Now Showing (2008, Raya Martin)

Now Showing captures the joyful and carefree ways of a young Filipina in the time of That’s Entertainment, a popular talent-variety show hosted by German Moreno.

A fledgling, and possibly young, filmmaker shares a fervent wish via an animated message. The filmmaker/animator wants to be just what every body else wants…you know, to be a star and to be always in the spotlight. The film’s initial scene cuts to a shot of a spotlight. Wait, it is a series of headlights. But, where is the performer? A precocious good-looking tween named Rita comes out from a closet and proceeds to belt out a song. In her birit-best performance, she does a heartfelt interpretation of Celine Dion’s It’s All Coming Back To Me Now. She then segues to acting. This segment is a bittersweet nostalgic trip. Yep, it reminds one of the amateurish talent workshops of That’s Entertainment.

Filipinos are obsessed with celebrities. Several of them join talent shows to pursue their dreams of making it big in the world of showbiz. The world of Rita is a similar world of stars and performers. She was named after sultry Hollywood actress Rita Hayworth. Her grandmother was a former actress. Filipino kids like Rita are coerced to perform in front of relatives during parties.

Director Raya Martin creates a perceptive, three-part coming-of-age story of a post-Marcos baby. The excellent first part features Rita mimicking her favorite celebrities, playing street games, studying at night, and searching for a neighbor’s dog. We do not see her cry even if she was not included by fellow kids in a Christmas presentation. She refuses to let her disappointment with a lackluster birthday party get in her way. The only time we see Rita cry is during an out-of-town vacation. It is not clear what exactly triggers her outpouring of emotion. It may have something to do with Rita’s absentee father or Rita’s grandmother-actress. The segment following Rita’s emotional outpouring gives us some clue on what Martin wants to convey.

Part two of the film deals with the black-and-white movie Ang Tunay Na Ina. The 1939 movie is one of a handful of extant local feature films from the pre-World War II era. Rita’s grandmother might have been one of the characters in the movie. There is a scene in which a group of children performs a song-and-dance act. This scene echoes a similar Christmas scene in Part One.

The second part of Now Showing will most likely be a head scratcher to casual moviegoers and Raya Martin newbies. It consists of black-and-white film images played randomly, backwards, and upside down. It should be noted that Martin is a director obsessed with early twentieth century films. He is fond of using archive materials and found footages in his films. Martin may have been lamenting the poor state of film archiving in the Philippines. Just like the excruciating part two of Now Showing, most of the early local films are incomplete and barely viewable.

Part three of the film shows an older, less fearful, and still staunch entertainment devotee, Rita. The nubile girl tends a pirated DVD stall in Quiapo. Her mom always reminds her to be cautious of boys. At the end of the film, a pregnant Rita shuns the spotlight hoisted on her. She rides a bus back to the province.

Just like other Martin films, Now Showing can be enjoyed at different levels. Running parallel to Rita’s coming-of-age story is the evolution of home entertainment videos. From the distorted audio and video images of a well-played VHS tape, the film looks back at the faded audio and scratchy images of the1939 film Ang Tunay Na Ina, and fast forwards to the crisp audio and crystal-clear images of digital video. Another topic tackled was the irony of entertainment-obsessed Filipinos lacking appreciation for film heritage and film preservation.

If you've slept through the film or walked out during a screening, give the movie another chance to work its charms. Based on my experience, several Martin films get better with every succeeding viewing. From an initial bewildering/exasperating experience, my third viewing of Now Showing has made me a fan. It is so far my favorite work by Martin.

Maicling Pelicula Nang Ysang Indio Nacional (2005, Raya Martin)

‘Know yourself first,’ said the old man. And thus, the brilliant, multi-storied film unfolds the history of the common man. For more than 300 years of Spanish rule, the common man was fed with tales of miraculous cures, manna, and promised deliverer. He was taught Christian teachings such as loving your enemies and being patient.

The first story features a young bell ringer, who grows up steeped in religion and miracles. Even a natural occurrence like a solar eclipse is seen as a miraculous event like the raining of manna. The children with their mouths wide agape seem to be in the act of receiving communion. The darkened sun may have been enticing as a eucharistic host.

There is a remarkable shot of elderly women streaming out of a church. In all of Martin’s films, this sepia-tinged shot was one of a few times wherein Martin got the effect he always wanted: an early 20th century picture coming to life. What makes it doubly memorable was the preceding segment dealt with a religious statue that allegedly comes to life.

