Taxi Cab Karaoke

Ubiquity is the surest way to kill a song,’ music critic Sal Cinequemani wrote, and in this era where songs are transformed through different iterations of their selves: covers, remixes, endless loops in cafes, some still catch us by surprise. If you’re the kind of person who looks up sad love songs to listen to at night, YouTube playlists present a treasure trove of choices, from the legit harana tunes to 90s favorites.

Here are five songs, originally consigned to 90s jolog oblivion but, thanks to the aforementioned YouTube playlists and cab rides (where the radios are always tuned in to a station that plays these kinds of songs all day long), we get to re-examine and re-appreciate their glory.

1. Sana ay Mahalin mo rin Ako – April Boys

“Ito yung laging kinakanta ng kuya ko sa nililigawan nya noon, taz back-up ako, 5 yrs old palang ako nun,” the top comment in a YouTube videoke upload of the April Boys song. Its simple chord progression makes it an easy harana and if you’re up for singing it to your prospective jowa, it might actually work. While the song title gives off a bit of desperation, Vingo and Jimmy were actually singing about a plea for a lasting relationship.

Potential Facebook status: Kapag nakita ka, ako’y nahihiya/Kapag kausap ka, ako’y namumula/Sabi ng puso ko, ako’y in love sa’yo/Sana ay mahalin mo rin ako.

YouTube Level: Karaoke, personal photo slides, OPM playlists, covers, and lyric videos.

2. Alaala Mo – White Lies

Most listeners will probably associate the song’s hook with Dagtang Lason’s ‘Masarap Magmahal Ng Bakla’ which rewound White Lies’s paean to the enduring power of unrequited love. But beyond its videoke-worthy power chords, there’s something in here that echoes Barbra Streisand’s The Way We Were, but this time instead of conjuring up the past, White Lies sings for something that never was and never will be.

Potential Facebook status: Mga alaala mo’y kay sarap isipin/Bawat sandali’y kapiling/O kay sarap damhin
YouTube Level: Covers, Karaoke, official band videos, and anime tributes

3.  Mahal pa rin Kita – Rockstar

Rockstar swaps the cheese out of despair and heartache for the all-consuming flame of desire. You can easily picture a guy, down on his knees, the wind baying in the background while the rain pours down in empathy. Love lost is always a good reason to forsake sanity but Rockstar also proves it’s a reason for writing a damn good torch song.

Potential Facebook status: Bakit ‘di maamin na wala ka na?

YouTube Level: Lyric videos, guitar and piano tutorials, covers, Karaoke, and slide shows.

 4. Ikaw pa rin – Ted Ito

 Originally ‘Saigo no iwake’ by Hideaki Tokunaga, Ted Dito, who is actually half-Japanese, translated the song into Tagalog, making it one of the most remembered songs of the early 90s. It’s a deceptively simple song but ‘Ikaw Pa Rin’ manages to let the ghost of his love flourish, slow and subtle like the progression of time. Because waiting for love to come back feels like never coming home.

Potential Facebook status: Bakit di magawa nitong damdamin /Ang paglimot sa mga nagdaan /Sadya nga bang ganyan/Pag nagmahal ay di matatakasan 

YouTube level: Lyric videos, covers, remixes, and karaoke.

5.    Kasalanan Ba? – Men Oppose

Before Ebe Dancel deployed his bombs of sadness through Sa Wakas, Men Oppose carried burned down hearts in the arms of their song ‘Kasalanan Ba?’ There’s nothing like a man scorned despite the magnitude of his love and commitment, something that sends him to the dark alley of self-doubt and history of personal woes. It’s always the best that gets hit by the worst.

Potential Facebook status: The entire song. Stick in a notebook or make a slideshow with photos of your ex and the lyrics glaring in red, angry typeface.

YouTube Level: karaoke, playlists, lyric video, slide shows, remixes, and covers.

Published in the Independence Day supplement of The Philippine Star (June 12, 2013)

At the Mountains of Madness: The Making of Himala (Rogue Magazine, October 2012)

For the Entertainment Issue of Rogue Magazine, I got to talk to Ricky Lee about the catastrophic three-month shoot of Ishmael Bernal’s Himala in the sand dunes of Ilocos. 

