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Recommended Film:

 Number Five, Yoko Ono (1967)

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Because silent narcissism is a survival mechanism.

“Before leggings, when there were letters, before texts and tweets, when there was time, before speed cameras, when you could speed, before graffiti management companies, when cities had souls, we managed just the same.

Before celebrities, when there were stars, before Google maps, when compasses were internal, before umbilical online-ism, when we off-lined our lives, before virtual flirtation, when legs touched, we felt we managed all the same.”

~ Change or Perish by Roger Cohen via The New York Times

We go back to the history of Philippine Cinema – breaking down the walls, ploughing through the forest of happenings from the decades that were once unknown to us. We discover the forgotten details of the past, we remember the revolutions and its sentiments, and we reestablish the dreams of before.

We look at today, and we see the glimmer of the prayers and dreams for cinema that have attempted to materialize, we feel the play of emotion between sorrow and love of the believers of film. And with that, we decide at once. We put together the best works, words of inspiration, all of which we intend to fulfill the hopes of the wishful.

With the love for Philippine Cinema and all it entails, after more than three months of what seemed like forever, of unending passionate labor, with moments of slight disappointment and even doubt in between, we have finally come to the end of it, or rather, the beginning – our labor of love, the ESCOLTA Film Journal.

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Recommended Film:

Batang West Side, Lav Diaz (2001)

In third grade, while her equivalents cared for nothing but church on Sundays and after-school household obligations, the then nine-year-old had something else brewing in her head: Why her participation in brusque games in a school skirt was frowned upon and why verbalizing romantic feelings for a boy in class was dismissed as an anomaly simply because society dictates that a girl of culture must never do so. “Maliit pa lang ako, marami na akong tanong sa isip ko,” Bautista said between nips on a glass of cola, “Na-realize ko na bakit hindi ko kayang gawin ang mga ginagawa ng mga kaklase kong lalaki dahil babae ako.”

Reared in a world which history is defined by men’s actions and where women are discerned as objects of carnal desire and as mere domestic accessory, Bautista grew up harboring questions which answers never sprung up in school books. Unanswered questions fueled curiosity. Curiosity bred creativity.

With her hands folded next to an untouched plate of cassava cake, Bautista proceeded to explain her motivation for writing feminism-fueled fiction. “Katulad na lang nito,” she said, extending a hand as if to grasp the proper thought. “Behind every successful man is a woman…pero bakit ako ‘behind?’ Dati, kailangan mag-asawa ka, mag-kaanak pa para maging complete ka as a woman.  Bakit choice ng babae ang [pumili] between family and career, pero hindi yan choice ng lalake? Ang mga questions na ito ang mga tanong, ang mga seeds, mga binhi na nag-lead sakin na magsulat.”

Bautista, lauded not only for her work’s upfront realism but also for her prolific contribution in feminist literature and screenplay writing, gave birth to hard-nosed female protagonists–a far-cry from Philippine melodrama stereotypes of as far as fifty years back which depicted women as the eternal doormat.  Bulaklak Sa City Jail (1984) for instance, a story of a pub singer imprisoned for the frustrated murder of her lover’s wife and her stint in an infernal city jail amongst female reprobates, illustrated women as condemned characters—victims of a judgmental society and pawns of a corrupt system ran largely by men—but who, in the image of its main character, the iron-willed Angela, triumphed with the spirit of willpower fired chiefly by maternal drive.  “[Ang melodarama ay] nagsusulong pa din ng kaisipan na ang babae is either a virgin or a vampire. Napaka-stereotype. Naka-graduate na ba tayo don?” Bautista quipped whilst raising an eyebrow to perhaps emphasize the idea. “Hindi melodarama ang question kundi ang stereotyping. Pwede mo gawing strong ang babae without making her weak in the start.”

