THE subtitle of the comic book declares its intent clearly enough. It’s a satire, yes—a parody of the overlong titles of Pinoy action films, their slapstick counterparts and the massacre cinema of Carlo J. Caparas. It’s also an homage to the komiks that gave us local heroes like Captain Barbell, Darna and also Caparas’s Panday. For those more intellectually inclined it’s possibly also an indictment of a culture that has nothing left to do but to eat itself, to swallow the name of someone as artistically bereft as the aforementioned Caparas as a National Artist expecting the majority to be too busy watching Wowowee to care. But then again, it could just the product of an overeager imagination and of an awesome boredom besetting its creator, Louie Cordero, passing the time in between doing his more serious work as one of the country’s most revered young artists.

Whatever it is, it’s nonetheless a hit, one that’s attracted a cult following.

First published in 2003 by Abang Guard Productions, Nardong Tae is now on its fourth issue. Apart from garnering such citations as Best Indie Comic Book at the 2nd Philippine Comic Book, Anime and Gaming Convention, this creature has also spawned a limited edition toy series produced by Fresh Manila, which was launched at the chic environs of the Embassy club in Taguig. It quickly sold out.

So what is it all about?

The comic’s protagonist Bornek (just as numerous superheroes pre-powers before him like Narda, Paul Hewson and Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili) was ordinary until something otherworldly intervened and made him extraordinary. In this case it’s alien feces. Turned him into a humanoid turd, he somehow manages to take up criminology ostensibly to prepare him for a life of fighting crime. Before the first book ends, though, he also destroys the university where he goes to study with “the explosive power of his fart” and is thus “declared ‘Public Enemy No.1”—the plot at this point becoming a deliciously perverse variation of Pete Lacaba’s “The Clash of ’69.”

By book four, the entire world is literally reduced to shit. (But not before we catch a glimpse of the President himself who is none other than well-loved and respected independent filmmaker Rodolfo Sabayton Jr. who’s also won the film rights to adapt the comic.)

Cordero himself says that doing comics has always been something he’s wanted to do. In an interview with Pedicab’s Diego Mapa he says his enthusiasm for the medium was fueled at an early age reading local titles such as Zuma, Shockers, Ninja and artists like Vincent de Khua and Nonoy Marcelo. He also acknowledges the influence of the underground “comix” scene in San Francisco, in particular the work of pioneers like Robert Williams, Robert Crumb, Basil Wolverton, as well newer ones by Gary Panther, Daniel Clowes, Mike Diana, Charles Burns, Peter Bagge and Johnny Ryan.

“Nuong college pa ako, puro pinta at teorya tungkol sa art, kaya nakalimutan ko na talaga ang comics,” Cordero tells Mapa. “Tapos lumipat ako sa Cubao, dating comics factory yung studio ko, sobra akong naimpluwensiyahan sa lugar, wala na akong pambili ng pintura kaya nag-try ako na mag-comics muna.”

“Wala akong favorite na medium. Kung anong bagay doon sa work, yun ang gagamitin ko,” he says. “Kung kailangan sa papel, usually kung anong puwede sa papel, [pen and paper, collage,] at kung anu-ano pa. Kung sa canvas, encaustic wax, oil or acrylic. Kung anong meron sa studio at natitira, yun ang gagamitin ko.”

After completing the first issue he made 50 photocopies and just spread it around in areas like Azcarraga—oops, Recto in our turd-filled time. According to him, “lumaki na after that, yung iba pina-xerox ulit, free for all, tapos nakakuha ako ng publisher…”

As an artist, Cordero has won many accolades such as the 13 Artists Award from the Cultural Center of the Philippines. He has also exhibited his work abroad in countries such as Malaysia, Singapore, London and the United States. His work has been featured in foreign publications such as Giant Robot, among others. More popularly he created the sleeve art for Radioactive Sago Project’s widely successful album, Tanginamo Andaming Nagugutom Sa Pilipinas… Fashionista Ka Pa Rin.

“Mas gusto ko sa mainstream, mas masarap mambasag ng idea dito dahil mas marami kang audience, mas engaging yung palitan ng idea, dog-eat-dog, labu-labo, walang mahirap, walang mayaman, lahat pantay- pantay,” he says.