Out in newsstands this month or buy the digital edition on Zinio.

Of Gods and Men: Give Up Tomorrow (2011)

Photo by Arni Aclao

There is a certain trace of nihilism attached to the title of Marty Syjuco and Martin Collins’s documentary Give Up Tomorrow. After all, its subject is as bleak and hopeless as a Lars Von Trier film. As facts snowball into one apparent truth, the title emerges as a mantra, ushering in a degree of survival, especially for Paco Larrañaga, the documentary’s subject and the public face of the Chiong rape-murder case.

“I think when you leave this film, you’ll wonder how could he survive, how could someone innocent, not just Paco but all the other innocent people, survive (in prison)? And what we learned from Paco, living in the present moment and just getting through one more day, was just inspiring for us. Even though the title seemed very negative, when you watch the film you can see that it’s really a positive advice that kept him going,” says Collins.

This is the case: On the stormy night of July 16, 1997, sisters Marijoy and Jacqueline Chiong were allegedly raped and murdered after they were kidnapped at a mall in Cebu City. The case became one the city’s most heinous crimes and the authorities were pressured to come up with suspects or at least a lead. The police then arrested eight men who were accused of the crime, one of whom was Paco Larrañaga, then a 19-year-old student at a culinary school in Manila. The trial went on for decades and became Cebu’s “mistrial of the century,” a public spectacle of our country’s faulty justice system and a catch-all of the media’s penchant for sensationalism.

Give Up Tomorrow shines light on a huge chunk of the story that was never told back then. The media, and in turn the public, had a part in convicting Larrañaga and his co-accused. They were made out as monsters capable of killing two girls out of lust and petty reasons. The film assembles hundreds of interviews and evidence that point out the glaring truth about the case that was overlooked by the prosecutors and the media: the innocence of everyone convicted of a crime interlinked with the most corrupt depths of our society. A haze of facts and shady evidence clouds the real nature of the case. And this is what Give Up Tomorrow addresses: a view of the Chiong case that spotlights an outrageous example of bullying stemming from racial tension.

“We wanted to try to clearly show all sides of the story, to give voice to some who hadn’t had a voice yet in the reporting that had been done on this, to show something fair and let the audience make their own decision. That was always our goal. We also didn’t want it to be a news piece. We wanted it to be a film. We wanted people to connect with the characters emotionally onscreen,” Collins explains.

“When we started digging deeper and learning details of the case, we realized you can’t make this stuff up. Nobody can write this up because it’s too crazy, it’s too unbelievable, and the only way to tell this story is to make a documentary,” adds Syjuco.

Stoking racial tension

Even before the conviction was handed out, Larrañaga was already guilty in the eyes of the public. He was a conyo, a privileged delinquent who happened to be a great-grandson of the late Philippine president Sergio Osmeña. His roots were the very ropes that strapped him helpless even though evidence proved that he wasn’t even in Cebu the night the crime took place, a fact that was pointed out by defense witnesses (all 35 of them) using logbooks, school records, and even photographs. The evidence and testimonies were dismissed, saying that these were from friends of the accused.

“The media presented Paco as this mestizo. It was no longer about the facts of this case but about what Paco represented: the whole history of being mestizo, a colonial past, and being related to the Osmeñas. That was the story that was selling headlines and much more interesting so people were just stoking that ethnic and racial tension constantly and facts were just getting buried,” Collins shares.

But with years of research, clarity and brevity, Give Up Tomorrow lets the people involved in the case speak for themselves. It refrains from being an overarching piece of didacticism or unleashing a torrent of information that dumps “facts” readily available for decades. From the opening scene that establishes Larrañaga’s take on the case up to his transfer to Spain to serve the remainder of his life sentence, the filmmakers painstakingly filter voices that eventually mold into a singular perspective of the case. But most of all, it challenges a nation whose notions of guilt and justice were twisted by unfair and biased reportage.

Personal slant

The film teeters, though, on a side that could render its effort useless: Syjuco’s brother is married to Larrañaga’s sister so accusations of bias emerged from some prior to the screening.