[ Source ]

Bulaklak Sa City Jail was arduous and challenging to produce.  Bulaklak was an off shoot of a series of articles on the correctional institution that Bautista had written along with fellow writer and friend Josefina Corpus in late 1960s. The research process involved spending a few evenings in the penitentiary, with a bogus letter from the editor serving as their passport. “Siyempre adventurista ka, lahat gusto mo mapasok. Una naming pinasok ang National Penitentiary, nag-fake kami ng letter na kunwari galing sa editor ng Liwayway,” Bautista recalled, throwing laughters in between. “Nabuko kami pero [tinulungan kami ng] dating Director Alejo Santos ng National Penitentiary at siya na mismo ang gumawa ng sulat para makapasok kami sa Correctional.” Later, they progressed to doing studies and researches at the women’s section of the notoriously perilous Manila City Jail. “Nagpunta kami ng Manila City Jail at miserable ang sitwasyon. May isa don, nakulong lang sa pagnanakaw ng halagang 30 pesos. Mula don may mga nabuong istorya.” Bulaklak was first serialized in Liwayway in the early 80s and later, adapted into reel by Mario O’ Hara (who is painfully underrated, according to Bautista) in 1984.

Bulaklak Sa City Jail, which garnered 5 wins in the 1985 FAMAS Awards including Best Picture and Best Screenplay, shows sheer and naked realism reminiscent of Lino Brocka’s Bona or Insiang or Ishmael Bernal’s Manila By Night wherein urban poverty was outright illustrated minus the lies of a fabricated film set faithful to Hollywood dictates. In the case of Bulaklak, the audience was transported to witness the honest conditions of city jails: the dregs of society breathing amidst putrid and claustrophobic conditions worsened by corruption within the system and the stigma of being incarcerated.

The principal character of the film, Angela Aguilar (Nora Aunor), imprisoned for nearly murdering the wife of her lover (Ricky Davao), was subjected to a tormenting initiation ritual carried out by fellow inmates: a harrowing prelude to a string of other miseries. The only clothes she had are violently stripped off her back leaving her bare naked, a fitting metaphor for the humiliation caused by the disgrace of being a woman in prison.

Bautista proceeded to pick up other prison characters, all case-hardened criminals who shared a common denominator: they were all devoted mothers. Perla Bautista played Viring, detained for murdering her abusive husband; a mother who later succumbed to insanity for the death of the daughter—fathered by a former jail officer—she delivered and nurtured behind bars. Plain-spoken Juliet (Gina Alajar), jailed for estafa, avenged the maltreatment of her child in the hands of her husband’s mistress by murdering the latter. Then there was the veteran resident whore played by Celia Rodriguez who prostituted herself for a few pesos in exchange for her son’s comfort in the four walls of the same prison she was confined in.

Bautista, a dedicated mother herself, favored stories of women as committed mothers and wives, and portrayed them contradictory to a typecasted image of a mother/wife as mere domestic accessories in Philippine melodramas. This was very much reflected in her novels Bata, Bata, Paano ka Ginawa and Dekada ’70, which were both adapted to reel. “From the beginning, when I write, I just write,” Bautista explained. “I am basically a story teller. Nang lumabas ang Bata, Bata, Paano ka Ginawa [the movie], nagugustuhan ko kapag nakakarinig ako ng mga babae na sinasabi na, “Ay, istorya ko yata yan”. Definitely ‘pag nagsusulat ako, I like stories of women, doon ako mas nakaka-relate.”

Bulaklak Sa City Jail, apart from being a social statement on the ill-conditions of Manila prisons, was a metaphor of sorts in itself, aimed at critical arguments pertaining to Filipino women. Even in mixed-gender prisons where equal provisions were supposedly accorded for both men and women, the men still assumed the upper hand as reflected in prison world’s manufactured hierarchy: the male jail warden and the prisoners in the men’s section picked female detainees like cheap commodities for sex. The women, having little to no choice, were forced to fulfil the men’s wishes for practically the price of nothing.

Angela, in the beginning of her stint in prison, discovered that she was with a child and, initially arranged to undergo an abortion. Having later accepted her situation as a would-be-mother, she was plagued by threats of having her child taken away by the prison authorities for adoption, and resolved to fight against it. Later, she gave birth in a filthy animal pen in Manila Zoo, an allegory to the pathetic vulnerability of women to abuse and degradation.