Another story deals with an actor involved in a theatrical presentation of the Legend of Bernardo Carpio. The legend, as propagated by the Spaniards, tells the sad fate of an insurrecto trapped between two moving mountains. Every time Bernardo Carpio tries to break free, the earth shudders. The people content themselves with the thought that some day, Bernardo Carpio will successfully break free and lead them out of bondage.

The theatrical people participated in a game wherein they come up with words that define nationhood for the common man. One word seems to encompass all given words; and that word is yearning.

The penultimate story focuses on the yearning for freedom. Abuses by the friars and the Spanish government took its toll on the patient indios. A stunning and highly effective shot sees a group of indios throwing a Spanish friar into the river. A young man enlists to become a member of the revolutionary army. Unfortunately, the proletarian revolution failed because of lack of arms. An illustrado-led revolutionary army continued the fight against the Spaniards.

Raya Martin's A Short Film About the Indio Nacional ends with the sidetracked indio contemplating on his ideas of freedom and nationhood, while bourgeois-led events unravel on. These events will lead to the prolonged sorrow of the Filipino nation. Until now, the masses still yearn for a Bernardo Carpio, a hero, or a leader who will lead them out of poverty.

With allusions ranging from Jose Rizal’s novels to Andres Bonifacio’s failed revolution, the film works on various levels that it needs to be seen repeatedly to fully grasp its beauty and intellect. Every viewing unleashes new things. I can’t wait to see it for the nth time!

Manila (2009, Raya Martin & Adolfo Alix Jr)

‘Sir, black and white po iyung pelikula,’ reminded the ticket seller at the movie theater. Cineplexes must have received complaints from avid fans of Piolo Pascual during the first few days of the film's screenings. I bought a ticket and went in to see this two-part film. Lo and behold! There were just a handful of moviegoers at the movie theater. This is the only Piolo movie I’d seen that failed to bring in the crowds at a theater.

More than the black-and-white images of Manila, I thought the junkie role of Piolo must have turned off fans. Manila’s Day segment, helmed by Raya Martin, takes off from the last few scenes of Manila By Night. Drug addict William (Piolo Pascual) is able to elude cops chasing him and Cherie (Aleck Bovick). He spends the night at Luneta. He wakes up and loiters aimlessly. The rest of the segment, which shows William being rejected by people, is entirely new material based on a script by Ramon Sarmiento.

I didn’t like the Day segment of Manila. Martin took a big risk creating a sequel to what he considers the best Filipino film of all time, Manila By Night, directed by Ishmael Bernal. The time frame is too short to give some meat to the story. The acting and casting are not that good. Cry-baby Piolo is not credible as a hopeless druggie. He is simply too healthy to portray a young man desperately hooked on drugs. Rosanna Roces seems too young to portray his mother. John Lapus is no match to Bernardo Bernardo.

Martin knows every sequel or homage film will pale in comparison with the Bernal classic. I think his real objective, then, is to espouse the original, pre-censorship ending of the Bernal classic. As far as I know, the ‘happy epilogue’ ending, which was tackily attached to the DVD version of Manila By Night, was a concession made by Bernal to censors. In his Day segment, Martin rejects the ‘happy ending.’ He posits a bleaker ending for the character played originally by William Martinez.

The Night segment, directed by Adolfo Alix Jr., is based on another film classic, Jaguar by Lino Brocka. Never did I imagine liking an Alix film over a Martin film, but, in this case, I loved the Night segment more than the Day segment. My minor complaint with the segment is Philip (Piolo Pascual) was too much of an idiot. Director/scriptwriter Alix should have given the character stronger reason for blasting away. There is a major difference between this segment and Jaguar. Alix veered away from the latter’s ending. Just like Martin, he presented a bleaker ending.

The two segments present a dark, almost one-dimensional portrait of the city of Manila. The bleak endings give a scary, heartless picture of the city. There is nary a tinge of hope left for the main characters. The beautiful black-and-white images of police road blocks, flooded streets, mounds of garbage, and filthy ocean trap the protagonists looking for the exit. Death seems to be the only way out.

It is a good thing that jazzy and cheesy segments involving a film shooting were inserted at the middle and end of the movie. The film City of Love is an over-the-top romance story between a nurse and her remorseful boyfriend. The cheesy reconciliation of the couple happens in the middle of the night at the Ospital ng Maynila. The funny romp was a nice ender to an ambitious but uneven project of producer Piolo Pascual.