“I distanced myself mostly in the edit. The editing was really just Michael and our editor, Eric (Daniel Metzgar),” Syjuco says. “With the 400 hours of footage, it took them two years to edit. For me, I felt this was an opportunity, because I had this guilt, this was happening and I didn’t do anything. I guess I used the camera as a weapon. The true story was never out there. I also didn’t know Paco’s family very well. It’s just now that the film is done and they went to the premiere in Tribeca and we were together in some Spanish festivals, that I got to know them and spend real time with them.”

In a country that perceives personal connection to a subject as a form of corruption, Syjuco and Collins were just focused on doing their jobs as filmmakers, as champions and crusaders of truth.

“Our intention in making this film was to present the truth. We knew that once we did our job and once the people saw the film it wouldn’t matter. It wouldn’t matter if this film was made by his brother. The facts of the case were just showing the truth. It’s easy to say, if you haven’t seen the film, that there’s a family relation so it’s propaganda. But people who walk into the theater with that in mind always leave and say, ‘You know what it doesn’t matter anymore that you’re related to (Paco), because it’s presenting the truth,’” Collins says.

And as filmmakers who dedicated seven years of their lives working on this film, it’s encouraging to know that Syjuco and Collins don’t just see the controversial subject as a starting mark in their careers.

“We worked on this for seven years and we’re going to see it through the end. From distribution to outreach and eventually creating an impact,” says Syjuco.

A ripe time for change

After decades of discrepancies, doubts and disparaging images, the case is still an erroneous landmark in the face of our justice system. The Chiong case has been a playground for men and women acting gods, serving up crooked justice as they see fit. But ultimately, Give Up Tomorrow is about injustice, regardless of its form and who it takes in its undertow. After all, the Chiong family only looked for justice for their daughters and Paco’s family strived to undo the wrongs committed against him.

Like all the great documentaries that preceded it, Give Up Tomorrow is a manifestation of how the medium can serve as an instrument for social change, how it can create a spark that will ignite an impact greater than what the filmmakers realized. And with the changing social climate and the emergence of new voices in the media, maybe it’s about time that we looked back on a more tumultuous version of ourselves and reassessed our faults, prejudices, and accountability.

* * *

For more information about Give Up Tomorrow, visit pacodocu.com where you can contact the filmmakers for screenings and interviews.

This article was originally published in The Philippine Star

Through the Looking Glass: Olivier Assayas

Unlike other filmmakers who dwell on the grand notions of death and its actualities, French filmmaker Olivier Assayas is more interested in its ramifications and how the dead is survived by the living. In his most celebrated work, Summer Hours, three siblings struggle in dealing with the passing of their mother, who has left behind a house which has been kept as a shrine of their family’s artistic legacy, particularly that of their great-uncle’s, Paul Berthier. The house is stripped off its heirlooms: Corot paintings, Braques vases, and fragments of a Degas plaster stowed away in a plastic bag, each carved with its own story and its place in the family’s history. The larger patchwork of their troubled reality looms even greater than death but with Assayas’s intimate attention to detail, this process becomes a distinct insight on how we process death and live through its aftermath.

Assayas’s body of work is a shape-shifting oeuvre that ranges from three-hour costume dramas, globe-trotting thrillers, and art house fares. Coming from a family where filmmaking is an everyday matter (he is the son of French director Jacques Remy), Assayas went on to work forCahiers du Cinema, one of the world’s prestigious film magazines, where he assimilated a diverse film culture from filmmakers such as Ingmar Bergman, Kenneth Anger, Robert Bresson, and even Lino Brocka.

A Discourse Between East And West

His tenure at Cahiers ignited his long-standing affair with the East. He was responsible for the magazine’s groundbreaking spotlight on Hong Kong cinema, made at a time when Western cinema’s image of Asian cinema is based on swordplay films, kung-fu and samurai epics. He travelled to Hong Kong and Taipei, and played an important part in the emergence of the films of Asian filmmakers like Edward Yang and Hou Hsiao-Hsien.

“Before there was a very vague notion of what Asian Cinema is about,” he says. “So there was no notion that there was filmmaking and film culture anywhere else. For a young writer and would-be filmmaker, discovery of that cinema was a very exciting event because it was like discovering a new country. I’ve always had an inclination towards Chinese culture. I’ve been reading about Chinese painting, poetry. So when Chinese films surfaced I was attracted and I suppose I kind of understood them in ways other French film critics were not aware of.”

