Photo courtesy of http://morofilm.blogspot.com
My friend Jun Macarambon, who co-wrote “A step for my dream” had their film officially selected in this year’s Cinemalaya, inevitably the most prestigious film festival in the Philippines. I haven’t seen the film myself, but the fact that it made it to the festival should keep everyone’s heads up. It was directed by Monalayn Labado, also a Mindanawon. Hopefully, their producer Teng Mangansakan II, also a documentary filmmaker from Mindanao, would allow to screen the said film for this upcoming Mindanao Film Festival for everyone to see. Lately, the influx of critical Mindanao filmmakers shaking the national and international scene have grown since, perhaps, Lav Diaz. Other films to watchout for that are made by a Mindanao filmmaker include Sherad Anthony Sanchez’s film (director of Huling Balyan ng Buhi) “Imburnal”, which was recently shot in some parts of Bankerohan and Dumalag. It is an entry for this year’s Cinema One Originals. Also, an advocacy film was recently made entitled, “Hunghong sa yuta” which has already run on local cinemas. Noticeably, most of our fresh breed of filmmakers have done stories on Mindanao, treating these stories with a fair sense of what Mindanao truly feels like.
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Just last week, was the Bloggers Party at Casa Leticia and I volunteered to come up with the music for the night. Yes, I still have those pangs from good ol’ memories of disk jockeying days, so every opportunity to decide a playlist is such a BIG deal for me. Now, part of the BIG deal of it all is to make sure that the music fit the crowd but at the same time, you wouldn’t want something that distracted them from socializing with each other. Aside from the obvious factor of making sure that each song didn’t segue to each other awkwardly, I wanted to use a Music software that’d employ a really smooth crossfade between each song. Then Ria texted and told me to just burn a couple of CDs, heh, I ended up doing that, yes. But it doesn’t mean I haven’t thought about the more software-oriented approach of playing your party tunes.
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Yesterday, that is June 12th, was the commemoration of the very elusive Independence day of the Philippines (since some historians argue among themselves whether it took place during the late 1800s or Post-Commonwealth). In fact, I’ve heard smart alecky remarks from some that we’re not a free nation at all so the theory in practice is rather pointless. But never mind that, ABS-CBN enshrines freedom and have televised that “symbolic interaction” by simultaneously doing a 411 primary school flag ceremony in all ABS-CBN headquarters nationwide. Back at the mothership you realize that they come across as unpretentious, just as long as you think about Eugenio Lopez in all his dignified exuberance say the words, “Mabuhay ang Lahi ng Kayumanggi” without first expounding this profound idea. It’s interesting really, so many social issues to digest in such a short declaration. Are we really a nation who embraces Kayumanggi? What with all this hype of Glutathione and Eskinol sikerto ng mga gwapo? What is the social construct behind Kayumanggi? Was Lopez particularly lauding an idealistic view of our lahi? What does that mean also? Race? Culture? Essence?
You can only relate to this if you’re a Filipino and watched TV most of the day like I did.
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