There is a lone pine tree in Rikuzentakata, Iwate prefecture. Locals call it the ippon matsu (一本松), which is just a direct translation of "lone pine tree". Before the tsunami of 3/11, the tree was part of a large and famed grove called Takata-matsubara, a small forest of seventy thousand pine trees on the town's shoreline. When the 2011 tsunami hit, destroying the town and killing hundreds of people, it was the only tree left standing. Standing before the tree, Ella (Gabby Padilla) wonders why so much money was spent on the tree instead of giving it to the survivors, despite the fact that much was spent surrounding the locale with seawalls and literally raising the entire town above the ground. Ella's half sister, Reina (Arisa Nakano) replies to her that "memories are important." And that seems to be the central theme of Jaime Pacena's Kono Basho, because the thing is, that lone pine isn't exactly the same tree that stood in 2011: it had died due to saltwater toxicity, was felled, preserved and replanted as a memorial. An anthropologist like Ella should know that memorials are there not only in service of the dead, but also the living: as a way to keep those who have passed to live on, if only as a memory.
Ella has come to Rikuzentakata to say goodbye to her estranged father who has recently died, and settle her affairs regarding her inheritance. His second family has taken her in, though for Ella there is still a tinge of resentment at the family that took her father away from her.
Aside from its surface level family drama and slice of life elements, Kono Basho isn't only about "a place," it is also how people shape places and vice versa, and how that shaping creates history. It is only appropriate that the film takes place in Rikuzentakata, a place so profoundly changed that its previous self lives on only in the memories of the people who stay, whether by choice or not. In one scene, Ella muses on her sister's life before the tsunami: where could she have spent her idle time? in what places did she create memories?
It is also a film where culture shapes a person: for the Japanese, spirits live on beyond the corporeal body in a particular way. In the Shinto religion, people become kami (usually translated as 'gods' but in this case, spirits) who help the living and guard the land. They stay with us, forever, becoming part of a place. We rarely see or hear Ella and Reina's dad, but his presence is felt everywhere. The home where Ella stays and where Reina lives is a manifestation of his will. In contemporary westernized Filipino culture, souls go to heaven or hell. They do not stay, unless as ghosts. That dissonance can be seen all throughout the film, and is a source of the disconnect between the two sisters.
Reina is at peace and grieves openly at the start, but it takes Ella more time to process that grief. Ella chose to disconnect herself with a painful part of her past and made herself, in a way, incomplete. A popular saying exclaims that we are every person that we've ever loved; Kono Basho argues that we are also every place we've ever been. "Think of this place as your home," Reina tells her sister near the end. However far, however detached through space and time, there are homes, gardens, small ippon matsu in all of our hearts.
Two things struck out to me during my viewing of Richard Salvadico and Kat Sumagaysay's Tumandok. The first is a line spoken by one of the elders near the end of the film, to a local official from whom he is seeking help, and I paraphrase: you can order us to the ends of the earth, and we will settle there. But the people who take our lands may also claim the ends of the earth for themselves.
The film depicts the struggles of the Ati population living in Sitio Kabarangkalan in Iloilo. They're part of a group of indigenous peoples who have lived in the Visayan islands for many centuries. For many years, these people have been systematically driven out of their lands by state forces, capitalist interests, or both. Hewing from real life experiences, the film follows a young Ati girl (Jenaica Sangher) as she tries to manage the affairs of her chieftain father, who has been ailing for a while. She and her father go up and down the mountain to the government offices to process the papers for them to own their own land, a process that will take their people an enormous amount of resources. But our bureaucracy is labyrinthine and rigged against them. At the same time, she tries to contact her brother, who is in a minor position in the military, to help them out.
Tumandok embodies the function of film as testimony: the film's cast consists of the actual inhabitants of Sitio Kabarangkalan, speaking in their own language, telling their stories directly to you. As testimony, films like Tumandok also help tell stories that would otherwise be ignored - for example, many may not be aware of an incident where the police killed several Tumandok leaders in 2020.
Tumandok is also an embodiment of film as history and documentation: to tell one's story and shape histories. At one point in the film the residents of Sitio Kabarangkalan stage a performance for a public official's visit, and also to earn money for their land title. The song and dance is not theirs, not a part of their culture, and some of the people in the film decry it as such. That scene, (and metatextually, our viewing of it) reflects our own skewed view of these people in popular media, views that are distorted in "art" that is not made by the people it depicts. Art as a reflection of truth is art in its most powerful form.
The second thing that struck me during my viewing of Tumandok didn't happen during the screening, but in the talkback session after it: one gentleman, visibly moved by what he just saw, talked to the filmmakers, and related his own experience as part of an indigenous community in the Cordilleras. Films help people share experiences, and solidarity is formed in that sharing. Tumandok is a tremendous work, testimony and history combined, a film that reaches beyond the four walls of the cinema.
To help the people of Sitio Kabarangkalan regain their land, you can donate by clicking this link.
Paleng (Edmund Telmo) and Eliong (Andre Miguel) are lovers living in a small seaside community. Eliong is the son of the mayor (Raul Arellano), who is grooming the boy to be his successor. At the same time, the mayor seeks to evict the inhabitants of the seaside communities, including the one where Paleng lives. The community fights back, led by Mrs. Buhisan (Sue Prado) but the mayor has a retinue of goons supporting him. In one operation, said goons conduct a 'purge', and Eliong is seemingly killed. But when a fisherman (Perry Dizon) catches a mysterious rock from an ocean trench, things begin to change.
Kantil is a film that is admittedly unable to contain its creative audacity, though it puts up a noble attempt: it weaves together many stories and builds a world that feels alive and lived in. It feels very personal with its central romance but there is a feeling of something larger, something cosmic in scale, going on beyond these characters.
Many little things pop out to me while watching: the sheer randomness and happenstance in which power comes to people, the lengths to which people hold on to that power, and the capriciousness of that power being taken away, as a sort of corrective action bestowed by the land itself. There is also the community who, when continuously faced with their own destruction, relies on its own solidarity, and the cliched (but in this case, welcomed) trope of love enduring beyond death, persevering beyond time.
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