His films form an expansive cultural dialogue between the East and the West, more apparent in Irma Vep which stars Maggie Cheung who plays an international star stuck in a French director’s ambition to remake Les Vampires. This insistence of creating a wider cinematic worldview moves Assayas farther from the shadow of the great filmmakers of the French New Wave such as Jean-Luc Goddard, Jacques Rivette, and Erich Rohmer, all of whom also started as critics for Cahiers.

“To me movies are like windows of the world,” Assayas says. “I’ve always been interested in cinema coming from different cultures because they help me understand. They give us a different way of seeing the world, different ways of approaching it, and different ways of understanding human nature.”

Cinematic Responsibilities

Coming from a country that celebrates and supports film culture (France has a government fund dedicated to helping first-time filmmakers create their feature films), Assayas has more than enough wisdom to enlighten the plight of Filipino filmmakers who continue to be weighed down by economic and political limitations.

“When you are involved in an art form as important as cinema you want to connect with your audience. You can’t just be satisfied with not connecting with them and in a certain way. You must go in the direction in making an ambitious Philippine cinema anchored in the cultural history of your country addressed to the audience of your generation. And it’s something that has been destroyed by disastrous economic policies and it’s your duty to rebuild it,” he says.

The Future Of Independent Filmmaking

It’s this essential connection that Assayas values the most. His films may have a certain degree of disparity but they are geared towards a direction that exposes a facet of our lives that have been buried in the kineticism of modern living.

“I feel very privileged that my films are traveling and that they speak some kind of universal language. I always hope that my films were made for an audience beyond my circle French of cinema because that’s the future of independent filmmaking. You can be extremely local but your films have the potential to travel and it’s their way to survive,” he says.

Photo by Stephanie Di Giusto. Thanks to FrenchFilm Manile. This article was originally published in The Philippine STAR’s Supreme (16 June 2012)

Five Filipino Films That Deserve a Global Audience

Unknown to many, Philippine Cinema has prospered despite the flagging support of the general viewing public. Since the early 2000s, brave storytellers like Lav Diaz and Raya Martin have released a steady stream of films that have carved out a distinct perspective of our myths and stories. Producers and filmmakers like Raymond Lee and Jade Castro shun mainstream and indie categorization for the sake of clear-cut narratives that are both accessible and more endearing than most big studio drivel, as depicted in films like Endo and last year’s hit Zombadings:1 Patayin sa Shokot si Remington.

Film critic Philip Cheah even noticed the strong lead of the Philippines in the new wave of Southeast Asian films. “Filipinos themselves don’t realize the nexus of creativity that they exist in. They groan at the thought of how far behind their cinema is. But any outsider would be rendered breathless at the amazing power of their independent spirit. I know I was blown away when I watched last year’s crop of new indie films at the Seventh Cinemalaya film festival. There were tons of new films and after the regional wave of 2010, you could say that the empire (or the country’s center) struck back! The Manila-based directors rallied and released a surge of great films. But it’s not a real competition anyway. Filipinos know that they were born to create.”

With the emergence of films like Yam Laranas’s The Road in the international circuit as well as screenings of small-budget gems like Antoinette Jadaone’s Six Degrees of Separation from Lilia Cuntapay (the most critically acclaimed local film of 2011) in film festivals abroad, it’s truly an exciting time for Philippine cinema. The numbers of local releases may have dwindled but it’s undeniable that there are more quality films being produced.

Just in case you need more convincing, here is a list of recent films, including shorts and full-length, that deserve a wider audience not just locally but elsewhere in the world.

Tundong Magiliw (Tundo Beloved)

Dir: Jewel Maranan

Unlike other films that deal with poverty, Jewel Maranan’s Tundong Magiliw refuses to slither down Tundo’s infamous image. Instead, she captures an intimate portrait of a family struggling to make ends meet, and witnesses a birth that foretells a future riddled with its own emotional baggage and promises.

Mapang-akit

Dir: John Torres

Torres’s take on the aswang myth wanders from the idyllic into a poetic play of the supernatural. Made from outtakes of a collaboration with a Danish filmmaker, Mapang-akit creates its own language while still grounded in cultural quirks of a hushed town haunted by a grim spell.