Next Attraction (Raya Martin, 2008)

Probably more famously known for his cinema of the historical (A Short Film About the Indio Nacional, Autohystoria, and more recently, Independencia), Raya Martin is very rapidly making strides in another direction in what might be called his cinema of the topical. After inaugurating his Box Office Trilogy in 2008 with a film entitled Now Showing, the 24-year-old director has quickly followed it up with its second installment, Next Attraction, a film about the current state of the local film industry and about the young director’s conversations with his favored medium. In Next Attraction, we get for the most part the supposed neutrality of the cinema-verite documentary that is used, but the nature of what is being documented can be sometimes indicting.

Right from the start, we are asked to ruminate on a sequence shot – a long static one – of a house built circa 1970s. More precisely, this first scene happens in the poorly-kept backyard of this house, grass unmown, the roof water-stained, suggestive, perhaps, of unsettled, troubled thoughts. Winds buffet the coconut and palm trees and the other ornamentals in the background as a woman saunters out of the house and sits in one of the wrought-iron chairs in the yard. From a distance, her slow, deliberate manner, running her fingers through her hair, is indicative of wistful, pensive thoughts. We aren’t too sure, however; her face is a blur. The winds soon die down. As the minutes pass meditatively, the strange detail of a klieg light standing in a corner, beaming brightly in broad daylight, becomes apparent. What is this film up to now? Then we hear the empathic word: Cut! This has been all a take; the woman is an actress in a film.

It’s a film within a film. Director and writer Raya Martin, however, is not content with this tried-and-tested conceit. Francois Truffaut (Day for Night), Abbas Kiarostami (Close-Up) and Andrzej Wajda (Everything for Sale) have tried their hand at this narrative device before, but Martin goes one better: Next Attraction is a film within a film within a film. What results is surprisingly an intricate but coherent work. Three realities, three verisimilitudes in one film: one conveying a fictitious film crew being documented; another conveying the fictitious documentarians who never become visible other than through their scrupulous hands covering camera lenses, indicating cuts; and the third conveying the apparently “true story” being filmed. What we ultimately see is the documentarians’ point of view chronicling a film crew in action.

As might be expected when cameras are rolling, the film crew being documented are a picture of efficiency and synergy. They pull off the naturalism of a tight-knit group going about their business through a day of exacting work. Although they seem oblivious of anyone documenting them, they seem too eager to work with each other. No tantrum-throwing directors here, only modest actresses who don’t mind posing with admirers for pictures and such. This film crew is exemplary, bent assiduously on their tasks and everyone, from the director down to the technicians, is on his best behavior.

Complementing this film crew very well are the documentarians: very discreet and unobtrusive, as they chronicle the long, grueling but not necessarily unsatisfying shoots of a film crew. Using cinema-verite methods, the documentarians position themselves in the least intrusive positions on the set, shielding their lenses and turning off their cameras when needed. They almost shy away from the filmmakers’ shoots, and seem to home in on the dynamics of this film crew instead. What they capture is by turns reflective (conveyed through simple cuts to black) and frenetic (or perhaps tedious) (conveyed through jump cuts).

The overall tone of Next Attraction is, for the most part, tongue-in-cheek as it captures the controlled chaos of a film shoot. The fictitious film director (J.K. Anicoche) has time for small talk – jabbing playfully at Raya Martin the famous director in one of his overheard conversations with his crew. But if this is a time for a little humor, this also the time to pay homage to the capacity of the camera to fictionalize, to create its own truths. With simple editing trickery, this documentary of sorts is suggestive of ars cinematica – whose visual zeal and robustness echo the self-referential mannerisms of Godard.

And the film being shot? When the resulting film is tacked on and shown at the end, it might seem like anticlimax: it seems too aestheticized, too prettified compared to the relatively grittier realism of the actual shoot. But this fictitious film embodies many of the truths about what goes on in local cinema. The penchant for melodrama, the current predominance of indie aesthetics and production values, and the commodification of homoerotic acts are but some of the salient points of this fictitious film. And what is it about? Suffice to say that it features a troubled relationship between mother (Jacklyn Jose) and her 17-year-old son (Coco Martin).

Next Attraction is perhaps as much about the struggling (moribund?) state of one national cinema as it is a meditation on the nature of filmmaking, of what is true and what is not. Nothing (or perhaps everything) is what it seems: the truth is filtered through so many intervening mediations that might influence it. What may come billed as “a true story” is ultimately amplified, modulated and refracted by actor, film crew, director, editor and so on – subject to their synergy, the smallest eventuality, the smallest whimsy of everyone on the set. If there are passages that apotheosize an actress in bygone times in Now Showing, Next Attraction is more inclusive, it congratulates everyone who is (was ever) involved in that backbreaking endeavor called filmmaking. And perhaps that’s the note on which Raya Martin ultimately wants to leave us – not a scathing satire but an oblique homage to filmmaking.

