amBisyon 2010: Poverty (Lupang Hinarang Sa Sumilao by Ditsi Carolino / Ayos Ka by Brillante Mendoza)

Poverty alleviation and agrarian reform issues figure prominently in the May 2010 presidential race. Manny Villar bombarded the TV airwaves with pro-poor ads. He presented himself as having come from a family so poor that they didn’t have money to treat his brother. Critics came out to disprove his fairy tale.

A New York Times interview with Noynoy Aquino’s cousin Fernando Cojuangco reveal that Aquino’s vow of redistributing Hacienda Luisita to the farmers within 5 years may be sheer posturing. Cojuangco, chief operating officer of the holding company owning the plantation, said the Cojuangco extended family will not give up the 10,000-acre land or get out of the sugar business.

Politicians prey on the hopes and dreams of poor voters. The National Statistical Coordination Board states that there are 27.6 million poor people in the Philippines in 2006. These poor people live on a little less than 42 pesos a day.

Take a peek into some of their stories…

Lupang Hinarang sa Sumilao (2010, Ditsi Carolino)

The short film is gleaned from a segment of the magnificent documentary Lupang Hinarang. It chronicles the 12-year odyssey of Bukidnon-based farmers to gain back their ancestral lands. 155 farmers walk for miles to fight for a 144-hectare land in 2007. The support of a prominent bishop, politicians, and media compels the government to heed the demands of the farmers.

Filmmaker Ditsi Carolino gave an update on the farmers. Their leader Rene Peñas was assassinated in June 2009. Only a third of the land had been redistributed to the farmers. The fight is not yet over for the Sumilao farmers.

If you want to know why the Hacienda Luisita case is a big political issue, then watch this short film or better yet, watch the original documentary.

Ayos Ka (2010, Brillante Mendoza)

Filmmaker Brillante Mendoza had been criticized for allegedly making ‘poverty porn’ films for international film festivals. ‘Poverty porn’ is a type of film that employs shocking images in showing the misery and suffering of people living or working in hellish, abject conditions. Mendoza countered that he is just showing what is really happening in the country.

One of the things I loved most about the Mendoza films is that despite the grim subject there is some humor or trace of hope shimmering in the films. His latest film Ayos Ka is a wickedly ironic music video. The initial set of lyrics depicts the beauty of living in the Philippines. However, the images tell a different story. Third World squalor is shown for all to see. Kids are scavenging for recyclable items. A snatcher is scampering away with his loot.

There is an unforgettable, powerful scene showing a horde of istambays at a street corner. The accompanying lyrics remind the youth to shape up in order to avoid sharing the fate of these scums. The song ends with a shot of a smiling toddler.

The music video has such an infectious melody that I’ve had a bad case of LSS for days. The images are so brutal that it provokes the viewers to ask why these things are happening in their midst. Hopefully, the pondering viewer will make a wise choice in the coming May 10 elections.

Ayos Ka is a dig on politicians who trumpet economic growth of the Philippines. The economic gains are not trickling down to the ones who need it most. As long as millions of Filipinos are poor, there will also be millions of stories/images ripe enough to be filmed.

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What happened to the television screening of Part Two of amBisyon 2010 last weekend? The ABS-CBN News Channel 27 should have informed viewers what was the cause of the non-showing. amBisyon 2010 is a great project. I’ve seen majority of the films and I was hoping to see the other films on television. Will there be a screening in the future?

Lola (2009, Brillante Mendoza)

Right after winning the Best Director Award at the Cannes Film Festival 2009, Brillante Mendoza went home and started work on this film for 10 straight days. He wanted to capture the rainy season and the floods in Malabon. The movie ended up being a 'surprise' entry at the 66th Venice International Film Festival, where it received good reviews from critics.

Lola is a daunting, demanding, but ultimately rewarding film. If Mendoza kept you on the edge of your seat with the suspense-chiller Kinatay; then this time around, Mendoza will make you teary-eyed throughout the heavy drama movie.

The mood is drab, funereal, and quite depressing really. The heartbreaking plight of the elderly, prisoners, and impoverished people is too much to take. Think in terms of the gloomy aftermath of tropical storm Ondoy. The worst flooding in the Philippines since 1967 resulted in the deaths of hundreds and displacement of thousands of families. But, amidst all the dreariness, the extraordinary resilience of the Filipinos shines through. Bayanihan spirit will help our countrymen get through this crisis.