Big Boy

Dir: Shireen Seno

Big Boy approximates the glories and pitfalls of childhood in a swirl of hallucinatory images. Seno’s film, based on the experiences of her father, evokes the traps of our labyrinthine remembrances, where faces and names blur but the emotional resonance resounds stronger than ever. Timmy Harn and Gym Lumbera’s Class Picture, a short film that recaptures the fading pleasures of the titular photograph, should serve as a companion piece.

Sakay sa Hangin (Windblown)

Dir: Regiben Romana

Sakay sa Hangin immerses us into the rich culture of the Talaandig tribe as we follow the tribe’s musician on his quest to save his dying heritage. Romana’s film reminds us that our country holds more riches than what our school textbooks have shown us and that music will always be a universal vessel of peace.

Lawas Kan Pinabli (Forever Loved)

Dir: Christopher Gozum

Mixing fiction and documentary, Lawas Kan Pinabli shatters the heroic notions about overseas Filipino workers. The film is divided into several interviews with OFWs in the Middle East whose harrowing experiences stem from their dream of better lives. But the film also shows how some Filipinos knowingly break rules and cultural norms to fit their misguided intentions, not realizing there are realities far bigger than themselves until they eventually hit rock bottom.

Originally published in The Philippine Star Supreme (May 26, 2012)

Monster Class

It’s strange how Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way Ball” can be both a celebration of oneness and a paean to the perils of individuality. As an outspoken advocate of the LGBT community (“I cannot respect homophobia and intolerance of the gay community!” she bellows during the Manila leg of her tour), Gaga has embraced the rainbow connection like a currency, something she has conflated in Born This Way and its title track. “The Born This Way Ball” is a celebration of this virtue, a spectacle of pomp, grace and aggressiveness that has earned her the adulation of her “little monsters,” and the ire of conservatives around the world. But it’s this kind of pelting that makes her even stronger.

By now, Gaga’s spiels from the concert have circulated around Twitter and Facebook like an infectious chain of text messages, punctuated by the proclamation of “I am certainly not a creature of your government!” People are quick to jump on this as her way of wagging her middle finger to the protests that surrounded her arrival but it’s, more or less, her elaboration of the manifesto that she blabbers on all throughout the show. She mixes ‘80s kitsch with goth/medieval sensibilities and Golden Age science fiction to catapult the rise of a “new race”: a population distilling her advocacy that ultimately stems from the Bible, no matter how hard the fundies crucify her as devil incarnate. Gaga, after all, was schooled in a convent.

When armed with her love-yourself ammunition, Gaga becomes a strikingly commandeering presence; a high priestess of pop music. She is the honey badger of the music industry: she really doesn’t give a sh*t. She preaches what she wants and she does it like no other prefabricated starlet. The “Born This Way Ball,” she says, isn’t just a big-ass promotional platform, it’s a venue for her beloved fans to celebrate their true selves under the banner of empathy and togetherness; a prayer rally for those inflicted with low self-esteem. And with anthems like Born This Way, Bad Kids, and Hair, she can make anyone feel like they’re up there with her, living their childhood dreams. If you’ve been cheated on, duped or cast off, Gaga’s songs can be her way of braiding your hair and giving you a pat on the back. “It’s okay,” she’ll say. “They’re all replaceable anyway. Look at my couch, it’s all man meat. They’re more useful this way.” And for that moment, while you sing along to her ridiculous turns of phrase, you believe her.

Without the cultivated persona, Gaga is at her strongest. The Fame era songs remind us how once she was obsessed with boys, blinding lights, and proving her detractors wrong, how her glitter-guzzling former self has given the world turbo-powered fusions of Eurotrash and electronica without the baggage of empowerment. Syllables turn into tics; gummy earworms that lounge in your head for days. Songs like Poker Face, Just Dance and Love Game are proof of how her old pop star image has helped catapult her into a larger-than-life performer. And when she hit the Born This Way era, she threw off the sequined gloves and put on a Versace-designed habit and launched into a mission to preach her gospel to whoever wants to listen and be enlightened.

