TNGMAN PH+

The pain of remembering

2020-09-20T22:42:00.000+08:00

#NeverForget #NoToMartialLaw Mohammad Kanda was only thirteen years old when Philippine military forces detained him together with more than 1,500 men at the Tacbil mosque in Malisbong, Palimbang town, Sultan Kudarat province, in September 1974.

The soldiers assured them that it was going to be okay, that the measure was for their own good, that they meant no harm to the people of Palimbang.

It was the height of the Martial Law regime of Ferdinand Marcos.

For more than a month, Mohammad and his companions were cramped inside the mosque and fed mostly thin slices of coconut and green papaya. They drank water boiled with guava leaves. Soldiers would spit and urinate in the water.

“Twice a day the soldiers would bring about a dozen of the men to the nearby beach, ” Mohammad remembers. “The daily excursion was followed by gunfire and the men never to be seen again.”

After a month, Mohammad and about 100 men were transferred to a mosque in Baliango, still in Palimbang, where they were tortured and interrogated by the military. About a dozen were killed, those who were deemed uncooperative and those suspected to be related to Moro rebels.

Later Mohammad discovered that only the group that went to Baliango survived. More than a thousand men were massacred in Malisbong, their skeletal remains slowly emerging from shallow graves along the beach as tides swelled in the succeeding months.

Mohammad's story is part of my documentary Forbidden Memory which Reckless Natarajan Pictures produced for Cinema One Originals in 2016.

Influential films during my formative years

2020-08-29T13:17:00.004+08:00

Raise The Red Lantern, Zhang Yimou (1991)

In an online lecture on improving the filmmaking skills of young Bangsamoro filmmakers two weeks ago, I was asked by an aspiring filmmaker what films were influential to my development as a filmmaker and writer on cinema. There was a deluge of questions and I feel that I was not able to answer this particular inquiry.

Now pondering on the question I can divide a list of films into two timelines: my formative years from 1994 to 2009 which account for my university days to film school, my first short film to the year before I made my debut feature Limbunan; and my journey as a feature filmmaker and an active writer on cinema from 2010 onwards. For this post I will enumerate the films that helped cement my resolve to enter the world of cinema. I was preparing to become a medical doctor prior to this in fulfillment of a childhood dream.

While attending university in Davao, access to films was limited to what was available on VHS rental, mostly Hollywood flicks and the latest Tagalog flicks, and the films available in the university library like Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941).

It is said that the forbidden is a seductive thing. When the Philippine censors banned The Piano (Jane Campion, 1993) for its nudity, there was an uproar in Manila which consequently lead to the lifting of the ban. Somehow the ban created publicity for the film it upped the curiosity of people leading them to watch it in cinema houses. I saw the film in a standing room only screening and fell in love with it for the performance of its leads (who could forget Holly Hunter's performance when her husband cut off her finger), the lush cinematography and brilliant direction. Later the novelist and poet Danton Remoto gave me a book containing the screenplay of The Piano as a gift.

Jane Campion, The Piano (1993)

My glimpse of earlier cinematic gems came in 1995 when Mowelfund Film Institute organized the World Cinema Centennial Film Festival in Manila. In the festival I saw what I consider 'The Trifecta', the three films that shook me to core. These were Tokyo Story (Yasujiro Ozu, 1953), 8 ½ (Federico Fellini, 1963) and Death in Venice (Luchino Visconti, 1971). I was enthralled by the slow pace of the films and the philosophical questioning on mortality, beauty and the nature of our own being.

In 1997 the Cultural Center of the Philippines organized a tour to encourage the formation of Sineklab or film clubs in the regions. The tour screened Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio de Sica, 1948), Raise The Red Lantern (Zhang Yimou, 1991) and Cinema Paradiso (Giuseppe Tornatore, 1988). De Sica's film offered me one of my first lessons in intertextuality as some of the composition in the film were derived from classical paintings. Zhang's film stirred something personal in me. I am familiar with polygamy as my grandfather had many wives. Although back then I was not privy with the jealousy and perhaps a conspiracy of wives to race to the top but it gave me a picture of what could be. Cinema Paradiso on the other hand validated my love for cinema with that end sequence forever haunting me.

The Scent of Green Papaya, Tran Anh Hung (1993)

During that tour I was introduced to Southeast Asian cinema with The Scent of Green Papaya (Tran Anh Hung, 1993). By now I realized that I am drawn to slow films and loved every moment of the film. With its rich visual details from close up of papaya seeds to the slow motion of the camera from one part of the house to another film, it became the visual peg for my debut film many years later. I also saw Happy Together (Wong Kar Wai, 1997) and was hypnotized by its cinematography capturing both longing, desire and alienation. Never before did I realize that sadness can be so beguiling.

I went to film school in Manila in the summer of 1997. My access to films grew not only from the school library but also to what has become an all-too-important store in Greenhills, a center of film education of some sort, that sold bootleg VHS copies of films. I bought 400 Blows (Francois Truffaut, 1959) that would later introduce me to other French New Wave auteurs, Color Trilogy (Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1993-1994) which expanded my notion of cinematography as well as the moral ambiguity of characters that defied the clearcut distinction between good and evil in standard mainstream flicks, Persona (Ingmar Bergman, 1966) which had a profound effect on me for its exploration of the psychology of characters manifesting in very beautiful and surreal images, and Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa, 1950) which taught me storytelling techniques as well as opened my eye to film criticism.

400 Blows, Francois Truffaut (1959)

As a fan of the late River Phoenix, My Own Private Idaho (Gus Van Sant, 1991) holds a special place for me. Loosely adapted from Shakespeare's Henry IV, it gave me an idea to explore classic literature as a rich source of stories that can be translated to contemporary sensibility. My filmography would be filled with works that have been influenced by literature.

Billy Elliot (Stephen Daldry, 2000) taught me that no dream is small. Raised in the rustic town of Pagalungan, Maguindanao, I saw my own struggle in Billy, in a town that does not understand the complexity of our desire, anxiety and restlessness to be something else outside of the norm –be it a ballet dancer or a filmmaker. As Lupita Nyongo said in her Oscar speech, all dreams are valid. Billy Elliot is a testament to the validity of dreams.

I Dont Want To Sleep Alone (Tsai Ming Liang, 2006) showed me how the spectrum of identity and rootedness –from vacillation to being confident in your own skin –is important in becoming what we truly are.

Lessons on creativity and patience from mungbean sprouts

2020-08-24T15:03:00.002+08:00

Four days ago I woke up at noon time, a habit I developed since the Philippine government imposed a lockdown all over the country in March to avert the spread of the coronavirus. I suddenly had the craving for lumpia with togue filling. Knowing that togue or mungbean sprouts and lumpia wrapper were not available at the nearest grocery store, and that I was prohibited from venturing downtown due to the barangay clustering scheme that our city government put in place, I rummaged through my kitchen cabinet to look for the next best thing. I found a bag of flour and mungbeans in a jar. Over coffee I Googled “how to grow mungbean sprouts” and managed to do the task in half an hour. I retreated to my home office and started writing entries for my new blog sites. These are writing projects that I started two days earlier in a bid to be productive during the COVID-19 crisis. After all two film projects have been shelved due to the crisis. My creative juices needed to be put in good use.

Yesterday I woke up earlier than usual. I was roused by a phone call from my father who is in our hometown Pagalungan, Maguindanao. He asked me how I was doing. “The summer heat is just too much. But I’m OK. How are you?” I assured him. I’m isolated from the rest of the family since I took residency in General Santos. I want to see my father. But that is impossible in the meantime. From this city I have to pass through two provinces that have imposed total lockdown due to cases of COVID-19. There are checkpoints, and chances are I will be turned away. Only vehicles with essential goods and medical personnel are allowed to pass.

To read more, click here.

Why are there no writers in the Maguindanaon language

2020-08-04T11:33:00.002+08:00

This week an editor inquired if I have any piece of work written in the native language – that is, Tagalog or Maguindanaon – for possible translation and inclusion in an upcoming anthology. I told her that I write in English.

A couple of months ago, writer Mark Angeles forwarded to me an email from the National Book Development Board regarding the National Book Awards. NBDB was looking for books written in Maguindanaon for consideration in the awards. I told Mark that I could say with absolute certainty that no book written in Maguindanaon has been published in the previous year, and perhaps none ever (unless you consider the 'parukunan' or Muslim prayer manual as one). This got me thinking: Why hasn't any Maguindanaon writer endeavored to write a book in the native tongue? I can only look at my own reasons for preferring English, and not Maguindanaon, for answers.

