MMFF 2020 Reviews: The Boy Foretold by the Stars, Isa Pang Bahaghari, Pakboys Takusa

 

Dominic (Adrian Lindayag) studies at a boys' school. During a religious retreat (par for the course at any Catholic school, believe me) he meets Luke (Keann Johnson). At the same time, he receives a prophecy from a local fortune teller (Iyah Mina) about a potential soul mate.

The mere existence of The Boy Foretold by the Stars is astonishing in itself: it represents the first BL (Boy's Love) movie ever screened in the Philippines. Popular in countries like Thailand and Japan. BL is a genre that exploded in popularity during the pandemic season with local shows like The Ideafirst Company's Gameboys. Last year, I would never have predicted that we would have a film like this in the MMFF, but here we are, and that fact makes me overjoyed.

It's a very sweet, well shot film that follows the conventional tropes of the genre, and that in itself is a huge thing. But even though the film is relatively wholesome the film still manages to address the difficulties effeminate gays face while living in a very conservative, even homophobic society. The film even explores, in certain classroom scenes, the roots of that homophobia and how interpretations of religious texts can be weaponized for people to rationalize their own hate.

But I digress. The Boy Foretold by the Stars is a simple love story, one that tells us that love may not always be up to destiny, sometimes it takes one person to say "fuck it," throw caution to the wind, and just start loving.

Because of the title's similarities to Joel Lamangan's other recent MMFF entry, Rainbow's Sunset, I thought Isa Pang Bahaghari was also an LGBT love story. I was only partially correct, as this film is more a family melodrama with some LGBT elements.

Dom (Philip Salvador) returns home after a long stint abroad, and not by choice. He comes home to his wife Lumen (Nora Aunor), and she is not happy about him coming back. If you just caught yourself thinking "hey, this sounds really similar to Coming Home," yeah, me too. But this time the script makes it easier to suspend disbelief, and the lead actors make the script work somehow. He was lost at sea, and someone took care of him, eventually getting married to him. It's still a pretty out there explanation. The plot still begs several questions: Dom lived with someone else abroad for years? Why wasn't he deported? Did he hide from the authorities? Why didn't he contact Lumen? Was his new family really that stingy with international calls?

The film feels very old fashioned. The film's narrative is reminiscent of family dramas from the nineties and early 2000s. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but the proceedings move at a very languid place, and the plot drags in several areas. Also, at a time where films like the aforementioned The Boy Foretold by the Stars exist, the inclusion of the "baklang martir" trope with Michael De Mesa's subplot (he's Dom's best friend and has been carrying a torch for him all these years) feels a little dated. 

I'll give Isa Pang Bahaghari this: it's not as bogged down with sideplots as Rainbow's Sunset. The conflict between Dom and Lumen gets resolved more or less by the 2/3 mark, leaving more time for the story to explore its characters. And it all comes to a head with an ending that I can only describe as baffling. It's a major stretch of disbelief, and the emotional impact of the ending with audiences will vary. I can say the same for the entire film, to be honest.

I'd have thought, with the pandemic shutting down movies and moviemaking for a year, that we would not see any stinkers this year, at least nothing too bad.

I was a fool to think that.

Pakboys Takusa is a film about four married lotharios whose sole purpose in life seems to be to breed with as many women as possible. I didn't bother to know their character names, because unless they're pets, animals don't have any names. They style themselves as Casanovas. I think the more appropriate term would be "sexual predator." One of these "people", (notable Gunpla seller Andrew E) is even a dentist. He makes out with several of his patients, which violates several professional codes. Note that I put people in quotation marks.

Most of the film consists of one joke: one (or more) of the four Pakboys is cheating on his wife, sometimes with multiple women, sometimes two or more Pakboys with the same woman. Said wife almost catches him in the act; he reacts by making outlandish excuses. Wife inexplicably forgives him. Rinse, repeat. This goes on for one hundred and twenty three fucking minutes. As you may notice, this joke is no longer funny; it is even less funny when you repeat the same joke 420 times. It was never funny, but some guys way back seemed to think it was funny. They are, of course, wrong. 

There is nothing to speak of about the film's plot, because it probably consists of scribblings on a torn receipt for Knorr Chicken Cubes. The film copies the formulas of similar films from the eighties and nineties. Hell, there's even a beach scene for some reason. There's no point thinking about it. This is like the worst porn ever: no plot (expected for porn), but no sex either. And what's left isn't even funny.

I wrote something when I wrote my review of Sanggano, Sanggago't Sanggwapo, and I think it still applies here:

this is fantasy wish fulfillment for middle aged old men, that somehow their old, bloated, fat, rotting bodies are still desirable to younger women even though they do not have the money or charisma to attract them; that somehow they can hold their own in a martial arts fight with hardened thugs; that they are actually as charming and cool and suave and funny as they think they are. This is a film by dinosaurs for dinosaurs.

Maybe the people involved did the film as an excuse to ogle chicks, I dunno.

Wait John, I hear you say, maybe this film portrays the toxic, philanderous behavior of its main characters because at the end, the characters realize how wrong they were and change for the better. HAHA NOPE! The film makes it a point that none of these characters have learned their lesson and will keep on happily shooting their spooge into any hole (not specifying which, because maybe they like butt stuff) that's available at the moment, like a cream pie conveyor belt, their penises bobbing up and down into an assembly line of gaping vaginas. 

Then again, I hear certain stalwart protectors of Philippine Cinema pipe up and say: well, this movie isn't for you. And to that I say, yes, I fully agree. This is not a movie for me. This is not a movie for anyone I know. This is not a movie for any self respecting human being. The only people I can recommend this to are probably sex offenders or genetically downgraded mutants.

Pakboys Takusa is the putrid grime festering on the perineum of Philippine Cinema. It's not satisfying, it's not funny, and it was a general waste of time for all involved. I am now stupider for having watched it, and if you, dear reader, try to watch it anyway, may whatever god you believe in have mercy on your soul.

MMFF 2020 Reviews: Magikland, Fan Girl, Coming Home

 

The realm of Magikland is in trouble. The evil forces of Mogrodo-or have taken the kingdom from its rightful rulers and things look bleak. In desperation, the deposed rulers seek out "champions" from our world in order to save them from complete darkness. It just turns out that those four champions are a bunch of kids.

Magikland reminds me of the type of movies the MMFF came to be known for in the early 2000s (and probably a bit earlier) - effects-driven, family friendly films. And it comes as no surprise, either - the late Peque Gallaga, director of the seminal Magic Temple (1996) helped make the film in order to promote the theme park of the same name. This is that type of MMFF film, refined and reimagined for modern times with modern filmmaking magic.

The film's production design stands out, creating a world that feels fantastical, but is often rooted in a design sensibility that feels recognizably Filipino. The CGI is spotty at some points, but when it works, it works very well.

