Cinemalaya: The future of Philippine cinema

Consider the Narra tree. No, really, take a closer look. The trees have a huge girth, often wider than most arms can encompass. Looking at a cross-section of the tree, one sees at the center a region of dark-brown wood--the tree's heartwood. It is the hardest, toughest part of the tree, and the source of its unyielding strength and stability. But it's basically dead wood--if it were otherwise, it would not be as tough, nor would it be able to bear the tree's considerable weight (a good-sized Narra could grow up to a hundred and twenty feet, or forty meters, and tip the scale at several tons), nor could it stand up to the hundred kilometer winds of a Filipino typhoon. Point is, while heartwood is the strongest, hardest, most valuable wood (for furniture making or flooring or house construction) in the tree, it's hardly the living part necessary to keep the tree growing. For that you need the cambium layer. Cambium isn't very thick; it lies just underneath the tough black-brown bark, and is the only layer of actively dividing cells in the trunk. Cells moving inwards are called the xylem; cells moving outwards are the phloem. Cambium also conducts water and vital nutrients from the roots up to the tree's upper branches and leaves. The cambium layer is quite fragile; one way of killing a tree without cutting it down is by 'girdling' the tree, or cutting the cambium layer in a belt going all the way around the tree's trunk. This stops the flow of water and nutrients and the tree dies slowly, surely. Which brings us to the rest of our extended and rather elaborate metaphor. Filipino studios spend a great amount of money to shoot films (via traditional 35-mm film stock), develop them, edit them, post-produce them, turn them into dozens of perhaps a hundred prints, project them on traditional film projectors in traditional theaters. The upside of this is an image of unmatched quality and durability (barring fire or poor storage technique, film prints can last for something like a hundred years, longer than any digital or video technique presently known). The downside is that it's such an expensive process (last I remember a well-budgeted Filipino film can cost upwards of twenty million pesos) that producers will only finance surefire projects with time-tested stars in well-known genres: comedy, horror, drama, action, erotic (or any combination thereof). In short, garbage. Digital is different; with digital you can fund something for a million pesos and it might make its money back. And then again it might not, but you're out a million and not twenty million. If it's a hit, it can make its money back and spare change; if it at least makes its money back (what finance specialists like to call the "break-even" point), you can plow the money into yet another production. The lower the break-even point, the easier to reach. At a million break-even, financiers can actually breath a little easier. A little bit. Point is, with digital and the small budget it requires, you can pretty much do anything--explore, innovate, dwell on unpopular or personal subject matter, whatever. My thesis, then: that independent film-making, particularly digital independent filmmaking (though I dearly hope that the time of experimental celluloid filmmaking isn't irretrievably in the past) represents the cambium layer of Philippine cinema. It's the one segment of the industry that is expanding, not collapsing, with an audience that is growing, not shrinking. And it conveys life-giving ideas and talent (water, nutrients) to the fossilized inner layers. Such is the case for the granddaddy of independent film festivals, Tikoy Aguiluz's Cinemanila Film Festival. With its Ishmael Bernal Award given to young filmmakers, its seminars and workshops and programs designed to give independent filmmakers recognition and support, it has been a longstanding ally of that all-important cambium. It has given an important start to a royal flush of once-unknown, now well-known artists: Mes de Guzman, Ato Bautista, Raya Martin, John Torres, Brillante Mendoza. It has recognized the works of other independent but already established filmmakers: Khavn de la Cruz, Jeffrey Jeturian, Ditsy Carolino, Lav Diaz. Developing the metaphor still further, Cinemanila might be considered the phloem-producing cambium of Philippine cinema; its films are more formally experimental, more appreciated by critics and cineastes. The Cinemalaya Festival--organized by the Cultural Center of the Philippines--might be considered its xylem-producing cousin. Cinemalaya films are geared more to the popular audience, albeit with an innovative edge, from stories you normally don't see done by mainstream studios or TV stations. Some of the names in its roster may sound familiar. Auraeus Solito's "Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros" (The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros"), about a gay boy and his crush on a police officer hunting for his larcenous family, was in fact a Cinemalaya entry that went on to exhibit in Sundance Film Festival and enjoy a healthy little international run afterwards. Paul Morales is a long-standing theater director (he transformed Nicholas Pichay's "Bilog" into a brilliant multimedia event) turned filmmaker. Dennis Marasigan is a Tanghalang Pilipino acting and directing veteran turned filmmaker. Clodualdo del Mundo, Jr. is the legendary screenwriter of Lino Brocka's "Maynila sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag" (1975). So we have new and old talents, practical nobodies and venerable institutions, all mixing in and mixing it all up. Unsurprisingly, a good proportion of the filmmakers and cast they draw on are from the theater, attempting to make the transition to a new medium. As a result they draw from theater's more freewheeling devices to keep up with cinematic conventions (think of quick scenery changes in Elizabethan theater, and how it resembles the art of montage), tap the theater's deep well of excellent performers, use a sense of theatricality much like Orson Welles (a theater man turned filmmaker) did, to inject energy and style onto the big screen. The results can be a heady brew, as with Solito’s "Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros"--a gently melancholic fable of gay youth's rite of passage; or "Big Time," Mario Cornejo's Filipinized (and to my mind much superior) take on the Tarantinoesque caper film; or "Tukso" (Temptation), Dennis Marasigan's "Rashomon"-like film noir; or (the latest winner), Veronica Velasco's "Last Supper No. 3," a Southeast Asian version of Dickens' "Bleak House" and arguably the first ever truly successful film on the Filipino legal system (unsurprisingly, it's a comedy). - GMANews.TV