1. There are only a handful of Moro writers, and ethnic Maguindanaons are just a fraction of an already sad number. Considering the motivation to be read widely, I have chosen English because it is a universal language. We spoke English at home, and read books written in English. My mother forbade us to read Tagalog comics because they were reserved for the servants. There were no books written in Maguindanaon so I learned by observing the language as it was spoken by friends and family members, especially my grandmother.

2. Maguindanaon lacks a standard orthography. "What is that?" can be written as "Ngeyn i namba?" but it can also be "Ngin namba?" I prefer the former. Even with the spelling of Maguindanaon there seems to be no agreement. Maguindanaon? Magindanon? Magindanawn? Maguindanon?

3. The different Maguindanaon dialects can also be problematic. As tao sa laya or 'people from the upstream' referring to people inhabiting areas inward and far from the coast, my vocabulary is different from the tao sa ilud or those in the coastal areas. "Endaw ka pebpawang?" which translates to "Where are you going?" is laya specific. Ilud variation would be written as "Endaw ka bagangay?" Because of this, within the Maguindanaon readership, the number of possible readers of a text written in a particular dialect can become even smaller.

4. Literary language is difficult to study as there is little access to the vocabulary and techniques of Maguindanaon literary forms like the bayok, or to an extent, the dayunday. Old folks who have knowledge of literary language are either dead, senile or dying.

5. How do you find a publisher? Publishing houses have language preferences, and even regional publishers would think twice before publishing a book with a very limited audience. Self-publishing can be explored but what subjects to write about and what genre, how much printing costs and how many people are willing to buy a book should also be considered.

6. How do you find readers? Most readers now prefer English or Tagalog, if anyone still reads. Maguindanaon has been reduced to utilitarian purposes, its potential as a rich literary language unexplored.

My humble beginnings in cinema

2020-07-12T22:25:00.000+08:00

Today I commemorate a decade since the world premiere of my first feature film Limbunan (Bridal Quarter) at the Cinemalaya Philippine Independent Film Festival in 2010. While it was a celebration of my directorial debut, it took a journey of twelve years to reach that point and cement my grounding as a filmmaker.

I had my humble beginnings in my 22-year career in cinema. Right after finishing a 16mm film workshop at the Mowelfund Film Insitute in 1997 where I specialized in art direction, I landed a job as wardrobe master for the late Judy Lou de Pio's art department. My first assignment was a Regal Films project entitled Lumay Sa Siquijor (alternate title Apoy ng Lumay) written by Raquel Villavicencio and directed by the late Mario J. De los Reyes. It starred Ara Mina, Gary Estrada, Jaclyn Jose and Chinchin Gutierrez. It was supposed to be the launching film of one of Zoltan Amore, one of Direk Mario's talents. This was in 1998, heydays of ST (sexually titillating films), so naturally the film had steamy sex scenes.

Aside from being in charge of the wardrobe of the actors, I was also assigned the delicate task of preparing and installing 'plaster'. Plaster, as it was called in the industry, was a layer of gauze and Leukoplast adhesive tape that was placed in the genital area of actors to prevent any mishap. Leukoplast was the tape of plaster of choice because it mimics natural skin tone so it was virtually invisible. Preparing the plaster entailed making an estimate of the size of the crotch area. Some actors would allow me to take measurements for precision. Before installing the plaster, I had to ask the actors to pee first because they had to wear it until the scenes that required it were finished. This could last many hours usually until the wee hours of the morning. Replacing the plaster if an actor had bladder issues was quite a hassle. But the hardest part was the removal process. Because the plaster usually stuck to the pubic hair, I had to be careful. The trick was to moisten the plaster with a mix of water and alcohol to loosen the adhesive to prevent unwanted pain.

The plaster was not exclusive to male actors. Female actors were also required to have them. So even if they engage in stimulate sex scenes, there was a barrier to protect them. If the director chose a butt exposure, having the plaster was an ideal setup because the derriere remained exposed in contrast to actors wearing skin tone colored underwear or stockings.

Unfortunately Lumay Sa Siquijor was shelved because of the rising cost of production. Direk Mario passed away a few years ago.

After this project, I worked under the art department of Martin Littaua as substitute wardrobe master for ABS-CBN's Tabing Ilog, then Manny Santos for two episodes for GMA Telesine, and the late Joey Luna for his various films. I learned how to be meticulous in production design from all of them which I utilized in my own films. As a result, two of my films have been nominated for achievement in production design at the Gawad Urian (Limbunan, 2011 and Qiyamah, 2013) and achievement in visual design at the Young Critics Circle Citation for Distinguished Achievement in Film (Qiyamah, 2013).

Street art across the globe

2020-06-18T15:23:00.001+08:00

Street art (sometimes graffiti art or independent public art) has garnered legitimacy in the art world recently thanks to Banksy whose art works have appeared in various cities across the globe. His art works have become so phenomenal that websites and online chat group devoted to hunters of possible sightings have also sprouted. They have become valuable as well; private art collectors have shelled out hundreds of thousands of dollars in the art market to have a Banksy, which for art critics and observers, is an anthesis of what street art should be - free and accessible to the public. This is not to say this type of art can't be lucrative. Many graffiti artists, including the late Jean Michel Basquiat, have graduated to gallery exhibitions, making a name for themselves in the art world.

Street art has spawned a sub/culture and has been a topic of debate especially with regards to its place in the oftentimes snooty art world. A reflection of resistance to norms and the establishment, it is associated with protest movements. As such, authorities have regarded it as a public nuisance, a disturbance in the status quo, and have reduced it to vandalism, a destruction of public property, an aberation from the normal urban landscape. Nonetheless, it continues to thrive. It will remain a part of the city life for as long as there is a need for its critical nature.

In my trips to many cities, I've encountered many street and graffiti art that have caught my eye.

In Warsaw, for instance, protest takes the form of graffiti art. As resistance is embedded in the gene of street art, large art works are made in large buildings criticizing government policies such as increased militarization.

Another street art in Warsaw, made in the entry gate of a grocery, features animals and bananas, that provides an attraction for buyers and passersby.

Georgetown, in Penang, is known as a haven for gastronomy, local culture and art. It is not unusual to find street art on the plaster walls of the old city.

Street art also celebrates the achievement of Georgetown's native citizens. For instance, a street art marks the spot where international shoe designer Jimmy Choo had his humble beginnings.

In downtown Brisbane, I stumbled upon this street art that interprets Frida Kahlo as an icon in a game card.

In a mall in Manila, this art work though technically not a street art, is featured on the wall of a famous stationery store.

In Tokyo's Shinjuku District, Hello Kitty is deconstructed to illustrate various moods and expressions, perhaps a criticism to the cosmeticism that the popular cultural icon provides, hiding the many problems of Japan via its cute and lovable imagery.

Another Shinjuku work is self-reflexive announcing itself for what it is - street art.

In Jakarta, the all-seeing eye is rendered in a style that is iconic to the street art scene painted by skaters armed with a bottle of spray paint.

The business of fear

2020-06-17T20:00:00.000+08:00

Serpentine creatures abound in many cultures. (Photo courtesy of Mythology Wiki)

It has been theorized that during a period of political turmoil, diversion in the form of the supernatural and the macabre abound so that citizens lose focus on the real problem at hand. That's why in recent weeks, news of aswang (evil creatures usually capable of flight) sightings have been reported in the Philippines to divert public attention from the government's mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

While walking to the fish market, I thought of the many public scare or fear mongering that has caused panic in Maguindanaon communities for as long as I can remember. In the 1970s, the ilaga scare was rampant for good reason. There have been massacres of Moro civilians, for instance, the 1971 Manili massacre in Carmen, Cotabato province, and elsewhere which were perpetuated by a the ILAGA (Visayan term for 'rats', acronym for Ilonggo Land Grabbers Association), an ultra-right wing extremist, pro-government paramilitary group composed of settlers mostly from Panay Island.

Growing up in Pagalungan, in the 1980s, the story of a deranged woman who ate her children similar to the infamous Maria Labo story of Panay Island made the rounds. Parents had to keep an eye on children lest they be abducted by this character.

There has been health scare too, fueled by deep superstition. For instance, the hepatitis epidemic was believed to have been caused by water elementals. The solution was a ritual called guana or ipat.

When the a political dynasty rose to power in Maguindanao, talking about them, especially in the pejorative manner, was done in hushed tone, otherwise one can suffer the brute force of the family. The methods of killing, they said, ranged from the usual gun sustained wound to being stabbed multiple times using a barbecue stick, or being flattened by a road roller (pison).

