Cinemalaya Backlogs: Tribu (2007)

I have a lot of pending or unedited reviews for Cinemalaya films from the past six or so years, especially the 2008 festival. Here's one of the reviews I decided to finish up.

I managed to watch Tribu during its gala night premiere. Since then it has gained a lot of positive attention here and abroad. Now, having watched the movie again, I found a few new things about it that I wasn't able to catch on first glimpse. It still remains a great film after all these years.

Tribu is shot almost like a documentary, with its camera work and its use of non actors in many of the title roles. Jim Libiran grew up in Tondo and it shows, with lots of dynamic shots moving around the story from one scene to another. His actors sometimes go on set with their own weapons; other times they are shot or arrested in real life.

His movie is a violent slice of life, and at the same time it shows a Tondo that is dichotomous: during the day, the adults rule with their adult concerns, rumors and gossip. During the night, the street gangs prowl the streets like packs of wolves. The two sides seldom meet, and when questioned by their parents or by people in authority, the youth hide behind supposed innocence. During the day they might be your average kid next door; but as night comes you may see them knifing some guy to death.

This clash of cultures, the formation of the culture of gangs, stems from a lot of other things. The film tries to hint at this during the open dialogue. It is a deviant society borne from poverty, from ennui, from the youthful notions of invincibility and wanting to belong. It also comes from a disparity between generations, with neither side wanting (or willing) to understand the other, and with neither side as guilty or innocent as the other. This society comes across as violent, even barbaric. And yet, during a scene near the climax, we see that this society in the shadows has formed a culture of its own. The rap music flows like poetry throughout the film, and reaches its peak before the climax of the film.

We see the movie through the eyes of a child, who drifts in between the warring factions. He is an observer, both of the youth corrupted by crime and the adults who are no better. In the end, everyone looks out for themselves, and the kid is no exception.

I heard that because of their work with the film the actual gang members have formed a peace with each other. That was five years ago; hopefully it will last. And Libiran himself has continued his love letter for his home town: his succeeding film, Happyland, is also set in Tondo, albeit with a different story to tell.

Cinemalaya 2007 Catchup: Ligaw Liham

Back in the day, we didn't have mobile phones or the internet. Sometimes we didn't have phones at all. I could remember in my childhood, before the days of PLDT's Zero Backlog program, of going to the PLDT center in Alabang (a 20-30 minute drive from home) just to make a call to my grandparents in Bulacan. Connecting to others was difficult, and often the only way one could communicate to another through long distances was through letters.

This theme of connection is mixed in with a man's first love in the independent film Ligaw (na) Liham. Set sometine in the 70s, in a place where letter writing may be the only line for people to communicate with the outside world, Nor is a man who is in control of this system when it suddenly stops working for one reason or another. Although placed in an outsider role in the community (he is considered the village idiot or something to that effect) he uses his power over the letter writing system to write letters to a village lass, Karen, in the place of her husband. Soon the exchange of letters makes him fall in love with the girl. The usual complications stemming from this unlikely correspondence ensues.

The film is one of the examples of increasing film production quality in recent Cinemalaya entries. Although technically there are no problems (and the film deserves some merit in terms of cinematography, editing and music,) and there are solid performances from both leads, the film may strike some as paced too slowly or overlong.

There isn't much else I can say about the film but it explores its themes adequately and gives a good, if slightly flawed, story of a first love.

Cinemalaya 2007 Catchup: The Shorts

Like the films I will be reviewing, I'll just make the reviews as short as I can. Some spoilers may follow.

Doble Vista - Only saw 30% of this one. Too bad, since it was promoting itself as a noir. Being a fan of noir, I wanted to see if this really was what it was. From what I saw... maybe.

Durog - Interesting film. A hallucinogenic look into the destruction of one man's psyche, all because he wanted a fix. Well, he got a fix alright. OK performances from Baron Geisler and Roxanne Barcelo, good camerawork and solid plot.

Gabon - My friend never "got" what this film is all about. To me, it is a reflection of the cultural traditions we have regarding family. A little girl wants to follow her parents so much, she dutifully goes to school to finish her schoolwork even though she is already dead. Good performances from the non-actors.

