Every year, Cinema One provides grants of P1M each, this year 10 films projects chosen from hundreds of submitted screenplays. These film projects are meticulously selected by a jury composed of representatives from the film industry and Cinema One.
(Alchemy of Vision and Light Film and TV Productions)
Fe GingGing Hyde
(HYDEout Entertainment)
in coordination with:
NCCA (National Commision for Cuture and Arts)
33rd GAWAD URIAN nominee for:
Best Film:
Skyweaver Productions
Alchemy of Vision and Light Film and TV Productions
HYDEout Entertainment
Best Director
Arnel Mardoquio
Best Cinematography
Dax Canedo
Best Production Design
Bryan Bajado
Best Music
Gauss Obenza
Best Supporting Actress
Jea Lyka Cinco
Conterder for the 10 Best Films 2000-2009
(34th Gawad Urian Awards 2011)
Starring:
Rochelle Venuti**Marvin Mindog**Jea Lyka Cinco
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Revisiting the war in Mindanao
Director Arnel Mardoquio whose “Hunghong sa Yuta” (Earth’s Whisper) rated an impressive number of nominations from the Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino, has a new film. “Hospital Boat” revisits the war in Mindanao, and this time Mardoquio’s script has broader concerns.
The movie, against the background of war, touches on the Muslim fight for independence, the work of health workers in coastal villages of Mindanao, the plight of evacuees and the evils of warlordism. Such concerns call for epic treatment of the problems that make Mindanao a daily hot topic for the national media.
The boat serving as the pathetic central image of the struggle to bring relief to war victims is whatever available banca that can bring the medical doctor and the nun from village to village. Dr. Sittie and Sister Claire are the principals in the narrative that take the viewer from sequence to sequence depicting scenes of poverty and need and the alleviation that outside help can offer.
The two women health workers come across a lumad boy who lost his mother in a bombardment and left him with an infant brother to care for. They take him along as a guide and helper. In the course of their relief work, they run across a teenage Muslim girl who had been raped by an American soldier, and they take her along hoping to relieve her trauma. In a remote parish, they meet an activist priest who looks after war’s evacuees and they join him in working out some economic help from a villainous Muslim warlord.
“Hospital Boat” confronts the viewer with the multifarious conflicts brought about by war, inducing a sense of guilt that would impel him to respond to the film’s advocacy to end the devastation and the desperation of the people. Mardoquio’s script has assembled the relevant characters and stitched together the pertinent incidents to make his film an effective vehicle for peace advocacy.
As a narrative, however, the diversity of plot lines does not quite cohere. The dramatic promise in the situation of the lumad boy with an infant brother left in his care has been left unexplored. The individual private lives of the medical doctor and the nun are barely sketched out, so that we are left with cardboard figures who fail to move us because we are left hanging by their sketchy characterization. The work of the priest among evacuees is barely depicted. The best realized plot line concerns Muktar the warlord and his hostility to Father Allan and his work.
Along with Dr. Sittie and Sister Claire, Father Allan attempts to pilfer sacks of rice for the consumption of evacuees and such results in a chase through the woods with the trio pursued by Muktar and his henchmen. Muktar’s sister, a congresswoman with liberal leanings, saves the priest and the health workers from Muktar’s fury for a brief spell. A climactic moment occurs when Muktar catches up with Dr. Sittie and Sister Claire as they are preparing to leave the island. Dr. Sittie strikes Muktar with an oar and in a violent encounter Sister Claire shoots Muktar who, in his dying moment, stabs the nun to death.
As a Mindanao peace advocate, Mardoquio displays his ample directorial skills in “Hospital Boat.” His work with his cinematographer and editor endows the film with much professional polish. As a director for activist theater, he easily gets expert film performances from his cast whose previous experience in his stage productions allows them confidence and naturalness in their acting. What Mardoquio would seem to need to develop at this stage is a firm hand in molding the narrative of his screenplay and a steady eye on the characters he deploys in his story.
(Bienvenido Lumbera is a National Artist for Literature).
Malou Tiongco**Lorie Ann Cascaro**Joffrey de los Santos**Marvin Mindog
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The Endangered Indigenous Healer
There is always something very appealing about an art work which is a labor of love! This is especially so, if it happens to be the artist’s first major production. One can tell that such artists invest their soul into their first creative production. Consequently, the appreciative viewer responds favorably to the artists’ assertion of a soul seeking to express deep longings and aspirations even as they take the risk to be vilified and damned for over-estimating their gifts.