With Nardong Tae, he’s certainly succeeded. Not only does he transcend mere ‘xeroxing’ the American archetype of a superhero, remolding it into one that’s recognizable to Filipinos. Whether that’s reminiscent of the befuddled mug of Gibo Teodoro during the Typhoon Ondoy crisis, Willie Revillame’s plastic bonhomie on our TV screens or Caparas pathetically offering as proof his drawings to prove he really, really deserves to be a National Artist, that’s up for the reader to decide. After all, as Cordero points out, crap is universal—even in America. They’re just probably better at flushing it before it reeks like here in the third world. (Maybe not, they just close lids quite fast.)

Over here, it seems we just haven’t acquired the habit of flushing out what stinks.

The question really is how long do we suffer the stench? Six years? Another 20? Or do we just hold our breaths until we’re dead?

by Erwin T. Romulo
* A slightly different version of this article was first published in the Philippines Free Press (Nov. 2, 2009)

By Erwin Romulo:

BELOW IS THE EMAIL I SENT TO ALEXIS WHILE I WAS STILL WORKING AS AN EDITOR FOR ROGUE. IT’S A LITTLE PIECE BY MY FAVE WRITER WHO ALSO DIED THIS YEAR. I JUST THOUGHT IT WOULD SPARK SOMETHING. THE SUBJECT OF THE EMAIL READ: “time for you to write a COLUMN for ROGUE”

On 24/05/2008, erwin romulo wrote:
‘What I Believe’ by J. G. Ballard
I believe in the power of the imagination to remake the world, to release the truth within us, to hold back the night, to transcend death, to charm motorways, to ingratiate ourselves with birds, to enlist the confidences of madmen.

I believe in my own obsessions, in the beauty of the car crash, in the peace of the submerged forest, in the excitements of the deserted holiday beach, in the elegance of automobile graveyards, in the mystery of multi-storey car parks, in the poetry of abandoned hotels.

I believe in the forgotten runways of Wake Island, pointing towards the Pacifics of our imaginations.

I believe in the mysterious beauty of Margaret Thatcher, in the arch of her nostrils and the sheen on her lower lip; in the melancholy of wounded Argentine conscripts; in the haunted smiles of filling station personnel; in my dream of Margaret Thatcher caressed by that young Argentine soldier in a forgotten motel watched by a tubercular filling station attendant.

I believe in the beauty of all women, in the treachery of their imaginations, so close to my heart; in the junction of their disenchanted bodies with the enchanted chromium rails of supermarket counters; in their warm tolerance of my perversions.

I believe in the death of tomorrow, in the exhaustion of time, in our search for a new time within the smiles of auto-route waitresses and the tired eyes of air-traffic controllers at out-of-season airports.

I believe in the genital organs of great men and women, in the body postures of Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Princess Di, in the sweet odors emanating from their lips as they regard the cameras of the entire world.

I believe in madness, in the truth of the inexplicable, in the common sense of stones, in the lunacy of flowers, in the disease stored up for the human race by the Apollo astronauts.

I believe in nothing.

I believe in Max Ernst, Delvaux, Dali, Titian, Goya, Leonardo, Vermeer, Chirico, Magritte, Redon, Duerer, Tanguy, the Facteur Cheval, the Watts Towers, Boecklin, Francis Bacon, and all the invisible artists within the psychiatric institutions of the planet.

I believe in the impossibility of existence, in the humour of mountains, in the absurdity of electromagnetism, in the farce of geometry, in the cruelty of arithmetic, in the murderous intent of logic.

I believe in adolescent women, in their corruption by their own leg stances, in the purity of their disheveled bodies, in the traces of their pudenda left in the bathrooms of shabby motels.

I believe in flight, in the beauty of the wing, and in the beauty of everything that has ever flown, in the stone thrown by a small child that carries with it the wisdom of statesmen and midwives.

I believe in the gentleness of the surgeon’s knife, in the limitless geometry of the cinema screen, in the hidden universe within supermarkets, in the loneliness of the sun, in the garrulousness of planets, in the repetitiveness or ourselves, in the inexistence of the universe and the boredom of the atom.

I believe in the light cast by video-recorders in department store windows, in the messianic insights of the radiator grilles of showroom automobiles, in the elegance of the oil stains on the engine nacelles of 747s parked on airport tarmacs.

I believe in the non-existence of the past, in the death of the future, and the infinite possibilities of the present.

I believe in the derangement of the senses: in Rimbaud, William Burroughs, Huysmans, Genet, Celine, Swift, Defoe, Carroll, Coleridge, Kafka.

I believe in the designers of the Pyramids, the Empire State Building, the Berlin Fuehrerbunker, the Wake Island runways.

I believe in the body odors of Princess Di.

I believe in the next five minutes.

I believe in the history of my feet.

I believe in migraines, the boredom of afternoons, the fear of calendars, the treachery of clocks.

