"Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end."

- Closing Time (Semisonic, Feeling Strangely Fine, 1998)




"Hit me baby, one more time."

- ...Baby One More Time (Britney Spears, Baby One More Time, 1998)

The Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) was established with the best of intentions – invigorate the local cinema industry by providing a venue for film makers, writers, and producers to showcase exemplary work that captures the spirit of Philippine culture, the interest and fancy of the local audience, and to push the envelope of Philippine cinema. But over the decades, it has lost sight of this mandate and objective and has become a parody of formulaic and uninspired output.

The trend towards independently-produced and curated films over the past few years have birthed some of the most exciting (and, once in a while, dismal) film festivals in the country. With a carte blanche of inspiration as its impetus; writers, producers, directors, and filmmakers have come-up with some of the most memorable films in the last two decades – the Cinemalaya and CinemaOne Originals being two of the most notable stalwarts of the movement.

In the end, the MMFF has lost both its meaning, relevance, and mandate to represent quality local films. Its yearly roster of re-hashed, regurgitated, and humdrum films indicates a lack of insight into the audience’s interest. Banking on its unquestioned monopoly over the cinema houses throughout the holiday season, this absence of healthy competition have left the big-name and big-ticket production houses to annually churn out one of the following blasé themes: a triptych horror series or some form of supernatural terror fest, a tongue-in-cheek rom-com with the most recent and popular love-team as its top-billers, some form of adventure-format or magical sojourn based on a superficial premise, the classic struggle of good versus evil, a farcical slapstick comedy, a semi-biographical action flick, or some gritty drama with the un-evolving theme of third-world struggles.

It’s no wonder and surprise then that discerning moviegoers respond more to indie-films and film fests than they do to the MMFF. Primarily because patronizing the sort of films they have released lately borders on insulting the capacity of their audience to accept, digest, and appreciate more complex, uncomfortable, or extreme themes.

It’s a challenge, then, to the MMFF organizers; and indirectly to the producers, to push the boundaries of film-making in the future, and produce content that is truly a zeitgeist of Philippine culture, a tranche de vie of the sentiments of a more and more discerning, vocal, and discriminating public.

The premise of every artform and medium is insight, perspective. Without this, it is nothing more than glorified nonsense.

Cinéma vérité (/ˈsɪnɨmə vɛrɨˈteɪ/; French: [sinema veʁite], truthful cinema) is a style of documentary filmmaking, invented by Jean Rouch, inspired by Dziga Vertov's theory about Kino-Pravda and influenced by Robert Flaherty’s films. It combines improvisation with the use of the camera to unveil truth or highlight subjects hidden behind crude reality.

"Some things, once you've loved them, become yours forever. And if you try to let them go, they only circle back, and return to you. They become part of who you are. Or they destroy you." 

- Allen Ginsberg, Kill Your Darlings (2014)

When I was younger, influenced by the naivety of inexperience, I used to believe time was therapeutic. That everything is made easier and palatable with patience. And pain fades away with memory, like brush strokes on vellum.

But time is neutral, and it can easily fade a memory as much as magnify it. Resolution, like the depth of an experience or a memory, is independent of how long you dwell on it. No amount of wallowing will make the pill go down easier.

In that regard, we're slaves to history. It is both what feeds our hope for sunnier times, and the nimbus that clouds our present; propelling us in the struggle and abating our potential growth.

Experience is a good mentor, but insight is the better one. We often fail to recognize that what we go through in life is rendered worthless if it doesn't educate us.

Noone comes out of grief unscathed; the scars are meant not just to deform but also to inform us. Time does not pause from its glacial procession. It is only us who choose to be still, to stagnate, in these valuable and long-gone moments.

When a clock stops ticking, its gears do not cease to exist. They're still there, needing to be rewound.

This, here, is that.





This entry is for the Round Table Challenge, and was done entirely (including the photo-graphics) on the phone with Google Keep, PhotoGrid, and Blogger for Android.

Hello Aya,


"Happy is the man who finds a true friend, and far happier is he who finds that true friend in his wife."
- Franz Schubert

Forgive my inaniloquence, as this wonderful news have come at such a surprise. Your nudiustertian decision is well appreciated, and has left me nothing but aghast at this elating development. The years have been unkind to those of the intelligensia, and discontent plagues our plight with the persistence of a keloidal scar, but that shouldn't deter us from seeking that elusive love. Serendipity is kind to those whom fate have been harsh to. I am glad you've found yours, from this immense sea of strangers, at a foreign land no less. 

