Saturday, July 17, 2021

2:06 PM | Notes on a Growing City, Part 1: Dumaguete on the Verges of Growing

On 13 July 2021, the Philippine Statistics Authority released the results of the new census. For Dumaguete City, it tallied a new population figure of 134,103 as of May 2021, roughly a 2% increase from the old census of 2015, when Dumaguete registered a figure of 131,377 people.

I’m not an economist, so I won’t even dare go into deep interpretive mode about the nuances of population growth in connection to the economy—but even the most casual observer of these trends would know that the index of growth [whether of an increase or decrease] in the population of a place bodes something significant to the economic status of that place, and in a sense also measures the attraction of that place to potential economic migrants and investors. Simply put, one goes where the money goes.

Mall developers and business franchises, for example, take note of specific population markers before they decide to open branches in a new locality. When Robinsonsplace Dumaguete opened on 9 November 2009—twelve years ago—it significantly meant that Dumaguete was now big enough to sustain such an all-encompassing business enterprise as a mall.

At least, this is how numbers talk.

But I’m sure these businesses do not really take into account the cultural readiness of a place and the specific mindset of its people when they decide to go ahead and stake their claim on new territory. Sometimes businesses fall flat on their faces because of this.

Take note, for instance, the local hospitality industry. Business people in Dumaguete know there is a dire need for new hotels and new restaurants in our fast-growing city, which has been catering to a significant increase of tourists and business people coming to town for conventions and what-not. There is also a native population with a comfortable middle class that has money to spare and boredom to dissipate. You would think that any new restaurant and any new hotel would have a surefire entry into the city, given these factors. But not always.

I remember two recent restaurants who tried to make their mark in Dumaguete—and ultimately failed: there was Tree Hive Food Hub along Veterans Avenue and there was Chapters Café along Calle Sta. Catalina, both of which opened their doors in 2017. Their respective structures were gimmicky and Instagrammable—one was a multi-story space built like a tree house, and the other was a wonderland of books—and they were designed in such a way that was sure to entice customers. And when they first opened, they sure did attract hordes of people.

But ultimate success in Dumaguete is measured in terms of the long game that is governed by local idiosyncrasies, and locals invariably rejected both. Tree Hive Food Hub and Chapters Café just did not jibe with the Dumaguete mentality and notorious pickiness—both had bad food wrapped in shiny gimmick the proprietors must have thought could hoodwink the locals, a no-no for the Dumagueteño, and the gimmicks themselves [which made good Instagram posts] were so shallow, the picky Dumagueteño could easily see right through them. (We are so picky that I remember one Manila-based music producer once claiming that if you find success in Dumaguete, you’re sure to find success elsewhere in the Philippines.) We may be “gentle” and all that—but we are secretly vicious in selectively embracing anything that tries to join our community fabric.

Personally, as a native born Dumagueteño, I knew both those places were doomed from the very start. You would think that as a writer, I’d take to the book gimmick of Chapters Café like a charmed customer, and think it a worthwhile addition to a place that likes to think of itself as a “city of literature.” Nope, I found the food excruciatingly bad, like Frankenstein pieces put together to resemble a dish, and the whole book thing was extremely tacky. The book titles they selected to adorn their space were so much of the bargain bin variety any bookworm would immediately know this café was just using books for decorative purpose, and nothing else.

They failed.

Why am I going on about this when what I really want to talk about in this space is the reclamation issue in Dumaguete, which has consumed much of the city’s attention of late—even extending as far as national and international coverage in media?

Because I want to contextualize what “growth and development” means for Dumaguete—which is not always what and how our businessmen, and apparently also our politicians, understand it. For the businessman, growth and development means profit. For the politician, it means political will and legacy. (Some people would also say it means under-the-table kickbacks for these people.) For most of the locals, however, growth and development means a measured step forward with all good things considered, always with due diligence and not just a matter of money or political force.