The film also manages to look into the lives of these children outside the world of fantasy: Boy's mother is dying and he uses the Magikland game to retreat into his own world, and Kit and Maya are children on the opposite sides of separated parents. But it is Pat's story arc that gained my attention the most. Compared to his relatively well-off friends, Pat is poor and unwanted, subjected to abuse and judgement by his peers and local authorities, and he would not have been scouted by the people of Magikland if he had not gained access to a stolen cellphone. Access to Magikland is a privilege he gains access to by chance, but even then, he is integral to the success of the quest - he simply wasn't given the chance to excel on his own by society at large. His mystical item is a defensive item, perhaps an inadvertent piece of subtext commenting on resilience narratives? One's interpretation may vary. And at the end of the film, he elects to stay, because he knows that in an oppressive society like ours, there's no place for someone like him. It's one of the quiet tragedies of the film and I can't stop thinking about it even long after the credits have rolled.

It's a shame we didn't get to see this film in cinemas - perhaps one day, when the conditions are right, we can see ambitious blockbusters like this in theaters again.

They exude charisma, they say the right words, they do the right things. People love them when they do that, and sometimes, people love them even when they don't. We see them as immaculate paragons, even though that veneer of perfection can be manufactured. 

Sometimes people see them as gods.

It's not a phenomenon that's exclusive to our country, and it's not our first time, either. Lino Brocka knew, in his 1980 film Bona, how our unique culture, shaped by colonial forces, makes us perfect candidates for this kind of phenomenon. Our learned behavior towards blind faith, and our proclivity towards seeing strongmen as saviors, has fooled us before. In Antoinette Jadaone's Fan Girl, that idea is there too. Different strongman, different time, but people are suffering all the same. But the object of desire in this film is no bit player, he's a fictionalized version of one of the country's most well-known actors, Paulo Avelino. And the titular fan girl in the center of our story, Jane (a revelatory Charlie Dizon) is perhaps not as self sacrificing as Aunor's Bona, but they both eventually reach similar conclusions. She desires the object of her worship; the mere proximity to her idol becomes an intoxicating drug. But she wants more. She is not as blind as we think.

The self-reflexivity in the film is interesting, considering that, for a film produced partly by ABS-CBN's Black Sheep, that same celebrity culture owes its current level of cultural reach to Star Cinema and its ilk. In fact, the fictional If We Fall in Love, the movie within a movie that figures in Fan Girl's central storyline, feels like it could've been made by Star Cinema. 

It's a movie whose course evokes similarities to Jadaone's own Alone/Together (2019), in that it explores a woman's coming of age and emancipation from the cultural shackles that bind her both as a woman and as a blind follower. And in this film, when Jane finally wakes up, she sees that her obsession is mirrored everywhere - and not just with matinee idols. In fact, if one looks closely, they exist in plain sight. But therein lies the catharsis: Jane has awakened. And when one wakes up, it would be travesty to close one's eyes again.

Benny (Jinggoy Estrada) is a shitty man. He left his family for another woman, and there's no disputing that. The film tries to frame it like the other party seduced him, but the film fails; after all, it takes two to tango and after the fact, he stayed with his mistress for good. This was Benny's decision, and nothing more. He does this despite the fact that his eldest son gave his kidney (and died) for his sake. Let me repeat this: he made a conscious choice to leave his wife and family.

Benny finds his way back home to his family after years of being absent. It's more like his wheelchair-bound self is dumped on the curb by his new partner, which is frankly more than he deserves. It's unclear whether he himself made the decision to return or his new wife decided for him, because when he arrives he looks sick as shit.

His children mostly do not want anything to do with Benny. They've all been traumatized in one way or another due to their father's actions and are all the worse for it. One is stuck in an abusive relationship. The other deals with it by emulating his father's behavior, falling in love with a married woman. The other one took being absent seriously and gets lost at sea. Pirates were involved, don't ask.

Despite this, Benny's wife Sally (Sylvia Sanchez) wants the family to forgive her husband and come together as one family. Absolutely nothing in the film would have changed had Benny not been involved in the equation, had the siblings learned to help and support each other without the toxic source of their troubles looming over them like a fat and ugly Professor X.

Benny says he's changed, but nothing in the film seems to indicate that. He says he's sorry, but his words seem hollow. He made his bed, and now he's sleeping in it. But the film doesn't want that to happen. A reconciliation is then forced upon the family, and we are made to watch. The film even goes for the waterworks in its justification of this, but again: if Benny were not in the story, absolutely nothing would have changed.

Coming Home is full of toxic hypocrites, who feel that a family together is a good thing, even though the forgiveness needed isn't justified at all in this case. The film asks us to forgive shitty men, while handwaving away or weakly explaining the reasons behind their shittiness. And for what? The film failed to make me forgive Benny, and sometimes when I see him hollowly apologizing yet again, it's sometimes not Benny that I see, asking for forgiveness. Instead, I see the man behind the character asking for forgiveness. And to be honest, I don't think the film succeeded in that regard either.

QCinema 2020: Midnight in a Perfect World

 

The "perfect world" of Dodo Dayao's second feature film doesn't look too different compared to ours: young people go out and drink, have fun, go to restaurants and live their lives. But strange things happen at midnight: darkness envelops the cityscape, sirens blare and people vanish. But everything is fine, our protagonists say. As long as it happens to someone else, I'm safe. It all sounds very familiar. Perhaps one of your relatives has told you that with the way things are, they haven't felt safer walking down the streets at night. But is that safety all an illusion?

Like many others have already pointed out, Midnight in a Perfect World deconstructs the very idea of "safety". The horror genre, then, is the perfect way to express the loss of that idea, and this film in particular gets it. Striking cinematography from DP Albert Banzon bathes frames in darkness, creating an atmosphere of disorientation; it's been attempted before with films like Khavn's Three Days of Darkness (2007) but those films were not as successful, and the technology just wasn't there. The sound design is equally impeccable; Dayao's films and his other works (such as the recent streaming series The Tapes, which he wrote) all possess a solid sonic footing, relying less on jump scares and more on creating an atmosphere of dread. This movie is tense, suffocating, and it hardly lets up.

But what is perhaps most terrifying about Midnight in a Perfect World is that we don't have to look very far to see ourselves, reflected: this film was, in my best recollection, filmed late last year, but with its release in late 2020 I would not be surprised if you told me it was filmed last week. For only a few months ago, in a place that the higher-ups called 'safe,' the streets were empty, with parts of the city bathed in darkness. During the height of a pandemic, sirens blared in Manila at night, with warnings telling people not to come out or face the consequences. And here, too, even in a world as imperfect as ours, from back then and even until now, people vanish without a trace.

QCinema 2020: True Mothers

 

If I had to pick someone to adapt Mizuki Tsujimura's novel True Mothers, I can think of few people better suited to the job than Naomi Kawase. And it's not just due to the gentle emotionality of her other films, either: Kawase was raised by her grandmother/great aunt after her parents' divorce, giving her first-hand experience of what it feels like to be raised by someone other than one's biological parents. Kawase's earlier works such as Katatsumori (1994) reflect on her relationship with her grandmother, put into context years later in Tarachime (2006) which contrasts her relationship with her grandmother with her own impending motherhood.