As an appreciate viewer I salute Orvil Bantayan and everyone who collaborated with him to come up with Mananabang for their courageous attempt to place themselves as serious stakeholders in a most promising nascent Mindanawon independent film movement. Like Arnel Mardoquio, Teng Mangansakan, Sheron Dayoc and other Mindanawon filmmakers before him who have made waves in cinema circles even beyond the Philippine shores, Bantayan produces a first film that immediately conveys that he is a filmmaker with a future! Like Mardoquio, Mangansakan and Dayoc, Bantayan does it by grounding himself in Mindanawon context and realities, transcending the odds of a limited budget and tapping on local talents that can compare with those of imperial Manila.
Mananabang tells the story of Manang Soling, a community-based indigenous healer, who – like hundreds of them since time immemorial – responds to the health needs of her community especially in assisting pregnant women from the period of preparing them for the moment of birth to the actual procedure of childbirth. An unfortunate incident where she assisted at her own daughter’s childbirth but which ended tragically resulted in her demonization by her very own community following the orders of the local Department of Health personnel to stop her midwifery practice.
Unlike her neighbors, an expectant mother named Magda has not lost confidence in Manang Soling’s health skills. The wife of Jepoy, a landless poor peasant who earns money from weeding and selling firewood, Magda takes on the pragmatic stance. Since she and her husband do not have the money to go to the lowlands and be admitted at a hospital, she asked Manang Soling to assist her at childbirth. The old woman healer resists as she, too, fears that she could be put in prison if found to still be involved in being mananabang. Jepoy and other neighbors also conspired that Manang Soling should stop engaging in her practice.
But as luck would have it, Magda’s water bag broke unexpectedly just when Jepoy had gone to town to find money for her hospitalization. In the end, Manang Soling had no choice but assist in Magda’s labor and the film ends validating the importance of Manang Soling’s service to her community.
Even as we praise Bantayan’s breakthrough film, we honor him by taking his work seriously. That means engaging his “film text” by pointing out both its lights and shadows vis-a-vis the “what-could-have-beens”. The film’s strengths are manifested in a number of striking features: how it deals with the everyday reality of a rural community along with the topical issues very relevant to the Filipino citizenry, its attempts to capture the texture and sounds of an isolated village, the moods created through the use of various sounds and music, the confident camera work and the ensemble acting of all the members of the cast (some are former theatre actors who have shifted naturally to acting on film).
One is amazed at the level of acting of all members of the cast. Despite limited exposure to film acting they deliver. The three women actors are the most outstanding; they play their roles without any hint of artificiality. There is truth in the emotions manifested even if they “acted” for a film. Luchie Ong as Kora, Lorie Ann Cascaro as Magda and Malou Tiangco as Manang Soling embraced their roles and gave it their all. If Mananabang is their first film, one imagines how their acting could blossom if given more opportunities in the future.
The film, however, is beset with many shadows, primarily because of the travails and limitations of doing an independent film project, a lamentation heard not only in the Philippines but even in the margins of Hollywood as expressed by filmmakers who end up at the Sundance film festival. If even the likes of well-established and award-winning film directors such as Joel Lamangan and Mario O’Hara are faced with such financial woes, what more for beginners like Bantayan?
Given such budget allocations, the director cannot actually show the contrast of women giving birth in government hospitals in the towns or cities compared to those given care in their own homes where the former gets demythologized as the ideal setting for childbirth. Thus the neighbor Kora (Luchie Ong) is reduced to telling the Baryo Kapitan Nestor (Mario Lim) what she saw were the horrible scenes in the government hospitals even as she expressed how upset she were with the government’s health personnel.
Since the director could not afford to stage crowd scenes, it is difficult to understand how deep the demonization of Manang Soling from the perspective of her neighbors is, as this impacted the mind of Joey (Marvin Mindog), the young nephew of Jepoy who fears Manang Soling as an ungo (witch) who devours infants.
Given limited lighting gadgets, the indoor scenes are mostly dark which make them hard to view. The production design has to keep everything at minimal levels. While the “aesthetics of poverty” could work very well for stage productions, it is harder to translate these aesthetics on film that needs to be enhanced through details.
However, the truly creative film director can manage to transcend his budgetary limitations by maximizing whatever resources are at hand. Here is where Bantayan will need to expand his horizons for his next film projects if he is to sustain viewers’ interest in him. For Mananabang, he could have explored various possibilities.