But at her most vulnerable, Gaga is most believable. As she performs the stripped-down version of Hair, she turns it into a powerful weapon; a highlighted passage in a John Green book that morphs into a moment of self-actualization. Your hair may be a ridiculous metaphor for self-expression and freedom but it does make sense.

In the end, when all the bass lines and camp have all been blown into the spotlight, she’ll turn off the lights, stow away her costume and close her book. You’ll walk out, into the antiseptic lights of the arena, humming the chorus line of Marry the Night, assimilating the last two hours in your head. It’s an intense experience, hammered with pop’s greatest transgressions; something that bears a close resemblance to a religious experience. Now go forth and spread the word.

Originally published in The Philippine Star Supreme (May 26, 2012)

Weeknight Memoirs on HD: John Torres

Photo by Gym Lumbera

John Torres is trying to break your heart. Most of the time he succeeds. His films leave cuts, bruises that remind you of extraordinary stories that you have once encountered and the futures that they promise. From his trilogy of shorts to his three full length features, John’s films are high-definition mirrors to his own world, meticulously personal but still embrace universality.

For his next film, Lukas nino, which deals with the ordeal of a heartbreak, John will be crowdsourcing additional funds to make it. The film will be shot in 35mm film and is inspired by a lost Ishmael Bernal film called Scotch on the Rocks to Remember, Black Coffee to Forget.

Why crowdsourcing? 

Crowdsourcing involves outsourcing tasks to a crowd. To some, crowdfunding should be all or nothing, where pledges will be collected only if you hit that amount. another site allows partial funding which collects any amount at the end of the campaign. The crowd pledges, and whatever you have in the end will be collected all at once. What I’m doing is a straight fundraising campaign where I’m basically selling my works to the crowd, collecting payment anytime they make a purchase throughout the campaign.

Aside from seeing your name at the film’s end credits, the crowd will get DVDs of my first shorts, a limited-edition boxed set of Todo Todo Teros, Years When I was a Child Outside, and Ang Ninanais[Refrains Happen Like Revolutions in a Song], tickets to the premiere, posters, among others. Now, I am also committing to finishing a book I’m writing because it is also one of the items I’m giving out.

There’s one reward where I get to make you a short film. You choose your reward based on the amount you choose. There are eight levels, the highest of which gives you credit as one of the co-producers.

There’s a language disconnect again in Lukas, just like Ang Ninanais and Mapang-akit. Why this fascination with language?
I don’t know. I grew up learning Ilocano from hearing my parents speak it at home. I grew up speaking Tagalog but understanding Ilocano, without my parents teaching me. I am fascinated because it remains foreign to me, yet I feel like I always eavesdrop when I hear it because I understand every word. It remains foreign because I cannot speak it. There’s the aspect of mouthing it out. there’s practice, there’s the getting used to part to it. I always get a kick when i hear it spoken outside the house.

Tell us more about the book that you’re writing.
I want to share my own experience of making my early films, from the first short to the first features. It can be pretty straightforward like this. Or, I have the idea of writing a screenplay after Todo Todo Teros orYears or Ang Ninanais — scripts coming after the completed films. I can watch scenes I shot scene after scene, describing the visuals, the sound faithfully as they happen. Then, I react and put them on paper.

I know I kept my handwritten notes, drafts of the outlines. They contains a lot of erasures, and I want to scan them all and sell them as art. Haha.

I noticed that Teacher’s Village or QC itself figures into your work quite a lot recently. How important is the influence of your environment and the people around you in your works?
Sherad [Anthony Sanchez] said I shoot like I see and hear from a bus window. I made my shorts, situating them from home. Then I guess I travelled with my longer works and more recent shorts, and now, I’m missing my place in QC.

With my next film, I hope I can shoot scenes in our village. I am launching the fundraising site on Thursday, and it’s tentatively called 59 Mahabagin is near Maginhawa, referring to street names in our area.

Will Lukas nino still be as personal as your full lengths? 
My works will always stay personal and precious. Saying that, things will change as I change, right? As it is Teros is stylistically different from Years and Years, from Ninanais. Lukas is my first time to work with a script, a crew, and money from the crowd.

Visit John Torres’s blog for more information. This interview was originally published in Restless Cities.