Independencia (2009, Raya Martin)

Maverick filmmaker Raya Martin groped for words in an impromptu speech before the start of the June 12, 2009 Philippine premiere of the film Independencia. 'Anong sasabihin ko?,' he muttered to his companions. The 24-year-old director may not be the best speaker out there, but he speaks volumes with his consistently excellent films.

Independencia is Martin's latest masterpiece. The 77-minute film is the second in a trilogy of films depicting the Philippines under colonial powers. Martin uses dominant film formats and popular entertainment fare during each period to frame his stories. The first film Maicling Pelicula Nang Ysang Indio Nacional utilized kundiman, theatre plays, and silent films to depict the Spanish period. This time around, Independencia employs newsreels and early 20th century studio films with false backdrops to show the destructive effects of the American colonization.

The Americans saw the potential of films as propaganda. They utilized films in their battles. Popular newsreels shown in the United States depicted American soldiers stopping an insurrection in the Philippines. The fighting was pictured as an uprising against an established government and not as a war between two countries. Most of the newsreels were just re-enactments showing American soldiers in good light.

Martin is a young man obsessed with early Filipino films. Most of his films deal with silent films, early 20th-century newsreels, and pre-war Filipino films. In this film, he recreates a movie that counters the jingoistic intent of an American newsreel. He indigenizes the movie’s format and content. The movie features three dark-skinned actors portraying characters fleeing from American troops. The characters speak in an old-fashioned local language. Local myths and superstitions are depicted in the movie.

The false backdrops of the movie riled two viewers seated near me. They complained about the obvious studio sets, which they perceived to be a result of the producers' stinginess. Another one blurted out 'The film is boring.' I expected this kind of reaction from them because I've overheard them saying it was their first time to see a Martin film.

The film Independencia is Martin’s most accessible film so far but it is still arty fare for casual moviegoers. The film is in black-and-white. The film is not talky but speaks a lot about heavy stuff such as colonialism, propaganda, and native resistance. The film does not feature a popular actor. Vilma Santos was originally set to play the mother but later backed out. In hindsight, Tetchie Agbayani is the right and better choice for the role. She is a morena and closely resembles Sid Lucero, who plays her son.

The theme of native resistance was enhanced with the film's utilization or visualization of lines from protest songs such as Marangal na Dalit ng Katagalugan. The song Bayan Ko dealt with an image of a caged bird crying and struggling to break free. The film featured several released birds flying straight to freedom. The last line of the country's national anthem was enacted at the stunning, blood-stained ending of the film.

Martin may have stammered in his introduction but he managed to greet the audience with 'Happy Independence Day!' It was a happy day too for independent films and independent filmmakers. His courageous film was a perfect ender to a whole day of local film screenings at the 14th French Film Festival at Shang Cineplex.

*picture taken here

**check out also this review

Independencia (Raya Martin, 2009)

For, with a strong indigenous cultural life, foreign
domination cannot be sure of its perpetuation.
-- Amilcar Cabral

Everyone of us is channeling Americans. For over a hundred years now, we have imitated and internalized their smallest tics and their thickest twang; we aren’t called Little Brown Americans for nothing. Our assimilation of all things American is there to see – though perhaps too self-evident to notice. We eat Kentucky Friend Chicken and McDonald’s burgers and wash them down with swigs of Pepsi or Coca-Cola. We wear the latest shoes from Nike and listen to the latest songs by American Idols. We watch the latest movies churned out by Hollywood, starring our favorite state-side actors. These are our everyday realities. We are, in truth, not as independent as the history books would like us to believe; we are living in the shadow of these insidiously neo-colonial times.

Raya Martin’s Independencia, making its Philippine premiere on Independence Day ironically in a French film festival, may not espouse up-in-arms revolution (how, when the enemy is within us?) but delivers a subtly hortatory message: the Filipino should endeavor to rediscover his pre-colonial roots. It’s the first small step in his long journey towards recovering true independence. Set in the early 1900s and onwards, Independencia avoids, perhaps by default, the grandiosely-scripted and astronomically budgeted depiction of an epical and heroic era: the American occupation. Instead, writer-director Raya Martin astutely focuses on common folks, non-comnbatants: a mother (Tetchie Agbayani) and her son (Sid Lucero) who flee to the forest as soon as the threat of war encroaches on their town.