The film would have been served well with good editing. At 72 minutes, the film is 20 minutes too long. Consequently, a number of scenes – especially in its first half – dragged. There were far too many shots of characters walking up and down the hills of the film’s location. If tightened further, the film could help sustain the viewer’s intense interest. It is to be assumed that a film director who solely edits his film is bound to face problems.
The film could have worked better if the film’s perspective was more focused. This could have been a rite-of-passage film from the eyes of the boy Joey especially since Marvin Mindog is a very promising young actor. The unfolding events, if viewed from Joey’s eyes, would have made a greater impact. In its present package, the boy’s dilemma – how to conquer his fears of Manang Soling’s being an ungo and yet be able to respond to the urgent needs of her auntie – is only a part of the story. Joey’s metamorphosis could have rendered a more powerful plot for the film. The film’s ending could have been more hope-filled with Joey embracing Manang Soling as truly his community’s saint rather than demon.
More production features could have enhanced atmosphere, mood and texture. Jepoy’s work as to do hurnal and firewood gatherer could have been integrated. The Kapitan’s abode could have been projected as one where people gather. Joey could have been shown to play with other kids in the neigborhood. If Manang Soling were truly an indigenous healer, there would have been rituals accompanying her work as midwife. All these would not have involved too much production costs.
One last comment has to do with the writing of the film script and, consequently, in the speaking of the lines. Mananabang is in Bisaya-Cebuano (with English subtitles for those who cannot understand Mindanao’s main language spoken). Unfortunately, Bantayan as scriptwriter is a city-bred Davawenyo. His Cebuano which is the downtown Cebuano used in Davao City – with a lot of Tagalog and a few English words incorporated – is not the kind of Cebuano in the hinterlands of Mindanao, which is his film’s location. The Lumad Cebuanos immediately are disconcerted by the kind of Cebuano used in Mananabang which gets in the way of “suspended animation” as they know the Cebuano being used is not accurate.
Consequently, the accent in speaking Cebuano is one that does not reflect the accent of the ordinary folks in the far-flung rural areas. Bantayan missed this given his own language reality as a filmmaker. Here is where one admires filmmakers who make sure even the detail of languages and accents are well taken care of.
Still, all in all, Bantayan’s Mananabang is good news for the Mindanawon cineaste who has had enough of Hollywood’s super-blockbusters and Star Cinema’s escapist romantic comedies. And for those who dream of a Mindanawon film industry, Bantayan is one young filmmaker to watch!
Alchemy of Vision and Light Film and TV Productions
CPC Creative
45th Chicago International Film Festival
10th Calgary International Film Festival 2009
27th Annual Vancouver International Film Festival 2008
Starring:
Gie Salonga**July Jimenez**EJ Pantuhan**Kit Poliquit**Kim Vergara
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Gay-Beauty-Contest yarn wins some, loses some
Amid the backstage chaos, a harried voice shouts out the obvious: “In this world, the best faker wins.” It’s the world, narrow but competitive, of gay beauty-queen pageants. Wiggling into cheap gowns with gaudy sequins, the fakers are hard at their transformative work, pulling stuff up, taping stuff down, in mid-metamorphosis from guys to gals. The pageants themselves are low-rent affairs aping the real deal, held in tacky theatres across the Philippines, complete with skimpy swimsuits and skimpier talent and the pretense of international content. And when the five finalists are announced, the emcee boomingly dismisses the losers, the bulk of the high-heeled herd, with a final note of faux sincerity: “Thank you, girls.”
Thus, the title: The Thank You Girls. The plot follows a group of perennial losers on their endless pageantry, tracking that still point where the art of deception meets the malaise of self-deception. There are five of them, mimicking female beauty with their daily dose of estrogen pills and (to say the least) meeting with varying degrees of success. They travel in a rundown bus driven by “Mommy Paola” (Pidot Villocino), a veteran of the queen scene who triples as a manager, a mother and a father. A good thing too, because most have long since been abandoned by their actual parents. Everything about them, from their breasts to their stage names to their sense of family, is an invention where artifice and truth try to peacefully co-exist. Try, and often fail.
Alas, the same might be said of this movie. Like his cross-gendered subjects, writer-director Charliebebs Gohetia is also striving for a hybrid effect here, hoping to mix the camp road comedy of Priscilla: Queen of the Desertwith the demimonde tragedy of those pioneering films by his countryman Lino Brocka. But the mix never quite takes, and the result feels as cluttered as that backstage mayhem. Gohetia’s structure only adds to the confusion – the narrative keeps looping back to repeat specific scenes and incidents. If that’s a strategy designed to emphasize the vicious circularity of the characters’ lives, well, the point is made at our expense – we frequently get lost in the repetitious maze.