There is one public scare that I remember vividly in the late 1980s, and that was the reported introduction of the invasive snakehead fish species to our waters. They were originally from China. The public scare gained a monumental level people avoided bodies of water from canals to rivers. People refrained from eating mudfish or catfish thinking that cross breeding with the snakehead fish might have occurred. According to rumor, isnek pis, as locals called them, were venomous they could kill faster than a cobra. Furthermore, the fish can walk on land. It was talk of the town for months. Soon, when scientific fact was established, it was known that snakehead fish tend to avoid human contact and accounts of attack were limited to instances when nests have been disturbed. Debunking the belief that it was more snake than fish, a sort of chimera, it was found out that they didn't possess venom. The scare might have died down but I will always remember the public hysteria. However, it continues to invade the waters of North America threatening indigenous species.

Archipelago of stars

2020-06-15T15:58:00.002+08:00

I have received a few messages on Facebook inquiring about my biography and the origins of my writing life. These came from teachers who are teaching 21st Century Writing in the Philippines to high school students. I have pointed them to the About section of this blog for my biography. For notes on my writing life, I am publishing here once more my essay Archipelago of Stars which became the titular piece of my book of essays released in 2016.

“HOW CAN I BECOME A (GOOD) WRITER?” is probably one of the trickiest questions that I have been asked in my life. “Are writers born or made?” ranks closely in second place. The first question denotes the existence of a step-by-step procedure similar to, say, gourmet cuisine, guiding the novice through a logical sequence of actions from mincing and chopping, to sautéing and flambéing, and then continuing to the delicate art of plate presentation. Meanwhile, the second question implies the role of genetics, or the difference one brand of infant formula milk makes in the development of a would-be writer.

I never considered becoming a writer when I was growing up. There was no oracle foretelling what I’d end up to be, although soothsayers have always been inclined to say that I was bound to do great things. I’m okay with the thought, for as long as it doesn’t entail death by firing squad or hanging like most of the great people I encountered in grade school history lessons. I get embarrassed when I’m asked, “What do you do for a living?” I don’t want to be presumptuous by announcing, “I’m a writer.” Then again it’s a more pleasant thing to say compared to admitting that I’m a bum most of the time.

Until recently, when I was asked to speak in a writing workshop, I haven’t bothered tracing the origins of my writing life.

Like many children I dreamed of becoming a doctor. When I was five years old I showed an intense fascination with the doctors who looked esteemed in their starched, antiseptic white gowns as they attended to my paralyzed grandfather. However, my mother was so opposed to the idea that she announced it right there and then that she would not hear of me wanting to become a doctor.

“Why?” I asked innocently.

“I said no, and that’s it!” My mother ordered with a finality of a Supreme Court ruling.

I never mentioned my silly dream of becoming a doctor to her again, although I learned later that she went to medical school herself but was kicked out on her third year because she went on an extended vacation in Europe, and did not bother filing a leave of absence from school. My pursuit of a career in medicine became a clandestine operation only a circle of cousins, classmates, friends, and teachers shared.

Perhaps realizing that her fatwa would do more harm than good my mother placated me by constantly giving me books. Henceforth I always looked forward to the arrival of a new Dr. Seuss title with a fanfare of a parade on Mulberry Street. Soon after my father brought home a large crate containing Arthur Mee’s Children’s Encyclopedia.

Back then my father came home to Pagalungan during weekends because he worked in Cotabato, a city ninety minutes away. On late Friday afternoons my siblings and I, together with our white shih tzu Commander waited patiently for him in our front porch. Going over a thick edition of an illustrated Readers Digest Children’s Story Encyclopedia, we picked the stories we wanted our father to read for the Saturday. An exercise that was something far from being peaceful.

“I’m the kaka so I should be the one picking the story,” I invoked my firstborn privilege. “I’m the youngest,” Farah appealed to our good side, “and I’m Papa’s little girl.” Anwar would use brute force by pulling Farah’s hair. He was a boy who realized early on that, in very select instances, words have their limitations.

Invectives were hurled. A kick here. A punch there. More hair-pulling ensued. A bucket of tears spilled. Amid the fracas, there was a common understanding among us, an early evidence of enlightened diplomacy. The book, like a sacred relic, must, at all times, be spared from the conflict. Commander never took sides. He played the important role of barking repeatedly until our step grandmother, realizing that there was a commotion, pacified us with threats of a lashing.

With bruised egos and butts still hurting from the beating inflicted a day earlier, we huddled around our father as soon as we were done with our Saturday brunches. He read stories with passion. He was an animated storyteller. We cheered Raja Indarapatra when he victoriously slew the monster Kurita. We were soaked in the spray of ocean as Old Stormalong battled the Octopus. I adored my father, and, in silence asked myself: Will I become a good storyteller like him when I grow up?

I was raised with a well-stacked library filled with Tagore, Shakespeare, Dickens, Homer, Voltaire, Dostoevsky, and, surprisingly, a Blakely St. James with pages stuck together by what I presumed later in life –when I was old enough to know what the f-word was— as dried bodily fluid. I think that early on my writing life was already taking shape with the steady speed of termites feasting on a narra tree. My ustadz said that in Islam nothing is coincidence. Everything is decided by the will of Allah. “Even before all of us were born, the wheels of fortune had already been set in motion,” he declared. His fatalism would answer the question, ‘Are writers born or made?’ Debating on the merits of being weaned on Promil or am is immaterial since our fate had been decided for us.

I was already poring over the pages of Berenstein Bears before I could recognize my ABCs. Nothing special. Every kid has done it. In Walter Salles’s Behind the Sun, which is set in the Brazilian heartland much more rustic than my hometown, there’s a memorable scene of the young boy Paco ‘reading’ the pictures of a storybook that is given to him by a gypsy. It is of no consequence to him if he cannot make sense of the words in the book. He creates his own fantastic, yet coherent story out of the pictures.

Imagination is the writer’s chief weapon. But if all human beings have the faculty to imagine, what sets the writer apart from the rest?

I cannot claim to be an expert in English – the language I use to write ninety percent of the time. Neither can I profess the same with Filipino or Maguindanaon. I was too young when I was uprooted from my hometown to study in the city, long before I could learn the complex literary style of the bayok. The way I use Filipino borrows much from the conventions of Cebuano, the predominant language spoken in Mindanao. I would write “Gikain” rather than “Kinain.” Both words are in the past tense, which means, “Ate.”

I was not an exceptional student, but I belonged to the honors class. The only time I got an award in grade school was in a Spelling Bee contest. That was in first grade. Lessons on the parts of speech induced me to a stupor. I couldn’t differentiate an adverb from an adjective. Worse I associated gerund to a type of a shrub, the variety which you dry the leaves and store them in transparent antique bottles that sat nicely on your mother’s cupboard, sandwiched between cinnamon and thyme. My fourth grade teacher resigned to the fact that I was hopeless, an opinion that changed every time she read my theme-writing notebook. “You write well,” she would declare. To me that was more important than determining whether a clause was independent or not.

In freshman high school our teacher –with that ridiculous faux New Yorker accent of his— mistook English for a class in stenography. At the end of the school year, he asked us to present him a complete transcript of his lessons before he signed our clearance form. I was too lazy to write down notes. Alain, a classmate who also shared my lack of enthusiasm for longhand exercises, had to buy a large notebook, borrowed notes from a few classmates, and copied them page by page like a sage rewriting the Torah on fresh parchment. Meanwhile, I retreated to a quiet corner of the school library every afternoon, and, with a black Kilometrico ballpen, mastered the slightest arcs of my teacher’s signature.

The onset of puberty and nationalistic fervor brought about by the triumph of a Filipino popular singer in a Hong Kong singing competition might have sparked my hormones to do their job because things got better in my sophomore year. I performed well in class, landing a spot in the Top 10. English was no longer confined to the boring dissection of the moronic and the oxymoronic. We studied World Literature, and since I was enrolled in an all-boys high school I was asked to portray Sita in a dramatic performance of Ramayana.

With my newfound confidence I joined a school essay-writing contest. Proclaimed first prizewinner I climbed on stage to receive my medallion, but the teacher in charge of the contest refused to give me my prize. “There must be a mistake,” she mumbled. “Would you mind waiting downstage for a while?” She scrutinized the tally sheet. Everything was perfectly okay. Still she wouldn’t give me the medallion. A sophomore beating three seniors and two juniors who were supposed to be on top of their classes was unthinkable. After five minutes, when all my humanity had been vaporized, she called me again, this time with total certainty in her voice, that I was the winner. Even the finest coffee emerges into the world via the indignity of cat dung.

