QCLokal Shorts Expo REVIEW: A Solid, Eclectic Collection of Fresh Filipino Voices
QCLokal Shorts Expo REVIEW: A Solid, Eclectic Collection of Fresh Filipino Voices
QCinema 2024 introduced for the first time the “Shorts Expo,” an exhibition program that they described as a series of “Filipino world premieres that loosely revolve around the many ways Filipinos experience exile.” They’re said to “embody the archipelagic and fractal nature of Filipino memory, consciousness, and being, with each film tied by recurring imagery of water, neglect, and departure, revealing the sadness and displacement felt by this current generation of artists.” It’s essentially a curated collection of Filipino short films that were not created for the festival, nor in competition within it.
For these reviews, my goal is to describe the films briefly and comment on how they fit in with one another as a curated set. I’ll then talk about my own emotional or intellectual reaction to them. I am writing these a week after seeing these, after letting the films linger in my consciousness, and so my experiences with them will also reflect their lasting power for me, personally. Film watching can be a very individual experience, and so any criticisms here should not be taken as objective assessments, but merely personal ones.
Brownout Capital dir. Pabelle Manikan
This short documentary is about the eponymous “brownout capital” of the Philippines, Puerto Princesa, Palawan. Through fly-on-the-wall footage, we observe how much of the local residents’ lives are disrupted by the persistent power outages there. For example, ice deliveries take hours to arrive, and when they do, there’s no place to properly store them.
We also learn about their frustrations with their local government, who would rather spend their tax money making the outside of the municipal hall look good, rather than actually improving the lives of its constituents, and so on. Even for the occasional parties they throw they can’t keep the lights and music on all the way through. There’s a brief discussion that suggests that one of the main issues is with privately owned electricity production and distribution, but it’s not explored further.
Overall, it’s an engaging snapshot of the city’s current predicament. It doesn’t attempt to explain or help us understand the deeper rooted causes of these issues, but merely shows us that many people are inconvenienced by it there. It was a good start to the program, but as a short about a very serious issue, it felt a bit too disconnected from anything actionable for the audience. We are being made aware that brownouts are a problem in Palawan, but it doesn’t try to explore the structural issues that could help us connect it to our daily lives.
Privately owned power generation and distribution is a huge aspect of everyday Filipino society, and so it would have been useful to hone in on it more to help us gain more perspective on how these issues can be alleviated. This is not necessarily the responsibility of the film. It clearly doesn’t intend or try to approach these complicated issues.
But it would have been more compelling if it either went more deeply into the problems of say, PALECO (Palawan Electronic Cooperative), or if it addressed the town’s residents more directly and personally, instead of keeping them at a distance by filming them as if a fly on the wall.
May Puso Ba Ang Isang Manika? dir. Shiri De Leon
Rey (James Mavie Estrella) is a young boy without close parental figures, who finds an inflatable sex doll in a garbage dump and takes it home for himself. Perhaps in it he finds company, perhaps he’s reminded of his mother, perhaps he’s just drawn to dolls. Whatever it is he’s clearly motivated by some kind of deep loneliness. There’s an over-the-top villain, Manong Bert (Bembol Roco), who is furiously driven to taking the doll away from him to use for its intended purpose, so much so that he sends two henchmen to break into his home to rip it out of his arms. Heartbroken, Rey sets out to find it.
At first, I was caught off-guard by the sudden tonal shift from the meditative and contemplative documentary Brownout Capital to this more melodramatic short about loneliness and isolation. There’s clearly an intended examination here of queerness and the experience of being othered, but I had a hard time taking the film seriously. The most prominent image in the film is of Rey walking around town carrying this sex doll, being made fun of by his neighbors.
I initially thought that the film was trying to present something metaphorical with the doll, but as it went on, I realized that they meant for us to take most of the story quite literally. But I found it too difficult to buy into its premise and it ended up feeling too artificial to provoke any deeper resonance for its story and message.
I think that there’s a possibility that it would have worked better if it was programmed amongst a different selection of films. But with how it’s situated within this program, there’s too much of a disconnect between the first short’s feeling of hard reality and the over the top fantasy melodrama of this one. They don’t complement each other, and the artificiality of this film ends up being more obvious when paired with the realism of Brownout Capital. Within the context of these films, it just didn’t work for me and I had a hard time connecting with its message.
Invisible Labor dir. Joanne Cesario
This documentary is about the life and work of Carlito Piedad, a janitor from Leyte who volunteered at AsiaVisions to help manually rewind footage of workers’ protests and rallies during the Ferdinand Marcos and Corazon Aquino administrations. His efforts ensured the footage could be digitized and preserved. Interspersed with the recovered footage of the labor movement’s confrontations with the police and government are interviews with Carlito’s family and co-workers. We learn about his unerring and tireless dedication. We learn of his sense of solidarity.
Video and film preservation is essential to the preservation of history itself. Without citizens like Carlito, our collective memories would cease to exist. They stress in the film that it’s necessary to realize that the struggles of labor have barely changed since the time of the Marcos dictatorship. They vociferously protested against the same things 40 years ago, such as the rising prices of gas, oil, and food, that continue to worsen the living conditions of the workers whose backs our society leans on to this day.