Liwanag sa Dilim - a bit abstract, but quite intriguing from start to finish. A interesting take on Man vs. Himself. Go go Mark Gil.

Maikling Kwento - quiet slice of life film. I kinda noticed that this took place in the 80's during the waning years of Marcos' regime, although it didn't really have to do anything about that.

Misteryo ng Hapis - Too angsty for my taste. It was dripping with it and left me with a slightly sour impression. My friend liked this though, so it might just be me.

Nineball - probably the funniest short of the lot, and the least serious. Watch out for a cameo from Efren Reyes.

Rolyo - a look into a child's dreams for a better future as she collects film reels. Here she sees a world that seems alien to her, a world that she wants to reach. At least, that's how I saw it. Nice.

Tagapagligtas - one of the more serious films. Seeing that I encounter people like these everyday in the hospital, it has a personal touch to it for me. Should we judge these people for what they have done to themselves and to others? Good production values and acting.

To Ni- as a kid who often played alone, this kinda touched me a bit. OK acting from the child actor/s.

That about wraps it up for the shorts. Told you the reviews were short.

Cinemalaya 2007 Catchup: Still Life

Yo.

It's been a while, hasn't it? Gearing up for posts regarding Cinemalaya 2008, let's first finish what we started last year (has it already been a year?) and get some reviews in.

Still Life


One of my favorites from last year, it details the story about a painter who, after discovering that he is suffering from a debilitating condition, seeks refuge in a remote seaside location. Here he meets a mysterious woman with her own story to tell and the two forge a peculiar bond.

See that picture above? Absolutely fantastic composition and choice of location. Great cinematography from Dan Villegas. Musicwise I have no complaints, and the production value, like the other competition films this year, has gone up a notch.

The story is quite entertaining, as it is one of the few Filipino movies that tells of a love not quite romantic, not quite platonic. Tired of the slew of sugary sweet rom-coms that have dominated Philippine Cinema since the turn of the millenium, this is fresh as fresh can come for me. Both leads deliver a brilliant performance and their on-screen chemistry is perfect. Glaiza de Castro deserves some merit as Emma, and gives a nuanced, natural performance. I look forward to seeing her in more, similar (or not so similar) productions. Watch for a cameo by John Lloyd Cruz in the beginning!

One of the few complaints I heard about the story is that it did not need the sudden twist at the end (and the twist is indeed something major that I will not spoil it here.) It works perfectly as two people meeting each other transiently in a remote place and saving each other by means of their new friendship. In some ways it draws parallels to another interesting movie that I enjoyed, Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation. Personally it could work either way, and ending the movie before and after the twist did not have any detrimental effect of my enjoyment of the film.

There was many a teary eye in the cinema in the closing moments of the film, and there were some sniffles present too. Ultimately the film strikes me as a clever little not-quite-romantic drama that deserves its place among the greats of Philippine indie cinema.

Cinemalaya 2007: Pisay

Pisay Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuXGrIWDZ5I

On the night of my elementary graduation, the mother of one of my classmates asked my mother on the way to the parking lot: is your son going to Philippine Science High School? Since I was attached to my old school, having studied there for eight years already, and because PSHS was an hour and a half trip away, two hours considering traffic, I didn't want to go there and opted to stay in my school for four more years, two of which proved to be the two most miserable years of my life.

But I digress.


After I entered college I heard about what the school is: a school composed of some of the Philippines' best and brightest students, subjected to subsidized, advanced education in the hopes that one day they will become leaders in the fields of science and technology. They took Physics in the first year! That was a fourth year subject for us.

I also encountered many students and alumni from the school and some are good friends of mine. So when I found out that there was a film depicting the lives of students from this school, I wanted to watch it, to at least gain a perspective on how they lived their high school lives. What came out is a great and heartfelt film by well-known filmmaker Aureus Solito, of Maximo Oliveros fame.

Pisay (the contracted slang form of the school's name) tells of the lives of eight high school students studying in the university. The film itself is divided into four parts, each representing one of the four school years of high school education. The film is set in the early to mid 1980's - smack dab in the middle of the social upheavals that surrounded the last years of the Marcos regime and the birth of a new Philippines under Cory Aquino.