Despite my initial success in writing I didn’t forget that I wanted to be a doctor. In college I took Nursing as a preparatory course for Medicine, but I shifted to Biology the following year. I became editor of the student publication. I confess that I was not a good student. I became a student activist, armed with the strong belief that real education was achieved by understanding the struggle of the toiling peasants and the working class. I once wrote in my journal, “Do not let schooling interfere with your learning.”

In another year I shifted to Communication Arts. It was not because I wanted to pursue writing seriously. It was the magic of filmmaking that enthralled me. In the dark and empty theaters of Megamall, I fell in love with Fellini and Ozu in a film festival.

During the summer before my junior year, my dream of becoming a doctor –an act of defiance that had been nurtured since childhood— was once and for all thrown off course. It would take several years for me to realize that filmmaking was just an extension of my writing. Writing not with words, but with images, in the true spirit of the camera stylo that Jean Cocteau envisioned filmmakers to aspire for.

If writing were a curse, it’s much deadlier than Aveda Kedavra! As a novice asking the question, “How can I become a (good) writer?” is only a small peek into the pensieve. One fundamental question that needs answering is, “Are you prepared for the writing life?”

In two decades of writing –well, half of the time I was merely doodling—I’ve learned a lesson or two, struggling to be alive in a culture that treats writing as frivolous as fine arts i.e. painting. People will either love or crucify you for your writing. You can thank them for their appreciation, but you must keep an open mind about criticism. Listening to critics doesn’t mean kowtowing to their tastes. If at first you don’t succeed –in getting your work published or winning a literary contest— then you can try again. Writing doesn’t guarantee a luxurious summer holiday in Ibiza, except maybe if you land a contract to write textbooks. Some writers have day jobs as teachers or NGO workers, while others are lucky enough to be writing for newspapers and magazines on a regular basis. The income though is never sufficient so they accept raket on the side. Most people have no respect for the writing process, unless you share a National Artist’s gene pool. People hardly understand why you need to lock yourself up in your room for days, foregoing meals and baths. They will suspect that you’re either on drugs or have developed a proclivity for incessant wanking. Don’t excuse yourself by saying, “I am writing.” It’s no good. It’s not a worthwhile pursuit compared to slaving in an office from eight to five, the way society defines what an employee should be. In mid sentence you will be called to wash the dishes, or “to be useful in the house.” Sometimes when I’m confronted with a similar situation I wonder: If I became a surgeon, will people treat my work the same way? Will I be asked to put the scalpel down in the middle of a delicate brain surgery because I need to throw out the garbage?

Writing is a solitary experience. Even if you’re stuck at JFK or in the middle of an EDSA X rally, writing is a process that is done by turning your back from the world for a while. Yet deep within your soul, you know that you must be certain that your words can connect to people. You can read all the writing self-help books, but in the end it all boils down to you alone. A little bit of patience and humility will keep you afloat during the most trying times. Because like it or not, not all writers are destined to become literary giants. But that doesn’t mean you cannot taunt the establishment for being elitist, stupid, medieval, vampiric, and incestuous. You can even accuse them of patronage literature, that homoerotic pat on the backside, the pederasty.

In 2007, my first book Children of the Ever-Changing Moon was published. The response I got from readers was generally positive. My favorite review came from a respected Moro leader. Borrowing words from the Khaled Hosseini’s novel The Kite Runner, he said, “You are like tourists in your own country.” All the writers in the little anthology were still grappling with cultural identities. Now publicly acknowledged as a “writer”, at least in my own community, I’m anxious about complacency, not writing enough, and lately, not writing good enough. Should I write what I like and feel strongly about? That’s easy. Or should my writing be representative of my people? A tall order. Realizing that spontaneity is one of my strongest traits, I tell myself to just let the words flow in the spaces between light and shadow, and weave tales out of an archipelago of stars.

It has been an exciting adventure, and I am still the same —“a tourist in my own country.” But now I have the keen awareness that the process of writing is nothing but a surgery of words –suturing loose thoughts, incising ideas to reveal new images, a laparotomy to explore hidden meanings and connections.

I have become a doctor of words.

— Gutierrez Mangansakan II

Lockdown reading list

2020-06-06T02:47:00.000+08:00

I have a confession to make. I have not been reading novels lately. The last novel I read was We The Animals by Justin Torres. This was three years ago, in September 2017. Torres' language possesses a clarity and fluidity; it is remarkable for its elegant simplicity. It didn't read like a tedious novel. It was like reading personal essays, each chapter a story of its own that didn't require the reader to jump to the following chapter immediately to find out what happens next. I paused for a long while after reading a chapter, and recalling my own childhood, I took in the vivid tales of growing up years eloquently told. Today I learned that We The Animals was adapted into a film by Jeremiah Zagar, premiering at Sundance in 2018.

This does not mean that there is a scarcity of books. Since 2016, I have amassed quite a number of books that I found on trips to Penang, Brisbane, Berlin and Manila. I still prefer the physical book to the digital version. The titles include Salman Rushdie's Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights, David Foster Wallace's Both Flesh And Not, Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, Alan Hollinghurst's A Stranger's Child, Thomas Bernhard's Correction, Umberto Eco's The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, several film books on black cinema and Francois Truffaut, Henry Kamen' Empire: How Spain Became a World Power, 1492-1763, and a few translation of Malaysian classics. Prior to the past two Christmases, I planned to read the books while on holiday but spontaneous invitations to hang out with visiting friends or relatives had prevented me. With a busy schedule throughout the year, I managed to read Kamen's superbly written book last year as a reference for a screenplay I was writing set during the Spanish colonial occupation of the Philippines.

I declared a moratorium on buying books until such time that I have read at least half of my book haul. But I confess that this was not easy. One day, during a trip to the mall to buy groceries, I passed by a book store and checked out their stocks. Five minutes later, I purchased Clive Aslet's The English House, a collection of essays on architecture.

The lockdown, as it turned out, afforded me the time to read the books that have been collecting dust on my bookshelf. I started with Early Cinema in Asia, edited by Prof. Nick Deocampo, a film historian and documentary filmmaker from the Philippines. The book is helpful in understanding the beginnings of cinema and how it was brought to the Philippine shores during the American colonial period, parallel to the British occupation in Malaya, the French in Vietnam and the Dutch in Indonesia. Tracing the history of cinema is important as the Philippines celebrated the centenary of its cinema in 2019.

Next on the reading list was Faith in Writing: Forty Years of Essays by Goenawan Mohamad. The essays which originated from a column that Mohamad wrote for an Indonesian paper provides an overview of the changes in the social, political and cultural landscape of Indonesia, from the authoritarian regime of Soeharto to reformasi and the democratic transition, offering a lucid and insightful observation into one of the most exciting upheavals in modern history.

Last night I finished The Thing Around Your Neck, a collection of short stories by Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. The stories resonate to a generation raised in war, violence and poverty, drifting away from home in search of a better life.

I think I can still manage with a book or two, so I will begin reading Both Flesh And Not before life gets in the way again.

Life skills children can learn this year

2020-05-26T01:55:00.000+08:00

This photo of a rice pounder in Bandung, Indonesia (1908) is reminiscent of the rice pounding tradition of the Moro people, particularly the Maguindanaon, because of the affinity of our cultures. (Photo courtesy of Wikipedia)

A few months into second grade at the JASMS - Philippine Women's College in Davao, a circumstance forced me and my siblings to stop going to school that year and returned to our hometown in Pagalungan, Maguindanao. I was six years old then. I am remembering this now after reading about parents planning to let their children skip school for a year because of apprehensions caused by the pandemic. Little did I know, as I was writing this post last night, President Rodrigo Duterte had a television address saying that he was opposed to the opening of classes without a vaccine.

Although there was no emergency of any kind back then, with the situation that school children and their parents face right now, being out of school does not necessarily mean time wasted. They can put their tablets and PSPs away. In the meantime this is a time for kids to learn life skills - from the basics of cooking or something more complex like baking, how to start a fire when you run out of LPG, or how to quarter or chop a chicken which is a skill I haven't mastered after three decades. Sure, they can search Youtube for these seemingly mundane tasks but one is never too prepared when the practical need arises. It will also be soul nurturing for children to look back to this learning experience, finding meaning in the particular memory, that can be life enriching.

While we were in Pagalungan, and later in my father's hometown of Paidu Pulangi, in neighboring Pikit, we learned some life skills that I'm thankful for until today. Here are a few memorable learning experience.

Planting corn. In front of our house in Pagalungan is a patch of land that we cultivated by planting corn. We were taught the dibbling method in which holes in the ground were made with a makeshift dibbler, in our case, a pole that was sharpened in one end. We threw three to five corn seeds in the hole and covered them with soil. Months later, the corn grew much taller than us. We were able to harvest a full sack of corn.