Lola highlights that type of resiliency and indefatigable spirit inherent in Filipinos. The Mendoza film features two grandmothers who’ve probably encountered and weathered all types of crisis and troubles. The two senior citizens are linked together by a homicide-robbery case. Lola Josefa ‘Sepa’ Quimpo (Anita Linda) lost her grandson in the incident. Lola Purificacion Burgos’ grandson Mateo is the suspect in the killing.

Adversity brings out the best in Filipinos. The elders (brilliantly acted by veteran actresses Linda and Rustica Carpio) will do anything for their family members. Lola Sepa mortgages her pension card in order to raise money for the funeral service. On the other hand, Lola Puring pawns television, and mortgages her property to amass funds for a possible amicable settlement. However, extreme crisis also brings out the worst in the Filipino. Lola Puring resorts to shortchanging buyers of vegetables to raise precious money.

The funeral procession on the inundated streets of Malabon is destined to be an iconic Mendoza moment. We see Lola Sepa, family members, loved ones, friends, and neighbors riding in a half-dozen bancas as they serenely go to the cemetery. No one is crying. It is as if their tear ducts have all dried up.

There is also a beautiful, night-time shot of a shimmering, gleaming flooded street that bodes hope and redemption. The ending shows the two grandmothers, along with loved ones, coming out of the Hall of Justice. They have overcome the latest problems that life has thrown at them. Drawing strength from family members, they are ready once more to wade through life’s joys and sorrows.

Lola will open the 11th Cinemanila International Film Festival, which runs October 15-25, 2009 at the Market! Market! Cinemas in Bonifacio Global City, Taguig. Opening night is by invitation only. Check the Cinemanila website for more information

Tirador (Brillante Mendoza, 2007)

Brillante Mendoza’s Tirador opens summarily and briskly with a police raid on a shantytown in the outskirts of Quiapo. Rendered In a cinema-verite vein, it's a night sequence that simulates what we see on the evening news, the herky-jerky camera work that documents all manner of interrupted illegality – and in this breeding ground of criminals, out they come tumbling.

The element of surprise rattles the unsuspecting: packets of drugs and other paraphernalia go flying out the windows, prostitution stops short of consummation, and the guilty, who must feel accordingly so, take a dive into fetid waters to escape. No exit for the unwitting – except for those who have learned to adapt to these specialized lives, those who know the loopholes of the law and can humor them.

It’s a heady and humorous beginning to what is essentially a cross-section of the underbelly of Quiapo, a portrait of the small-time criminals whose fates literally crisscross in the commerce and commotion of its busy streets. Much of the humor and irony can be self-deprecating, taking to heart, it seems, the truism that the Filpino laughs at his own misfortunes. And there can be as much misfortune as fortune in the act of everyday survival. Mendoza’s criminals are not smooth and infallible operators, but they know how to roll with the punches.

There is young Odie who pilfers coins from unattended gambling machines. Caloy must turn to snatching after his pedicab is heartlessly repossessed. Odie’s father will take your valuables at knifepoint, but shares his meager takings with adopted families. Rex and Tes are a couple in more ways than one, pilfering expensive electronics in well-coordinated tandem.

In Tirador, most of these men and women, young and old, have long ago stopped sentimentalizing the despondency of being at the bottom of the social totem pole. Even among their own kind, there is no letting their guard down. They live by the cold laws of the urban jungle, where Social Darwinism applies with ruthlessness as well as with finesse. One can never afford to turn his back on a cowering figure or a seemingly repentant or remorseful quarry. They are a pack of chameleons with well-practiced masks, all honed to second nature.

Mendoza’s social commentary – leavened by streetwise idiom and the jargon of gangsters and thieves – levels the breakdown of law and order on the whole rotten hierarchy of society. The usual suspects are easy targets and not spared here: they whose faces are plastered all over walls like so many posters of wanted criminals. But the culture of cynicism and immorality are more deeply entrenched. Politicians and religion are partly singled out, but in truth, it’s an over-determined state of things. Corruption breeds corruption, ad infinitum.

To disentangle the coils of corruption, however, is not, ultimately, Tirador's purpose. What’s paramount is its study of self-preservation. Nothing is sacred here-- so that the feast of the Black Nazarene is not just a moment for religious fervour – but provides singular opportunities for thievery. Grand electoral rallies, with the fiery motherhood speeches of the country’s supreme leaders, are equally promising bonanzas for thieves.

