wagging the dog

when PAWS raised a howl over the killing of a dog in the film Oro after it had been showing in theaters for more than a week, i wondered what the MMFF selection committee that had named it among the eight best of 27 submitted entries back in mid-november had to say.  i expected that at least one of them —

Nicanor Tiongson (author, Manunuri member and former MTRCB chair)
Ping Medina (award-winning actor)
Lawrence Fajardo (writer/ director/ film editor)
Mae Paner (actor/film director/ political activist)
Atty. Trixie Angeles (conservationist/ legal counsel for the National Commission on Culture and the Arts)
Alan Allanigue (station manager of DZRB Radyo ng Bayan)
Crispina Belen (veteran journalist)
Joy Belmonte (Quezon City Vice-Mayor)
Krip Yuson (writer/poet, inducted to the Hall of Fame of the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature)

— would speak up and defend their selection of Oro, dog-killing and all.  it has to be defensible, after all, given that the choice was unanimous.  walang nag-object.

“When we computed all our individual scores, there was a consensus on these eight films. There were no objections among the execom members, and neither were there other issues that came about from these choices. We were all focused on the same direction, and concerned primarily on the quality of the films,” MMFF 2016 Competition Committee member Nicanor Tiongson explained.

strangely enough, we haven’t heard again from tiongson or any other esteemed member of the competition/selection committee since PAWS demanded that Oro be withdrawn from theaters, its awards revoked, and the director and producer banned.  the only one we’ve been hearing from is liza diño of FDCP, who was not herself a member of any MMFF 2016 committee (FDCP was represented by a mere staff member), and yet who took it upon herself to speak for the MMFF and, horrors, to dignify validate legimitize PAWS’ over-the-top importunings, thereby setting a horrible precedent that spells disaster for filipino filmmaking.  ishmael bernal and lino brocka would be howling back in thunderous proportions were they around today.

it bears pointing out that, except for diño and PAWS, dog-lovers who saw the movie pre-PAWS tell me they were not offended, i suppose because the scenes were believably integral to the story and the culture of impunity.  it also bears pointing out that of some 10 reviews of Oro, again pre-PAWS, that i read online, not one mentioned or brought up the dog-killing, and only one referred to it, with “irony” yet.  read IN THE NAME OF GOLD: A Review of Alvin Yapan’s ORO (2016) by gio potes.

… you got to give props for Alvin Yapan for shedding light on a locale that otherwise would only be known as a surfing spot (you can even handpick the coverboy governor as your superficial Exhibit A). Relying on the actors’ prowess to move the narrative forward, ORO worked best as an actor’s film complete with fine turns from Irma Adlawan, Sue Prado and Mercedes Cabral. While several of the film’s metaphors may not fit well into the narrative, ORO echoes Iñárritu’s AMORES PERROS, juicing irony not from the condition of human characters but from their best friends, the dogs.

Like BARBER’S TALES, ANINO SA LIKOD NG BUWAN before it, and even NUNAL SA TUBIG way way before it, the grit and drama of ORO is more than enough to alarm audiences of brutal injustices in the country’s fringes. It is very brave to have been done and entered in the most commercial of local film festivals; even Yapan had second thoughts in making it. But unlike documentaries, the makers of ORO know the power of fiction to ignite the fire on certain things we probably may have forgotten, on pressing matters easily ignored, and to draw viewers to investigate on hidden narratives that may be lurking around. When Eugene Domingo exclaims satirically “Suffering! E suffering na nga e, bakit pa imamaximize?!” in her own MMFF vehicle, you know she may have a point on escapism. But then again, Alvin Yapan’s film slaps the audience right back to the seats to utter just one question – who, then, will maximize it?

post-PAWS, there were a few who, while acknowledging that a law had been broken, insisted on going beyond the legalities, such as jj domingo in a facebook post.

… What I know about rights is there are positive rights, which are derived from legitimate authority, and there are natural rights, which are extrapolated from perceived order of nature (or, if you’re theist, the divine). Are animal rights merely positive rights bestowed either by human prerogative (to make us feel good about ourselves) or utility (to conserve the environment); or are they based on inherent, pre-conceived natural rights?

If animal rights are mere positive rights bestowed by human prerogative or utility, then why can’t they be trumped anytime by other human considerations, such as for instance the need to effectively tell a story in order to inspire social action? If animal rights are based on natural rights, then why don’t we respect the rights of all animals? Why just dogs and not, say, mosquitos? Also, how can we say that it is natural for all creatures to have rights when the most fundamental regime in nature is the food chain, which decrees that all is fair in the name of survival? I mean, really, I don’t think Peter Singer has ever proven that Mother Nature wishes to protect all her creatures from death and suffering. On the contrary, we know that Mother Nature allows millions of creatures to die and suffer everyday, all in the name of ecological balance.

on the other hand, the film reviews post-PAWS, as expected, turned critical of the dog-killing and the initial denials and obfuscations.  read Fauna non grata by tito genova valiente.