That makes for a perplexing journey, although not without sporadic pleasures en route, isolated moments of amusement or poignancy. For instance, the cast (led by July Jiminez and Kit Poliquit) are all adroit at capturing the desperate high spirits of the preening drama queens. Sure, they squabble endlessly, tease mercilessly, and posture pathetically. But there’s also real bravery in their bravado. In a poor country, poverty is their enemy, but so is a childhood filled with physical abuse and an adulthood fraught with homophobic aggression. No wonder the “girls” retreat behind thick layers of theatricality – it’s their statement of defence, simultaneously a proud assertion and a necessary barrier.
And so, fighting prejudice and five o’clock shadows and beauty’s inexorable decline, they head off to the next pageant and its elusive prize money, perhaps this time to join the circle of winners, but more likely doomed to cast their lot again with the thank you girls. “Destiny doesn’t favour us,” laments a plump hopeful with tufted armpits. Indeed she doesn’t – smiling on the well-born, frowning on the down-trodden, destiny discriminates too.
Youth Ministry of the Brothers of the Sacred Heart
in cooperation with:
Loradzen del Fierro Youth Foundation
and
Sky Phoenix Productions.
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Starring:
Jaymar Generana**Nelson Dino**Joan Mae Soco
A Mindanao film for the nation
“Earth’s Whisper” as the English translation of the title of Arnel Mardoquio’s film about war and peace in Mindanao easily cues us on how to read this story about a clutch of deaf-mute children in a mountain community consisting of Christians, Muslims and Lumads, and the teacher from the city who introduces them to the alphabet and numbers. War between rebels and the military has devastated the community of Hinyok, its most telling casualty being children born without the ability to speak and hear whose fathers are now intent on training them to become fighters to defend their land. Vigo Cruz, artist and toy-maker, answers a posted notice about Hinyok’s need for a teacher, and his work with the children brings joy and hope to the young war victims and their mothers.
Mardoquio’s screenplay weaves together with realism and symbolism the many contradictions that the war had imposed on the community. The military has been sent by the Manila government to the jungles of Mindanao to decimate the rebels as per the demands of politicians and businessmen who want peace so their careers and business could prosper. The communities are forced to take up arms to defend their farms and homes. With husbands away as guerilla fighters, the mothers find themselves taking sides in the war, suspicious of strangers who come into their midst until Vigo comes to Hinyok and presents himself as a teacher to their children. Thus, armed with the abakada and numbers, the children become persons able to get hold of an alternative to their crudely-fashioned wooden toy guns. Here Mardoquio’s narrative takes a symbolic turn.
Having achieved their identity as persons, the children are on their way to discovering the bond that integrates them as members of one community. This is dramatized in their recovery of the brass instruments that the war had caused to be abandoned in a stream following a massacre of villagers. But the joy of making music is disrupted by the revelation that a man assumed to be a rebel leader turns out to be a soldier spying on the community. The deaths that ensue bring out the lamentable consequences of war that does not spare the lives of men of goodwill such as Vigo, the tribal woman leader Buyag Inggan, the intrepid fighter Wahab, the recalcitrant Amrayda, all of them betrayed by the traitorous Taok.
An advocacy project of the Brothers of the Sacred Heart Youth Ministry under the leadership of Br. Noelvic Deloria SC, “Hunghong sa Yuta” is part of what its producers intend as a “mobile peace education campaign.” What distinguishes it from the usual advocacy project is the meticulous care given by the director and his staff, and the passion and excellence of the finished project. Mardoquio as director had been able to assemble a highly competent cast from Davao City theater folk that includes Nelson Dino, Lucia Cijas, Joan Mae Soco, Popong Landero, Mario Leofer Lim and Christine Lim, and the child actors Jaymar Generana and Marvin Mindog blend with confidence with the adult performers.
Of the technical staff assisting Mardoquio, outstanding is the work of the cinematographer Egay Navarro whose achievement with a single high-density digital camera can only be described as “miraculous.” As film editor, Arthur Ian Garcia provides Navarro superior assistance in turning out a smooth but dynamic narrative flow for the film in spite of the limited imagery captured by only one camera. Composer Popong Landero has provided music that hauntingly captures the ethnic atmosphere of Hinyok and its three-people culture.