This is much more aligned with the themes of Brownout Capital and makes more sense to present side by side with it. With Manika sandwiched in between them, though, it also makes that film feel even less relevant to the selections’ driving themes. But Invisible Labor is quite well done. The title refers to the invisible labor of Piedad to help preserve the history of the labor movement, but also it succinctly references the invisibility of the labor sector in our national-historical memories themselves. I liked this a lot. Its chosen scope feels appropriate to its length and it feels like a complete project. This is my favorite of the shorts to this point.
Forgetting Clara dir. Nicole Matti
Forgetting Clara is the thesis film of Nicole Matti, the daughter of the award-winning filmmaker, Erik Matti. According to an interview with Rappler, she describes the film as one that “delves into the complexity of womanhood” as well as the “importance of pushing back against the masculine gaze in both life and cinema.” I don’t doubt that those were the intentions of the film, but I failed to learn anything from watching it.
It’s quite abstract and experimental, with some interesting glitchy visuals and sound editing. Most of it consists of a woman (Mina Cruz) alone in a room doing various mundane tasks such as smoking and dancing. There is an image of her with her mouth taped. There’s a scene of her screaming, of her wanting to possibly escape from something or somewhere. Often, the images feel more like accessories or accompaniments to the film’s intricate sound design, similar to that of a music video. But the images themselves don’t necessarily cohere in any obvious way. I quite liked the ambient synths in the soundtrack though and there were some striking images throughout.
Just like Manika, the negative qualities of this film are more obvious due to its placement within this curation of shorts. I could easily imagine that if it were a part of a selection that was labeled as intentionally experimental or abstract, then it would have been easier to get into its groove. However, as it stands here, the switch from the very direct documentary style of Invisible Labor to this chaotic collage of sounds and images, just made it more difficult to take in whatever its themes were supposed to be. It overall just felt like a poor fit for this curation.
Kay Basta Angkarabo Yay Bagay Ibat Ha Langit dir. Maria Estela Paiso
This documentary is about the contentious sea issues between the People’s Republic of China and the Philippines, particularly surrounding the treatment of fishermen at Scarborough or Panatag Shoal. It features a mixture of animated and live action footage that explores the perspectives of fishermen from Masinlog, Zambales, who have come into violent contact with Chinese patrols. For example, they’d talk about how the Chinese would seize all their best catches and treat them like robbers in their own waters. It also includes some audio clips from politicians like President Bongbong Marcos, Vice President Sara Duterte, and her father, Rodrigo Duterte. The short presents incisive criticism of the current political landscape with regards to these West Philippine Sea issues and importantly highlights the actual voices of the fishermen most affected by them.
This is a great example of a short that manages to successfully marry an experimental approach to cinema, while still delivering a clear and potent message alongside it. It’s all wonderfully done and comes off almost like a children’s storybook in the best of ways. This was also quite a fan favorite within the theater I watched it in, with the audience clapping and laughing all throughout. It also taps into the current cultural milieu in a way that feels very relevant to our present day, much more so than any of the other films in this Shorts Expo. There’s a palpable anger to it all that is rejuvenating. And of all the shorts here, this one presents the freshest and most exciting voice and possible direction for our local cinema culture moving forward. Paiso’s short is far ahead of the curve amongst these films.
By the time we get to it, however, it’s clearer that there’s a pattern with the curation for these shorts. They alternated documentaries with fiction films, the former of which focused on specific real-life issues, while the latter were of more emotionally driven narratives. Perhaps, in the future, it would be much better if they just separated them in order to allow for a more cohesive watching experience. Up to this point, it feels too imbalanced and without a clear sense of direction, which hurts the films that are not attempting to make a strong historical statement.
Yung Huling Swimming Reunion Before Life Happens dir. Glenn Barit
This is a heartwarming fiction film about a group of friends coming together for a reunion. The premise is that one of them is making a film about it in order to preserve their memories together for perhaps the last time. They reflect on their lives, their possible futures, and what they want to see and be in this world. Thematically, it covers similar ground to his feature-length film, Cleaners, but in a way that still feels unique to his storytelling voice.
It’s filmed with a strong aesthetic point of view, in which it simulates what a film like this would have looked like if it was made about 15 years ago or so with cheap and accessible digital technology. It’s very well done and it captures a very specific form of Filipino 2000s nostalgia that hasn’t been explored much in our cinema. There’s a unique joy and energy that feels authentic and authentically Pinoy that Barit is able to capture with his films that resonate intensely for anyone who grew up before this modern era of social media.
It’s a striking testament to this film that it manages to overcome the pitfalls of the two other non-documentary shorts. Despite the fact that it also feels a bit too disconnected from the rest of the films programmed here, it’s so well done that it transcends all of that. It’s also a wonderful short to conclude the Shorts Expo because it provides a touching sense of closure. In a way, it even ties some of the themes of the other films together in that it also engages with the ever present themes of historical memory, of our desire to hold onto or preserve moments of the past, to help guide us for our futures. Filmmaking in general has an incredible capacity to make-immortal not only our everyday issues and struggles, but our brief periods of joy as well.
Overall, I still think this inaugural Shorts Expo was a success. Although I personally felt that there could have been more cohesion with its curation, it still did a solid job and introduced us to a series of well-intentioned and heartfelt short films that can help us broaden our perspectives on the many lives of Filipinos today. I was impressed with the creativity of many shorts and even learned quite a bit about contemporary issues such as the brownouts in Palawan and the hard work it takes to preserve films digitally. I don’t know if I understood how they were supposedly about exile or “the archipelagic and fractal nature of Filipino memory,” but I’m glad this section of QCinema exists and hope that they can even expand it further in the future.