…One of the achievements of independent cinema is the exploration of narratives, of self-conscious storytelling that has created, to borrow the words of film historian and film theorist David Bordwell, “a vast appetite for artifice.” Stories are told and retold and, most often, the themes that didn’t touch us because they were developed by the dryly objective approaches of mainstream TV journalism, are now viewed “cubed”, as if the phenomenon is being turned around and around for us to deliciously and deliriously take in the realities made super. That, among other things, is the legacy of good cinema: Reality is achieved without resulting to plain reality. In plain words, actors need not die in their death scenes, dogs need not be killed for the committal of injustice to be less assaulting.

As it is, I agree with Anna Cabrera [of PAWS] and her decision to bring to court the Oro team and the Oro filmmaker. I, however, do not agree with her move the awards be taken away from the group. I don’t think the killing of a dog contributed to the performance of Irma Adlawan. She’s a good actress because she knows the magic of artifice…

which brings me back to PAWS and diño who mightily succeeded in wagging the dog and, wittingly or unwittingly, distracting from the march 2014 massacre in barangay gata, caramoan, camarines sur, on which the film was based.  read Kalikasan’s On the cause and controversy of the film ‘Oro’.

…In ‘Oro’, the small-scale mining community was threatened at gunpoint by the SKTF [Sagip Kalikasan Task Force], and subsequently displaced them from the mines. The SKTF took over the operations of the mine, forced the community to work on a contractual basis, obliged them to sell their ore to the SKTF’s local collaborationist buyer on unjustly low fixed prices, and eventually killed their leaders.

There are an estimated 200,000 to 500,000 small-scale miners across the Philippines and they continue to suffer the same fate. The worst situations they have faced involve large-scale mining operations displacing them from their livelihoods, and paramilitary, military, and private security forces perpetrating atrocities that range from intimidation and harassment to enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings. Self-regulation remains a pipe dream as the current mining policy regime deprives them of access to the accreditation process and to much-needed state support.

The small-scale miners, peasant farmers, indigenous people, and other marginalized masses, together with all the flora and fauna that compose their once sustainable rural lives, are all victims to the open-pit mines and other forms of development aggression, and the heavily armed fortifications that come along with it. We have a tyrannical social and economic system as a common foe; let us always remember what the real enemy is.

in august 2015, a DOJ special panel of prosecutors found probable cause to charge members of the Sagip Kalikasan Task Force (SKTF) with murder pertaining to the “Caramoan massacre” of March 22, 2014 that led to the death of four local miners in sitio campo, barangay gata, caramoan, camarines sur.

The Panel found that all elements of murder were established:

First, victims Julio, Rene, Salem, and Jesse were killed.

Second, Respondents Breso, Espares, Jr., Tria III, and eighteen other unidentified men, allegedly members of the SKTF, were responsible for the killings, as seen by witness Elmer and heard by witness Carino.

Third, the killings were attended by the qualifying circumstance of treachery as testified by witness Elmer. The victims, who were simply having dinner and drinking after work, were caught off guard when Respondents Breso, Espares, Jr., and eighteen other unidentified men shot the former point blank, leaving them no chance at all to evade the onslaught. The Panel observed that the method of inflicting harm by Respondents Breso, Espares, Jr, and the eighteen other unidentified men ensured that they would fatally kill the victims without risk to themselves.

The defense of alibi by Respondent Tria III was held to be unconvincing because he was positively identified by the eyewitnesses.

five months later, on january 29 2016, bicoltoday.com reported that court hearings were finally to commence, “very soon,” at the RTC in san jose, camarines sur.

On Thursday, January 21 (this year), families of the victims staged a rally in the City of Naga and cried for justice as authorities were slow in investigating the massacre and had encountered stumbling blocks over gathering of evidence.

… Investigation by authorities had taken a downspin at some periods in time as gathering of evidence had turned out difficult after provincial capitol officials refused to cooperate with investigators who wanted to get the roster of Capitol employees, specifically those belonging to the environment department and Civil Security Unit.

Even Governor Migz Villafuerte refused to turn over vital information which might help authorities in the investigation.
Villafuerte’s refusal to cooperate had caused the ire of the National Police Commission (NAPOLCOM) which, later, purged the Governor of his “deputy powers.”