Removing kernel from the cob. Once the corn was mature and dry, we were taught how to manually remove kernels from the cob. It was quite painful for our tender hands but we managed with a few cobs until our thumbs became sore. Another technique was using a bolo or machete to chop the kernel from the cob. While this method was easier, we were discouraged because of the danger of using a bladed weapon and the damage this method does to the kernel. The corn kernel would no longer germinate because an important part of the seed is removed by this method.

Twenty years later, my mother told us that she was quite happy we learned the hard way hoping that we do not end up as arrogant landlords or hacienderos.

How to fish. At the back of our house is a pond an acre or two in size. Our father taught us to catch fish using a bamboo fishing rod, nylon thread and hook with worm as bait. Aside from fishing, the experience taught me how to keep very still. The slightest movement scared the fish away.

How to make coconut oil. What made this chore attractive was the smell of coconut permeating the air. Of course, we eagerly waited for the sweet, solid byproduct of coconut oil making called lintad, or latik in northern tribes. I was also curious because the oil was called lana tidtu which translates to 'true oil' or 'pure oil'. I theorize that this term cements the importance of coconut in Maguindanaon culture. It is the most natural source of oil.

How to make rice flour the traditional way. This was taught to us by our maternal grandmother. The process began with soaking the rice in water. The water was drained after an hour. The next step was the pounding. There was a specific rhythm to the pounding by two or three people, otherwise my grandmother would say that the resulting flour would be inferior. When she got frustrated with her servants' impertinence, she would throw the rice on the ground for chicken and ducks to feast on. The flour was then sifted using a fine mesh or ayakan. Any rice particles that would not pass through the mesh were pounded again. The flour was placed on mats and dried under the sun. After which, the rice flour was stored in big containers and were used mainly to make the Maguindanaon delicacy tinadtag.

Setting a trap for wild birds and small mammals. In Paidu Pulangi, our uncles taught us how to set traps using what looked like an easy noose. The noose would tighten on an animal's foot while feeding on bait.

I remembered discovering a wild duck (tanepol) that my uncle Diding caught in the marsh. He intended to make roasted duck for dinner, but when I told my paternal grandmother I wanted the duck as a pet, my uncle obliged. A year later, that duck became the source of my grandmothers's grief. When a clan feud or rido escalated in Paidu Pulangi that time, the residents evacuated the village as gunfighting ensued. My grandmother wanted to bring the duck to the city but in the haste, she had to leave my duck behind.

Identifying wild birds. During the weekend visits of my father (he was in working in the city some two hours away), he would bring us to lake and grassland of Paidu Pulangi for some bird watching. He would then tell us the names of birds and their distinguishing features.

How to weave a mat. The Maguindanaon people have a rich weaving tradition involving textiles and mats. For the latter, the main component, pandanus leaves, were harvested and dried. They were made into strips and then rolled. Some of the leaves were dyed in bright yellow, magenta and green. It involved grana, a type of dye, that was purchased in Dulawan which was more accessible by boat from Paidu Pulangi compared to a jeepney ride to the poblacion in Pikit. With the colored leaves and the ones without a dye, the weaving of the mats commenced with intricate patterns. As beginners, we were taught how to make rice containers or leban which took us two days to make.

Qiyamah

2020-05-23T22:07:00.001+08:00

Qiyamah (The Reckoning) is my third film. It won best film in the Young Critics Circle of the Philippines Citation for Distinguished Achievement in Film, in 2013. The critic Tessa Maria Guazon wrote, "While Qiyamah partakes of the nothingness that shape apocalyptic films, it grounds it well within a local moral world; that of the small village, its council of men and the ties between women. It foregrounds tainted innocence as it tries to ferret out the workings of evil in a world which little by little has shrunk both in its physical realm and within the imagination of those who inhabit it. Qiyamah underscores the fickle nature of our individual desires and dreams, whose value and gravity becomes apparent only in context of relations with others."

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Digital decluttering

2020-05-19T20:35:00.001+08:00

I decided to embark on a digital decluttering project while on quarantine. The objectives are mainly to organize my files and create a digital bank of all the files I've accumulated all these years from movies, photos, documents, ebooks, presentations, to the raw files of my own films; to free up the space of my MacBook so that I can upgrade the operating system, and lastly to reduce my digital footprint.

The first two objectives I accomplished with ease. First I copied all contents from my MacBook to a hard drive. With a lot of patience I sorted through files stored in 16 hard drives. I decided on what will stay and which to delete. I ended up deleting 10 percent of my files, which were my former students' works and papers. I also had to decide on categories for folders - the decision was between creating a file system based on year or type of files. I decided on the latter so I ended up with 3 hard drives of movies, 12 hard drives of raw files of my own films, and 1 hard drive of documents, photos and presentations. I also thought of a back up for important documents which are stored in the Google Drive of my email address. A Gmail comes with a free 15Gb of data storage. If you want to upgrade your storage, you can do it for a fee. Another Gmail stores back up of my three recent films which still get invited to film festivals. That way file transfer is also convenient. My iCloud, on the other hand, contains photos. So I don't need to bring hard drives with me all the time.

The reduction of digital footprint can be quite challenging. It's easy to permanently delete old Facebook or Twitter accounts for as long as you still remember the password. It's also important that you can access the email address that you used to create the accounts. Social media platforms usually require verification via email.

What I find challenging is the deletion of email addresses, particularly Gmail. I have about ten Gmail addresses which I used for various reasons. I no longer use half of them, hence, the desire to delete them. But Gmail has a very complicated verification process before you can delete your address. Gmail asks you to access a linked email address for security reason. That was no problem. But they also ask for the mobile number that you linked your account. This was problematic because the emails that I created ten years ago were linked to an old mobile number. So they're staying, for now, until I can find a way to convince Gmail that I no longer need the email addresses.

Recreating sound and look in a period film

2020-05-14T12:59:00.001+08:00

When I was pitching Masla A Papanok (Bird of History), I was asked the question, "What does the bird look like?" Papanok is the Maguindanaon word for bird. So I began describing the bird and how I intended to shoot the scene to the QCinema International Film Festival selection panel.

Masla A Papanok takes place in 1891, towards the end of the Spanish colonial era in the Philippines. One day a huge bird suddenly appears, which, according to local superstition, is a bad omen.

Much later, when I was got the grant from QCinema to shoot the film, I asked my father to recall accounts of those who have seen this mysterious bird in the past. It was a big black bird, he said. He likened it to an eagle, but much larger. He has not seen it himself, but has heard of many stories about it. I imagined that it might have looked like the thunder bird Argentavis magnificens, or the giant teratorn (photo above).

My father cautioned me, however, to stop obsessing on the physical features of the papanok. I wanted to argue that I needed to imagine how this bird looked like because film is a visual medium, but I was also eager to learn more. You see, in Maguindanaon lore, the appearance of this bird is bad omen. People in the olden days say "inunian na buniga" to refer to this event. Roughly translated, "the sounding of the big bird." When people hear the sound, they know that bad things are bound to happen. The sound of the bird is, therefore, the ominous presence more than the sighting. To imagine Masla A Papanok is to imagine how it sounded.

But how does one make a period film for 1.5 million pesos (US$30,000)? Clearly the biggest challenge of producing Masla A Papanok was how to mount the film's production design with very limited resources. The first task was turn to archival photos of Cotabato, the milieu of the film, which were taken during the last years of the Spanish colonial period. These photos offered a lot of insights to the production - from creating an authentic look to deducing knowledge on the political economy and social life of the Maguindanaons of the late 1800s, which would then inform the visual design of the period. As there is little extant tangible heritage of the period, imagination filled the gaps. For instance, basing on the photograph below, fabric was a luxury only the rich or nobility could afford in those days. Servants and members of the lower class had to make do with a singular malong (tubular cloth) as garment and would wear it to cover the breast down. Trading with the outside world was a lifeline of the economy, so a lot of goods and commodities came from Chinese traders. As a result, the Maguindanaons wore camisa de chino ('Chinese shirt') and malong made of cotton and silk cloth (rather than the traditional inaul weave of the Maguindanaon).

Old photographs are a window to the past, a time and place that we will never be able to visit. They capture images that are frozen in time. Much of my work as a writer, a filmmaker, an observer of culture are produced by encounters with photographs. I am particular with images of the common folk as they could provide a more accurate assessment of the social, economic and cultural conditions of the past. With meager material resource, there is little room for staging or art direction.