And above all, it means not changing the fragile fabric that makes Dumaguete “Dumaguete.”

The city is still small enough for most of its population to know there is a certain thing that makes something “Dumaguete”—and when that something feels false, we are only too ready to reject it. Often we do this in a subtly done exercise of plainly ignoring this “langyaw” of a thing, with the hopes that our inattention will make this langyaw go away—but when push comes to shove, we can be vehement in our opposition. This is what is happening now.

I started this essay with the new figures in our 2021 census because I thought it was uncanny that the reclamation issue—which first came to light in July 7—would burst forth in roughly the same time frame. The thing to take from this coincidence is that Dumaguete is indeed growing, and with growth comes new and often uncomfortable reckonings with regards our infrastructures, our changing economic models, and crucially, our way of looking at ourselves.

We are growing: Does the city’s basic services—water, food, waste disposal, transportation, etc.—reflect that growth with its requisite new demands?

We are growing: Does the city still think of itself as fast urbanizing place with new economic considerations? (Which can be hard when nostalgia for the “rural” Dumaguete of yore is still very much entrenched in our idea of place.)

We are growing: How does the city see itself now? Are we still a “University Town?” Are we still the “City of Gentle People”? Are we still the “Cultural Center of the South”? All of these are precious identities for most locals. In what way does a new branding like “Smart City” change our prior expectations and our old identities? Will it be for the good, or for the better?




The thing is, Dumaguete has an interesting history of public works projects affecting the local identity and the local economy, going as far back as the Spanish colonial period. For the longest time—throughout most of the Spanish period, in fact—we were the ultimate backwater country and so economically depressed. We were right smack in the middle of two towering economic centers in the Visayas—Cebu to the east, across Tañon Strait, and Iloilo (and Bacolod) to the west, across the Cuernos de Negros and Mount Kanlaon. Dumaguete was negligible and economically unimportant—and what’s more, adding to that economic depression was the fact that we lacked the infrastructure to participate in the trade flourishing all over the Visayas.

Historian T. Valentino Sitoy once wrote in Kabilin:

“Except for the sugar plantations of the elites in Bais and Tanjay, the provincial economy had long suffered from numbing lethargy since the Spanish regime. In 1904, the industries of Negros Oriental were ‘next to nothing,‘ said Governor Demetrio Larena. The few that existed were small home industries for local consumption, such as the weaving of textiles, fish nets, mats, hats, baskets, and sacks (bayong) for sugar packing. There was some cigar- and cigarette-rolling. But the pillow- and mattress-making, which in Spanish times was a ‘great industry’ exporting 100,000 to 200,000 pillows annually, had now atrophied for lack of demand. The only hopeful new industry was carpentry, for most of the carpenters in the province had been employed in the construction of the first buildings of Silliman Institute, particularly what is now Silliman Hall.”

Sitoy continues: “Moreover, business in Negros Oriental in 1904 was in the hands of foreigners, with 78 stores owned by the Chinese, two by Americans, and two by Spaniards, while only about six little more than sari-sari stores were owned by Filipinos. The Chinese dealt with all sorts of merchandise, including groceries and canned goods, dry goods and textiles, wines and liquors, drugs, medicines, perfumery, etc., and nearly monopolized the buying of local agricultural products, such as copra, corn, sugar, tobacco, abaca hemp, kapok, etc. The American or Spanish stores sold only groceries, beverages, and stationery.”

Sometimes, political shenanigans especially by those in powerful positions have led to the economic stagnation of Negros Oriental. When the plan was laid in 1890 to separate the island of Negros into two provinces so that the ignored eastern side would have more chance at political autonomy and economic vitality—the government in Bacolod divided it not according to proper geographical consideration, but according to what pieces of the economic pie would be more favorable to those in power. They took the Cuernos de Negros as the demarcating line for most of the length of the island—and then, right at the point of Mount Kanlaon, suddenly shifted the demarcating line towards the east, leaving the vast agricultural fields (and haciendas) of San Carlos, Calatrava, Toboso, Escalante, and Sagay still in the hands of the Occidental side when they are clearly in the Oriental side (and Cebuano-speaking to boot). What we inherited in the Oriental side was a rocky landscape with some excellent spaces for agriculture in Bais, Tanjay, Siaton, Bayawan, Sta. Catalina, Canlaon, and Vallehermoso—nothing compared to the bounty of the Occidental side.