In stripping Villafuerte of “deputation powers accorded to him as Deputy of NAPOLCOM”, the police commission cited the Governor’s involvement in “covering- up investigation of the Gata massacre; protecting the suspects and coddling of armed men; obstruction of justice; and acts inimical to national security.”

but but but there have been no subsequent reports of court hearings, the case is still pending, which must be telling of how powerful were / are the villafuertes, luis and miguel, father and son, across the aquino and duterte administrations?

i would like to think that the dog-wagging was not a deliberate attempt to draw attention away from the real crime and the real enemy.  even if, for a while there, the PAWS-diño tandem seemed virtually unstoppable.  the MMFF was called out on jan 2.  by jan 3 the FPJ award was taken back.  by jan 4 Oro was no longer showing in theaters.  and on jan 5, camarines sur rep. luis raymund villafuerte was asking congress to probe the MMFF.  the nerve!!!

… film fest officials should explain “why they included ‘Oro’ among the official entries – and worse, even granted an award to it – despite its gory dog-slaying scene and its depiction of supposedly everyday life in our province that was the exact opposite of what actually happened as well as the real protagonists and antagonists in a barangay in Caramoan Island.”

“The film is nothing but political propaganda masquerading as art in which the highly respected actors that took part in it, plus the film crew, were unwittingly used to present an alternate universe of events that never happened in Caramoan Island two years ago,” he said.

“The withdrawal of the award over the animal cruelty issue is the best proof of sloppy work by the film fest committee, which explains why it was haphazardly included among the official entries despite its grossly inaccurate depiction of reality in Camarines Sur,” Villafuerte stressed.

… “Instead of just suspending the movie’s showing until such time that the dog-slaying scene is edited out, the Metro film fest committee must ban its showing altogether as an act of contrition for its dismal failure to exercise due diligence,” he said.

seems to me like a last-ditch effort to convince the public that the gata4 massacre was all just a figment of the imagination of the villafuertes’ political opponents.  nothing to lose?  pushing their luck?  given a liza diño who’s all over the place, and given the silence of the likes of boots anson and ed cabagnot, jesse ejercito and wilson tieng, nick tiongson and krip yuson, e talaga namang sinusuwerte ang mga villafuerte.

Mar and Grace must speak out

… The two won a combined vote of 18.6 million compared to President Duterte’s 15.9 million (Santiago and Binay earned a paltry 6.7 million votes combined).

If Poe and Roxas speak out, Duterte may taunt them as losers. If he does, that’s all right, that’s his style. But having had a combined vote larger than Duterte’s, they’re in a position to call out the government to rein in the police.

We all – government supporters and dissenters – must work together to make sure the nation’s direction is righted before things deteriorate and all will be lost. We cannot afford to have another Marcosian nightmare that we had from 1965 to 1986.

This is not a call to arms, a coup d’etat, or another People Power uprising. Rather, this is a call for enlightenment, for discernment, for open-mindedness, and for unity.

Leandro DD Coronel

Monica Feria (1954-2016)

Sept. 22-23, 1972: OUR LIVES CHANGED OVERNIGHT  

That whole week before Sept. 22, 1972, the University of the Philippines was aflame with rallies and teach-ins. Opposition leader Ninoy Aquino had warned that the declaration of martial law was imminent. Midweek, up to 30 busloads of students had been mobilized for a civil liberties rally at Plaza Miranda.

It was capped that Friday by a bonfire and rally around the UP campus. We headed home past 10 p.m., walking with close friends and significant others down the more dimly lit roads of the campus’ faculty housing area.

Those were heady days. Being able to criticize the government and speak your mind was something the university community had taken for granted—as were family life, school privileges and the idea of moving on to adult careers.

Looking back, I still sigh at the realization that many of the things we take as givens in life are actually very fragile. Overnight, from just before midnight to the early morning of Sept. 23, everything was shattered: Our house was ransacked, the family torn apart; the university was closed down and neighbors and friends bade quick goodbyes. No teach-in ever prepares you for such a morning after.

‘Paul Revere’

We were sprawled on the porch that night relaxing from the exertions of the day’s rally when a professor and some students came running up the steps, calling for my mother, who had already gone to bed. The military was storming the campus, they said, huffing. “They are ransacking the faculty center,” wake up your mom, they urged us.

If anyone would be on the military “order of battle,” it would be my mother, Dolores Feria, a professor of English and a writer who was identified with the radical teachers movement. My American mother and Filipino father had met as students in the United States, married and returned together to the Philippines in 1946. The day she arrived, my mother started teaching at UP.