True Mothers tells the story of the Kuriharas, a family who wants to raise a child, but cannot due to a number of factors. They learn of an adoption service after seeing a feature on TV, and they decide to try it out. They eventually find a young mother-to-be, Hikari (Aju Makita), the exchange is made, and they part ways. But as we find out in the beginning of the film, that decision came with a lot of baggage, and the Kuriharas and Hikari find themselves reunited, albeit in vastly different circumstances for Hikari.

The original novel focuses on the mystery of Hikari's appearance, but in this film Kawase focuses more on the characters instead. There are strong societal pressures that influence Hikari's decision to give up her baby, and arguably there are different societal influences that push the Kuriharas towards adoption. The film finds its place in mundane, day to day activities, especially in the first half with young Asato, the child at the center of the film. Like in her previous works, Kawase finds the value in each of those shared memories. For Kawase, she once said that, to her, movies are a way for people to relive those precious moments that would otherwise have been forgotten.

While the movie goes through the motions, oftentimes delving into melodrama, and a lot regrettably remains unexplored at the end, what's more important in True Mothers is the emotional connection these characters make with each other, and the journeys both mothers undertake for their child (adopted or not) and themselves.

PPP 2020: The Highest Peak

 

David (Dax Alejandro) wants to climb Mount Apo, the highest peak in the Philippines, after the death of his wife and son. To do so, he needs a porter - and after fate gives him an unlikely choice, he sets out on a personal journey that takes him into interesting paths.

The mountain trek as personal journey narrative has been explored before in local cinema in films such as Pepe Diokno's Above the Clouds (2014), but usually in these narratives, the climbers are usually outsiders. While that holds true in The Highest Peak, we are also told the perspective of the people living around and in the mountain itself.

It's clear that David is more involved with Mount Apo than it first seems - he was once part of a mining company that planned to take advantage of the mountain's resources to the detriment of its Lumad population. In a way, this journey is not only one of healing, but redemption. As he makes his way up, he gains firsthand knowledge of the lives of the people he was about to ruin. While that happens, Apo itself becomes a character, its occasional earthquakes almost like signals of discontent.

That said, everything I just mentioned works in theory, but the execution is lacking. While this film is a step up from earlier efforts such as Tu Pug Imatuy (2017) and Kaaway sa Sulod (2019), a lot of details are lost thanks to an edit that doesn't bring all these concepts together. For example, had I not known the synopsis of the film first hand, I'd have thought that Mara Lopez's character was David's wife instead of someone else, and certain flashback scenes don't feel like flashbacks, making the film slightly difficult to parse.

And once David has reached the peak, with all the standard melodramatic bells and whistles, what then? He joins the people of the mountain, he partakes in their struggles. All admirable things, of course, but the threat of large corporations is still there, and they won't go away. I'm personally torn whether that storytelling decision is justified or not. While Barbarona does touch upon the different ways the mountain is exploited by capitalists and corporations, what about the local efforts of the government to stop and prevent (or, in some cases, facilitate) that exploitation? What are the other effects of this exploitation towards the Lumad communities?  While, to be fair, the film does depict some of this, it's only during the last 10 minutes or so when this happens. The picture the film paints feels incomplete.

That said, while heavily flawed, there were some parts to The Highest Peak that I enjoyed, and hopefully Barbarona and company get to refine their filmmaking skills even more with future projects.

QCinema 2020: Genus, Pan (Lahi, Hayop)

Note: spoilers. 

Aristotle once wrote that what separates us from the animals is our ability to reason, in that our being rational is our defining quality, our final cause. In Lav Diaz's Genus, Pan, that idea is turned on its head, exploring all the different ways where that isn't necessarily true, either due to our ability to reason against reason, or our proclivity towards emotionality and chaos.

Genus, Pan is an expansion of Diaz's original short film Hugaw (2019), part of the omnibus film Lakbayan (2019). In my original review of that film, I read the film as a meditation on truth. This film expands on that in terms of both themes and scope: truth in the context of mythohistory (that is, history within myth) and systems of control, as well as how hierarchies and systems of control are corrupted by our irrationality and base desires.

The film starts out by following three mine workers who are returning home after undertaking dangerous work: Baldo (Nanding Josef), Paulo (Bart Guingona), and Andres (Don Melvin Boongaling). They traverse through the forest, exchanging stories and arguing. Not all three make it through, and we are left to question why. 

If we consider Clarence Tsui's reading of the short film as a retelling of the plight of revolutionary hero Andres Bonifacio, it also makes sense in this expanded version. The film's protagonist, Andres, shares the frustrations of his namesake; people close to him, including family, have been savaged by those in positions of power. The difference is, in this retelling, the Spanish have been replaced by other foreign powers alluded to in the dialogue: Chinese, Japanese and other foreign powers (as well as their Filipino collaborators) who use the island and its peoples for their own material gain. 

Diaz's fascination with history, myth and mythmaking continues here, as he explores the many different ways the population of Hugaw are controlled by both: the spread of a malicious rumor keeps prying eyes out of Hugaw, while characters create myths of their own to serve their own aims. Inggo (Joel Saracho) does this very thing in order to take revenge on Andres; and even Andres himself embellishes his story at first in order to cover his own tracks. It resonates with the past, given how certain historical events have been reframed or hidden (consider how Andres Bonifacio's own tragic end was obscured by the Americans until it was unearthed by Teodoro Agoncillo.) It resonates with contemporary events, especially given how our media is controlled and twisted through fear, creation of distrust in the fourth estate and in the proliferation of fake news.

And, we return to Aristotle's words and how Diaz uses that idea of man and animal to depict man's inhumanity towards man. Our animal side is seen in how we establish hierarchies, whether by choice or nature. For example, in the mines, the corporations control the bosses and supervisors, who control and exploit the workers. Even within smaller groups, this pecking order exists: Baldo, Paulo and Andres have established their own levels of control and power, with Andres at the bottom. Quite similarly, in the Philippine revolution, Bonifacio's group represented the masses, only to be controlled, co-opted and snuffed out by the elites under Aguinaldo's command. 

And both protagonist and presumed namesake meet their end not at the hand of foreign powers, but at the hand of their fellow countrymen, all because of a desire for control, for self-gain, and maybe even because the hierarchy (the way things are) commands it. There will always be predator and prey. Someone always has to be the first to partake in the day's kill. Either way, it leads to chaos, death and savagery. That mindset is felt ever more strongly today, and while Diaz doesn't make any direct attacks, there is a simmering sense of discontent in this film that he holds back, unlike his other recent films, such as Ang Panahon ng Halimaw (2018), that could barely keep it in.

It is when one looks to the past, acknowledges past mistakes (including one's own), and works to disable the systems that place us in strictly defined strata that we can transcend our animal nature. But unfortunately for Andres, such epiphanies come too late. Perhaps, it is not too late for us.

PPP 2020: Kintsugi

Note: Spoilers are present in this piece.