What about Dumaguete? While being the most populous town in the eastern side of Negros—which made it readily the capital of the new province—it also has the smallest land area in the whole of Oriental. It does not boast the same agricultural stronghold of places like Bayawan, Siaton, Canlaon, Bais, and Tanjay—but Dumaguete’s saving grace was unique, and it came with the Americans. With Silliman Institute founded in the town in 1901, Dumaguete surged forward as a cosmopolitan-minded locality, its treasures being its educated people and its carefully cultivated arts and culture scene, which gave way to a city that knew how to transform itself into a genteel place that was economically vibrant not because of agriculture and industry, but because of its people.

This is Dumaguete.

Still, you can only do so much with “people.” The local economy was so bad throughout three centuries of Spanish rule, and even straight on into the early years of the 20th century with the Americans now in control of the archipelago… until the pier was built in 1919.

Before the pier was built, ships and boats bearing people and trade barely took note of Dumaguete as a vital stop in regular routes. “Commercial traffic was also slow, a carry-over from earlier days, as Dumaguete was off the main shipping lanes,” Sitoy wrote. “Though there were steamers from Cebu every two days, and two others every week from Iloilo, those from Manila sometimes came only once in twenty days.”

The pier—the first major public works project undertaken by Dumaguete—carved into the Dumaguete shoreline, but also brought with it a steady stream of economic progress. Later, Mayor Ramon Teves Pastor and the town leaders after him set out to develop the Dumaguete beachfront into what we now know as the Rizal Avenue [or Boulevard], previously called the Marina.

The seaside stretch, which invariably destroyed the natural beach front (concrete over sand) and moved the small beachfront community to somewhere else, was the second major public works project in Dumaguete, with the new road connecting with the other arteries in town, including Calle Sta. Cecilia [now Silliman Avenue], Calle Sta. Catalina, Calle San Jose, Calle San Juan, and Escolta [later Alfonso Trese Street, and now Perdices Street]. This was a profound undertaking in all actuality, and invariably changed the pace and the outlook of Dumaguete. We cannot think of Dumaguete anymore without thinking of the Rizal Boulevard—it has become an icon—but it started as a visionary project that probably had its naysayers back in the day.

I shall continue this essay in another installment.

[Photo: the Dumaguete shoreline with Silliman Hall in the background in 1905]

Labels: dumaguete, economics, history

[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich

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Monday, October 18, 2010

7:10 AM | Murdering the Humanities

My friend, the much-missed speculative fictionist Baryon Tensor Posadas, recently posted a link to this New York Times column by the cultural critic Stanley Fish, where Fish essentially announces the death of the humanities, especially in the academe. I paid close attention because this was personal: I am a teacher in the humanities, and I write, and the production and cultivation of culture has always been the focal point of my existence. I paid close attention because if the humanities is dead, has my life so far been essentially worthless?

In his column, Mr. Fish takes to task George M. Philip, the president of SUNY Albany, who last October 1 "announced that the French, Italian, classics, Russian and theater programs were getting the axe." He then does an extensive postmortem about how Mr. Philip got away with murder, and goes on to entertain the age-old debate once more about the worth of the humanities in contemporary life, especially in a world racked by a recession. He writes: "What can you say to the tax-payer who asks, 'What good does a program in Byzantine art do me?' Nothing."