It was sometime between midnight and 2 a.m. Actually, my mother had already been awakened by our voices on the porch. Professor Rolly Yu, whom we would later nickname “Paul Revere,” advised us to “leave the house immediately,” but not to try to leave the campus because it had been cordoned off by the military.

‘My books, my books’

A meet-up place at dawn when the situation hopefully became clearer was agreed on. Rolly took off as quickly as he came, saying he was going down the street to warn Petronilo Daroy, another teacher identified with the radical movement on campus. Another in the group scurried to see if professors Flora Lansang and Dodong Nemenzo had been warned.

“My books, my books!” my mother repeated frantically, as we helped pile them into a big suitcase and, with the help of friends, dragged it across the backyard and hid it in a bush in a neighbor’s garden. My father, also a literature professor, relieved my mother of her heavy typewriter so she could pack a few clothes before we—my father, my mother, my sister and myself—all dashed off to a neighbor’s house. (A third sister was married and no longer living at home.)

It seemed only minutes later that we heard a truck come to a screeching halt in front of our now empty house. We heard loud raps on the door, then pounding as they broke it down. They turned on all the lights and from a crack in the jalousies of the neighbor’s house, we could see soldiers with Armalites surrounding our house, arm-length apart. We could hear closet doors being opened and banged shut.

Bursts of gunfire

Suddenly, we heard bursts of gunfire from afar. It seemed to come from down the road in the direction of the athletic field. We shuddered at the thought of a massacre of students trying to escape. (Only the next day did we learn that the gunfire had come from an encounter just outside the UP boundary between Marcos’ soldiers and the guards of the Iglesia ni Cristo who were defending their radio station. We would learn later, too, that soldiers had smashed their way into dzUP, axed the transmitter tower at the College of Engineering, and took over the UP Press.)

All radio stations went dead. When dawn broke, one of the boarders at the house we were hiding in stepped outside and bumped into a soldier. “Martial law na ba?” she asked, and he nodded.

When it seemed the soldiers had left the area, we ventured out to look around. At a rise in the road, we saw a car driven by a student leader coming to collect those who had escaped the first swoop. Speech and Drama professor Behn Cervantes, one of those who escaped, was already in the car.

My mother, who had by then decided that she would join her students and other colleagues in the underground resistance movement, embraced my father and climbed into the car with her briefcase and typewriter.

We picked up bits of what happened that night from others who had slowly made their way out of their homes. Flora Lansang of the College of Social Work and Community Development and the wife of the late journalist Jose Lansang was the only teacher in our area (Area 1) who was not able to escape.

Harvest of detainees

Lansang’s daughter, Risa, said her mother was taken to the Camp Crame gym where she later shared a room with journalist Amelita Reysio Cruz, a Manila Bulletin columnist, and other women detainees. At the gym’s main court she met up with professor and journalist Hernando Abaya, and later,

Nemenzo, among other academics. It was evident that the academe was only one of many sectors systematically targeted in the initial martial law salvo.

Risa said her mother saw oppositionist Senators Benigno Aquino Jr., Jose Diokno and Ramon Mitra, and former Sen. Soc Rodrigo, there. Politicians from the provinces like Lino Bocalan of Cavite were also there. Detainees from the press included Teodoro Locsin Sr., publisher of Philippines Free Press, and the magazine’s staff writer, Napoleon Rama; Luis Mauricio of Philippine Kislap-Graphic; Amando Doronila, editor of the Manila Chronicle; Max Soliven, columnist of The Manila Times; Jose Mari Velez of Channel 5; Rosalinda Galang of The Manila Times; Rolando Fadul of Taliba; Go Eng Kuan and Veronica Yuyitung of Chinese Commercial News; radio commentator Roger Arienda; Ruben Cusipag of The Evening News; Roberto Ordoñez of The Philippines Herald; and Manuel Almario of Philippine News Service.

Chino Roces, the publisher of The Manila Times, it was reported, drove himself to Crame when he heard that some of his people had been rounded up. He managed to escape the first swoop because he was not home when the soldiers went to his house.

Among the labor sector leaders were Cipriano Cid, Rosendo Feleo, Bert Olalia and his son Jun, and Ignacio Lacsina. UP student leader Jerry Barican was there with activists from other schools. Also, there were assorted gunrunners and big-time criminals. (It would not be possible to mention all the names of those caught in the first round-up here. Also, we did not really know the big picture at the time.)

