to be liked? Things like that. Independencia, like Martin’s previous films, poses questions that are not unanswerable but they are difficult to answer because I think Martin doesn’t know the answers to his questions either, so why should I bother? Why shouldwe bother?

And I guess that’s where I see the point of his films, and the reason why he should continue doing them. He stands alone as the hopeful one, the peerless storyteller of Philippine history that forces us to see the image that we refuse to look at, even for a second. We complain that we are always seen as a poor nation, that the films that represent us in foreign festivals are always about poverty – - how tremendously poor can we really get? – - that Kinatay isn’t exactly the proper image of the Philippines that we should project outside. We do not complain about Independencia’s subject because it alleviates our guilt – - our guilt for not caring, our guilt for not letting these things matter – - because it is fed to us that history is important yet we do not really know why. But Independencia also shows how poor we are, how malignantly distant we are to our past, and how unrecognizable, as if our past is only what our textbooks tell us. If Martin’s films represent the true Filipino, then maybe that’s the reason why we choose to be another, to imbibe the culture of another, to becomeanother. That’s why his films are such agony; it is easier not to recognize their power because they leave us powerless. They are not a source of enjoyment because otherwise we should redefine enjoyment.

Our history, if I may borrow Paul Simon’s words, is like a distant constellation that’s dying in a corner of the sky. Like the young man’s failing eyes as he looks at his home, vaguely making anything out of it, his feet barely moving, leaving him at the mercy of leaves and thunder, it all becomes a matter of recognition, of our memory failing us or us failing our memory. And Martin, if I have not yet expressed my sincere admiration, for taking the road less traveled, has surely made all the difference.

http://lilokpelikula.wordpress.com/2009/06/18/independencia-raya-martin-2009/#comments

Independencia, Pasintabi Column, Pinoyweekly.org

Independencia

Malaki ang interes nang unang ipalabas ang Independencia (2009) ni Raya Martin. Mahaba ang pila sa sinehan sa Shangrila. Marami ay pumila nang apat na oras. Halos magkagulo nang mabalitaang kaunti lamang ang tiket na laan para sa publiko.

Ito ang unang pelikulang Filipino na pinondohan ng gobyerno ng France. Unang pelikulang Filipino rin itong kasama sa line-up ng Un Certain Regard ng nakaraang Cannes Film Festival. Sa katunayan, dalawa ang pelikula ni Martin sa Cannes ngayong taon, kasama ang Manila nilang tambalan Adolfo Alix, Jr. para kay Piolo Pascual. Noong nakaraang taon, kalahok naman ang Now Showing niya (2008).

Sa nakamit na ni Martin sa kanyang edad, siya ang lumalabas na frontliner ng kanyang henerasyon na brat pack na indie filmmakers. “Brat pack” dahil hindi handang magkompromiso ng kanilang independienteng estetika ng sining at pelikula. Hindi kaiga-igaya ang kanilang mga pelikula, mahirap itong maintindihan, namumutiktik ng referensiya ng kasaysayan ng mismong pelikula, kaya hindi lubos na accessible sa maraming manonood.

Kasama sina Khavn De La Cruz, Sherad Sanchez at John Torres, si Martin ay pinapalaot sa feature-length ang konseptual na pelikula ukol sa formasyon ng bansa. Si De La Cruz ay ukol sa modernong kwento ng bansa; si Sanchez, ang spesifikong sityo ng Mindanao sa bansa; si Torres, ang autobiographical sa pambansang kwento; at si Martin, ang transformasyon ng medium ng pelikula sa pagsasabansa.

Sa Cannes’ blog, ipinaliwanag ni Martin ang kanyang estetika: “Formally Independencia mimics the esthetics of studio films during the American occupation, whereas the story focuses on the resistance during the same period. The idea was to expose the Hollywood substrate and subvert it to redefine our struggle. The fake newsreel in the middle of the film is a good example: it is based on the true story of an American and the death of a local boy. This segment is similar to the intermission that we had in the theatres at the time.”

Tinalakay sa Independencia ang mabilisang transformasyon ng teknolohiya ng black-and-white na pelikula—isang medium na kinasangkapan ng kolonialismong Amerikano--at ng naudlot ng pagkabansa. Sa kalagitnaan ng gabi, tumakas ang ilustradang mag-ina (Techie Agbayani at Sid Lucero) patungo sa gubat. Namuhay sila roon sa abot ng kanilang makakaya. Biglang may inuwing walang malay na babae (Alessandra de Rossi) ang kanyang lalakeng anak. Biglang namatay ang ina.

Biglang buntis ang babae, nanganak at lumaki ang sanggol. Biglang bumagyo. Biglang magkahiwalay na namatay ang mga magulang nito. Biglang dumating ang Amerikanong sundalo sa gubat, kasama ng lokal na giya. Biglang tumakas ang bata. Bigla tumungo ito sa tuktok ng bundok, at biglang pumula ang damit na suot nito. Biglang tumalon ang bata sa bundok, at biglang pumula ang silangan.

Ang empasis ng pelikula ay hindi sa masinop na motibasyon ng komersyal na pelikula, na siya ring malakas na daluyan na mini-mimic ng kasalukuyang indie cinema na nangangarap maging mainstream. Sa agaran at walang patumangging pamumukadkad ng salisalikop na direksyon kwento ng Independencia, naipapaloob nito ang usapin ng simulain at pagkaunlad ng medium ng pelikula sa kalakaran ng persepsyon ng mundo, kasama ang bansa.

Mula sa simulain ng pelikula, ang stilong walang camera movement (ang aktor ay labas-masok sa mga eksena), ang mahika ng dating bagong medium (tulad ng pagpapakita ng balloon na naglalaman ng panaginip ng mga tauhan), ang mis-en-scene na pintadong telon ang foreground, hand-coloring ng bawat frame, at preferensiya sa studio setting ay nagsasaad ng ibang mundo at pagmumundo ng pelikula—ang kakayahan ng simulain ng pelikula na dalhin at itransforma ang historikal na mundo ng manonood-mamamayan sa mundong ipinapaloob sa kanila—Hollywood, imahen, imperialismo.

Modernista itong self-referentiality ni Martin: ang kritika ng medium ng pelikula bilang kritika ng pagsaklaw pati ng nasa labas nito—ang pagtatagumpay ng fantasya ng imahinaryo (natratransforma nga ba ang manonood?) sa tunay o historikal. Poetika ang gamit ni Martin para sa self-reflexive mode na ito: tulad sa talinhaga, marami itong pakahulugan, liban sa aktwal na sinasambit nito.

Pagpupula ng silangan, biglang pagpasok ng eksenang nagkakakulay ang saplot ng bata, pagtalon ng bata sa bangin, pagbaligtad ng damit nang maligaw, ang Independencia ay tungkol sa pagwalay at pagtumbok, pagpasok at pagsara, pagkilos at pag-udlot, pagbuo at pagwatak sa bansa, ng kasiyahan at pighati sa pelikula. Ang flatness ng pelikula ay nagtatago sa mga struktura at antas ng pakahulugan nito.

Kaya overkill na ipinalabas ang pelikula sa araw ng kalayaan. Mas inisip ko pang angkop na self-referentiality ng pelikula ay ang tunggalian sa Con Ass (Constitutional Assembly), na muli na namang nagbibigay ng kapangyarihan sa politiko at naghaharap sa bansa sa pagkawatak-watak nito sa milyon-milyong piraso, na ang protesta ng Independencia ay hindi natitinag sa edad ng mapang-abusong paghahari ng iilang lalong nagpapailanlang sa bansa sa imperialistang globalisasyon.