“Hunghong saYuta” is a Davao film that richly deserves to be seen nationwide.
(Bienvenido Lumbera is a National Artist for Literature).
(Alchemy of Vision and Light Film and TV Productions)
34th Gawad Urian 2011 nominee for:
Best Film
HYDEout Entertainment
Skyweaver Productions
Alchemy of Vision and Light Film and TV Productions
Best Director
Arnel Mardoquio
Best Screenplay
Arnel Mardoquio
Best Actor
Perry Dizon
Best Actress
Fe GingGing Hyde
Best Production Design
Bagwani Ampalayo
Maree Contaoi
Jun Cayas
Best Editing
Willie Apa Jr
Arthur Ian Garcia
Best Music
Popong Landero
Best Sound
Maki Serapio
Paolo Angelo Lindaya
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34th GAWAD URIAN AWARDS 2011 Best Screenplay: Arnel Mardoquio Best Actress: Fe GingGing Hyde Best Editing: Willie Apa Jr and Arthur Ian Garcia
Cinemalaya 6 Film Festival 2010-NETPAC Category
(Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema)
NETPAC Best Film 2010
Vietnam International Film Festival 2010 (Entry)
official entry:
Asiatica Film Mediale 2010-Rome, Italy
official entry:
Jogja International Film Festival 2010-Indonesia
Dubai International Film Festival 2010 (FilmMart Section)
Singapore Art Museum 2011
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Starring:
Fe GingGing Hyde**Perry Dizon**Popong Landero
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A Film Review from a Mindanaoan
"The pen is mightier than the sword!" We are all familiar with this adage which goes back to 1939 when the playwright Edward Bulwer-Lytton incorporated these words in his play, Richilieu.
Today the words are a bit archaic given the changes in communications and weapons technology. Perhaps it can be updated to: "The camera is mightier than the nuclear torpedo!"
The pen did have - and perhaps still continues to have - might. Many have believed that its power had greater impact on peoples and nations than a sword, especially as the world moved more and more towards pacifism. Newspapers with their news reports, editorials and commentaries and magazines with their articles and essays have been able to dismantle structures and forces of power by the sheer force of their truth! Books, novels and poetry - through the centuries and across the various continents of the world - have also manifested such power.
But in today's post-modern landscape, it is the camera that is proving to have the greater might than the pen and can certainly prove to be more lethal than a nuclear torpedo. As it functions to produce a film, the camera is today's weapon in terms of asserting truth to set human persons free!
Pen and Sword. Camera and Torpedo. Might and Power. Truth and Setting the People free! These were in my thoughts while viewing Sheika, Arnel Mardoquio's third film after 2008's Hungong sa Yuta (The Earth's Whisper) and 2009's Hospital Boat.
Sheika is a powerful film; its power derived from its stance to stand squarely on the side of the powerless, its courage to unmask the hidden realities that the powerful would rather keep under wraps and its rage to speak the truth that absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Mardoquio and his film collective are not only putting their talents and investments on the line with Sheika. It is not just their reputation as filmmakers at stake. They are not out to earn millions and win awards (although that would help to sustain their film production unit). They are putting their lives on the line. Mardoquio et al are true artists; they not only mirror lilfe's realities for all of us to see but they do so courageously, taking risks where some of us would cow under fear of being harassed. And yet, Sheika is also primarily a work of art; the film's aesthetics can compare with the best that world cinema is offering now to cinephiles.
One wishes however, that unlike "art films" that find their audience only in art cinemas and film festivals with a limited coverage, Sheika will find a broad audience among the A-B-C-D sectors. Sheika deserves a broad audience; but on its own merits, it has the promise to go popular and be a box-office hit despite having no celebrity star in the cast! For Sheika is most engaging: its story moves the heart with the travails of a Mother Courage, the casting and ensemble acting are most impressive, the cinematography is breath-taking, the production design makes Davao City not just the location but also a character of the film and the whole piece breathes as one. Perhaps, some people might find fault with the editing as a few of the film's segments move far too slow. Sheika is a big event in this year's film output; a film critic can only urge film lovers to drop everything if it is showing in the nearest multiplex cinema (or wherever it is being shown).
But being an indie film, Sheika may not be that accessible to the audience that need and/or wish to see it. Cinema multiplexes tend to favor Hollywood and Pinoy mainstream films especially those who are deemed blockbusters! Public film showings of indie films come few and far between; they tend to be viewed through an alternative network of schools, NGOs and other viewing sites. As DVD copies cannot yet be made available - to ensure return of investments by making pirating impossible - Sheika's producers need all the help it can from interested parties so that the film can be shown to as many groups as possible where the audience are willing to pay for viewing.