I believe in anxiety, psychosis and despair.

I believe in the perversions, in the infatuations with trees, princesses, prime ministers, derelict filling stations (more beautiful than the Taj Mahal), clouds and birds.

I believe in the death of the emotions and the triumph of the imagination.

I believe in Tokyo, Benidorm, La Grande Motte, Wake Island, Eniwetok, Dealey Plaza.

I believe in alcoholism, venereal disease, fever and exhaustion.

I believe in pain.

I believe in despair.

I believe in all children.

I believe in maps, diagrams, codes, chess-games, puzzles, airline timetables, airport indicator signs.

I believe all excuses.

I believe all reasons.

I believe all hallucinations.

I believe all anger.

I believe all mythologies, memories, lies, fantasies, evasions.

I believe in the mystery and melancholy of a hand, in the kindness of trees, in the wisdom of light.

HE FOLLOWED BY REPLYING THIS:

On Mon, May 26, 2008 at 8:05 PM, Alexis A. Tioseco wrote:
When is deadline? And any topics in mind?

AND I WROTE BACK:

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: erwin romulo
Date: Tue, May 27, 2008 at 12:03 AM
Subject: Re: time for you to write a COLUMN for ROGUE
To: “Alexis A. Tioseco”

How about your own? Becoming a crusader of Philippine cinema. Basta something like that.

BELOW IS THE ARTICLE HE SUBMITTED.

The Letter I Would Love to Read to You in Person
by Alexis Tioseco

My Dear Nika,
I’ve been asked to write a column for this issue of Rogue, and the topic given to me was myself. I’ve always felt it awkward to write in public spaces about personal motivations behind the work I choose to do, so I have decided to use you as an excuse: there are things that you must know, that you may sense but not understand unless I tell you, and so I shall use this opportunity to put them on paper.
Besides, how could I say no to this offer when just the other day you recalled how an essay that written by the solicitor of this column – in a previous incarnation of this magazine – played a central role on our being together? One must pay back one’s debts…

~
When we met in Rotterdam last January there was something about you that struck me immediately: it was not your beauty, or rather, not just your beauty, but your manner of speaking: which now sixteen months later still demands so much of me. There is a precious intensity in your gestures, the way in which your eyes dart and hands reach out to grab the right word, that illustrates how strong a desire you have to communicate, especially when the conversation turns toward the things that matter to you: the integrity of your work, the importance of nature, the concern for your brother. (I know what you’re thinking – shut up! I’m not a native speaker! – but this isn’t a question of familiarity with language).
We both did not arrive at the festival in the best of conditions: you in ill health and from the disappointment of not closing the latest issue of Ekran before leaving Slovenia, (compounded by missing your flight and multiplied by a years fatigue of battling for editorial independence), and I from the solitude of learning to live alone, and of not yet having come to terms with abrupt death of my father seven months before (something which, as you know, I am still attempting to do).
I wasn’t in a very good place the months before we met, reckless and hurried in my interactions with new acquaintances, but in Rotterdam it was hard not to fight for clarity and calm when the person before you, beleaguered and weary as they were, would still refuse to let their words slip carelessly…
I know sometimes you may think that it was the fact that we work in the same field that attracted me to you, but I must tell you that this couldn’t be farther from the truth. Why? Because one of the greatest joys I believe one can feel is to share that which they find beautiful with someone who otherwise wouldn’t have noticed it, and to see it appreciated. This is the main reason why I love teaching and why I refuse to show Lord of the Rings to my students (no matter how fervently my co-teachers insist). It is also the evidence that cinema isn’t what brings us nearer to each other: because in this regard we are on equal footing, and I must instead find other things in me to share with you. For anyone who knows me, they know how difficult that is…

But Rogue wants to hear about cinema! Or at least about my work and what I have done in it. Why it means so much to me, and why I have done the things that I have. So it is about cinema that I must write. Some of this may seem like things you have heard, my dear Nika, but don’t worry, if I am successful it will all come together in the end, and you will see why it relates to you, to us, and to the future.

~
Allow me to begin with a story, one of which you may be quite familiar.

In 1997 my father decided that my brother Chris and I, together with my mother should return to the Philippines (my father as you know had been going back and forth between Manila and Vancouver, never growing quite comfortable in Canada. Remind me to make you a copy of the essay “Where’s the patis?”).