Tirador, as the foregoing suggests, is sheer gritty realism – but not angry, certainly not vociferously so. Paradoxically it radiates raw and lurid power with underplayed drama. As a piece of docudrama, it has much method and stripped-down production values in common with Mendoza’s other real-time film, Manoro. It’s a visual departure from the self-conscious aestheticism of his other films namely Masahista and Serbis. But in Tirador, there is a hand-in-glove dovetailing of form and content. The handheld, in-the-trenches camera work goes hand in hand with street-level proceedings, observing without comment what would otherwise be sentimentalized or overdramatized. Where exploitation might be unavoidable, Tirador achieves sheer human compassion.

Kinatay (2009, Brillante Mendoza)

This is no ordinary Brillante Mendoza film.

Vividly colored snippets of people doing their routine morning chores. Friendly game of basketball among the young men. Tween girls running an errand. A cook cutting a chicken into pieces. Happy portrait of a couple with their cute boy.

Is this really a Brillante Mendoza film?

Employing an Alfred Hitchcock's trick in Rear Window, the Mendoza film lures the audience into the blissful, carefree world of Peping (Coco Martin), a soon-to-be-married criminology student. The beautifully-lensed daytime segment takes a voyeuristic peek into the activities of Peping's neighbors. This segment will soon segue into a cheesy interlude onboard a jeepney and ultimately culminating in the joyous wedding celebrations. However, the daytime segment ends with an ominous shot of a red-tinged sunset.

Night falls and we see Peping running an errand for a criminal syndicate headed by rogue cops. His friend Abyong (Jhong Hilario) later convinces him to join an operation. They catch up with their colleagues inside a family van. A prostitute named Madonna (Ma. Isabel Lopez) becomes the last rider to hop onboard.

What follows is a Stygian journey into the pits of hell. Peping didn't expect anyone to receive any kind of beating. When the gang members start gagging Madonna and tying up her hands, Peping helplessly looks on. Sarge (John Regala) slaps and kicks the prostitute. The muffled cries of Madonna eventually died down. A shocked Peping can't believe the events transpiring before him. Even if he wanted to leave, he knows he can't get pass through the tight-guarding Cerberus-like trio near the van's door.

Scriptwriter Armando 'Bing' Lao provides a solid depiction of Peping's slow descent into the heart of darkness. After the group unloads the unconscious prostitute in a house, Peping contemplates on ditching the group. Escape is not an easy option, though. The group members are mostly cops-turned-hardened criminals and he is just a student. They won't hesitate to kill him. The crooked police captain (Julio Diaz) drags Peping further down the abyss by giving him a gun. The lure of power clouded the student's judgment. Soon, he is fetching sacks that will be used in the disposal of Madonna's chopped-up body parts.

The Stygian trip back to the city is equally hellish for Peping. Madonna failed to pay the required money and was soon thrown, limb by limb, out of the vehicle. The stench of the rape-slay crime overcomes Peping. He vomitted and realized that he has reneged on his school oath. He can never get back the much-desired integrity.

This is no ordinary Brillante Mendoza film.

Kinatay is the most terrifying film made by Mendoza. To horror fans out there who have never seen a movie by Brillante Mendoza, now is the right time to savor the brilliance of a Mendoza film. The suspense ratchets up to the roof since the start of the Stygian journey. The film's chills quotient never flags down. It maintains its feverish pitch until the end. The most chilling sight is seeing a pot-bellied man washing bits of skin and blood off his body. The man, who will later don a long-sleeved white polo, is Sarge, a police officer. Criminal cops? Scary stuff. The scarier part is they do really exist. As the Dagdag National Artist Carlo J. Caparas would say, 'God have mercy on us!'

Photo credit

Manoro (Brillante Mendoza, 2006)

By now, everyone must be quite familiar with the teachings and tenets of real-time filmmaking, a paradigm of Filipino cinema pioneered by the avuncular Armando Lao. A slew of successes in recent years that includes Jeffrey Jeturian’s Kubrador and Brillante Mendoza’s Tirador has given it a high artistic profile. Manoro, another film by Mendoza, continues to demonstrate the virtues of this school of filmmaking. A film of disarming and deceptive simplicity, Manoro, which means teacher in the Aeta language, chronicles a handful of days in the life of Jonalyn Ablong, a young Aeta tasked to help and teach her fellow Aetas -- illiterates all --to fill out ballot forms.