An ugly truth about blog monetization

2020-05-11T16:31:00.002+08:00

So I resumed my blog after an absence of five years. I noticed some changes in the blogging landscape. For some of us who started blogging more than a decade ago, it was more to do with expressing ourselves, writing our observation on just about anything, or chronicling our day to day experience. However, blogging nowadays is driven by marketing of information on a particular subject or niche. Blogging sites are full of advice to focus on a niche or lose an audience. But while I'm not ready to do that yet here (I talk about a range of topics that I like from film to books, travel to shopping, current events to cultural anthropology), I'm quick to adapt a few changes. I learned that Google Adsense has been disabled in this blog for inactivity. It was easy to monetize your blog through Adsense then. There was virtually no requirement except to open a blog and post regularly. Due to stiff competition today, Adsense has set some new requirements focusing on number of traffic and quality of the blog. I'm not sure when my Adsense will be approved or activated again, so while waiting I searched for alternatives to monetize my blog.

A week ago I found a seemingly attractive alternative in Adsterra. I read some good reviews and sent my application. I got accepted in an instant. So I copied the scripts and HTML codes to my blog's HTML template and added the ad codes to my gadgets (the equivalent of widgets for Wordpress users). The ads were displaying well and when I checked my Adsterra publisher dashboard two days later, my blog started to get monetized. It was a good start. I added two other blogs to my Adsterra registration. But yesterday morning all my blogs started acting strange. They were being redirected to gambling and porn sites. My first instinct was to Google the problem and most of the advice centered on malware. I'm using a MacBook so at first I couldn't believe that I was having this problem. There was a long-held belief that Apple products were immune to virus and malware. But upon checking, Macs do get infected by virus and malware and they have even outpaced PCs. Since I didn't have anti-virus installed in my MacBook, I purchased BitDefender online. It scanned my system for more than an hour only to find out that my MacBook was clean. So what's the problem?

There are two things common in my blog. All of them are hosted by Blogger, but since it is owned by Google it has a robust security system. The next thing that all my blogs share in common is Adsterra. So I checked Google again for similar issues with Adsterra and was shocked at what I found out. There have been complaints of blogs and websites using Adsterra that were getting redirected to other links or what is called malvertising campaign. The problem lies with the scripts that you embed in your blog. So I removed the Adsterra scripts from my blogs. It remedied the problem. I browsed my blogs using my MacBook and my Android phone, and they were working fine. No more porn and casino sites. Still unconvinced I asked my partner to check my blogs using his phone. There were no more problems.

My comeback came with a hard lesson with the risk I got myself into with finding alternatives to monetize my blogs. I guess that while good reviews provide promising options to consider, others that raise the red flag also deserves (more serious) attention.

Blogger as a reliable blogging platform

2020-05-10T01:28:00.000+08:00

I have been using Blogger as my preferred blogging platform for close to fifteen years now. It's easy and convenient, and it's also free. Blogger is one of the earliest blogging platforms developed by Pyra Labs in 1999, which was bought by Google in 2003. All you need is a Google account to start a free blog on Blogger. Once you create your Gmail account, it can easily be activated as with other Google features. It requires very minimal technical skills. Because it's powered by Google one can expect a secure blogging platform with little no hassle.

Blogger has fallen out of favor because of its perceived limited blogging tools. The theme design templates might be few but third party templates are available for Blogger which are either free or priced low. I don't see this as a downside for this blogging platform. In fact, the simplicity of the theme options makes you focus on the content of your blog. Too many customization options offer unwanted distraction. You are also tempted to use everything at your disposal. Nobody wants to read a blog that looks like an overly decorated Christmas tree.

Still there are a lot of useful options on Blogger that you can optimize to create a handsome blog. These include customization of theme background and blog layout, text options like font type, color and size, width adjustment of main post area and sidebar, and so much more. There are a wide assortment of gadgets (or widgets) that you can add to your blog, including HTML scripts from third party sources like advertising platforms. If you want to monetize your blog, Google Adsense is a built in feature which you can activate if you meet their minimum requirement. You can also add CSS codes without the need for plugins. All these features come with no additional cost. The only cost I incur using this platform is my annual domain registration which is US$12.

I have tried migrating to Wordpress a few years ago, and even started another blog using Wordpress a month ago.

WordPress starts out free but as soon as you want additional features, you have to upgrade to Premium. This costs about $100 per year with a free domain. If you want to monetize your blog, you have to upgrade again to a Business Plan that costs about US$300 a year, purchase a plugin give you control of your blog and be able to add HTML codes from third party advertising platforms like Adsense, Media.Net and Adsterra. This can cost up to US1,0000. WordPress is expensive and is not suitable for personal blogging or a start up business. The blogging platform also calls for advance technical skills including creation of HTML codes. I was so frustrated I ended up terminating my WordPress Premium plan.

I'm sticking with Blogger not only for this site but also for two more blogs I manage - New Durian Cinema, a journal of Southeast Asian cinema, and Cobek Batu Adventures, a food and travel blog devoted to culinary trips around Southeast Asia. Now I have more time to think what I want to write about.

The blogging landscape has changed drastically in the last several years. Once used mainly as a site for creative expression, personal journal and political punditry, blogging has increasingly become a business tool where information on all sorts of things are marketed and niches are your new speciality shops. Information is the greatest commodity of this age.

A decade in review

2020-01-02T12:46:00.000+08:00

I'm back again. Considering whether to resume blogging again or not, I reviewed the entries of this blog and realized it has been a decade. There are things in my past that are well chronicled here, worthy of reflection on how to move forward in the new decade.

The last ten years was an exciting time. In December of 2009 I started preparation for my debut film Limbunan after it was announced a week earlier that it was selected as a finalist of Cinemalaya 2010.

In 2010 we shot the film and learned valuable lessons in filmmaking. I felt the outpouring of support from the creative as well as the Moro community especially when Limbunan was invited to the Venice Film Festival. It was election year and there was a vacuum in FDCP leadership so our grant application was on a standby. Back then DCP conversion was a whopping 200,000 pesos (US$4,000). Money I didn't have. Good thing NCCA under the leadership of Malou Jacob was quick to support us. We also organized fund raising screenings in Davao and Cotabato with the help of then Bureau of Cultural Heritage director Atty. Toie Mitmug. That year alone Limbunan was invited to a dozen international film festivals. More would follow in the succeeding years.

Banking on the high of Limbunan I made Cartas de la Soledad in 2011 via Cinema One Originas. It was largely ignored by Filipino critics (one Manunuri even said to me, "After Limbunan how could you make this film?") This also started my standing rift with a notorious post production company of that time details of which are still too painful to recall. Anyway Cartas de la Soledad was well loved by international critics solidifying my stature as an obscure arthouse film director. It won the NETPAC Prize in Jogja too.

2011 was a low for me because nearing the end of the year my mother passed on.

Consumed by guilt and trying to make sense of the loss I made the doomsday drama Qiyamah in 2012 through a grant from Film Development Council of the Philippines (FDCP) - Sineng Pambansa program. It won best film and best editing in the 2013 YCC Film Desk Citation for Distinguished Achievement in Film. Strangely Qiyamah is my least traveled film after being compared to the oeuvres of Lav Diaz - monochromatic and slow. That same year I released The Obscured Histories and Silent Longings of Daguluan's Children, winner of best film and best director at Cinemanila. It fared better in terms of its festival rounds and earned the approval of the film critic Chris Fujiwara.

I went on a directing hiatus from 2013 to 2015. I moved to Gensan from Davao and founded the Salamindanaw International Film Festival which would shift its focus on Asian cinema in 2016. I also tried acting in Lav's 2014 film Mula Sa Kung Ano Ang Noon (From What is Before).

In 2015 I began working on moro2mrw which received a production grant from FDCP. However, due to the Mamasapano Incident, the said grant was withdrawn as FDCP feared that any project on the Moro would not be well received by the public. I started a call for support for the film which the ARMM government under Governor Mujiv Hataman gladly responded to, providing us with much needed funding support to make the film. Friends also contributed to our crowdfunding campaign.

During this time I was also released an anthology of young Moro writings called Rays of the Invisible Light.

In 2016 the first part of moro2mrw - Daughters of the Three Tailed Banner premiered at the World Premieres Film Festival Manila earning two Impy Pilapil sculpture-trophies for Grand Jury Prize and Best Artistic Achievement. That same year I made the Malisbong massacre documentary Forbidden Memory which won best documentary at Cinema One Origs Film Festival.

Forbidden Memory is a special film for me. It surfaced an episode in our dark past that only a few knew. It allowed the survivors of the Malisbong massacre to talk about their experience. I would like to believe that Forbidden Memory is not just a film but an important historical text.