We had moved to Canada in 1983, leaving the Philippines just a few months before the death of Ninoy Aquino, and just a few months after my second birthday.
Like most teenagers, I was still growing comfortable in my own skin, or rather trying to, and the thought of moving to another country for my last two years of High School petrified me. I resisted: on one hand I protested to my parents that I wanted nothing to do with a country that was so class conscious and so corrupt (though I didn’t mind going there for vacation…), and on the other hand, inside, I just didn’t want to deal with attempting to infiltrate ill-fated High School social circles in a new country. I was also completely devastated about having to leave the first girl I ever slow danced with in my high school life – Melodie Pangan – who I’m sure never thought of me as anything more than a friend, but who I still called dramatically from the airport, in tears, telling her I loved her for the first time. But I digress…
~
My father seduced my brother and I with the promise of round-the-clock air conditioning and a driver to take us wherever we wanted, which admittedly made the move easier to take (so much for my 16-year old defiance of class consciousness). Both of which, as it turned, were just selling points: things he was able, but unwilling, to provide.

As you know, we are five children in my family, but only Chris and I, together with my Mom, moved back. The primary excuse for it being just he and I was that we were the two youngest and since Chris was just preparing to enter College and I finishing my last two years of High School, we would both be able to adjust easier. But the other reason was also that we were men, and as men, in the Philippines, he had wanted to groom us to take over the family business, to help maintain what he had established, or build on top of it. The primary reason, I believe, for him wanting my mother to come back was so that Chris and I would. We had grown quite close to my Mom over the years in Vancouver, as my Dad was often away, and he knew that her agreeing to go was the key to being able to bring us back. On the part of my Mom, she liked and was settled in Vancouver, she wasn’t comfortable having helpers live in the house and was used to cooking and cleaning herself and looking after us. She moved back for him, because he asked her to.

Two years passed, and my mother moved back to Vancouver. She had been battling bouts of depression caused by their fights, by her lack of control of the family, and it was decided that she would go to Vancouver for a while for therapy. I didn’t know at the time that it would be for good, it was supposed to be for two months. She returned for the first time in 2006 for my father’s funeral.

My brother Chris never quite settled in the Philippines. One theory we have as to why was that he never got to imbibe the culture in a manner deeper than gimmicks in Makati, and as a majority of his good friends were foreigners and he had no Tagalog classes, he didn’t learn the language much. The other possibility is that he just wasn’t used to living under my fathers watchful eye. He graduated from University in June of 2001, and by August he moved back to Vancouver.

What was left of my Dad’s dream – of keeping the family together in the Philippines, and one of his sons taking a keen interest in the business? Me. And just me. With less people living in it the house had more space, and I no longer shared my room with anyone, but I felt more and more suffocated. Upon graduating with my studies directed towards business management, I began working for my father. I lasted from June to November of 2004 before admitting that I couldn’t do it any longer. I would tell you I quit. My father told relatives at family gatherings he fired me. Either story will do now; it doesn’t really matter.

~
Sender: Dad

Date: 24-04-2006

Time: 05:19:51pm
“BF 2 GF’s rich dad: I wana mari ur dauter,

Dad: Do u work?

BF: Im a theology scholar.

Dad: Can u afford a weding?

BF: God wil provide.

Dad: Wat about a haus, raising a family & education of d kids?

BF: God wil provide.

Later…Mom: How’d it go dad?

Dad: D guy’s poor, & he thinks Im God!”

Sender: Dad

Date: 24-04-2006

Time: 05:22:32pm
“BF 2 GF’s rich dad: I wana mari ur dauter,

Dad: Do u work?

BF: Im a Unvrsty Profsor nd a film critic.

Dad: Can u afford a weding?

BF: God wil provide.

Dad: Wat about a haus, raising a family & education of d kids?

BF: God wil provide.

Later…Mom: How’d it go dad?

Dad: D guy’s poor, & he thinks Im God!”

~
I never wanted to be a film critic. To this day I abhor using the term for myself, but I’ve begun to do so regularly, just because it makes life easier.
Many filmmakers, especially filmmakers in the Philippines, have a problem with the word critic. We have little to no culture of healthy polemics in the country, as any attempt to consider fault is taken as a personal attack. Rare are those that are able to deal with it properly. One particular filmmaker took objection to the idea of a publication that I was to edit using the title ‘Criticine’: he had a problem with the word critic being included. A nasty term, I suppose he thought.

The first impulse of any good film critic, and to this I think you would agree, must be of love. To be moved enough to want to share their affection for a particular work, or to relate their experience so that others may be curious. This is why, criticism, teaching, and curating or programming, in an ideal sense, must all go hand in hand.