Allow me to express my heartfelt well wishes for the both of you. Nothing of value comes in this life without effort, and struggle. The struggle informs this value, makes the honey sweeter, the journey greater, and the and the sun a tad more warmer (and kinder). Maybe some day I will get to meet this man. May you bring joy and support, love and understanding, and above all trust and respect to each other. 

We must find happiness where we can. It is the only noble way to love.


Les deseo a ambos todo lo mejor en su compromiso y para el futuro!

Salud!
Red

We’re all damaged, you and I. No matter how sheltered or unkind fate has been with you; we all have missing pieces, minute cracks and fissures that pepper our self. You might be unaware of it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not there. The broken shards, held together by the social graces; the composed demeanor masking the silent screams, that awkward laughter that hides the anxious fumbling. We can’t be alive, and not be broken. But being broken isn’t the problem. Humanity’s injured consciousness is the price we pay for free will. Because free will precludes conflict and contradiction; we cannot be free without affording the same liberty to others. So you learn, along the way that being free means being disappointed.

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Dear Blog,

I would like to apologize for my protracted absence. It has been a while since I’ve last posted anything noteworthy for you. For all its worth, this negligence has been primarily unintentional. I wish I could expound on the reasons more, but the cloud of doubt, uncertainty and anxiety looms over me like a shadow. A very large, menacing, and amorphous shadow.

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To write seems futile, incomplete, unintelligible
thoughts that refuse to find voice, form, a message
scarcely scribbled, quickly discarded, drafted
in the silence of an ordeal 

unspoken.

There is comfort in indecision.

 Realizing, I am human after all.

Words fail, when the heart sprints incessantly

Falling upon deaf ears, for that question unanswered

Maybe in a forlorn reality thrown into the chasm of life

I hold a morsel, remaining untouched, unconsumed.

But for now I am a footnote, those disparate minutiae

Informative, but utterly irrelevant, meaningless in this moment

Yet in this barren conduit, find comfort in the faceless crowd

You might find me, here, where I have always been

all this time.

The sun to my fragile leaves;

dancing midday in whispered heaves,

tangled between each other’s’ steps

supple lines, swiftly caressed.

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Just remember, once you're over the hill 

you begin to pick up speed.

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Charles Schulz

People generally dread turning 30, like an affliction that creeps in in the dead of night, turning youth into vain memory, a faint spark of glory days when life meant frolicking in wanton abandon, unbridled by mature conceptions such as responsibility and making a living. Considered a social fulcrum, men of this age and beyond are expected to forego juvenile dreams, and fickle behaviour, opting for the supposedly adult values of sound-mindedness, being goal-oriented, and a sense of obligation.

How easy it would be fall into this stereotype, conceding to the call of age, of time, and of the present. To pledge allegiance to social expectations, because the alternative, uncertainty, is a disposition that men fear with the same progression as they do with age. That the closer you are to your deathbed, the more you fear its eventuality, thus consequently turning the most free-spirited of us into jaded, indifferent, flawed pragmatists and cynics. That to become an adult, or mature, means to fall in line, to follow the flock, and to brand oneself with the searing humility of normalcy.

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This space, barren, quivers in the vast nothingness that has penetrated it. Unspoken words linger afloat in the cavity that trails untraced from there to nowhere. Miniscule crumbs left sprawled across the coffee table. Drapes hung low and depressed in the parched summer humidity, with seams tattered and undone. The floor creaks with patience for the foot that never sets foot upon it. Windows left ajar, wide and welcoming to the forgotten beyond. Paint cracked and peeling across walls stained with the mute passing of time, withered and pasty accumulating along the edges of the room, like termite-ridden dusting, sans the termites. For, even they have left abandoned this place. The leather sofa sits idly in a corner, askew from the line of the antique Persian rug beneath it, its upholstery frayed with a dullness whose cause is suspect. A broken floor lamp slumps with its wiring exposed, and its shades torn and discolored  A heel-less stiletto boot here, a discarded iPhone there; trinkets and follies without ownership and purpose.

