Note: This photo-essay in a slightly different version appeared in the 27 Mar - 02 Apr 2015 issue of FilAm Star, 'the newspaper for the Filipinos in mainstream America' published in San Francisco, CA. This author/blogger is the Manila-based Special News/Photo Correspondent of the weekly paper.
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| Kidlat in cap and gown (he graduated from UP and Pennsylvania's Wharton School and bahag (he embraces the indigenous culture of the Cordilleras to this day, having grown up in Baguio City). |
Indie-genous from indie and indigenous: for his being the “Father of Philippine
Independent Cinema”, a title given Kidlat Tahimik by his fellow film
makers, and second, for making Filipino
cultural threads shine through his unique, playful and humorous film narratives.
I had two occasions to meet indie genius Kidlat (formally Eric de Guia, 72, of Baguio
City): at the screening of Balikbayan
#1 Memories of Overdevelopment Redux III on 23 March, and at a forum with film
students at the UP College of Mass Communications the next day.
In August last year, during the 10th Cinemalaya Film
Festival, Kidlat received the Cinemalaya Gawad Balanghai from the Cultural
Center of the Philippines and the Cinemalaya Foundation for his outstanding
contribution to Philippine independent cinema.
This was in recognition for giving the “[indie cinema] movement impetus through his pioneering
efforts.”
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| Kidlat turned over Cimemalaya Balanghai award to Yason Banal of UP Film Institute for safekeeping. |
Balikbayan #1 took
35 years to finish. Kidlat narrated that
it all began in 1979 when his oldest son Kidlat was five years old, Kawayan was
three, and Kabunyan was not born yet.
The busy years were from 1981 to 1985.
He said that he came to realize in 1988 that he wanted to be barkada to
his sons who were growing up. He decided “to be father first rather than a film
maker.” He wanted focus in his role in
family bonding. Thus, he “hang” his 16
mm camera, so to speak.
He resumed
shooting again in 2013. The 16mm technology was out already, and digital was
very much in. He felt it was a cosmic chance to finish the film after seeing
his son Kawayan with a thick mane and fully bearded, perfect as the new
Magellan. He had just come back from the retrospective shows of his films in
the United States.
“Magellan was
just a prop in the film,” Kidlat stressed. It is Enrique de Malacca’s story:
“umikot sa mundo [si Enrique] at umuwi sa kanyang bayan ...he was the first
OFW, the first balikbayan.” The film narrative, he jested, was “according to
the gospel of Kidlat Tahimik.”
Home to the
reincarnated Enrique became an Ifugao village in 2013. Here he is a wood-carver
where old customs and values are very much alive.
In good humor, Kidlat
said that Enrique made the complete circumnavigation. In his fiction, Enrique was
an Ifugao lad who flew to Cebu using his native blanket. He could have been captured and brought to
Malacca by pirates, where Magellan purchased him from a Chinese trader, brought
to Portugal and Spain. Of course, he was part of the expedition in search of Spice
Islands, and it was his duty to give Magellan a bath!. According to Kidlat’s
gospel, Lapu-Lapu, a babaylan, not a tough guy, killed Magellan. The poor Ferdinand did not complete the
round-the-world trip back to Sevilla.
Balikbayan #1 is
also about the power of language. Enrique was into translating his native language
for Portuguese and Spanish ears. After the long sea voyage, they landed in
Limasawa. Enrique could not understand
the Warays there but he understood the rattle of Bisaya words of his tribe
mates when they got to Cebu/Mactan. Language was the
key that opened the islands to the Spanish empire. The aside is, of course, the
post-1898 experience tells that it was through language that Pinoy culture got
Americanized.
The film is a
family movie. “The family is in the film,” Kidlat said, “for practicality. The
cheapest actors are my sons.” Kidlat himself
portrayed Enrique de Malacca. Son
Kawayan played the new Magellan, the other sons Kidlat, Jr. and Kabunyan did
cameo roles. His wife Katrin was the original Queen Isabella. And they were all involved in the
production. Kabunyan did the
poster design five days before Berlin.
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| Kidlat talking about his approach to art. |
The musical theme is something familiar to Pinoys: Yoyoy Villame song of the discovery of the
Philippines by Magellan. Villame,
according to Kidlat, in good humor, is the “best teacher of Philippine history”
because of this signature song.
At the student
forum, he told the students of his indie path: how he made films when his
‘duwende’ wanted him to tell a story.
He said that he
had no scripts, no theoretical base, all “kapa-kapa” and “pakiramdaman”. He
cites the crazy architecture of his Oh My Gulay restaurant in Baguio, “walang
eskuwalado”, and where the Jose Rizal statue has a “bahag” underneath the
overcoat. “Don’t be a square!,” he
humored the film students. “Don’t be a
Mother Lily!” in his swipe of Pinoy formula movies; “Don’t be Hollywood!,” a
caution on sex-plus-violence to ensure box-office hits. The
indie path, he said, does not lead to PST (patok sa patilya).
Kidlat looks
forward to the day when he can teach again. He has proposed to what he calls
the “creative colleges” of the University of the Philippines (Fine Arts,
Architecture, Mass Communications, Music) to offer a required elective that he
will handle, a collective course defined along Sikolohiyang Pilipino or the
Pinoy “Kapwa” psychology, where the students will be encouraged to find old
core values in defining their methodologies for producing creative works.
Year 2021 will be
the 500th anniversary of the arrival of Ferdinand Magellan in Limasawa and his
death in Mactan. Will there be official
celebrations to mark the quincentennial of the “discovery” of the Philippines?
Who will remember
Enrique de Malacca, the first Pinoy who made the first around-the-world journey
across the Pacific and Atlantic oceans 500 years ago?
Probably, Kidlat
Tahimik will expand or make another Balikbayan film for Enrique!
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| Kidlat with the image of the propagandist Marcelo del Pilar. He received
the Gawad Plaridel from UP CMC a fewyears ago,
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