The first proper review of a Filipino film that I wrote was on Lav Diaz’s Batang West Side. I knew I liked movies, had even harbored thoughts of making them at one point, and I certainly took a measure of pride in being looked to by my peers as someone whose opinion was worth seeking; but despite this, and despite the surprising satisfaction of first seeing my name in print, I never had any interest in writing film criticism in any serious way.

It was not writing the review of Batang West Side, which I was quite proud of at the time but look at with a bit of embarrassment for its simplicity today, that changed things for me, but rather what took place before and after writing it: the almost complete lack of intelligent writing on the film that engaged more than just the length (Noel Vera did, Conrado de Quiros tried, and perhaps his championing was more important than the actual text). Batang West Side, as you know, is 5-hours long, and if you read most of the articles that mentioned (I dare not say discussed) the film in the local press, this would likely be still all that you knew. Even Jessica Zafra, after organizing through her engaging-if-but-short-lived FLIP Magazine a screening of the film (and having commissioned an article from Lav), proceeded to make crude jokes about the film in the letters section of the succeeding issue.

I was a junior in college when the film premiered, and in the five years I had lived in the Philippines at the time, the closest I had come to connecting with culture via cinema were a few jokes in April, May, June, a film about three sisters starring the then quite popular Alma Concepcion, and maybe SPO1 Don Juan: Da Dancing Policeman, starring the great Leo Martinez. Needless to say, Batang West Side was a departure, not only in length, but in aesthetic: its rhythm, the distance from the camera to its subject, the duration in which shots were hold, the construction of the discourse (equally about past as about present), and most uniquely in its attitude towards its audience – its stubborn refusal to give in to our inherent need for a neat ending, instead forcing us to draw our own conclusions.

I wasn’t prepared for Batang West Side. I hadn’t heard of Lav Diaz and simply attended because it was shown during Cinemanila, and it’s not everyday someone makes a film of that length. I was curious. The film stuck with me. Especially so as one of the first films that made me think concretely about what it meant to be Filipino, about the pitfalls of migration. Perils that, I think about for the first only now as I type this, my Dad probably understood better than anyone. It’s a shame he never got to see the film.

It was now a full year after Batang West Side premiered, a good few months after I wrote the article, and still little literature was available on the film. I contacted Lav and asked if I could interview him, to which he obliged graciously. The interview ran close to an hour, and I asked him all the questions I wished others had.

Happy with the results, which ran 12 pages long and was published on the website Indiefilipino.com (may she rest in peace, how I loved her so!), I used all the prepaid credit I had to text most everyone mildly interested in cinema in my modest phonebook to plug it. Hardly any of them responded, of course, but there were notes of appreciation on Indiefilipino’s forums, and it made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

There were people, it turned out, who were interested in reading serious writing on serious cinema – it just had to be written and published somewhere accessible.
The first impulse is always one of love.

The more films I saw, specifically local independent films, the more I wanted to see. The deeper I got, the more responsibility I felt, the stronger the need to do something, to share that which I found beautiful.
Writing in English, I never felt much of a need to write about foreign (non-Filipino)

movies, though I’m often asked to, and especially Hollywood fare. While I love cinema in general, a passion that has grown exponentially over the years, I feel no need to put myself in service of that which doesn’t need it. The feeling has always been: why write about Juno when I’ve hardly read anything incisive put to print about the great animation of Roxlee? Why write about No Country For Old Men when there’s the brilliantly charming films of Antoinette Jadaone waiting to be discovered? The same held true for a stint I had reviewing films every other week on The Breakfast Show on Studio 23. The informal terms of agreement: I could review anything I wanted, local or foreign, new or old, short or long, so long as they could get clips to show. It didn’t make waves by any means – it was but a single segment on a show designed for viewers with ADD – but I think it meant something to some people: Kris Villarino, the Cebu filmmaker who made the short Binaliw, or the group of young upstarts from Davao starting a series of filmmaking workshops that has only grown over time, or the chaotic arrangement of an entire episode on independent filmmaking (before the term was abused) in Christmas 2005 that had guests like Raya Martin, Khavn De La Cruz, Mes De Guzman, Roxlee, Lav Diaz, Pam Miras, and a very shy John Torres, speaking about his short films in public for the first time.

One thing has slowly progressed into another, and what began as a simple curiosity pursued with sincerity has evolved into a commitment.