Bautista, moreover, compared the prison cell enfolding her characters in Bulaklak to the backward notions about women’s position in the society, even among women themselves. “Sa iba’t ibang paraan nakakulong ang babae,” Bautista said, her eyes sparkling. “Nakakulong tayo sa mga mali at lumang paniniwala natin sa sarili natin.”

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Recommended Film:

Sedmikrasky (Daisies), Vera Chytilova (1966)

Faithful to the Warholian treatment of effecting boredom and challenging the endurance of the spectator’s gall bladder, Possible Lovers, much like Warhol’s Sleep, is a film I am yet to make sense of.

A random thought: Raya should have had, instead, casted Piolo and Sam sans clothing. Just saying.

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Listening to The Importance of Being Idle by Oasis ♫ ♪ ♫

Okay. I am only trying to look for a confirmation of my worth as a writer.

Art school friends would insist on an afternoon photography trip in Quiapo during the weekends, courting crooks with big-ticket Canon EOSes. I would decline each time with a feigned toothache. Quiapo just wouldn’t do it for me.

But for a film enthusiast aching for a Brocka piece, a Gosiengfiao oddity, Quiapo is salvation. From its black and dark alleys, one would find rare films those illuminated video stores will never put up their shelves because comely John Lloyd screams more moolah than a young Boyet De Leon in cream bell bottoms. Thirty five pesos a piece, thirty if you are hoarding.

Now I find myself constantly in Quiapo’s piss-smelling mouth, haggling with underground movie hawkers, slippered feet dirt-soiled. And smiling, smiling, smiling.

I remember a feeling of overwhelming disbelief and self-doubt when I learned that my name was among the eleven others chosen that shall make up the first batch of the internship program. I still sometimes repeat the list of names in my head, recall how it was to see the faces behind these names for the first time and how we were all seated mute in our chairs at the UP Film Institute’s Videotheque, all anxious but visibly thrilled. Mostly, I remember wondering what the heck am I doing here, with a name tag around my neck and your name spelled out on the flicker of the projection screen.

I had given up on my love-hate affair with cinema long before I even finished multimedia arts school and in every emotional affair I resolve to sever (I believe a love affair with art is an emotional affair), I am never the one to turn back. No one understood why I had given up on film and chose to instead rot away behind the blue light of a computer, with the four o’clock office coffee break as my sole idea of a vacation. Each day, along with the rest of the corporate slaves trapped in painfully left-brained jobs, I  would clock out precisely at five, mentally burned.

If you care to listen, I’d like to tell you how my penchant for cinema began: I was first introduced to cinema in third grade, after I discovered a paperback of screenplays by Ricky Lee entitled Brutal/Salome (1981). The images of vulgarity were a shaming but curious experience for me, a child of nine (I am specifically referring to Salome (Gina Alajar) in a compromising position with her flame Jimmy (Dennis Roldan) in the former’s kitchen). Although the film stills were a far cry from my familiar picture books of fairy tale princesses in a bed of blooms, I was permanently drawn.

At age thirteen, when Spielberg’s Schindler’s List was screened in Manila, I recall that the least I could do was crouch outside the movie house screening the film and absorb the indiscernible dialogue of the actors reduced to thick vowels and to listen intently to the bass of the film score, signifying a plot tensity, a climax.  I finally saw the film a couple of years later, still three years too young to watch, after I succeeded in coercing the maid to have a copy delivered to our home by the neighborhood video rental shop.

In college, while queued at the enrollment line, I, without a hint of reluctance, dropped plans of taking up Consular Affairs as a preparation for a stint in law school. Instead, I happily signed up for the Multimedia Arts program because, and only because, it offered a couple of lessons on film making.  Film, at this point, was the sole thing that ever mattered.