Freshman year details the story of Rom, a brilliant student from a less off family whose father is an OFW and whose mother works in the market, and Wena, who comes from a wealthy family from Negros. Almost as soon as he enters the clasroom sparks fly and first love is born. But the things expected of the country's finest students soon get in the way of their romance. Also in this segment, the trials of being newbies at the school are explored. This chapter may be considered as introductory, and the various scenes between the two characters are nice. Kudos to the scriptwriter for not forcing Wena's actress to speak Tagalog lines all the time. It's really weird in, say TV when I hear actors like Sam Milby try (and I emphasize TRY) to speak all Tagalog lines.

Sophomore year revolves around Mat, whose life at the school is anything but stellar. He's faltering in one subject (Math,) he has trouble adjusting to dorm life, including being bullied by his dorm-mates and he is homesick. Add to the fact that he was the best in his old school, the dramatic shift in his life takes a toll. His only comforts are his friends, especially his bright and inquisitive friend Minggoy, and his Math teacher, who seems genuinely concerned about him.

I like this part of the story because I identify with the main character. I feel what he feels when he struggles with his new position, and I like how he faced his conflicts and how his teacher's advice really helped him - that it's all about being a big fish in a vast ocean - you're still a big fish, but you're still in a damn big ocean.

Junior year is my favorite - it focuses on Andy, who applies for the school's version of the Officer's Training Corps for CAT, and Liway, the socially minded daughter of activists and union leaders. As the chaos of the last year of the Martial Law era approaches, the two evolve from indifferent project partners to genuine friends. Plus there's some of that ol' social relevance in there as well.

Finally, Senior year tells the story of Euri, a boy with a predilection for the performance arts - which isn't a good thing, since the school stipulates that for the education to remain free - one has to pick a science related course or pay the entire expense of education at the school. As this part unfolds he is in conflict with what he wants to do with the rest of his life.

Nostalgia. If I were to express my thoughts about the film in one word, that would be it. Every High school student would relate to the events of the film - their first high school romance, their experiences with CAT, dealing with academic or other problems. You don't have to be a genius to have these problems - and that is where this film derives one of its strengths - that you don't have to be from the school to "get" the film. Everyone who experienced high school and all of its ups and downs can sit down, appreciate it, and be entertained.

The cinematography of the film is good, as one would expect. Film quality seems to have improved since Maximo and Tuli. The soundtrack is quite amazing, composed of songs from the period and some original songs. Buy the soundtrack if you can, it's good. There are no problems in editing or scene selection. Another amazing thing is the amount of cooperation the people from Philippine Science had in having locations for filming - most of the spots in the campus are featured in the school. As much as it was a labor of love from the crew, it was also a gift of love for the people in the campus to let them film.

The greatest strength of the film is in its ensemble cast, as these talented child actors deliver a remarkable performance as their respective characters. No hammed up or contrived lines (as I see in some child actors today and in the past) just natural, honest to goodness acting. Thank God for these people. The adult cast is not bad either, specially a great performance from the person who played the Science Teacher (whose name escapes me at the moment) in giving life to a teacher who, as a classmate related, is someone all of us have had in the course of our high school lives. If I could give all of these people acting awards, I would.

The film was made through the stories of the alumni of the school. In the theatre, I could see all of the appreciation the students and alumni had for this film - the theatre was jampacked with PSHS alumni and students, probably even faculty, and everyone showed that appreciation with wild, enthusiastic applause. Of all the four shorts, the fourth one seems to be a reflection of the director's own self, having been (if I'm not mistaken, correct me if I am!) an alumnus of the school.

Pisay is a film that deserves a wider audience. It is a heartwarming tale of youth and the joys and pains of an adolescent life. Despite its independent status it is a film that gains a lot of mainstream appeal (and indeed, it was voted as the most popular pick at the end of the festival) and is something that does not feel manufactured, but something heartfelt. It is, in my opinion, the director's most refined work to date, and also his most personal.

Cinemalaya 2007: Gamot sa Pagkabagot

Wednesday saw the world premiere of Ato Bautista's Gamot sa Pagkabagot. He is the director of another well known film in the indie scene, Ang Aking Pagkagising Mula sa Kamulatan (a film that, despite three opportunities, I have not seen.) Shot in murky DV, the opening of a film is screens of pure color interchanging in the background of strange music.