Philippine cinema has given much to me, and one must pay back ones debts.
***
I had never expected to have the opportunity to travel for/from film, especially not on the expenses of others, but slowly the opportunities presented themselves. Traveling is a privilege, and not one that I take lightly. In June 2004, as a fresh college graduate, I participated in an academic film conference in Singapore. A few months later on the basis of my writing I was selected to participate in the Asia-Europe Foundation’s Meeting of Young Film Critics from Europe and Asia. A few months aftere I found myself in Berlin as one of 8 critics selected for the Berlinale Talent Press (though this was only partly subsidized, and it was a last minute loan from my brother in Canada that allowed me to go). A number of trips have ensued, to everywhere from Singapore (7x) to Hawaii, from New Delhi (2x) to Paris, Rotterdam, Oberhausen, and of course, precious Slovenia, serving on juries and giving talks. All the time I’ve maintained the same stance: that it is important for people to write about their own cinemas, and not let it be left to those outside to dictate what matters.
But these tickets, these travels, are expensive. Hotels are expensive. Time is expensive. The pollution caused by airplanes in the sky will cost us in the long run. When you put all these things together it equals an investment: a serious investment made on and in an individual. Do I sound like I’m taking this too seriously? Allow me to phrase it another way: without the cultural investment made in me, for the work I have or can do with regard to Philippine cinema, I would have never met you. There is much to repay.

~
I don’t like writing critiques of the Metro Manila Film Festival— a grossly misguided event. I didn’t like it the first time I did it in 2003, nor did I the second or third time. I didn’t like it as well when, with the help of Erwin Romulo, we drafted a position paper seeking reforms in the festival and attempted to rally established filmmakers behind it (signatories included, among others, Eddie Garcia, Peque Gallaga, Jose Javie Reyes, Erik Matti– it’s not fun being told off like I was a two-bit journalist looking for a quote by filmmakers named Laurice. I didn’t like it but I did it, because part of me sincerely believed we could change things. A belief that, for a few moments, was infectious, for even those that knew in the back of their mind nothing would come of it still chose to take part. A friend whose couch I slept on for much of those weeks sent me a text sometime after, a message that now three years later is still saved on my phone:

There’s a line in AGUILA where a Moro secessionist is told his cause is lost. He replies to him that winning doesn’t matter, it’s doing what one feels one should do. That’s wisdom for you.

~
My dear Nika,
If there has been a single cause of strain that has stuck out in our relationship it is this: the idea of my attachment to the Philippines, the strong desire you see that I have to live and work here, and the way that, perhaps, you see this as a matter of misappropriate priorities. Does a place mean more than a person? Does my work in the Philippines mean more than the possibility of a life with you, somewhere, anywhere else? Must it be you that moves, makes the – I know you hate the word but let us use it – sacrifice of moving – and what, if anything does that say about us – that the scales of our love weigh more heavily on your chalice?

I know you’ve come to terms with the idea of moving here, hopefully next year we discuss, but I still felt the need to talk a bit more about some of my reasons for wanting to stay, at the very least for the meantime. I’m not attempting to compare my affection for Manila with yours for Slovenia, but only to explain the thoughts that go through my head, the things I feel I must do, things that, perhaps, we can do together.

Yours,

Alexis
~

I wish that the Film Development Council of the Philippines would understand the value of the money they’re given and consider going to Paris and spending 5 Million of their 25 Million allotment for a showcase given by a young festival an investment, and not just a vacation.

They support filmmakers with finished to go abroad to festivals for the pride they bring their country—I wish instead they would support their films locally, and help them get seen by larger Filipino audiences.

I cry for the loss of Manuel Conde’s Juan Tamad films.

I cry for a country that can’t convince a single Filipino-American who owns the only known print of Conde’s Genghis Khan in its original language to return (i.e. sell) the film back his mother country.

I cry for the generations of Filipinos, myself included, that can no longer see Gerry De Leon’s Daigdig ng Mga Api, and instead have scans of movie ads to admire on the internet.

I cry for a country that last Lamberto Avellana’s Prinsipe Amante.
I mourn a heritage that has allowed through neglect the prints of Mario O’Hara’s Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos and Peque Gallaga’s Oro, Plata, Mata to turn flush sepia.

I cry for a Union Bank and University of the Philippines that conspire in apathy to let the master negatives of treasures produced by Bancom to rot in rooms only ir-conditioned half the day, and in cans untouched for years and years.

I pray for a Senator or Congressman to take the courageous step of drafting a bill to help establish a National Film and Sound archive.