I stood on the road with my father watching the car carrying my mother move away from the neighborhood I had lived in for 17 years. We did not know when we would see her again. My father turned to me and told me it was best if the family split up for a while and we agreed on where each should go and how we would contact each other. “Take care of yourself, kid,” he said. More than his words, I could feel the pain of a father having to tell his youngest daughter this. I could not at the time grasp what would happen. All I knew was that sometime during that long night, I had left my girlhood behind.

Epilogue: About a week after the Sept. 22-23 crackdown, my eldest sister and I, together with some friends and neighbors, returned home to clean up and were pounced upon by military agents (they had a lookout in front of the house who was pretending to be an ice cream vendor) and brought to Camp Aguinaldo for questioning. They questioned us for two days about my mother’s whereabouts, before releasing us after failing to get any information. My father, Rodrigo Feria, lost his teaching job that week at the University of the East, a victim of a notorious Marcos order to purge schools of “subversive links.”

We never went back to that house on campus. My eldest sister, Stephanie, migrated to the US. My other sister, Chuki, and I had to look for jobs. Dolores Feria was eventually captured in 1974 together with other UP writers Pete Lacaba and Boni Ilagan. She was detained for two years. She returned to teaching after her release and retired in 1984. Part of this account was refreshed in her essay, “Underground Letter: The Imminent Death of a University,” which is included in her book “Red Pencil, Blue Pencil.” She wrote two other books, including “The Barbed Wire Journal,” a prison diary, before her death in Baguio City in 1992 at the age of 73.

calling on the church, the integrated bar, and the communists

on facebook, duterte’s pa-thinking trolls have been bashing bashing bashing vp leni for being on vacation in the states during and after typhoon nina that hit her home province hard.  kesyo hindi daw dapat umalis in the first place, kesyo dapat umuwi na, now na, kesyo wala siyang kuwentang vice president, at kung ano ano pang panlalait na tuloytuloy lang, to the point na OA na, as though the vp had committed, were committing, an impeachable offense?  medyo over the top, guys.

i suppose it has everything to do with rumors of an attempt to oust duterte and replace him with leni before january 10 when, it is also rumored, the supreme court is set to replace leni with bongbong, which btw rendered rene saguisag incredulous (what with an indolent SC in the middle of a long break), and so you wonder why these pa-thinking peeps are even dignifying it, one of them even warning that if leni et al. should attempt a people power action, well, sila mismo, with mocha in the lead, playing joan of arc i guess, would respond in kind.  how exciting.

i suppose, too, that it is these same rumors that had the president flipflopping on martial law. just early this december he had said it would be “kalokohan,” he would not allow oppression, it did not do any good the first time around, blah blah blah.  but just before christmas he was suddenly lamenting that he couldn’t impose military rule without the ok of congress and the supreme court, and practically ordering that the charter be amended to allow him to do a marcos!  takot ako, seriously.

i suppose also that leni being in new york of all places is driving them paranoid.  easy to imagine that she’s cozying up to loida and, who knows, ex-ambassador goldberg?  UN human rights commissioners?  the CIA?  the senators markey, coons, and rubio?  the extrajudicial killings has rendered the president infamous, after all, his war on drugs failing to net any big fish but a lot of small fry who have no ex-deals to offer, not to speak of the bystanders, and the “innocent until proven guilty” that’s been honoured more in the breach than the observance in the last six months.

read david balangue’s Justice–Philippine style.  and manolo quezon’s Freedom from fear.  and this, from tony la viña, posted on facebook the day after his bloomberg TV interview on extrajudicial killings.

… we are nearing a point when legally and politically, whether intended or not, what is happening in the country will be considered by objective and independent international mechanisms as genocide. It’s the number and the typology of the victims, certainly not mainly pushers or definitely not drug lords, at most addicts and users with increasing number of innocents and almost universally poor. The evidence being gathered is damming and at some point will be overwhelming. It will not only have aid implications but there will be severe trade consequences once genocide is determined. Can ordinary citizens stop it other than self-restraint by the government? In my view, only the Church acting with such institutions like the Integrated Bar of the Philippines, and the communists by making human rights compliance a non-negotiable in the peace talks are in a position to make a difference here. The opposition is too weakened or compromised or complicit to even contribute to what has to be done. 

“self-restraint by the government” is a pie in the sky, given the president’s martial law talk.  and indeed, even the opposition (leni loida leila and LP, take note) is “too weakened or compromised or complicit to even contribute to what has to be done.”

but, yes, the church acting with such institutions like the integrated bar, and the communists by making human rights compliance a non-negotiable in the peace talks — they ARE in a position to make a difference.  especially the communists.  would that they rise to the occasion this time around.  not necessarily to oust duterte but, at the very least, to make. him. stop. the. killings.