I don’t know exactly what triggered it but one semester prior to college graduation, I severed my once-tight bond with cinema. Perhaps it was the sudden death of  Sid Hildawa, my screenplay mentor and film thesis adviser in college. Maybe, it was my introduction to the painful truth that there is no visible appreciation for cinematic legacy in the Philippines and how the mass populace have, instead, immersed themselves in formula movies in the call of escapism. Or maybe because I thought I knew everything there was to know about cinema only to realize that I was not even a thumb’s length ahead of a through and through cinephile.

Mostly, I suppose I had given up on film because it required too much of me and I just could not commit.

Forgive me but I didn’t know who you were, Alexis, nor have I heard of your impassioned advocacy for cinema until that  particular Tuesday evening in September of 2009. I remember standing before the flicker of the television screen with your one dimensional face staring back at my being and a block of letters underneath your image spelling out the word ‘Murdered’. I remember how you—because of the proximity of our age and a passion for films which you unwaveringly held within you until someone made the unkind and inhumane decision for you to cease living—reminded me, somehow, of my former self. I remember how the sad termination of your young life shocked me to reflect on my own and to reconcile with, what I believe, really mattered to me.

People tell me I am destined to breathe and die cinema. They say cinema is the only thing I can speak of with such articulation and love. Perhaps they are just being kind. I am no cinema Einstein. I can not critique, impromptu, on a Von Trier piece, nor can I assume scholarly notions on the films of Bernal. And these are the very reasons I am still searching for a clear validation of my worthiness of being called a film intern—your intern.

I hope my simple love for cinema is enough of a validation. My love for cinema is my only claim. And I can almost hear you say you very well think it is enough.

Your intern,

Louella

PS  Bayani Fernando is no longer MMDA Chair so we can finally see no more of the MMDA wall art (at least the spray-painted leftist sentiments it tried to conceal made better sense). I am not sure, however, if MMFF will ever come up with better selections. I think Enteng and his minions are hoping for an nth installment.

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Read my friend and co-intern Patti Sunio‘s Love Letter to filmmaker Kidlat Tahimik.

This realization dawned on me in the thick of daily recondite discourse on film (care of the mentors of the internship program) peppered with cinematic jargons, screening of and lessons on films I didn’t know existed. With over a hundred films I have collected and enshrined in an ample space in my tall shelves, I have not really watched any, after all.

My so-called affair with cinema began the day I discovered a copy of Ricky Lee‘sBrutal/Salome (1981), the first book of screenplays to be published in the Philippines. I was 9, a third grade jailbait, and the stills of Gina Alajar as Salome in a uncompromising position with lover Dennis Roldan moved me, with a shaming curiosity of a child’s first observation of sex. The film stills, a far cry from my childhood picture books of stout animals with cartoon-faces locked in eternal grin and blushing princesses in a bed of blooms, introduced me to the reality of a mad, rubbished world.

So from then on, I watched films whenever I can but only had a serious yearning for cinema at age 13. I remember being happy enough to crouch outside the moviehouse screening Steven Spielberg‘s Schindler’s List (1993), only being able to listen to the bass of the film score signfying a plot tensity, a climax, because I was too young for admission. I was coerced to leave the room when the knife-wielding Norman Bates in granny garb entered the frame and Romeo and Juliet (Romeo and Juliet, 1996 by Baz Luhrmann) tongue to tongue beneath the latter’s sheets was an automatic signal for me to bury my eyes in my hands, even at age 16. The neighboring video rental shop which employed a delivery service proved to be a last resort, with myself posing as an older member of the household over the phone.

A film curriculum in college meant more films for me to feast on. Thus my introduction to Kubrick and his delinquent Alex (A Clockwork Orange, 1971);Scorsese and his super anti-hero Travis Bickle (Taxi Driver, 1976); Eisenstein‘sBattleship Potemkin (1925) which ‘The Odessa Steps’ scene is given homage by De Palma in his The Untouchables (1987); Brocka and his ill-fated characters framed in a backdrop of urban decay and so on and so forth.

Ten or more years of film appreciation, over a hundred titles acquired and treasured and I joined the internship still practically a cinema idiot.

But idiocy sure still beats the heck out of utter ignorance.

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Listening to Coin Operated Boy by The Dresden Dolls ♫ ♪ ♫