I pray a city government or even enterprising and concerned theater owners would consider settings a side 50 centavos or a peso of a ticket to go toward the preservation of our national audiovisual heritage. There have been flood taxes siphoned from movie tickets for crying out loud, this should be easy!
I wish Cinemalaya, which thanks to the media and government mileage behind it has a great festive excitement would actually put their efforts in service of Philippine cinema, and not their own self-involved attempt to start a micro-industry.
I wish filmmakers would stop listening to Robbie Tan.

I wish Cinema One, which takes more risks gives more money, and often produces better films that Cinemalaya would actually give filmmakers some rights to their work and stop swindling them.

I wish Lav Diaz had larger budgets to maneuver and shoot with.

I wish Raymond Red would get to make Makapili and return to making fantastic shorts in the experimental mode.

I wish Mike De Leon would make another movie… Please… We need it.
I wish Roxlee would get enough money to buy the time to make an animated feature.
I wish everyone will buy a copy of Nicanor Tiongson and Cesar Hernando’s The Cinema of Manuel Conde.

I wish there were more books on Philippine cinema.

I wish there were a series of classics screenplays that would get published.
I wish Cinefilipino would have put out Maalaala Mo Kaya with the reels in the proper order.

I wish Cinefilipino would have put our their Brocka titles with just a little bit of care and affection, providing some writing on the film or some features, and didn’t just throw them out their to earn.

I wish Nestor Torre would open his eyes…

I wish the Manunuri books on Philippine cinema in the 70’s and 80’s would go back in print.

I wish the Manunuri actually cared about Philippine cinema today.

I wish the Manunuri actually reviewed films instead of just giving out awards.

I wish the Young Critics Circle were actually young.

I wish the Young Critics Circle were actually critics.

I wish Francis ‘Oggs’ Cruz, Richard Bolisay, and Dodo Dayao would get space in the broadsheets, because they’re far more interesting than anyone writing regularly their today.

I wish Noel Vera would move back.

I wish Hammy Sotto was still alive.

I wish Hammy Sotto’s manuscripts would get published.

I wish Jo Atienza was still in Manila.

I wish we had a fully supported Film Museum.

I wish we had a Cinematheque.
I wish the UP Film Center had better seats, and showed good films.

I wish more non-filmmakers from the Philippines would get to travel to festivals.
I wish film were taught in high schools.

I wish Teddy Co would get the recognition that he deserves for his selfless work.
I wish Teddy Co would write more as his ideas deserve to be recorded.

I wish co-ops would co-operate.

I wish Khavn De La Cruz would get to make his musical EDSA XXX.

I wish the Max Santiago feature would get made, and that shorts would finally come to my hands on DVD (Hi Marla!)

I wish Tad Ermitano never stops writing and playing in his cave.

I wish Lourd De Veyra continues writing on actors and cinema.

I wish Raymond Lee’ UFO successes.

I wish we had more regional feature films, and more support for regional filmmakers.
I wish everyone would watch When Timawa Meets Delgado.

I wish someone would lower MTRCB rates for screenings fee’s, especially for festivals.
I wish someone, anyone, would make a good, thought-provoking film about the Philippine upper-class.
I wish Ketchup Eusebio would get more leading roles.

I wish Elijah Castillo gets to do a lot more films, soon.

I wish Cesar Hernando would get to transfer Botika, Bituka.

I wish filmmakers had some integrity and told Viva to screw themselves when offered another exploitation film.

I wish more people could see the film Bontoc Eulogy.

I wish Vic Del Rosario wasn’t presidential advisor on Entertainment, given the shlock they produce, and yes, that includes the films which starred First-Son Mikey Arroyo.

I wish Star Cinema would stop — … just stop.

I wish there was a film library that people could go to and read books on cinema.
I wish the MMFF wasn’t handled by the same people who install public urinals (admittedly useful).
I wish the MMDA didn’t call those circles and boxes Art.

I wish that MMDA Art wasn’t so much better than every MMFF film.

I wish Mother Lily didn’t have a monopoly on the Metro Manila Film Festival.
I wish Mother Lily took better care, or rather took care at all, of the good films she produced the past.

I wish Mother Lily would get to see Raya’s Long Live Philippine Cinema! Or maybe not.

I wish the Hammy Sotto led Philippine Cinema in the 90’s book with interviews and a complete filmography, which has been completed for several years, would finally get printed.

I wish Raymond Red would still get to shoot on celluloid.

I wish all the old Mowelfund shorts — including the works of Regiben Romana, the Alcazaren Brothers, Louie Quirino and Donna Sales, Raymond Red and Noel Lim — would come out on DVD.

I wish a book would be written about all of the Mowelfund shorts.

I wish a book of Philippine poster art would be released.