In Japanese aesthetics, the concept of Wabi-sabi (侘寂) finds beauty in imperfection, meaning in brokenness. These flaws are not hidden, but emphasized: in the pottery technique Kintsugi, as one character in Lawrence Fajardo's film of the same name states, these flaws are the main feature of the piece. Yet in doing so, Wabi-sabi also notes the nature of transience and impermanence, in that all things, eventually, are broken. While the concept behind Kintsugi the film is nothing new - romance stories in Japan have been tackled in local films such as Between Maybes (2019) and diaspora stories in Japan was the focus of Fajardo's own Imbisibol (2015) - there's something interesting behind the flaws of this imperfect film.

Dante (JC Santos) is a potter and craftsman working in Saga prefecture, a place in Japan known for its potters. Like most Filipinos working abroad, he does this to support his family. He meets and gets infatuated with Harue (Hiro Nishiuchi), an art teacher who returns to her family house after a stint in Tokyo.

The film is presented with muted colors, the camerawork often fixed. At times, domestic scenes are shot closer to the floor, similar to Ozu's famed 'tatami shots.' And it fits with the mundanity of the film's goings-on, as it depicts the normal lives of normal people.

The beginning of the film takes us through the motions of a romance that seems normal at first glance, but it takes an unexpected turn when Dante returns to the Philippines and reveals more about his background. He comes from a family of potters and artisans, just like Harue's family in Japan; but while Harue's family is thriving, Dante's family craft is in danger of shutting down, due to a number of external factors (lack of government support being one of them.) It's also shown that he's married, but his wife was involved in a tragic accident and has been unconscious for a long time. Him reaching out to Harue and falling in love with her now feels like an escape, a life with her signifying a sense of perfection that he is unable to reach in his own land. His personal struggle mirrors the struggles Filipinos feel when going to another country for a better life - where the same life back home offers little to no benefits.

And although a life abroad is something that Dante aspires to achieve, Harue doesn't exactly have it easy either in Japan. While she is a talented potter and artist, those talents are mostly set aside because she is a woman. She cannot inherit the family business by herself, and her future is set towards a path she doesn't necessarily like. And Harue's father, perhaps out of either deep seated prejudice towards gaijin or concern for his daughter, drives a wedge in Dante and Harue's plans.

In contrast to Kintsugi, where the flaws are seen, the troubles that beset Dante and Harue are flaws that are hidden beyond each others' sight, leading to misunderstanding and conflict. It's hard to find the beauty in them, if such beauty even exists. But here we arrive at the second meaning in Wabi-sabi - that acknowledgement of the transience of things. Filipinos can claim another place as home, but some roots will forever stay in home soil; love can grow and blossom, but that too cannot last. All things pass and fade away, and the tragedy and sad beauty of life is in accepting that this is the way things are.

PPP 2020: He Who Is Without Sin

 

Movies about the plasticity of truth have been around for a while now, perhaps most notably Akira Kurosawa's 1950 masterpiece Rashomon, which presented one story in four conflicting accounts. There are similarities in the structure of Rashomon with Jason Paul Laxamana's latest film, He Who Is Without Sin, but such similarities are superficial at best, and while Rashomon works well to confront the complexities of truth and truth-telling, He Who Is Without Sin fails in that same respect.

He Who is Without Sin tells the story of Martin (Elijah Canlas) a broadcast journalism student who gets to meet his idol Lawrence (Enzo Pineda), a popular TV broadcast reporter. The story of their meeting gets told thrice, with each iteration filled with even more lurid details. Additionally, we see that, for some reason, Canlas' character isn't exactly a reliable narrator of events.

The film then seems to follow the structure of Kurosawa's film, but adds a number of complications into the mix that don't exactly help the proceedings. Martin's characterization is erratic, the script giving him random insane outbursts that are inconsistent with his character. If one were to read He Who is Without Sin as a work talking about sexual assault and the reaction of survivors to said assault, the implications are unfortunate. It seems to give the impression that victims rationalize their abuse by telling themselves that they wanted it in the first place. Whether that subtext is intentional or not, we can't say for sure.

In terms of the story's perspective (i.e. from where the story is told), most of the perspectives seemingly come from Martin only; and even that is in doubt. The sources of all three stories feel like they are presented from nowhere in particular, though with a perceived bias towards Martin. The film's stories and truths are incommensurable, and while that in itself is not a bad thing, it's what happens in the ending that damns He Who is Without Sin.

In Rashomon, while the film fails to reconcile all four stories, there is a note of hope in the end. That film shows that while humans may believe in certain things to benefit their own self interest, that's not always true. He Who is Without Sin just ends abruptly and cynically, and that's a mistake that Laxamana has made before with films like Instalado (2017). He seems to be more interested in describing a problem, layering it with all sorts of complications, building a milieu around that and abandoning it all just before anything interesting really happens. The filmmaking to support the story just isn't there. It honestly feels like a first draft, which is a shame.

And there is, of course, the elephant in the room: Lawrence and Martin are both mediamen, both unlikeable, both presented as products of a systemic, all-consuming rot within media itself. Why would we trust the truth of these truth tellers if they are horrible people? While one can reason away such subtext as the actions of isolated individuals, unrepresentative of the whole, and as an appeal towards critical thinking, the timing is very suspect, considering that both actual fascists and fascist wannabes have been fostering distrust of media for a long time. Laxamana could have used the film as an appeal for responsible journalism, but he cowers from his own questions at the last minute.

QCinema 2020: QC Short Shorts Short Shorts Reviews

 

It's film festival season here in the Philippines, though it doesn't feel like it given the fact that we're still in the middle of a global pandemic. In this piece we talk about 15 short films about pandemic life in all its varying degrees of darkness and light.

We start off with Basurahan, depicting two decapitated heads as they rot inside a trash can. While the heads' presence may be interpreted literally, considering our current state as a nation where murder is normalized, figuratively it may refer to people like us, trapped in our own isolated little boxes, while our government and society at large pisses and vomits on us. Our only recourse, then, is to scream.

Bond's direct relation to pandemic life is tenuous at best, but its depiction of human relationships still counts, literalizing the idea that every separation is painful, composed of hundreds of smaller goodbyes that cut, and cut deep. In a time where people are separated, and not by choice, it's a poignant meditation on that idea.

Cats and Dogs' world is a silent world, without dissent, anger or rage. It seems like a peaceful world, but it's also a world without people, showing us that a world like that is empty and perhaps not worth living in.

Happy Life Pilipinas starts with inanities, recommendations for self improvement that work only for some, and other miscellaneous nonsense. It does nothing for its sleeping protagonist, whose boredom and ennui probably resonates with a lot of us right now.

Swipe Right is a small hopeful snippet that communicates that, even in a time where separation and distancing have been normalized, people still find ways to find each other.

The only documentary in this lineup, Sigpat sa Paglaum, tells the story of a mother who struggles to teach educational modules to her children (she has 9, of whom 8 are of school age.) It's a damning indictment of the Department of Education's policies (and by extension, the policies of the government itself) - full of big ideas with little to no thought to the socioeconomic minutiae and complexities involved with bringing those ideas to fruition.

Mga Filipinx sa Panahon ng Pandemix is filled with faces - often with mouths agape - contorted in confusion, anger, or sheer incredulity at the stupidity being uttered on screen. The usual suspects utter those words, (which is not particularly surprising) making the proceedings hilarious and also infuriating.

