The Films Young Filmmakers Make

Last Saturday, we have just finished the deliberation for the awards to be given for the 2010 Cinema One Originals Digital Film Festival. This is an annual event where the cable channel gives a million peso each to selected young filmmakers. Out of some 100 entries, seven qualified this year.

It is interesting how the sample gives so much about the obsession and interests of this generation. On the material, Joey Javier Reyes, a member of the jury, noted how the directors opted to work on the techniques – the form – of their works instead of the content. The films had lots of style and were highly referential.

The directors, it appear, were bent on impressing the audience with the approaches that came from video games, MTVs and animation, Hollywood genre.

Away from the surface and into the depth of what they are trying to say, the contents of the films this year reveal what, perhaps, this generation has been bothered with. Almost all of the films are about families, their dysfunction and their disappearance. Even in a dark film like “Dagim” by Joaquin Pedro Valdez, the tale begins with the father not coming home. In this film which deals with all kinds of vanishing, the two children set out to the mountains and find there a new family, or at least a brotherhood. Extreme to the end, the film shows an entire village disappearing. Militarization deals darkness to the village in this film

In “Astro Mayabang,” the unusual hero goes home to a family where the father is always unconscious, drunk, and the mother is battered, drinking and smoking while praying the rosary. In “Tsardyer,” the Tausug family loses the mother. The boy then finds himself going to the mountains where he sees his uncle he so admires. The boy then starts working for the Abu Sayyaf as a “tsardyer,” meaning he is tasked with charging the cellphones being used by the group out there in the forest. The boy runs to the nearest home with electricity in order to do this.

As in the previous years, I am a bit saddened by the fact that there are no entries using Bikol language in this batch. Two finalists in this year’s Cinema One Originals are given this label “regional” film. It is an exoticizing name but one that makes films in non-Pilipino language special.

The film “Astro Mayabang” comes from Pampanga and is directed by Jason Paul Laxamana. The subtitles do not isolate the film because it stars Aaron Villaflor who has quite a following. The film itself is engaging because it tells the story of this young man who is very literal about his nationalism: he wears the flag around his body by way of a jacket bearing the flag design. He is proud of his being a Filipino even if it means putting down another nation. The nationalist is a racist, and we are not even aware of it.

My favorite in the batch is a film from Cebu called “Ang Damgo ni Eleuteria Kirschbaum” (The Dream of Eleuteria Kirschbaum). Shot on extended takes, with the camera trailing Terya with her father, mother, sister, and cousin, the film is about Terya leaving home for Manila, and from there to Germany. She is going to marry Hans, a person she never sees yet. She is leaving not only her home but also her boyfriend. The action is simply that, but the film engages the audience with what I believe to be the best ensemble performance ever. On location in Olango island, a sanctuary from birds flying in from the northern hemisphere, the film adeptly manipulates the metaphor of freedom in birds that are either flying away or fleeing the island. While not winning Best Film, the Cebuano work by Remton Siega Zuasola gets the Jury Prize.

I dream of sitting as member of Jury again but this time reviewing a film in Bikolnon, in all the splendors of its variations.