Film about Ayala (ALI) displacements in Sicogon to screen at Cinemalaya Film Festival
Film about Ayala (ALI) displacements in Sicogon to screen at Cinemalaya Film Festival
ASOG has won awards in the USA, Canada, Europe and Brazil; now it will have its Philippines premiere at Cinemalaya Film Festival.
This Friday, August 9, ASOG – an award-winning feature film depicting the lives of Sicogon residents displaced by Ayala Land Inc (ALI) – will have its Filipino premiere at Ayala Malls Cinemas at Manila Bay as part of the 20th Cinemalaya Film Festival. The film’s appearance at Cannes 2023 and the it’s World Premiere at the Tribeca Festival in New York City was celebrated by the government’s Film Development Council of the Philippines. ASOG features a cast of real Filipino Yolanda survivors and has already screened to international acclaim.
ASOG follows Jaya, a non-binary Filipino comedian on a road trip to a gay pageant. Along the journey, the performer encounters people who continue to endure the impacts of climate change, including residents of Sicogon Island displaced by ALI and SIDECO. The film was co-written and directed by Filipino-Canadian filmmaker/comedian Sean Devlin and was Executive Produced by Oscar-winner Adam McKay. The Hollywood Times has hailed it as “one of the finest Filipino films of recent years.”
In the aftermath of deadly Super Typhoon Haiyan in 2013, Sicogon Development Corp (SIDECO) and Ayala Land Inc (ALI), the Philippines’ largest real estate company, swiftly exploited the devastating typhoon to stake their full control of the island. The corporations blocked 6,000 individuals from returning to their community and barred them from repairing or rebuilding their homes(see notice). Despite this, 784 families on the island refused to leave and continued to assert their rights to become owners of the land under the Philippines government’s agrarian reform program, and to seek reparations from the companies.
Production on ASOG began in 2019, including scenes filmed with displaced Sicogon residents Raul Ramos and Amelia Dela Cruz, President and Vice President of FESIFFA. Ramos and Dela Cruz wielded the development of an international feature film in their negotiations, and after the film’s second leg of production was completed in 2021, ALI and SIDECO signed an agreement to meet the residents’ demands, including: developing 33 hectares of agricultural land for the villagers; disbursement of livelihood relief funding (32 million Philippine pesos); and financing the construction of 784 new houses for the displaced families that remain on the island.
Despite the agreement, ALI once again continued to drag its feet. In the year following the signing of the agreement, only 6 of the 784 homes they committed to funding had actually been built. However, once the ASOG film crew returned for their final leg of filming in summer 2022, ALI started yielding to the pressure and has since funded the construction of all 784 homes.
While there has been progress in construction of homes, ALI continues to fail to comply with the terms of the agreement in many critical ways, including: failure to pay livelihood funding and refusal to transfer legal titles to the land over to the residents.
"Ayala has delivered just a portion of what they committed to. We won’t give up until they fully comply with the agreement they signed and we have been given the titles to our land.” said Amelia Dela Cruz, President of FESIFFA.
“As the largest realty developer in the country, Ayala Land has all the resources to quickly and fully comply with its obligations to Sicogon residents. Its continued foot dragging to fulfill what it promised to FESIFFA members puts in serious doubt the company’s professed commitment to promote a sustainable society. The company should walk its talk”, said Lirio Cordova, Executive Director of the Rural Poor Institute for Land and Human Rights Services, Inc. (RIGHTS) – a non-profit organization that supports Sicogon residents in protecting their right to the land, food, and health.
ASOG is a film by internationally renowned Filipino-Canadian director and comedian Seán Devlin. In 2011 Devlin’s own cousin in the Philippines lost her home in the unprecedented flooding of Typhoon Sendong. The land she lived on was then deemed uninhabitable and designated a “no build zone” by authorities. For more than a decade, Devlin has devoted himself to documenting the lives of Filipinos losing their land and homes to climate change.
“The world premiere of this film is only the beginning of a multifaceted campaign to globalize support for displaced residents of Sicogon. The time has come for Ayala Land to deliver on what they promised." said Devlin. ASOG has additional international festival screenings in Fall 2024 across North America, Europe and Asia. The film is then slated to have an international release in commercial cinemas around the world in winter 2025 with a worldwide digital release to follow soon after.
ASOG will be presented at the 20th Cinemalaya Film Festival on Friday August 9 - 8:30pm @ Ayala Malls (Manila Bay) Cinema 9.