In 2016 the Ateneo De Naga University Press released my collection of essays Archipelago of Stars. Several of the essays started their life as blog entries here which I later developed into full essays. A few of these essays remain here.

In 2017 I started writing the screenplay of Masla A Papanok (Bird of History) after Lav Diaz emailed me a story. Two years earlier another Mindanaoan director, Sherad Anthony Sanchez, broached the idea of Lav and myself co-directing an ode to the Cotabato/Maguindanao of our birth. Although this dream film remains elusive, collaborating with Lav on a story was a joy. The following year QCinema provided the grant to make the film. It was a rude awakening for me on many levels. First, never screen a rough cut or a work in progress. It was the worst reception that I ever had, an Instagram reviewer said that the film looked like a high school project done by its valedictorian. John Tawasil's review provided a glimmer of hope. I realized (together with my assistant director Kikko Kalabud) that it was a polarizing film, and most opinions were formed depending on one's knowledge of Mindanao. But the validation would arrive a year later. In 2019, Masla A Papanok won best screenplay at the YCC Film Desk Citation for Distinguished Achievement in Film.

I have films on my mind. Books, too. Places to explore. I'm looking forward to the new decade to do them.

From Isfahan to Las Islas Filipinas

2018-12-08T22:16:00.000+08:00

After a week in Brisbane for the culminating leg of the Asia Pacific Screen Lab in which I served as one of the mentors, it was time to go. An Iranian from Isfahan drove us to the Brisbane airport. He has visited the Philippines on numerous occasions and he is looking forward to spending the Christmas holidays in Siargao and Cebu. Here's what he has to say about Las Islas Filipinas:

"It's a beautiful country. I love it. I've been to Davao and Samal Island. Bohol. Cebu. Beautiful beaches. Lovely people." I definitely agree.

"Filipino food is very bad, but you have nice fish and fruits." He hasn't eaten Bicol or Moro food so he is forgiven.

"Filipinos eat too much rice. They will become diabetic in the future." Haha. Exactly.

"Filipinos love greasy food like Jollibee. You like American food a lot." We were a U.S. colony for half a century. The U.S. is still very much a part of our culture, politics and economy. We are the brown Americans.

"Turks is the worst of its kind in the world" to which I totally agreed. "I saw long queues in all its branches." Philip Cheah then asked me, "So why do Filipinos love it?"

"Piolo Pascual. We love Piolo Pascual."

The Maguindanaon realm, a context

2018-05-25T19:31:00.000+08:00

Datu Piang (third from right) controlled much of the sa laya realm during the American colonial era.

Excerpt from the manuscript of Notes of Bantugan’s Last Journey which will be out soon.

The Maguindanaon people—the largest ethnolinguistic group in Central Mindanao—occupy the basin of the Pulangi River (Rio Grande de Mindanao in Spanish accounts), which spills down the southern slopes of the Bukidnon massif in north-central Mindanao, snaking south and west across a low-lying marshy plain to Illana Bay[i]. About twenty miles before reaching the sea the Pulangi splits into two branches. The narrower southern fork is known as the Tamontaka River. Near the mouth of the river, stands Timako Hill, and offshore, the dark crescent of Bongo Island. The wider north fork of the Pulangi flows past Cotabato City, which is located on its south bank about four miles above the river mouth[ii].

In the past, the Maguindanaon settled along riverbanks and in the valley regions of the Pulangi River where periodic flooding was experienced. It is due to this inundation that the people occupying the area came to be called maguindanaon –“people of the flood plains.” Today, they are found in several provinces. Maguindanao province accounts for 76 percent of the total Maguindanaon population. In Cotabato province, they are concentrated mainly in Pikit, Kabacan, and the interior villages of Midsayap. In Sultan Kudarat province, they live in Lutayan, as well as the coastal towns of Lebak, Kalamansig, and Palembang. They are also found in Malapatan, in Sarangani province, and Dinas and Labangan in Zamboanga Sibugay.

The Maguindanaon people descended from the waves of Proto- and Deutro Malays migrants from mainland Asia in 3,000 B.C. Exhibiting a higher stage of social development, they formed settlements or communities with political organizations along family or blood lines. Like most descendants of Proto- and Deutro Malays in Southeast Asia, they were animists believing that the rivers, trees, jungles, and mountains were inhabited by malevolent spirits which motivated them to develop elaborate rituals to placate these spirits[iii]. One can surmise that there already existed various forms of ritualistic practices by the time they came in contact with the rest of the region –starting with Indianized state of Funan in 1 A.D., to the contact with Islamic traders and sufis in the late 1500s.

In the early sixteenth century, Shariff Muhammad Kabungsuan of Johore arrived in Mindanao, landing in what is now Malabang, in Lanao del Sur, and introduced Islam to the native population. He founded the Maguindanao sultanate through his marriage to the daughters of local chieftains. One of his daughters, Mamur, was married to the Buayan chief Pulwa. Thus, the Maguindanao and Buayan sultanate claim descent from Kabungsuan. Later on, succeeding sultanates trace their ancestry from him as well.

During the course of history, the Buayan rulers controlled the datus and territories in the upper valley of the Pulangi –tau sa laya—while the Maguindanao sultans came to control the lower valley –tau sa ilud. Though interdependent, and related through marital and blood ties, they competed against each other for supremacy for most of their histories.

The distinction into tau sa laya and tau sa ilud as inland and coastal people has its dangers[iv], but the contrasts between the two is important in this study. Geographic factors and dialect variations also mean differences in ritual practices. Still both have a lot in common. The traditional Maguindanaon were horticulturists, growing either rice in upland fields or wet rice in lowland paddies. In the modern period, they have shifted to plow and harrow method of wet rice cultivation[v]. The Maguindanaon are excellent fishermen in both the riverine areas and coastlines. They possess a strong weaving, metal craft, carving, and musical tradition.

Although one of the thirteen Muslim ethnolinguistic groups in Mindanao, the Maguindanaon people retained indigenous belief systems in their religious culture. It is a reflection of how Islam is practiced by the vast majority of Muslims in Southeast Asia –moderate, tolerant and syncretic.

[i] Ileto, Reynaldo, Magindanao 1860-1888 The Career of Datu Utto of Buayan, Anvil Publishing, 2007.

[ii] McKenna, Thomas, Muslim Rulers and Rebels, Anvil Publishing, 1998.

[iii] Nasuruddin, Mohammad Ghouse, The Malay Traditional Music, Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, 1992.

[iv] Ibid, 1.

[v] Stewart, James C., People of the Flood Plain, Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Hawaii, 1977.

Archipelago of Stars is out

2017-08-24T10:00:00.000+08:00

My new book Archipelago of Stars is out. It is a collection of essays which I wrote within a ten-year period (2005-2015). Several of the essays started as blog posts here which I developed in the course of the years.

Victor Dennis Nierva did a fabulous job with the book design. He asked me about the elements that I wanted to include on the cover. I told him I have a penchant for the asterisk. In fact I use it in an unconventional manner that Dr. Cristina Pantoja-Hidalgo took notice of it in my essays during the 2015 UP National Writers Workshop where I was a writing fellow. She was aghast. But an asterisk is a marker of origin. I can call it mine. As a reaction, I wrote in my book's bionote that I "take pride in the deconstruction of the asterisk as his way of rebelling against the formality of political and artistic establishments." What I didn't tell Victor was that an asterisk reminded me of the jackstone stars which I loved playing as a kid. I told him that I wanted a denim texture for the cover to convey a down-to-earth and contemporary feel. It also features Gill Sans, one of my favorite fonts.

In my essay Archipelago of Stars from which the title of the book is derived, I wrote about the origin of my writing life:

“HOW CAN I BECOME A (GOOD) WRITER?” is probably one of the trickiest questions that I have been asked in my life. “Are writers born or made?” ranks closely in second place. The first question denotes the existence of a step-by-step procedure similar to, say, gourmet cuisine, guiding the novice through a logical sequence of actions from mincing and chopping, to sautéing and flambéing, and then continuing to the delicate art of plate presentation. Meanwhile, the second question implies the role of genetics, or the difference one brand of infant formula milk makes in the development of a would-be writer.

I never considered becoming a writer when I was growing up. There was no oracle foretelling what I’d end up to be, although soothsayers have always been inclined to say that I was bound to do great things. I’m okay with the thought, for as long as it doesn’t entail death by firing squad or hanging like most of the great people I encountered in grade school history lessons. I get embarrassed when I’m asked, “What do you do for a living?” I don’t want to be presumptuous by announcing, “I’m a writer.” Then again it’s a more pleasant thing to say compared to admitting that I’m a bum most of the time.

Until recently, when I was asked to speak in a career guidance seminar, I haven’t bothered tracing the origins of my writing life.