The year is 2004 and it is the eve of presidential elections. Armed with basic equipment and a makeshift blackboard, young Jonalyn must traverse a dying landscape, past water-lily-strangled streams, across lahar-choked plains and mountains, to instruct her fellow Aetas on how to put their presidential choices into writing. Whether taking pains to write down FPJ, GMA, or Lacson, there seems to be a child-like struggle to do so. Meanwhile, Jonalyn’s grandmother’s mind seems to be elsewhere – before a simple attack of black ants disperses this gathering.

There is also the matter of fetching Jonalyn’s grandfather who has gone hunting for wild boar in the mountains. She and her father must make a long, arduous trek through treacherous trails to look for him if he is to cast his ballot the following day. Jonalyn’s father seems equally fickle about the coming elections, and seems more inclined to find employment at a South Korean project in the vicinity. But that, too, requires filling out forms.

Manoro is as much about a portrait of a young teenage girl (i.e. the disproportion between her ability and her mission), as it is about a portrait of an indigenous people. Ralston Jover’s script offers a quietly burning reproach to the Aetas: depicted as a closely-knit community who share the fruits of the hunt and everything else, there are also less than flattering jabs in their direction. Take their worship of pagan gods to whom much is attributed. Take their flighty and fickle stance towards the election, the allegory of the lowly ants that can scatter them. They seem to be caught unsure at a crucial crossroads, no longer simply hunter-gatherers but not fully absorbed into modern society just yet.

With a cast of characters who play themselves, with a highly suitable use of hand-held cameras and a documentary approach, Manoro evokes a multi-faceted fable – of troubled hope and of a people caught in retreat. There are faint echoes of Samira Makhmalbaf’s Blackboards and Kiarostami’s Where is The Friend's House? and other Iranian films to be found in this film. There are also slight resonances of the mysticism of something like Souleymane Cisse’s Yeelen. But Manoro lays solid and unshakable claim to what it portrays. Filmmakers of the old schools, sit up and take notice!

Serbis (2008, Brillante Mendoza)

Serbis competed for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2008. Critics were divided over the merits of the film by Mendoza. When it crossed over the Atlantic, it was met with mostly positive reviews by American critics. It is still one of the highest-rated Filipino films tracked at the Metacritic site.

I have seen two versions of Serbis but I still haven’t seen the Cannes Film Festival version that polarized critics. The indieSine version is a heavily-cut R-18 film with valuable English subtitles. The censored scenes were re-integrated back for the UP Cine Adarna run of the film. Alas, the so-called Director’s Cut version did not have English subtitles making it difficult for viewers to take a grasp of Ilocano and Kapampangan dialogues. And apparently, it was not the definitive version. The DVD version of the film is probably the ultimate version. It seems to feature Coco Martin’s frontal nudity scene, which was not shown (censored?) at the initial UP Cine Adarna run.

Frontal nudity and graphic sex scenes abound in this movie. The initial scene shows a naked nubile girl preening in front of a mirror. She repeatedly whispers the words ‘I love you,’ which are barely heard amidst the noise of motor vehicles outside the room. Eighty-eight minutes later, I was muttering ‘I love this film.’

With Serbis, scriptwriter Armando Lao shows why he is the master and originator of the ‘real-time’ mode, which emphasizes the power of the place. In this film, Lao deals with the lives of denizens in a decaying movie house that features soft-porn flicks. Nanay Flor (played magnificently by Gina Pareño), matriarch of the family running the crumbling business, is deeply involved in a case against her philandering husband. Her daughter Nayda (Jaclyn Jose) gets embroiled in an incestuous relationship. Male prostitutes loiter in the lobby. At the end of the film, a movie house employee named Alan (Coco Martin) had enough of filthy things and promptly leaves the place.

A major strength of the film is its realism. The audience squirms as Alan cleans the clogged toilets and his buttock. These and other scenes of squalor are probably alien to foreign critics who lambasted the film. But, there are scenes that should have been excluded or minimized. Mendoza sometimes belittles the intelligence of his audience. A case in point is a scene showing a vehicle clearly going the wrong way. Mendoza finds it necessary to supply a close-up shot of the ‘One-way’ sign.