Sheika tells the story of Sheika who echoes the lives of Rizal's Sisa of Noli Me Tangere, Brecht's Mother Courage (adapted into last year's Madama Brava) and the Sophia Loren character of de Sica's Two Women. Her life story in the film is the composite of many mothers's stories in war-battered Mindanao from Jolo, Sulu to Davao City where, in Sheika's words, "the devil lurks". Since Sheika's woes interface with the labyrinthian terrain of the Davao Death Squads (DDS), her story is also that
of Clarita Alia, the mother who lost four sons to the serial extra-judicial killing spree of the DDS, namely, Richard (18 years old), Cristopher (17), Fernando (15) and Bobby (14) who were killed between 2001 and 2007.
Sheika (Fe Gingging Hyde) was a teacher in Jolo where she lost her husband owing to the war and raised her two young sons Dindin (Mark Anthony Perandos) and Soysoy (Dan Lester Albaraccin). Owing to the escalation of the conflict, Sheika was forced to seek safety for the sake of her two sons. Considering Davao City as a safe place for them, she brought Dindin and Soysoy to this city. Still, they have to shake off their identity as Tausog-Muslims and pretend that they came from Sorsogon so that they could live a normal life. Without relatives to help them and unable to find a job, Sheika and her two sons are forced to rely on various shady characters - petty thieves, drug dealers, moneylenders, gay beauticians and assasins - to survive in the big, harsh city.
Dindin eventually find himself "recruited" by a member of the DDS named Azul (Popong Landero) and is assigned to take a "posting" job to monitor potential assassination targets. Consequently, he becomes a drug user and finds solace in the company of other young boys who are into drugs. Soysoy manages with the help of a gay beautician who may not have noble intentions. Sheika ends up doing all kinds of odd jobs to put food on the table, from selling "uling" (charcoal) to pushing a "kariton" (pushcart) seen around the Bankerohan market. As the film progresses one sees the inevitability of Dindin and Soysoy entering the zone of DDS targets: boys who use drugs. Sheika's story shifts into that of Clarita Alia. Like Sisa who lost Crispin and Basilio to the Guardia Civil, Sheika loses Dindin and Soysoy to the DDS.
The tragedy results in her mental breakdown and she finds herself in the Mental Hospital. As she undergoes treatment, the hospital's janitor Gary (Perry Dizon) is attracted to her. Gary himself has a shady past and it is from his discovery of Sheika's diary that the story unfolds. Through the transformation of Gary, Sheika finds redemption.
The story unfolds primarily in the streets of urbanized Davao City. Sheika is Mardoquio's valentine to his home city and the film lovingly provides exquisite images of this "most livable city in the whole Philippines" through the lens of the camera confidently held byWillie Apa Jr. and Joel Sangalang. Some of the film's images are haunting and touches the heart: Sheika and her sons eating durian, as they walk through the Christmas decorations of Rizal Park, the continuing flow of Bangkerohan River, the birds' flight from Sheika at the park and the two boys sitting on the mosque's roof. But the film's Davao City is not that of the Department of Tourism. Through its inspired choice of the city's labyrinths, Mardoquio and his team of production designers allow us a glimpse of what is Davao City's subaltern: the world under the Bangkerohan River, the squatter areas by the river and the sea with houses-on-stilts, the market and the various passageways.
Sheika joins a growing number of global award-winning films with the urban jungle populated by shady characters as its location, where life is as cheap as Chinese goods including Lino Brocka's Maynila sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag and Ishmael Bernal's Manila By Night (early 70s, Manila), Fernando Meirelles and Katia Lund's City of God (2002, Rio de Janeiro), Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu's Amores Perros (2000, Mexico), Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire (2008, Mumbai) and Pepe Diokno's Enkwentro (2009) which also dealt with extra-judicial killings. These are not Woody Allen's New York City or that of Sex and the City where the rich and famous flaunt their wealth and whose angst revolve around personal problems.
In the film, Davao City is as much a character as Sheika, Dindin, Azul, Gary et al. Sheika presents her in her various faces, moods and temperaments. She is welcoming to people from different parts of the country who seek comfort zones that are no longer spaces available to them back home. However, she too is the abode of the devil; death's trap awaits anyone through its iskinitas (passageways) . She embraces peoples of different ethnicities, faith traditions and geographical origins. However, she can be harsh to those who are of the subalterns.
