The Sampaguita's journey

The audience stands respectfully as the National Anthem begins to play, hands on hearts, faces serious. Suddenly they realize that the images on the screen don't look like the usual tourism advertisement that screams "Come visit our 7,100 islands. We may be third world, but it sure is a nice place!" They can't help it - they start to laugh. It's a laughter not without much wincing - the kind that Filipinos have mastered. After all, the clever montage of national icons is funny, but it's also sad. For instance, the bahay kubo is shown, labeled as the national house - and then the camera zooms out and the nipa hut is revealed to be nothing more than a picture on a t-shirt - which is worn by a boy who sleeps on the street. The music stops and people are still standing. It takes a while for them to realize that the film had already begun with the first note. It is morning in the first scene - so early that the sun is not yet up. A child is woken from her sleep, and she emerges from a kulambo for a quick breakfast before her mother straps a plastic container to her waist. She then goes out to pick fresh sampaguitas, carrying a gas lamp. One by one, other children emerge from their huts and they move up and down like fireflies in the field.

The film follows the sampaguita's journey to the filthy streets of Manila, where children dart through traffic pleading with motorists and pedestrians to buy their flowers. The audience is brought close to the children - sometimes too close. The shots are shaky at times, sometimes nauseatingly so. But then, one would naturally feel dizzy while seeing these children's lives. On the street or in the car, it's easy to dismiss them as a whole. After all, in the few seconds you encounter them, you either fish for change in your pocket and purchase a fragrant strand of flowers, or shake your head and move on. In the theater, you have to watch them for an hour or so, and director Francis Xavier Pasion doesn't just show you, he makes you see. Though you wonder how much of the film was scripted, there is a firm sense of reality. After all, these are the kids you see everyday. The scenes, which mostly seem natural, are interspersed with interviews with the children. They seem to have difficulty with the questions, and, as expected, tears are shed. But what is most striking about the interviews is how, on the big screen, there is no denying it. When you look at their eyes, it's hard to find any childlike innocence. The film ends with a scene of one of the children asleep on the ground, still clutching his unsold flowers. On our way home from the theater, a child went up to our car window selling sampaguitas. Naturally, we had to buy some. Soon after, another child came up. He was persistent, but he settled for my friend's soda. It's depressing how many of them there are. If I could I'd buy from every one of them, but that wouldn't do any good. Besides, what would I do with all those flowers? Then it hit me, the problem is that big. No wonder, the film's full title is Sampaguita, Our National Flower's Journey to Decay. Pasion is the director-writer of the film Jay which won the Best Film, Best Editing and Best Actor Award (for Baron Geisler) in Cinemalaya 2008. Sampaguita is his sophomore film and also his second entry to the Cinemalaya. - GMANews.TV