Namnama En Lolang is a dramatized (?) account of events that ring all too true in light of current events. It is one of two films that touch on the plight of health workers during this crisis, and it goes straight for the heartstrings.

Miss You, George is the second of those two aforementioned films, and this one hurts even more. Personally, it's my favorite film of all 15 shorts because of that personal resonance.

Island Symphony in C Major 19 fills its frames with images of travel, both in open, 'free' spaces (such as a beach or on provincial roads) and in the strange new reality of a pandemic-stricken cityscape. The irony lies in the fact that the former resides only in dreams and hopes, while the latter resides in the here and now.

Naraniag A Bulan tells a story of separation and yearning in the context of the pandemic. It's images are lush, but in terms of content it comes out a bit short compared to its fellow short films.

I've been told that the word Mingaw could either mean silence, or the act of missing someone. In this short film of the same name, both definitions apply: the peaceful silence of old age, the loneliness that comes when longing for separated loved ones.

One of the lightest entries in this batch of shorts is Pitch to the Stars, which is exactly what it sounds like. It's nothing too deep or profound, but it's very entertaining, and we could all use a bit of laughter right now.

Maski Papano is another whimsical, lighthearted short film about finding ourselves whenever we feel lost and alone. At least that's what I think about it. You could say I'm pulling stuff out my butt this time but who cares, I really enjoyed this one.

And finally, Mask4Mask is a short meditation on how people maintain relationships and form connections with each other during a time when the environment isn't exactly conducive to such activities, similar to Swipe Right from earlier.

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That's all for today, stay tuned for more articles coming soon.

Notes on Daang Dokyu Film Festival: Taboo

 

Taboo is a word that carries a lot of weight. In some ways, it implies silence, because it relates to people or things that are simply not talked about. In some ways, it implies invisibility, ghosts moving about a hidden world. But to be silent or to confer invisibility denies people their dignity; and the documentarian's job then becomes one who speaks or lets others speak, and one who shines a light on invisible people.

Nick Deocampo's Oliver (1983) does just that thing, showing us in all its unfiltered glory the life and trials of its titular subject. While Oliver gyrates, impersonates and does all sorts of entertaining, at times shocking acts, we are reminded that he does this for the sake of his family. Ultimately, his acts are a transaction, exchanged for monetary gain. But beyond that  the film explores how its subject grapples with identity and gender, topics that would have been normally talked about differently in 1983, making this film a radical act in itself.

One constant running through both Oliver and the next film we will discuss is the limbo where sex workers dwell. The promise of what looks like easy money in exchange for flesh is a trap, and societal structures are rigged against these people escaping the trap, ensuring that the cycle will perpetuate itself anew. In Pabelle Manikan's Dreaming in the Red Light (2019), this trap extends across generations. The mother-daughter subjects of the film know that sex work brings with it certain prejudices and connotations, but the lure of sex work draws some of them like moths drawn to a red-lit flame.

People stay silent because of societal taboos, an internalized shame built on wrong or misguided assumptions. With this silence comes an anxiety at the thought that either one's self or a loved one may be afflicted with something considered taboo, and the documentaries Invisible (2019) and All Grown Up (2018) tackle this in different ways, and the latter in particular leads to particularly heartwarming and profound moments.

There are people who are invisible but want to be seen, in the case of Jose Antonio Vargas' Documented (2013). I saw this in Cinemalaya and it is even more resonant in Trump's America, where the status of immigrants, illegal or not (and also by choice or not) is more gray than black and white.

Child soldiers occupy invisible spaces. They are embroiled in conflicts often not by their own choice. They join these conflicts forcibly, or through social pressures, or in some cases, through a personal desire to fight oppression. Mga Batang Mandirigma (2004) chronicles the transition from normal life, to child soldier, back to normal life - or at least a life as normal as possible.

To end this batch of documentaries we have Dory (2017), a short glimpse into the life of an aging trans woman near the end of her life. While before we talked about invisible people and silence, we get a glimpse of what it feels like in reverse: to live a life where friends and family have mostly passed on, where almost everyone we know is gone or silent. The result is a heartbreaking look into loneliness and the double bladed sword of old age.

Daang Dokyu is a month long film festival celebrating 100 years of Filipino Documentary film. For more information, visit their official website.

Notes on Daang Dokyu Film Festival: Ecology

 

An interconnected system links environment with people and people with each other, and that idea is behind Daang Dokyu's first lineup of documentaries. This first batch of films not only deal with the idea of ecology in the biological sense, but also in the sociological sense. These films show the effects of both colonialism and neocolonialism on Filipino society, and how corporations exploit people for monetary gain.

The oldest films in the lineup, Native Life in the Philippines (1914) by Dean Worcester and Glimpses of the Culion Leper Colony and of Culion Life (1929) by Merl La Voy, are fascinating historical artifacts. But the former was borne out of racism and even white supremacy - the film was made because Worcester wanted material to support his idea that we are a people of savages and thus should not be made independent. He owned land in the Philippines as well, and as such didn't want to lose that land to anyone. The latter, while perhaps far more benign in its intentions, does not completely show how some patients are deprived of their liberties in the island.

Generational oppression is seen in films such as Sabangan (1983) and Dam Nation (2019), filmed 36 years apart, facing the same problem: the impending construction of the Kaliwa Dam, a project that will destroy their way of life if it ever comes into fruition. Over generations, oppression through war is replaced by the neocolonial aims of corporations, such as in Jin Takaiwa's The War We Were Not Taught About (1994).

And there are films that show the human response to trauma in the form of natural disasters: Balud and Ang Pagpakalma sa Unos are responses to Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda by exploring our relationship to disasters, superstitions and myth, while documentaries such as Pinatubo: Pagbangon Mula sa Abo (2011) presents our resilience as a people.

Perhaps one of the most interesting explorations of the idea of Filipino social ecology is Pagbabalik sa Tribo, an installment of the popular Probe Team docuseries, that depicts filmmaker Aureus Solito (now known as Kanakan-Balintagos) as he reconnects with the Pala'wan tribe and fights to defend their right to fish in contested waters. I have been talking a lot about the relationship between man, nature, and other men in this post, and this documentary is a synthesis of all those topics - the Pala'wan are discriminated against, marginalized and oppressed not by foreign invaders, but by fellow Filipinos who desire to monopolize natural resources meant for everyone.

Like so many of the other films in this post, Pagbabalik sa Tribo tackles man's relationship with himself, as both Solito and presenter Howie Severino grapple with their personal and cultural identity, trying to find out what being Filipino means to them.

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Daang Dokyu is a month long film festival celebrating 100 years of Filipino Documentary film. For more information, visit their official website.

Present Confusion Reviews | Heart Attack (2015)

 

After an extended stay in academia, it was time for me to embark on my first real job and contribute to society, my family and myself. Aside from the worry that no one will take me in, I also had to decide if the job was suited for the life I eventually wanted to live. Admittedly, such thoughts are a privilege, since many do not have the luxury of choosing. Between the stability of a salaried, regular job and the freedom of freelance work, I was attracted to the latter. There's something enticing about the prospect of working at your own pace and your own time. That flexibility, at least in theory, allows one to chase after personal pursuits. 