The film can be divided into three parts. The first deals with a woman being pressured by her companion into having a sexual experience. As this part goes on, we see that she has a dark past that she does not want to talk about. The second part deals with a boy who is being abused by his teacher. With no one to turn to or to vent his anger, he quietly fills himself up with hate, bound to explode, and the third and final half deals with a person who repeats a chilling yet mysterious mantra - Di ako mamamatay tao, Hindi ako mamamatay tao (I'm not a murderer, I'm not a murderer....)

To say more would be to spoil the whole film, so I'll leave that to some spoiler space later. The story is tightly written and is pretty straightforward, even though it might not seem that way at first. The acting is ok, especially the three (well, four) main characters (although there are other standouts in the supporting cast, especially the boy's boss in the second part of the film.)

Editing is okay in some parts but some of the editing in the other parts are, at the very least, strange choices. I attribute it to some technical error in whatever was used to edit the film. There are also a few continuity errors near the last part (hint: watch for T-shirts) but that happens in most films and is barely noticeable anyway. Sound tends to get repetitive at times but wraps up nicely at the end, and for the record, the best parts in the film sound wise in my opinion were during the transition sequences. Nice touch.

Being a DV film, the quality of the movie is decidedly not as high quality as the other choices, but that may also have been a directorial decision considering the topic of the movie. There are some nice shots composition wise, notably several scenes in the second half which give a picturesque quality to the scene being shot. The movie paces itself quite well and never drags or bores.

Overall, the film was quite good and a pleasant surprise to watch. After seeing this, I'm now really curious to how good Ato Bautista's other film is. I definitely have to see that one someday.




SPOILERS FOLLOW... don't read if you haven't watched the film





The three main characters in the film seem to all have one thing in common - they are denying something basic about themselves to the point that it drives them mad - the woman and her sexual inhibitions, the boy and his many, many issues, the murderer and his past. Each one manages to resolve this internal conflict, but only through some sort of process.

The girl does this by self-examination through a second personality, the boy does this by talking to his apathetic boss and the murderer does it by caring for a woman stuck in his home. The results are all strikingly different, but are definite resolutions: The woman ultimately integrates her second personality, and ultimately, dies in the process, (and ironically at that,) the boy lashes out at his parents who seemingly do nothing but ignore and abuse him, and the man returns to his old home and lets go of his past.

In this movie's case, the story is cyclical, and all the stories are connected. At first I didn't realize this, thinking the film to be an omnibus. But the way the three stories are intertwined is quite clever, and can leave the casual viewer a bit confused, but thankfully, not too much, thanks to the storytelling skills of the scriptwriter/director.

While thinking about the film, I thought about something interesting (albeit something probably completely unrelated) about the film. If you place the characters in the context of our society, the results are interesting. The woman could represent Philippine women in general, and the way their sexual expression is inhibited by the pitfalls of society. The boy could represent our youth, abused by society and often ignored when they need help. And what about the man? Does it represent us as a whole? Even more, what does that imply when we take that in the context of what ultimately happened?

I like the movie... it makes me think. I guess it really is a cure for boredom.

Cinemalaya 2007: Introduction

July 20-29 marked a special occasion in the Philippine independent cinema scene, the 2007 Cinemalaya Film festival. From all around the Philippines, the best talent in independent filmmaking gather together and share their works to the world. Nine full length films and ten short films have been selected for competition. The full length films are:

Ligaw Liham, a drama about interrupted lives set in Negros;

Pisay, a slice of life drama comedy about students of the Philippine Science High School;

Tribu, a movie about street gangs in Tondo;

Still Life, an offbeat lovestory;

Tukso, a Rashomon like village tale,

Kadin, a simple story about children living in Basilan;

Gulong, the life of a boy and a bicycle;

Endo, with love stories and contract jobs;

and Sinungaling na Buwan, a movie about the "end of the affair" for three couples.

In addition to the above films, they'll be showing a load of other films, mostly films and shorts from previous festivals and world premieres of other films. I'll try to cover as much as I can in the next few posts...