Here, in this forest, reality seems refracted through a strangely allegorical and magical prism. Birds dart out of the bushes like shimmering bullets; breezes blow unceasingly; ferns and palm fronds sway and bend; a stream ripples and flows through it. In the conversations that will transpire within its bosom, this forest will be alluded to as the object of greed, and two towns go to war for it. This is where mother and son seek refuge. Soon (no one knows the nature of time here) they are joined by a woman (Alessandra de Rossi) who has been raped by American soldiers. In due time, she gives birth to a fair-skinned child.

Independencia, however, is not about a family’s insularity. What this retreat from the outside world ultimately means is a symbolic return to the Filipino’s bedrock strength, a revalorization of his indigenous culture, his pre-colonial past. Within this film’s family, the oral tradition of myths, proverbs, legends and general folklore, is reenacted and passed down from one generation to another. Talk of talismans, giant wild boars, and the aswang circulate among this family in the woods. And the realities in the forest – e.g. the son finding his way home only after turning his shirt inside out, the appearance of wood spirits – don’t seem to contradict what this family partakes in.

Not unlike South American and other Third World writers employing magic realism in their works, Martin harnesses the inherently surreal/fantastical aspects of our folklore in order to mirror the under-emphasized and misrepresented aspects of our culture. Circulated in the deep of the night, circulated during meals, the stories exchanged in the depths of the forest are a kind of nourishment, a defense mechanism that both diverts and fortifies.

And yet in Independencia, Martin has fashioned out one of his least confounding and more accessible films to date. Independencia is not unlike a well-told legend: there are moments of facile objective reality combined with moments that ask us to suspend disbelief. Much of Martin’s unconventional and unpredictable narrative techniques are becoming familiar to us, it seems. He has also decided to meet his audience halfway: much of the counter-intuitive filmmaking we’ve seen in movies like Autohystoria and Now Showing is kept to a minimum. (But perhaps these are just the strictures of this particular film – to be displaced by the stylistic demands of the next film.) Instead of unknowns and non-professionals, he casts well-known, professional actors for this, and they invariably deliver.

Conceived as the second entry in Raya Martin’s cycle of films set during periods of national struggle (A Short Film About the Indio Nacional being the first), Independencia may not mention America once in any of the film’s dialogue but its pernicious presence, its colonizing threat, is palpable. There is a newsreel-like sequence at midpoint of Independencia that brings this home: an actual atrocity by American soldiers shooting a boy suspected of pilfering is reported in quasi-provincial, faux-American accent. The film finesses its point with humor. There are no strident anti-American slogans here. That the American atrocity mirrors what happens in a 1976 film (Lupita Aquino-Kashiwahara's Minsa’y Isang Gamu Gamo), only seems to suggest the currency of the Americans’ unchangingly contemptuous, subhuman regard for Filipinos.

Make no mistake, Independencia is a sophisticated post-colonial film and Raya Martin, at least in this instance, a veritable post-colonial filmmaker. Making a virtue of meager funding from European institutions (in particular, the IFFR’s Hubert Bals Fund in 2007), he uses unconventional and postmodern approaches to film Independencia. Noteworthy is his reliance on distanciation techniques, which puts the stamp of its real provenance on the film. This film, shot in black and white by Jeanne Lapoirie, may look like an early 20^th century American movie, but it is unmistakably a product of its time. Independencia is a living, breathing film: its colonial discourse is not restricted to the past, but remains as valid as ever. Hence, the tell-tale markers like the theatrical acting and theatrical dialogue, the unnaturally thick make-ups, the hybrid sets (a fusion of natural, live elements and handpainted backdrops brought to life by production designer Rodrigo Ricio), characters talking straight to the camera, the effect of film seemingly running out of its reel are not unjustified instances. The presence of White Leghorns – not introduced to the Philippines until 1950 – in a film that is supposed to be set during the American era also tells us of the timelessness of the issues problematized by this film.

Independencia, however, ends in the most unambiguous terms possible. Orphaned and alone, the fair-skinned boy (Mika Aguilos) enacts the supreme gesture of self-determination. Pursued by American soldiers deep in the forest, the boy makes sure of signifying his true allegiances. His realization of who he is and where he belongs, paints the sky in different shades of brown. This is, after all, the brown man’s world -- his beloved country. Long live the Filipino!


*picture from Criticine