I wish and would love to read the rest of Nick Deocampo’s projected 4-5 volume history of Philippine cinema — at least someone is writing it.
I wish there was a pure film studies course available in the Philippines.
I wish that venues which are censorship (and therefore MTRCB fee) exempt would understand the vital role that they play.

I wish we had a regular, print, film journal. Why don’t we?

I wish more people would see the films of Lav Diaz. Especially students. If my humanities students can endure them, I’m sure film majors can.
I wish more film teachers were approaching cinema from cinema.

I wish less directors who compromised, didn’t.

I wish Kiri Dalena good health, to direct (and shoot as DP) more films, though I wish they were less propagandistic.

I wish R.A. Rivera gets to make his first feature soon.

I wish Quark Henares refrains from selling out again, because if he doesn’t, he can be one of the important ones.

I wish more people get to see In Da Red Korner. It deserves to be reconsidered.
I wish Rogue would cut down their featuring of foreign films in the gallery section when there is so much to write about locally that doesn’t get covered in other media beyond sloppy journalism.

I wish the government would sponsor DVD releases of the surviving films of Lamberto Avellana, Gerardo De Leon and all other classics that still exist.
I wish FPJ Productions would again screen the footage of Gerry De Leon’s unfinished Juan De La Cruz.

I wish less filmmakers compromised.

I wish more filmmakers admitted when they did.

I wish we focused our attention more on audience education, development, and literacy, then on dumbing down films to pander to them.

I wish a certain festival in December didn’t consider box office as a criteria for its main prize which comes with rewards. We don’t give cultural awards to Wowowee do we? Well, we don’t yet…

I wish I could see how “commercial viability” was computed.
I wish Philippine cinema all the success in the world…

Editor’s Note: The potent but rather uneasy relationship between politics and pop music has always been contentious. In America, where “pop music” (i.e. records produced specifically for a market of teenagers) was borne in the 1950’s, it heralded also a shift in how their leaders were elected. Arguably, JFK was the first “pop idol”. There are those who consider the Live Aid concerts in the 1980’s produced by punk also-ran Bob Geldof as the culmination of this union. But between U2’s Bono waving a white flag to Elton John rehashing his Marilyn Monroe tribute for Princess Di, it all just seemed humorless. And that can only be shame since music is after all supposed to be fun. (Politics only less so but just because the joke’s almost always on us.) Perhaps the following piece—written by Philippines Free Press Associate Editor Ricky Torre—is a welcome step back into irreverence.

Can We Just Stop And Talk A While (The Situationist Version)

Music by Jose Mari Chan

Lyrics by Jose Mari Chan and Karl Marx

Fancy meeting you alone in the crowd,

couldn’t help but notice your smile.
While the hoi polloi around us is going about,
can we just stop and talk awhile?

I’ve been often told the pretty-bourgeois

is a social class that’s harder to fight.
Do tell me more about yourself
for my reeducation, if you won’t mind?

A social investigation

awaits the sub-committee
right down in the countryside.
Liberation from cash payment,

hurly-burly of the city life.

Criticism self-criticism.
It’s the first day of the rest of our lives.
Can we just stop and talk awhile

et nous sommes le pouvoir,

sommes tous indesirarles.

There is no place in the struggle for the liberals.
Let’s stop and talk awhile

Let’s stop and talk awhile

Let’s stop and talk awhile

Let’s stop and talk awhile

(the original version)

“This is a weird gathering.” That’s what Gang Badoy said upon realizing that she had Renato Reyes, Dante Lagman, Ricky Carandang, Jun Sabayton and Lourd de Veyra in her living room. This was right after RockEd Radio’s second episode at our new home in Jam88.3. The episode was typical of how Gang and Lourd has ran the show for the past four years—just getting the best people to talk on the subject regardless of whatever their affiliations or maybe even good sense. For this one, they managed to get two representatives of opposing leftist factions to sit down and just talk. Then, Ricky walks in just to join and hang out. This is what listeners of the show keep tuning in every week for: to hear conversations between people who you wouldn’t imagine to be in the same room together—and to join in.

That evening, even if we didn’t share each other’s politics, we did share stories, opinions and even jokes. That’s important these days—to be able to talk and listen to each other at a time when all our information is mediated through circuitry. It’s much easier to demonize or stereotype others whenever it’s just an avatar (and—apologies to Ricky—news anchors) that does all the talking. The aim is not to get everyone to agree—far from it.

This is what RockEd Radio has fostered all these years: an environment to have weird gatherings and see what happens.

Stay tuned.

- Erwin Romulo