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| the worst BL |
Well, what a year this turned out to be, huh? Here I was, ready to face another year of Philippine Cinema, when suddenly the concept of cinema itself was irrevocably changed thanks to a worldwide pandemic. We're living in interesting times now, folks, and although things seem to be slowly getting better, we still have a long way to go. The pandemic revealed aspects of our society that existed in plain sight, and showed us that just, equitable and good governance is important. Obviously good governance is something we don't have in the Philippines, so we had to learn those lessons the hard way.
Because the pandemic shut down everything, productions had to get creative, and the increased isolation made people create interesting, sometimes beautiful things. Films like Love Lockdown managed to make something during the height of the lockdowns, and other productions adapted plays into online stage readings. Some opted for a mixture film and stage, like Chuck Gutierrez's Heneral Rizal, while the Himala event organized by ABS-CBN film restoration sought to deconstruct the art that we already had. That makes the shutdown of ABS-CBN that followed a few months after that all the more tragic. It's a major event will send out ripples throughout our media, TV and film production for years to come.
At the same time, some creators tried to fight the dread by positive stories. The show at the center of that surge is the wholesome and endlessly entertaining Gameboys, directed by Ivan Payawal, which became a big hit. It initiated a slew of similar shows, leading to an unprecedented boom of the Boys' Love genre, which culminated in films like Bobby Bonifacio's My Lockdown Romance and Dolly Dulu's The Boy Foretold by the Stars.
Movies from earlier years started to show up on streaming services, either as paid content or free of charge on Youtube. Channels like Regal Entertainment even started rotating some of their older movies for free. For the Filipino moviegoer, while access to cinemas was out of the question, many Filipinos gained access to a wide range of Filipino films that would otherwise only be available through occasional screenings or through piracy.
Microcinemas that depended on steady audiences and support suffered the most during this difficult time. Cinema Centenario, a fixture over at Maginhawa, had to shut its doors thanks to the continued loss of business from the lockdowns.
Audiences had to shift to the online space, and festivals like Cinemalaya and the MMFF had an all-online edition, while QCinema opted for a hybrid approach, considering cinemas for the eventual new normal.
Who knows what will happen in the months and years to come. I do not know what the future will bring for Philippine Cinema, but I truly hope that it will be a journey we can all still walk together.
With that out of the way, here are 10 of my favorite Filipino (and Filipino-ish) films of the year. I've tried my best to watch everything that came out this year. Sitsit? Quarantina Gothika? Boyette: Not a Girl Yet? Yup, watched all that. I still have pending entries on letterboxd. I'm lazy like that.
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| yes, even The Next 12 Days. |
Guidelines are: FAVORITES, NOT BEST, must be something I saw first this year (so no Tokwifi in this list, sorry), something about the Philippines (and not necessarily directed by a Filipino) and nothing before 2019 at the earliest. Without further ado, here is...
John Tawasil's
10 FAVORITE LOCAL(ish) FILMS OF 2020
Oh, but before that, some Honorable Mentions:
Short films You are Here, Replay, and The Man Who isn't There and Other Stories of Longing from the Mindanao Film Fest deserve recognition for their depiction of life at the end of the apocalypse, during the apocalypse, and before the apocalypse, respectively as well as Jay Rosas' Budots: The Craze, which paints a pretty interesting picture of a man whose creation has left his control. One feature film figures in this list of honorable mentions as well: Lawrence Fajardo's Kintsugi, about the diaspora and the cracks in society we'd rather keep hidden.
Okay, here we go now, for real:
10. Watch List (dir. Ben Rekhi)
Movies and media about the War on Drugs have ranged from atrocious Reefer Madness wannabes (Kamandag ng Droga) to being insidious in its manipulation of form (Alpha: The Right to Kill). Ben Rekhi's Watch List is arguably the best of the lot. Congratulations as well to drugs for winning the war on drugs.
9. Elehiya sa Paglimot (dir. Tops Brugada)
The loss of a loved one is probably something a lot of us have dealt with during this pandemic. Tops Brugada's deeply personal examination of his relationship with his father, the plasticity of fragility of memories, and the days leading to his father's eventual demise, resonates even more strongly in the light of recent events.
Accounts of the cyclical nature of violence (in more forms than one) against the most underprivileged members of society are a (sadly) frequent topic in the realm of local documentaries. Pabelle Manikan's Dreaming in the Red Light depicts the Sisyphean struggle of a mother and daughter as they try to lift themselves out of poverty.
7. Sa Susunod na Habangbuhay (dir. Jorel Lising)
Yep, a music video is in this list. this is my favorite KathNiel film, and I can't exactly pinpoint why. Maybe it's because of that lovely concept by Juan Miguel Severo about two lovers experiencing an endless timeloop of memories both painful and happy. Maybe because it doesn't tell its story, it shows instead. Maybe because it allows this loveteam to express their emotions without dialogue. Either way, even if the year were full of films, this would be somewhere on top nevertheless.
6. Ang Pagpakalma sa Unos (a.k.a. To Calm the Pig Inside; dir. Joanna Vasquez Arong)
Bad governance isn't only limited to the current administration, it's an ongoing, systemic problem that's lasted for a while now. There's an idea in this film about people in disasters resorting to whispers and mythmaking, resorting to gods and mythical creatures in the absence of tangible leadership, and I think that's pretty interesting stuff.
5. Himala: Isang Diyalektiko ng Ating Panahon (dir. Lav Diaz)
The best Lav Diaz film this year lasts five minutes tops, a metafictional examination of the lessons we have learned (and not learned) since the time of the original Himala.
4. Midnight in a Perfect World (dir. Dodo Dayao)
After an extended period of time looking for a place and time to be shown, Dodo Dayao's second feature film finds its way to QCinema. And what a perfect time and place for this film, an examination of the concept of safety, or the illusion thereof, in a society where murder is permitted and even encouraged.
3. Fan Girl (dir. Antoinette Jadaone)
The word fan comes from the Modern Latin fanaticus, meaning "insanely but divinely inspired," and that's how some of us think of the people we venerate: as divine, infallible beings, and we think of them like that to the point of irrationality. But ultimately, they're the same as we are, only with the power to do what they want, and that can lead to nothing good. More an allegory than an examination of fandom (that's another movie, for another day), Fan Girl tells us to stop, take a long hard look in the mirror and question who is it exactly are we championing.
2. Overseas (dir. Sung A-Yoon)
When labor is commodified, people have different ways of adapting to that, to make themselves better 'products' in the labor market. Overseas depicts one such environment, a training facility that exists to help domestic helpers in their eventual jobs overseas. It explores far more than that: even the roles and spaces women overseas workers have to operate in compared to their male counterparts.
It's been a hell of a year for documentaries (several, in fact, occupy this list) and the best of them is Aswang, about an all too real monster. Said monster exists in plain sight, but operates invisibly; in fact in this documentary he is not even seen or heard. Nevertheless, his hand is palpably felt in every grisly death and injustice in this film. Somewhere in the Philippines someone is being killed or people are being unjustly imprisoned thanks to a system built on oppression and impunity, and Aswang shows us the brave few who dare to look the monster in the face.
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Next up: Odds and Ends from Philippine cinema!
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