The trademark kinetic camerawork of a ‘real-time’ film is also here. The camera follows Nayda as she traverses the stairways and dark hallways of the movie theater. After opening the door of the projection room, she seems to be taken aback by what she sees. The scene then cuts to a shot of a hunky projectionist playing with himself.

The Movie and Television Review and Classification Board initially gave the film an X rating. In response to the board’s action, Dante Mendoza and Bing Lao inexplicably sought a compromise and allowed the snipping of some scenes in order for the film to be shown in a mall in 2008. That was a grave mistake committed by the duo. What does it profit filmmakers if they gain a wider audience but loses their creative vision and soul?

Mendoza learned his lesson and vowed not to show future films in an edited version. In anticipation of the full run of Lao and Mendoza’s Kinatay at UP Cine Adarna, the UP Film Institute is showing award-winning works of Mendoza such as Serbis, Masahista, Manoro, and Tirador during this month of September 2009. Excluding Masahista, all films are recommended especially Serbis, a top-notch example of ‘real-time’ films.

Foster Child (Brillante Mendoza, 2007)

There is a special attentiveness, an almost preternatural solicitousness that accompanies the care of the titular child in Brillante Mendoza’s Foster Child. Even before the foster family can settle down to eat the first meal of the day, one of them must hurry out to buy diapers for the urine-drenched child. Instead of receiving stern discipline for wetting himself, this child is lavished with understanding and affection. During the course of long days in an overcrowded warren of suburban Manila, the foster child named John-John (Kier Segundo) receives devotional attention: he is fed, bathed, clothed with a kind of care that foster mother Thelma (Cherry Pie Picache) may not have given her own children.

It’s a premise fraught with the kind of emotional largesse that will appeal to this country of bleeding hearts, but the biggest virtue of this film is the restraint of Brillante Mendoza’s direction. Histrionics do not figure much in the director’s scheme of things. With a treatment that combines neorealist concerns and settings (Visconti’s Bellissima comes to mind) and both the thematic and cinematographic approaches of the Dardenne Brothers, Foster Child dwells tastefully on the dilemma inherent in foster care: what happens when a foster family becomes too attached to a foster child?

In Foster Child, Thelma and her family initially appear to have mastered the art of child rearing and the emotions of inevitable separation. As the film begins, it’s been eight practiced years since Thelma entered the fostering business. Everyone in the family is involved – mother, father (Dan Alvaro) and two sons – in lavishing love on the foster child. Even Thelma’s seemingly neglected son, Yuri (Jiro Manio), is no less caring for him. He cooks meals for him and carries him around like a younger brother.

The most crucial care, however, comes from Thelma. She is introduced as a model foster mother, never choosing a child to bring home, whether healthy or, say, afflicted with retardation. Her current “assignment,” John-John, however, is unlike any other: fair-skinned, mild-mannered and good-looking. (The filmmakers opted for an easy sell, it seems.) As John-John’s identity becomes clear – his abandonment at the orphanage, Hospicio de San Jose, in a sickly and premature condition – Thelma’s role in bringing him up becomes apparent to the viewer.

What we know about Thelma is beyond reproach – except perhaps for the fact that she might be deemed to be slightly naïve. Approached by a woman mendicant carrying a child, Thelma doesn’t hesitate to help her with some loose change. Bianca (Eugene Domingo), the social worker who gives Thelma her assignments, is more cynical but practical: she reproaches Thelma for abetting the crime of begging, and being fooled by someone using a child as an emotional bait.

The penultimate scenes at the plush hotel where Thelma and Bianca have brought John-John to turn him over to his new family (a wealthy American family) are by turns humorous and poignant. It seems like a cruel joke and yet necessary to involve the foster mother in these proceedings –in a final leave-taking, as it were. At one point, Thelma brings out a lovingly made photo album chronicling John-John’s young life. In her best but broken English, she proudly points out the milestones of the child’s early years, those tenuous years that will soon be forgotten.

As Foster Child reveals there is an entire cottage industry revolving around foster care in this country. What director Mendoza and scriptwriter Ralston Jover have brilliantly conceived and ably dramatized is how emotionally costly foster care can prove to be. Giving care, giving love, can never be so depersonalized as to be a simple cut-and-dried economic activity. Foster children should never change hands like mere commodities. Foster Child is a tragic tale that will break your heart.