As theorized by the post-colonialist Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, the subaltern refers not only to those who are oppressed which the Marxist theoretican Antonio Gramsci refers to - in a non-military sense - as the proletariat. Sheika's world in Davao City are those rendered having no agency as they have no access to society's wealth and positions of power. In the public hospitals, there is no money to provide them medicine. In the prisons, they have no money to pay for the bail. In the marketplace they can borrow money but at such exhorbitant itnerests. They are not getting any piece of the pie being an oppressed minority whose presence allows us to recognize that there is a world dominated by those with hegemonic power and their allies among the middle class. They are the marginalized who are made absent and, so, they find themselves literally pushed to live down the bridge. Everyday the majority cross the bridge - over troubled waters? - but cannot see those below.
Sheika reverses the picture so to speak and reveals what is under the bridge. The sight is not pretty and tragedy is its constant visitor, very much like the image of Death with its long knife. Like it or not, there will be more films about this landscape as urbanization has become a fast-expanding world-wide phenomenon. In the 1950s, only 20% of the world's population lived in cities. It increased to 36% in 1965 and is now 50%; in the year 2025, almost 70% of humanity will be urban dwellers. In the Philippines today, more than 50% are already living in urban places. The Urban Geography Reader refers to the phenomenon of the rise of the contemporary city as a "variegated and multiplex entity" and the "multiplex(c) ity" of urban life will make cities "porous" and "spatially open and cross cut by many different kinds of mobilities, from flows of people to commodities to information, a recognition that urban life is the irreducible product of mixture". In this landscape, people find themselves, in the words of social theorist Michel de Certeau, as "placeless".
Mardoquio's Sheika is a character that moves about in the city's multiplex entity where she experiences life as "broken up into countless tiny deportations" owing to the various displacements she faces. Having been displaced from Jolo, she finds herself and her sons in the tiny hut of a relative previously displaced from Davao City to seek greener pasture in the more urbanized Manila. Only by the pity of the girlfriend of their relative that they are able to share this tiny dwelling place. But once out of Jolo, Sheika and her sons are totally displaced in terms of their ethnic and religious identity. In a way, they've been deported both from Jolo and even in the Davao City, they are "deported" from an abode that would provide them dignity.
Her life is akin to an "urban fabric with intersections of various exoduses". Moving from one location to the other, they hope to survive. In the city, all characters of the film move all over the place across the Foucauldian lanscapes of the prison, the room of a moneylender, the mental hospital and the killing fields. Their various exoduses bring them to wherever they can make a buck and defy hunger no matter what the moral costs are involved. The poor cannot have the luxury of moralizing for theirs is the ethic of survival. In the end, Sheika's Exodus is a tragedy as her life and those of her sons interface with Davao City's own tragic contemporary history.
For all that has been tumpeted regarding Davao City as being the most livable city in the country, where criminality has been kept to a minimum and thus, attracting a lot of investments and tourism, such a city is the one imagined by those who hold the city's hegemonic power: the key people at City Hall, the businessmen, the rich from adjacent areas who have made Davao as their home (banana growers, loggers, those engaged in gold mining, the likes of the Ampatuans and others) and the middle class benefitted by Davao City's robust economy.
The "placeless" city that is populated by the subaltern is where one is hidden under the city's shadows. This is Sheika's locale and the films characters are those who find themselves carving out their destiny in what can be a most depressing location. This is also where the DDS is the devil that Sheika encounters. As the serial extra-judicial killings began to attract news reportage with the first victims in August of 1998, radio commentators and the general public could easily justify the killings as a necessary evil if Davao City was to continuously be progressive. Such a mindset was dominant until the numbers of killings increased through the years with actual documented cases reaching 814 in February 2009, a few months before Leila de Lima, as Chair of the Commission on Human Rights held public hearings on the DDS cases in March 2009. (The Amnesty International or AI claims that over 3,000 to include all other extra-judicial killings in the whole country under PGMA).
From out of this landscape arose Clarita Alia with the story of her four sons. Now with Sheika, Mardoquio made sure that no one will forget that many of us in Davao City were accomplices to the killings of hundreds of our own children if we were and continue to be indifferent to the evil of DDS. For many of us did take the stance that the killings are justified if Davao City is to be our imagined city of progress and development. Mardoquio has taken the advocacy of the Coalition Against Summary Execution (CASE) to a level where no one could doubt the lunacy and bankruptcy of a local government policy that would allow guns-for-hire to kill our young people just because they are deemed a threat to an imagined city of prosperity.