But this ideal setup is a pipe dream, reserved only for the rich and lucky. Capitalist society has corrupted the freelance system, taking advantage of it to allow companies to commodify time as a function of labor. You may have more "free time," but that "free time" can be spent making more money, so people are inevitably drawn to work more instead of resting (and this is a scenario ripe for exploitation). In my case, I had to take on multiple "rackets" or freelance work on the side, or risk not being able to pay the things I need (much less want.) In the end, I had a lot of work and no time, realized that was a bad idea, and eventually settled for a regular, salaried job to keep me financially secure.

Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit's Heart Attack takes that idea to its logical extreme. Yoon (Sunny Suwanmethanont) is THE freelance graphic artist, working multiple sleepless nights to deliver work to clients in record time. Time is a constant presence throughout the film; shots of a ticking clock are a constant reminder to Yoon (and to us) that he is working on a tightrope - one misstep and it's a missed deadline and a potential lost job. 

Yoon consistently submits excellent work, but he overworks himself to the detriment of his health: a mysterious rash begins to appear on his body. This is the strain on his body made tangible, and the film also keeps track of the number of rashes on his body, itself an indirect measurement of his stress levels and overall work-life balance.

The film presents us with a conundrum by introducing the character of Imm (Davika Hoorne,) a soft spoken medical resident who helps Yoon deal with his condition. Yoon knows that he will get better if he follows Imm's advice (and given her terrible track record as a healer, Imm would benefit from that as well), but that eventually means that he will stop seeing her once he's okay. At the same time, Yoon's efforts at taking a break come into conflict with his old workaholic life, and he starts to make mistakes.

That paradox reveals the tragedy of Yoon's character: he lives in a society that encourages workaholics like him, and as a consequence, this a society that does not foster meaningful human interactions and relationships. His relationship with Imm is a start, but even that is a transactional relationship; had he not been sick, Yoon would never have met Imm at all, and it is uncertain if he could meet Imm outside of the walls of the clinic if he gets better. He doesn't have any friends outside of that (at least, to him), because he simply doesn't have the time to sit and talk. This is explicitly seen when Yoon attends a friend's funeral, only to spend the majority of that funeral working from his computer. Yoon soon imagines his own funeral, and he accepts the fact that only a handful of people will be there to attend. This is the worth of a life under such an oppressive system: left alone, forgotten and unloved.

The character that becomes a mirror image of Yoon is Je (Violette Wautier,) Yoon's handler. At first she is trapped within the same oppressive system where the pressure for deliverables is constant. It might appear at first that she, like those above her in the corporate ladder, is exploiting Yoon for her own benefit, but it is clear that she is a dear friend and looks out for Yoon in her own way. Her work life balance is shifted in the opposite direction of Yoon's when she receives a marriage proposal and she chooses life over work. She eventually finds a balance and becomes instrumental in helping Yoon get out of his situation.

The ending is trademark Nawapol; it's giddily uncertain, like one holding a breath in anxious anticipation. It posits: we may be islands in an open sea, but we are all oases to each other. We are, each of us, secluded beaches where others can settle down, look at the setting sun, and exhale.

So I Watched a Turkish TV Series called Everywhere I Go

 

So let's take a break from movie reviews for a short while and talk TV. 

The Philippines has the teleserye, Thailand has lakorn, and Latin America has the telenovela. Many countries have their own version of the serialized television series, but one country that flew under my radar happens to be one of the most prolific producers of TV content in terms of international distribution - Turkey. In Turkey it's called Dizi, and can refer to shows from a number of different genres.

Thanks to the folks over at Solar Entertainment, I've been able to watch the first few episodes of a 2019 series called Her Yerde Sen, a.k.a. Everywhere I Go. Its premise is similar to the Japanese manga/drama series Good Morning Call! where two people are tricked into owning the same apartment and romantic hijinks ensue. Initially, these two new roommates, Demir and Selin, are not happy with their surprise arrangement and argue and bicker over the smallest things. This drama, however, adds an extra complication to the proceedings by making Demir Selin's new boss, where he begins to introduce a number of workplace changes that Selin does not appreciate at all.

The episodes I saw cover the very beginning of this relationship, so I don't know how it all pans out. But there's more to Demir and Selin than meets the eye: Demir, for example, looks like he has past trauma regarding family, and there might be a reason why he rented that particular home in the first place. Selin, on the other hand, has her own issues to work out. Both come from very different backgrounds and both have different viewpoints in life, but if my hunches are correct, they'll eventually find common ground somewhere down the road. It's nice so far, filled with interesting characters and although the chemistry between the two leads hasn't found its footing yet, it's too early to tell 3 episodes in.

As for the rest of the story, I don't know what's going to happen, but luckily for us local viewers we'll be able to see how the story unfolds once the series starts airing on the ETC channel on September 19 with a 3 episode premiere (basically the same episodes that I've watched so far) and regular airing every 8pm on weekdays starting on the 21st. 

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That's it, I'm thinking of using the blog to talk about more TV in the future since movie-wise the world isn't producing a lot of new movie content these days for obvious reasons.

TIFF 2020 Reviews: Shadow in the Cloud, The Disciple, Quo Vadis, Aida?

 

Roseanne Liang's Shadow in the Cloud is a great fit for TIFF's Midnight Madness section: a wild, sometimes silly, sometimes hamfisted mishmash of genres that is entertaining as hell, as long as you suspend your disbelief.

Monsters of all kinds haunt WWII pilot Maude Garrett (Chloe Grace Moretz) as she undertakes a top secret mission, and if we are to follow the film's rather overt messaging, the worst monster of all is the patriarchy. The disbelief, skepticism and casual sexism Garrett has to endure over most of the film is reflected in the claustrophobic space of a bomber's turret where she is physically squeezed into the frame.

The proceedings evolve (or devolve, depending on your suspension of disbelief) into more familiar genre trappings by the film's third act, something that will either make or break one's appreciation of the film. But Liang makes it all supremely entertaining, and she knows exactly what kind of film this is and rolls with it.

An artist's journey to master his or her art is often fraught with difficulties, stemming from any number of personal, social and even spiritual factors. But while many take the journey, very few can truly reach the enlightenment at the end. The question that Chaitanya Tamhane's The Disciple then asks is, what happens to all those artists that are left behind?

Both languid and introspective, The Disciple takes us through one such journey. Aditya Modak plays Sharad Nerulkar, a practitioner of traditional Indian music, specializing in a specific type of improvisational performance called Raag. His journey begins through childhood, and is shaped through many mentors. But he begins to suspect that among those climbing the mountain of artistic enlightenment, he belongs to those who will never reach its peak.

This deep existential crisis constitutes most of the film and is compounded by a number of other socio-cultural problems: for an artistic field whose practitioners are drawn towards more modern, contemporary forms of art, the idea that one is unable to contribute directly (and meaningfully) to that field is particularly devastating.