Like many children I dreamed of becoming a doctor. When I was five years old I showed an intense fascination with the doctors who looked esteemed in their starched, antiseptic white gowns as they attended to my paralyzed grandfather. However, my mother was so opposed to the idea that she announced it right there and then that she would not hear of me wanting to become a doctor."

Archipelago of Stars is published by the Ateneo de Naga University Press. For another sampling of the essays, click here.

A new film called moro2mrw

2015-08-05T15:22:00.001+08:00

"This film is made possible through crowdfunding. Thank you so much for your support." This is the opening text of my new film, moro2mrw, which was shot last March around Mindanao. I never thought that we would be able to make it considering one of our biggest funders thought that making a film on the Bangsamoro was a huge gamble after the Mamasapano incident that killed 44 SAF men and Moro nationalists. With the help of friends, family and the leadership of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, we managed. We're now on post-production.

First scene. Day 1. Somewhere in General Santos City.

Preparing to shoot the opening sequence in Barangay Silway 8, Polomolok, South Cotabato.

Deciding on a scene with line producer Liryc dela Cruz, soundman Arbi Barbarona and assistant director Joe Bacus.

Art Director TJ Baud prepares actress Mayka Lintongan in a crucial scene.

Magic hour. Waiting for the right moment (or was it waiting for the actors in an unplanned scene).

My August read

2015-08-04T21:29:00.003+08:00

In celebration of National Language Month, writer Edgar Calabria Samar has launched a Facebook campaign to popularize Filipino literature by asking people to post an answer to the question, "What book by a Filipino author have you read this August?" and use the hashtag #BuwanNgMgaAkdangPinoy.

The reality is less than ten percent of my library is occupied by books written by Filipino authors in English and Filipino. The last time I read a book by a Filipino author was May this year, Autobiografiya ng Ibang Lady Gaga by Jack Alvarez, right after the UP National Writers Workshop. Jack and I were fellows this year. I couldn't recall when and which book by a Filipino author writing in Filipino I read before Jack's, perhaps three or five years ago. This should not be miscontrued as lack of patriotism on my part, but distribution in the regions (especially in cities with no National Bookstore branches) has been quite problematic unless you're one of those Precious Hearts Romances writers. I also have a hard time reading Filipino. So excuse me if I only have ten or a dozen books in Filipino, mostly children's books by my friend Luis Gatmaitan and Genaro Gojo Cruz. Whenever I get a chance to be in Manila, it's for film-related business usually so I don't get to check the new titles. The only time I was able to amass Filipiniana was during the Philippine Centennial in 1998. My father was undersecretary of education then and became a recipient of each book that came out to celebrate the Republic and its many heroes. Naturally the books were passed to me, including the thick anthology The Best Philippine Short Stories of the 20th Century edited by Isagani Cruz and the Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo translation by Soledad Locsin. Someday I wish to make a film adapted from the story of Elias and Salome.

Aslan with some of my books by Filipino writers.

I have a few Filipino writers that I read every now and then for pleasure and education. Being a writer of non-fiction, I am a great fan of Criselda Yabes and Marra Lanot (whose De Javu and Other Essays has been a teacher of some sort to me). No one will admit to Jessica Zafra being an influence, at least at one point, in a writer's life. But I do. In the late 1990s, her Twisted anthology showed me how to make something creative out of my angst-ridden youth. I love cats and cinema too. Since the rise (and eventual fall of blogging) other Filipino writers have become quite accessible. It became an opportunity to cultivate friendships, both real and online.

Jessica Zafra signed my copy of Twisted V after guesting on her Sunday radio program.

So as for my August read? I'm reading Savor The Word, a compilation of winning entries (including runners-up) of the archipelago-wide Doreen Gamboa Fernandez Food Writing Award, not because I need to console myself with a morsel of nationalism during this time of year. I simply love food, and my cousin Shariff has an essay in the book.

The reluctant fellow

2015-05-23T14:57:00.000+08:00

After stalling for the last four years, and with the goading of three senior writers (Vim Nadera, Eugene Evasco and Ricky de Ungria who tried to convince me from August 2012 to February this year), I finally gave in to the urge and submitted an application to the annual UP National Writers Workshop. Now on its 54th year, the Workshop has evolved into a platform for midcareer writers to meet colleagues who also share the birthing pains of a new book and have their manuscripts critiqued by the country's leading literary figures. Until ten years ago, the Workshop was designed to help and cultivate young starting writers but a lot of workshops are already taking care of the beginners (Silliman, Iligan, Ateneo) so the UPNWW took care of the more experienced, published ones.

So I became a fellow, a very reluctant one. And for a week, I switched hats -from filmmaker to writer- and traveled to Baguio and spent a week breathing the cool Cordillera air with a hint of pine and hashish, inebriated in a mix of booze and poetry, and surrendered myself and my ego to the sharpened knives of writers who have walked this same path a long time ago.

Remembrance of a cat

2014-11-18T09:50:00.001+08:00

I still remember, vividly. The first moments we were together. The taxi ride from Balintawak to Cubao. How you meowed and meowed, afraid of the neon lights that veiled Manila at night. How you clinged to my arms, climbed my shoulders, and then perched on my head like a ginger crown when we walked the concrete sidewalks of Cubao at rush hour. You continued to meow loudly, attracting the attention of the crowd in front of the New Frontier Theater and forcing me to buy the pet carrier at a corner store in the huge supermarket that occupied Fiesta Carnival of my growing up years.

That night, acquainting yourself with the geography of your new home, I wracked my brain deciding on a name to call you, not because I was in a hurry but the cattery you were born into had an obligation to register your name. At midnight, I decided to call you Natarajan Beckham, after the character in Amulya Malladi's The Mango Season which I was reading that time, and my then favorite football player to commemorate the 2015 World Cup.

We were the best buddies for seven years until the affliction took you away from me.

It has been two years now, but the memory of you remains with me. You are missed every single day.

Natarajan Beckham

04/27/05-11/26/12

Norte is Philippine bet to Oscars

2014-09-26T11:43:00.003+08:00

The Film Academy of the Philippines has chosen Lav Diaz's opus Norte: End of History to represent the country in the bid for a nomination for best foreign-language film at the Oscars next year.

Ahead of the October 1 submission deadline for countries to name their official submission, 2014's field of international Oscar hopefuls is starting to come into focus. Norte faces tough competition. Belgium, for instance, has fielded the Dardenne brothers' neorealist work, Two Day, One Night, while Canada has chosen Xavier Dolan's Mommy which won a Jury Prize in Cannes this year. Turkey has high hopes for Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Winter Sleep which beat Mommy in Cannes and took home the coveted Palme d'Or.

After premiering in Cannes last year, Norte enjoyed positive critical reception at nearly all the world’s major festivals including Karlovy Vary, Locarno, Toronto, New York, Busan, Tokyo, Rotterdam and Hong Kong. Whether this is enough to get a slot in the Oscars foreign language film category remains to be seen.

The Philippines has regularly submitted films for Academy Awards consideration since 1953, but none have been nominated.

The birth of tradition

2014-09-19T16:24:00.000+08:00

This is a behind the scene photo of the first scene to be shot in The Obscured Histories and Silent Longings of Daguluan's Children in Matanao, Davao del Sur, in 2009. We shot the film without a script. We went on location with a big idea, and would just leave it to geography and atmosphere to bring out the story. This scene, of women talking about their desire to seek greener pasture as overseas Filipino workers in Kuwait, was decided because the artesian well, locally known as poso, amidst the oversized biga leaves looked 'nice' for a rural conversation.

But what became important about this day is that it set the tradition for my succeeding films, that is, lunch on the first day of all my film shoots must have on the menu sinful ginataang monggo (mungbean stew in coconut) and grilled tilapia and pirit (baby tuna). This was suggested by my assistant director Yam Palma which myself and production manager Elreen Supetran Bendisula agreed to. Dutch scientist and writer Louise Fresco wrote, "Food, in the end, in our own tradition, is something holy. It's not about nutrients and calories. It's about sharing. It's about honesty. It's about identity."

During the shoot of Limbunan, the tradition of having grilled or deep fried catfish on the first supper, and crabs on either lunch of the second or third day were added, not to mention overflowing Coca Cola round the clock because that's the preferred 'energy drink' of my cinematographer Coicoi Nacario and tech supervisor John J. Barredo. Red Horse beer being part of tradition is totally predictable. Peanuts on the other hand are not allowed. And even before the shoot commences, I would ask Elreen, a Catholic, to offer flowers and eggs in the Carmelite Church and pray for good weather and no rain.