Even with the gains in the work done by CASE, the AI, the media people who have taken risks, the courageous moves of Chair de Lima (now the Justice Secretary) to hold the public hearings and Diokno's earlier film, there continues to be a need to reinforce the work to dismantle whatever are the remaining discourses held sacred by those holding influence in the city. Here is where the power of Sheika comes in; here is where Mardoquio's advocacy through film needs popular support. With Sheika, Mardoquio is our new Rizal; if Noli Me Tangere is required reading in school, students should be made to watch Sheika as required film viewing. The more than a million city residents of Davao above 15 showed see the film. (Even younger kids should be allowed to watch it with the guidance of their parents and teachers). Then, the rest of the country should see Sheika, if they are to heed the lessons of what could arise with setting up the likes of the DDS.
But go see Sheika also because you care about Philippine movies. No tears are shed for the collapse of the mainstream Filipino movie industry. Part of the reason is because many producers came up with movies that insulted the Pinoy moviegoers' intelligence. Whether action, drama or comedy, many movies failed to engage the interest of the Pinoy audience. There were so few good, quality films. The more discriminating Filipino film audience turned their backs against the run-of-the-mill films. And for a long while, no Pinoy filmmaker made waves in international film festivals.
Then came the advent of the indie films and the Philippine film industry is now back on track, made possible owing to the lowering of costs with digital technology. There is an alternative film industry arising, though mostly producing indie films. Pinoy filmmakers are winning awards from Cannes to Venice to other film festivals. There is supposedly the rise of the Third Golden Age of Philippine Cinema as it enters its 90th year of existence. This time, this is truly a nation-wide Philippine Cinema, and not just films produced in Manila with Tagalog as its lingua franca. With Arnel Mardoquio leading the pack, Mindanao has produced filmmakers who are making waves across the country, including, Teng Mangansakan, Sheron Dayoc and Sherad Sanchez. Even Lav Diaz and Paul Morales could also be considered Mindanawons.
Mardoquio can definitely keep his head up high with Sheika even as his two films have been cited by the Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino. His direction of his cast is top notch; the ensemble acting is very remarkable.
Fe Gingging Hyde's Sheika is a tour de force in terms of performance; she is a young Lolita Rodriquez. Hyde's Sheika in the mental hospital reminds the viewer of Rodriquez' Koala in Brocka's Tinimbang Ka Nguni't Kulang. Casting is perfect; each member of the cast down to those who play what would be seen as very minor supporting roles has the right look for the particular roles. The cast's non-acting style provides a film a documentary "reality" feel. The film's script astutely captures the "verbal sounds" of multi-cultural Davao City; Mardoquio as screenwriter takes full advantage of the the raw language of the streets, complete with our own equivalents of four-letter words. The production designers knew exactly where to position each of the film's scene and what to include in each frame. The contradictions in images are most striking: the moneylender Boyax making an attempt to rape Sheika while the Divine Mercy image is prominent on the walls of the room. Gary and later on Sheika lives on the second floor of a house where the Robin Padilla ad in tarpaulin with the words - Think Positive - hangs. Landero's music will surely win praises as Landero once more integrates his songs and music into the scenes in a manner that does not distract the viewer's engagement with the scenes' emotions.
For all these and more, the film has been chosen as an official entry to the Network to Promote Asian Cinema (NETPAC) film festival at the CCP in July 2010. Sheika was meant to be part of the 2010 Cinemalaya Film Festival in July 2010 if not for the top honcho's insistence that a named movie star be recruited to play the lead role. It is Cinemalaya's loss that Sheika will not be part of the festival. However, Sheika is meant far beyond Cinemalaya. A fearless forecast: Mardoquio will win an Urian in 2011. And Cannes 2011, Sheika is coming!
Bulwer-Lytonn crafted these words: "Beneath the rule of men entirely great/ The pen is mightier than the sword./ Behold the arch-enchanters wand!? - itself a nothing - / But taking sorcery from the master-hand/ To paralyze the Caesars/ and to strike the loud earth breathless!/ - take away the sword - / States can be saved without it!
The sword and the torpedoes? Set them aside.With his camera, the arch-enchanter- sorcerer- filmmaker Mordoquio defies the rule of great men with their hegemonic power. His film Sheika - which will make you breathless as you watch it - will eventually help to paralyze the Caesars in our midst.