During my initial viewing of the film, I found myself frustrated at the film's eventual solution, something that I figured could've been resolved in far less time. But it's a sunk cost fallacy, in a way: when engaging in a lifetime of work towards an unattainable goal, it might look easier to just keep going than to stop, take a step back, and take a new path.

An inevitable, horrifying force propels the viewer through Jasmila Žbanić's Quo Vadis, Aida?, a heartbreaking and harrowing account of the Srebrenica massacre through the eyes of a UN interpreter. This inertia towards an inevitable outcome makes the proceedings all the more heartbreaking. This is a film that stays with you.

There are a number of things that Žbanić manages to pull off; the film does not glorify or stylize the atrocities that occur, electing instead to put the focus on the victims, and it does not pull its punches when it shows the inaction and thus, the complicity of the UN forces to the events that occur.

Aida uses her unique situation to try to help her family, trying to game a system obsessed with following regulations to the letter. The UN forces, meanwhile, are naive at best, and foolish at worst to think that they can take a war criminal's word as truth.

And then, a masterfully written coda adds a further kink to the proceedings, showing us that the enemy are not aliens or invaders from another land, the perpetrators of this brutal violence were (and still are) countrymen, neighbors, co-workers, and students, most of whom have not been held liable for their crimes. There are no mustache twirling villains, only evil men following orders, an Arendtian waking nightmare for those who survive. But instead of despair the end is hopeful, echoing the film's title: a reference to an apocryphal story where Saint Peter, on the run from Roman authorities, meets the risen Jesus on the road. Jesus' words compel Saint Peter to be brave and return to Rome, to certain crucifixion. Sometimes, in the face of despair, with nothing to lose, the best thing to do is to be brave and live on.

TIFF 2020 Reviews: Gaza Mon Amour, Nomadland, Under the Open Sky

 The Toronto International Film Festival is currently ongoing. Here are reviews of some of the films from that fest.

The romance at the heart of Gaza Mon Amour is the kind that would be done in a 15 minute short film, had the movie taken place in an ideal world. But the film takes place in Palestine, where simple matters of the heart are made needlessly more complicated by bureaucracies, systematic oppression and other things. 

By a twist of fate, fisherman Issa (Salim Daw) finds himself in the possession of a bronze Greek Statue (and its disembodied phallus). The statue (and its phallus) become the target of the Hamas authorities; indeed, phalluses both figurative and literal become a sort of obsession for them. It becomes a symbol of supremacy or power that is desired, but not easily obtained. Near the end, there is a parade in the streets where a fake rocket (itself a phallic metaphor) is being raised up. One day we'll have a real rocket of our own, one man says.

But this movie is anything but bleak; the film is more a comedy than a drama, mining gold from the absurdity of the situation Issa finds himself in. Despite all the darkness, the characters of Gaza Mon Amour have found laughter and love in their situation.

The economic devastation brought upon by the recession of 2008 has led Fern (Frances McDormand) to live a life of a nomad, riding across the United States on her trusty van, working part time jobs and seasonal work at places like Amazon. It is not an easy life, but it's a life that she has embraced, perhaps partly out of a desire to grieve, but with no real outlet for that grief. It is also in its own way, an indictment of the economic policies that have lead to this scattering of peoples.

The first part of Chloe Zhao's latest film, Nomadland reads like a series of testimonials from real life nomads (the movie is actually adapted from a true life story) who have all hit the road for different reasons. Some are just looking for a place to settle down. Some are looking for a place to die. Some desire freedom, and some take the trip to find themselves. It's a bit of a paradox, actually: where people find community in shelters and trailer camps, but often only in short, transitory spurts.

The second half of the film becomes a character study, where our gaze is directed solely at Fern and the reasons behind her desire to become a Nomad. She's presented with another way out. But wounds don't heal as easily as we'd like to think, and the shadows of a former life sometimes cling to people too tightly. Home may be where the heart is, but what if the heart is itself lost?

Miwa Nishikawa's films often depict people who use lies and deceit to live another life, but in her latest film, Under the Open Sky, Misao Mikami (Koji Yakusho) is a man whose candor regularly gets him in a lot of trouble. This is a man who wears his heart on his sleeve. The problem is in a society like Japan, speaking your mind isn't always the best recourse.

But to the people who do try to understand Mikami, they find someone who is genuinely trying his best to live out his newfound freedom. The film is littered with small acts of kindness from people who genuinely want Mikami to succeed.

In the end, however, Nishikawa throws us a curveball in the film's last minutes. It questions the meaning of living "under the open sky," and whether having freedom but merely surviving is any better than a life well lived, but behind prison. Paradoxically, for a man who tells the truth to anyone he comes across, the only lie is the lie he tells himself.

Cinemalaya 2020 Festival Report: Selected Reviews from Indie Nation Shorts, Special Premieres

 

The first few minutes of Joey Paras' Igib lets us know what kind of person its main antagonist is: opportunistic, selfish, the kind that doesn't take responsibility for her actions, the kind that takes a mile for every inch. Despite many calling it a blatant display of poor people doing poor things, I tended to see it more as a character study between a wayward mother and son, and an acting showcase for comedian/director Joey Paras, who gives an excellent performance here.

There's a very clever narrative trick at the end of Arby Laraño's Ang Meron Sa Wala that leads one to reconsider the entire film not just as an examination of a father's regrets, but as a genuine attempt to understand them. To say more would be a spoiler, so I'll just leave my recommendation here.

Dama de Noche's otherwise run of the mill plot is enhanced by its unique coffin-eye view, placing us in the shoes of its "protagonist," an OFW whose existence is reduced by many of those left behind to her ability to make money, even from beyond the grave. It gave me the feeling that I was being buried alive, and if it's "protagonist" were alive, I'm sure she'd feel something similar.

There's a lot to be gleaned in the silences of Cody Abad's Grand Gestures, a film about how some families tend to bypass said grand gestures when reconnecting and asking for forgiveness. In fact, its major character moments are seen in little things, without any accompanying histrionics (arguably the only grand gesture in the film is the incident that incited the events of the film in the first place.)  It's subdued but meaningful, making the most of its short timespan.

For every film like The Slums, we have films like Tarang. While Tarang boasts an impressive cast, I am personally getting tired of the same formula depicting poor people being subjected to near constant misery and misfortune, something that now feels as cliched as a mainstream romcom. 

Tahanan reminds me a bit of Brillante Mendoza's short Shiniuma; in both films the protagonist is displaced from a life that he's known for decades into a place that's alien and off-putting, a place where he doesn't belong to anymore. I like the character study, even though it's a riff on familiar material.

What makes Gulis (Lines) work for me is its depiction of familial love, the type of love that is given despite everything, without judgement. It's a fitting last (?) performance from Menggie Cobarrubias and I hope to see more from this director in the future.

The superimposed layers on top of the form of Displaced feels unnecessary, because its stories and accounts from people during and after the Marawi siege are powerful enough.  Still, even just for those stories it is worth watching.