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Because everyone needs a pick-me-up sometimes.

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I recently passed the Licensure Examination for Architects (more on this later on) and amidst the fanfare, debacle, and confusion on what transpired during the examination, an outpouring of congratulatory sentiment permeated the online communities. This may be rather quotidian and ordinary for most, but for those who do not subscribe to the typical social media platforms, Facebook in particular, this sort of emotional projected self-promotion became rather curious.

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"Nothing, before its time."
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  Alicia Keys

For the thousands of my brethren, my comrade-at-arms, my kindred spirits, who have taken the recent Licensure Examination for Architects last January, this week spells the inimitable wait towards finding out, revoking all previous qualms and uncertainties, if we have earned the legal and professional right to call ourselves architects.
 

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A deadline met. Bills paid in advance. Lunch-out with colleagues. A successful introductory meeting with clients. A logbook finally signed. Spending time with le partenaire de mes rêves.  New friendships. An unexpected gift. Renewed ties. An honored introduction. Post-Christmas festive mood. Makati City after work hours. The unplanned stroll at the beloved park. Cold milk tea on a warm December night.  

It has been (and continues to be) such a wonderful year. Here's to an even more wonderful one ahead. 

Bonne Année, et à votre santé!

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Beneath the surprisingly arid blanket of an early December evening, amidst the jolly frolicking of Christmas party-goers, I sat exhausted upon the uncomfortable edge of a low-profile poly-vinyl wicker-backed chair in one of the comparatively less-frequented cafes at Makati. Books in tow, sprawled across a wood-veneered composite table laminated in deep cherry lacquer, I piled my readings face-up to assess that evening’s objectives.

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We hold on to the fleeting present, sparse and amorphous like
Falling, trickling, seeping sand between
the loose fingers of consciousness
Losing, sublimating into the ether of memory, the forgotten
Lint of a weathered past

We fear frail indistinct fragments, cracked, crackled, coarse, cluttered
The tip-tapping, tick-tocking, clink-clanking hush of haunting
Muddled filaments lined with meaning that refuses
To disentangle from the macramé of recollections

Surly esoteric moments that used to
Move and meander our reality
Now miniscule footnotes buttressed against the weight of past
Lovers, lives, learning, longing

So we seek permanence, to deny our mortality
We write, and build, and think, and express
Creating manifestations that reflect
an imagined distinction, delicate translations
Borne of a hunger for acknowledgement, admission,
and acceptance as contrarian

But man’s immortality lies upon the intangible
For objects, like man, weathers, withers, wilts, and is wanting
It is in the seed we plant among our brothers,
Bits of ourselves broken apart, shared, imbibed, dissolved, ingested

Parts of our parts, becoming parts of theirs
Enriching, enlightening, educating,
Forming, deforming, informing
In that hope that when we pass, we surpass

Not in tangible, impermeable, impenetrable objects detached
From the flesh of our being, the nectar of our psyche;
But as missed, unforgotten advocates of humanity
Adding to the richness of culture and society, as our predecessors have.

[A blitzkrieg-exercise done in observance of All Soul's Day, this was written within the span of 15 minutes, a rather mundane attempt of encapsulating the immediacy and fleeting nature of memory, and the overwhelming recidivist effects of grief. May we all never forget, and never be forgotten.]

Original image from here.

The PRC (Professional Regulation Commission) has finally released their board examination schedules for the 2013 term. Now, the eventuality and immediacy of the licensure exam is more palpable and real. From here on, it becomes an inimitable countdown to a necessary deadline. The date is January 25 and 27 (Friday and Sunday) 2013.

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Underneath the Atlas of immediate expectations,
Of pending papers, incumbent examinations,
Bearing and bursting tattered seams of discipline,
Tick-tocking verily, a veritable exhaustive end.

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A subtle change is happening. I feel it most during those incoherent hours between sleep and wakefulness, vast and vacuous moments of apathy to the world that pepper and interject my days, and sometimes nights. They mingle and trickle beneath the seemingly bland normalcy (if, one could imprecisely classify it as such). It may be a harbinger of something more pervasive, invasive and assertive that has yet to find fruition. So far, this paradigm shift is neither malevolent nor malignant, at least to my knowledge.

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