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Manila by day and night

By Aruna Vasudev

If you want a new generation of filmmakers to emerge, start a film festival. That is the clear message transmitted by the Cinemalaya film festival in Manila. It has just held its fifth edition but the difference with other festivals is that this one is exclusively of Filipino films — around 170 of them this year. Features and short fiction, retrospectives (the unmatched Lino Brocka this time), documentaries, animation, women and, along with these sections, one on gay and lesbian films. Filipinos are known not to shy away from reality. And the Filipino reality is relaxed, accommodating, laidback.

Across the road from the Cultural Centre of the Philippines (CCP), the festival venue, is a restaurant complex where dozens of little restaurants and coffee shops serve everything from noodle soup to every kind of alcohol, and where the filmmakers, the theatre, dance and music people congregate after the last show at the CCP every night to engage in passionate discussion, while across the way the sea sparkles with the lights of Manila Bay. Little wonder then, the dozens of new Filipino filmmakers spring up everywhere. Little wonder also that this year in Cannes, Brillante Mendoza from the Philippines won the Best Director award and there were two other Filipino films in the Un Certain Regard section — Manila and Independencia. And no surprise that the Pusan Film Festival with its pulse on developments in Asian cinema will pay a homage to Filipino cinema at its coming edition this October.

Music and dance — and now even cinema — seem to be intrinsic to Philippine culture. They find highly creative expression in both formal stage presentations and in the way they live their lives. From all the around 7,000 islands that constitute the country, young people converge in Manila, which is the only real centre — of the country and of the film festival. The CCP was Imelda Marcos’ contribution to cultural life in the city and is now a vibrant centre for the arts, with three main theatres, art galleries and cafes. The Cinemalaya Foundation, the Cultural Centre and the Film Council Development of the Philippines come together to present this festival with a difference. The established filmmakers are also there, interacting with the young newcomers, and the still fairly restricted number of international delegates.

There is definitely a new wave in Filipino cinema. After the disappearance of Lino Brocka and Ishmael Bernal (who, incidentally, studied at the FTII in Pune many, many years ago), with Marilou Diaz-Abaya and Laurice Guillen engaged in other pursuits and only occasionally making a film themselves, with Mike de Leon having gone underground, there was lull that lasted two decades.

Chito Rono is one of the few of that generation still actively engaged in filmmaking and was a member of the jury this year. Now Marilou has a film school of her own and Laurice Guillen (whose Santa Santita was shown at Osian’s Cinefan in 2007, in her presence) is both vice-president of Cinemalaya and head of the competition section. But there are a host of younger people who are making waves internationally. People like Raymond Red (Golden Palm at Cannes 2000 for his short film Anino) Lav Diaz whose films range in duration from six to 11 hours, John Torres, Jerrold Tarog, the award-winning Jeffrey Jeturian… The Raya Martin and Adolfo B. Alix’s co-directed Manila — a homage to Lino Brocka’s Manila in the Claws of Neon and Ishmael Bernal’s Manila by Night (the title had to be changed into City After Dark at Imelda Marcos’ behest because she thought it gave Manila a bad name!) opened the Festival, Raya Martin’s Independencia, a strange tale of the (American) colonial era, set in the forests evoking the early 20th century, had a special screening. Both these films were in the official section of Cannes earlier this year.

Ten features competed for 13 awards, for everything from best film to best sound, production design, supporting actor and actres. Each film got something — the most uncompromising of them, the hour-long Engkwetro (Encounter) won its 21-year-old first time director Pepe Diokno, a jury special mention. Ten short fiction films competed for four awards. It was first-time filmmaker Guiseppe Bede Sampedro (very popular concert, music video, TVshows director) who carried away Best Director and three more awards for Astig (Squalor), and Mendoza’s scriptwriter, Ralston Jover directing his first film Bakal Boys who won the Netpac prize. The Best Feature went to a charming comedy Last Supper No. 3.

The jury was composed of three Filipinos — Chito Rono, actress Cherry Pie Picache (she won Best Actress at Osian’s Cinefan in 2007 in Brillante Mendoza’s Foster Child), and Mark Vincent Escaler (a professor of film and Media Studies and coincidentally Mike de Leon’s nephew!), along with Aude Hesbert who is the director of the Paris Cinema International Film Festival in France, and myself from India. The 10 shorts were of a high standard, ranging from conventional narrative, to highly personal forays into the world of the imaginary. The Filipino filmmakers are not afraid of breaking rules, they are not restricted by the fear of not finding funding or a showplace for their work; they are in the fortunate position of being given the opportunity to give free rein to their imagination. That perhaps is what makes their films so original and what makes Cinemalaya a unique festival.

Aruna Vasudev is an eminent film critic who has been on the jury of major film festivals around the world