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Basurero is a great addition to the canon of films taking place during the government's war on drugs. It's also notable in that it also shines a light on why the poor are forced into the drug trade - because of limited opportunities for employment, selling drugs feels like easy money.

Like last year's PPP entry Pagbalik, Nang Em is heartfelt but very rough in its construction, with a tone that feels all over the place. But Gloria Sevilla's performance carries the film for me in any case. One's mileage may vary.

If there's any film that encapsulates the growing frustration of Filipinos during this latest crisis, it's probably Chuck Gutierrez's adaptation of the stage play Heneral Rizal. The titular Rizal doesn't refer to the National Hero, but rather his brother, Paciano (played by Nanding Josef), who laments the state of the nation after our country is passed on from one colonizer to another. Its ending scene seems to imply that we should not seek the guidance of a singular savior or the second coming of someone who has long passed away, but instead we should emulate a love of country and nation within our own selves, and that's something I can get behind.

Cinemalaya 2020 Festival Report: Main Competition Entries

Cinemalaya 2020 exists now in a different form than earlier planned: from a venue-based film festival, Cinemalaya has joined other festivals to the online space, with films old and new available for streaming for a very reasonable price.

Here are some short thoughts about the Main Competition entries for this year's edition of Cinemalaya:

SHORTS A

Ang Gasgas na Plaka ni Lolo Bert was part of last year's Cinema One Originals Film Festival, and its depiction of isolation and loneliness in old age rings even more poignantly today, considering the physical and emotional distances that have emerged between us during this pandemic.

Parts of Hubert Tibi's Pabasa Kan Pasyon reminds me of the Cinemalaya 2012 short Victor in its depiction of religiosity and the irony that arises when that religiosity conflicts with worldly desires. But beyond that, it explores the ironies of human behavior: how we sometimes treat the profane as sacred, and how we treat the sacred as profane. This facet of human nature is portrayed via various images: urinating next to holy symbols, posing for pictures next to Herod and not Jesus, storytelling for things both scandalous and holy.

Out of all the competition shorts in this festival, James Mayo's Fatigued is the short that takes the most advantage of the festival's shift to the online space (although hearing people chanting and stomping their feet in, say, the Tanghalang Nicanor Abelardo would be a hoot and a half.) Its aesthetic evokes a Japanese Visual Novel, both in its interactivity and its general visual feel. But the game itself is a facade, an illusion of choice - evoking the helplessness and hopelessness this pandemic has brought out of us.

There's something magical about Tokwifi, a spell of a film that shatters the rigid tenets of Western thinking and colonialist mindsets in the context of our society. On one hand, we have Limmayug, the indigenous man, whose culture and humanity has been dismissed by the white man as savagery and incivility, and Laura, the woman, whose image is molded in the white man's eye, her personality dictated to her by those same men. During the climax of this short film, those chains are broken. When Limmayug shows Laura the beauty of his culture by showing her something those colonizers could only dream of building, Laura, albeit temporarily, is liberated (figuratively or not), the film's way of urging us to consider the stories of our people in a different light, through our own eyes.

Quing Lalam Ning Aldo is a relatively straightforward tale of homecoming, but like many of the other entries in this festival, it takes on a whole different meaning when there are families all over the Philippines that are separated thanks to this plague, and not by choice either. Its ending represents the dream of a world that has returned to normal, a world that feels increasingly out of reach as days go by.

SHORTS B

There are two disasters in Ang Pagpakalma sa Unos: the first is the disaster caused by Typhoon Yolanda when it struck Leyte and Samar (as well as many other provinces.) The second disaster is what happened next, thanks to the ineptitude and callousness of the Aquino administration and the local government. It's a hard watch, but it's a necessary one, as it shows us that what's happening to us now is merely the latest iteration of a systemic problem that's been around for a very long time. We can prepare for disasters, but how do we prepare for disastrous leadership? The film is not completely dark, however, as it also shows the capacity of people to cope and survive in the face of unfathomable tragedy. Perhaps the biggest tragedy of the film is that some of these people didn't need to reach that point in the first place.

There's an almost Murakami-like surreal quality to Living Things, when a subtle shift in a relationship between two people is made tangible and literal. But the nonchalance of the response to that shift is also a testament to how we are pliable, elastic; willing to bend and mold ourselves in response to great changes in our lives. Its last sequence, a shot of people undergoing the same process, feels prophetic (if it was made before the pandemic). 

Utwas is perhaps the most gorgeously shot of all the shorts in this entire lineup; the S.O. remarked that it felt like a wedding videographer shot the whole thing, which is meant as a compliment. That said, the slice of life that Utwas presents us is cut short prematurely in my opinion, offering a tantalizing but incomplete look at the lives of these fishermen.

There's a shot in former QCinema 2019's Excuse Me, Miss, Miss, Miss that sticks to memory even more in these times - that shot of workers, all having completed a day's work, waiting hours to catch a ride home. It's gained more poignancy in the age of the pandemic, in an environment where Filipino workers are oppressed even more than usual. The absurdity of Excuse Me, Miss, Miss, Miss is the ironic point of the film, asking us why such illogical, inhumane labor systems exist, and why we treat such systems as normal.

And finally, we end this festival report with The Slums, a satirical take on how some depict the poor in media. It shows the artists' complicity as they profit off their subjects' misery. It is humorous and tragic in equal fashion, as we witness people carelessly creating works of art that ignore the humanity of its subjects while exploiting their misery for public display.

Transformers: War For Cybertron is what happens if you have bad leaders

This is gonna be short but I just wanna talk about this.

Transformers: War for Cybertron is a weird show. It's a heavily retooled retelling of the Generation 1 story that's darker and edgier in some ways than the original TV show. This first part of a planned three part series covers the battle between the Autobots and the Decepticons before their fated trip to Earth. It's nothing groundbreaking, but it's okay, and fans will surely get some sort of enjoyment out of it.

What really piqued my interest, however, was the backstory of the whole conflict, which sounds like a far more interesting story than the main story of War For Cybertron. I don't have much of a background in Transformers except for the G1 TV show and some scattered episodes of later series, so let me know if this has happened in other series too.

In some side dialogue, the Decepticons mention that they staged a revolution because they were abused and used as labor for a very long time. Thus, the conflict between Autobot and Decepticon is basically a class war, and the Decepticon uprising is basically a worker's revolt against the aristocratic Autobots, who fight for nebulous concepts like freedom (from what, exactly?) and miss a world with arts and culture (mentioned specifically during dialogue.) The Autobots were the oppressors, and they got overthrown.

What happens next after the Decepticon victory reminds me a lot of Pablo Freire's 1968 book Pedagogy of the Oppressed, when he talks about how oppression dehumanizes both oppressor and oppressed, and how the onus for uplifting society lies mostly on the oppressed. Screw up that process, and all people will be doing is switching sides. That's kind of what Megatron ended up doing - instead of equality for both Autobot and Decepticon, he decides to take revenge. Other than that, he establishes authoritarian rule and a cult of personality around his leadership. Usurping the desire for change, he uses blind loyalty and all too human desires to create a new oppressor class.

How ironic (or fitting) for a series about fighting robots.