He goes on:

But keeping something you value alive by artificial, and even coercive, means (and distribution requirements are a form of coercion) is better than allowing them to die, if only because you may now die (get fired) with them, a fate that some visionary faculty members may now be suffering. I have always had trouble believing in the high-minded case for a core curriculum — that it preserves and transmits the best that has been thought and said — but I believe fully in the core curriculum as a device of employment for me and my fellow humanists. But the point seems to be moot. It’s too late to turn back the clock.

What, then, can be done? Well, it won’t do to invoke the pieties ... — the humanities enhance our culture; the humanities make our society better — because those pieties have a 19th century air about them and are not even believed in by some who rehearse them.

And it won’t do to argue that the humanities contribute to economic health of the state — by producing more well-rounded workers or attracting corporations or delivering some other attenuated benefit — because nobody really buys that argument, not even the university administrators who make it.

There are no easy answers to the dilemma, and Mr. Fish does not even offer anything. Might as well. But he does underscore the notions of politics and ineptitude in the part of leaders who should know better as really the main causes of humanities' death. Academic leaders, he says, are supposed to be cheerleaders of the pursuit of education and knowledge, not undertakers who are only concerned about the bottomline. I firmly believe that something fundamental dies when the humanities in our culture is allowed to die. It is like a skewering of our soul.

I am already living through this. In the university where I teach, for example, I was shocked last semester to find out that the biggest college we have has dropped literature from its curriculum, simply because its autonomy from CHED declared it could. In essence, they rendered Philippine and world literatures unnecessary in the making of a thinking professional. It was a sad day when I found out this. And I could not just fathom that notion: how do you go to college without at least having a smidgen of literature in your academic life? What are we trying to produce, unthinking and unlettered robots? It felt like a kind of death.

My fellow teacher Sherro Lee Lagrimas also wonders: “What will they remove next? Have they forgotten this C.S. Lewis quote? ‘Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.’” I’m not sure they have forgotten; they just probably do not care anymore.

All these also make me realize that sometimes those who are in-charge of our educational institutions, good-intentioned they may be by the cuts that they make, are often blind to the big picture. A friend, the Hong Kong-based journalist Heda Bayron, once told me a story: “A couple of years ago, I had the pleasure to meet and share a dorm room with an MIT professor emeritus in French Studies. She teaches French literature and fills a lacuna in the education of MIT’s math and science geeks, making them much more well-rounded human beings. Learning French literature or Chinese literature also makes MIT students more competitive in the global stage because success is no longer about your math aptitude or quaint skills, it’s also about how you conduct yourself. And you can only rise above the crowd if you possess a wider perspective.”

I don't know why but this whole thing made me think, somehow, of the writer Ayn Rand, but in a different light. In her polemic novel Atlas Shrugged, conversant of her belief that capitalism is the very engine of the world, she paints a possible time when all of the world's business leaders, innovators, and entrepreneurs go on a strike, hide from the rest of society who does not care for them, and watch that society slowly eat itself up from its uselessness. I wondered if somebody could write an artist's equivalent of Atlas Shrugged, where, instead of business powermen going on strike, artists will leave the rest of the world behind to wallow in its filth of no artistry and no soul.

My question though is this: if we follow these people's logic about the humanities not "contributing" anything to the economy or whatever, I counter with this idea of bankers and Wall Street people having seriously fucked up the economy and have given "the American way of life" the black eye. Why aren't business schools being closed down?

And then this: when I was in San Francisco, the city was trying to gentrify the down-on-its-luck Dogpatch industrial neighborhood near Arleta by inviting artists to come in and enjoy the low-rent warehouses. And many artists have come in, turning many of these unused warehouses into studios. There is now an upswing in the standard of living in that community, still in the beginning stages, but it's there. The city of course knows that this effort to bring in artists would soon bring in other people and other businesses -- cafes, boutiques, galleries -- and soon bring in the dollars. This has happened in New York, in Chicago, and in many other cities.

And soon, of course, this is what happens: the artists who have gentrified the neighborhoods in the first place have to move out because they can no longer pay the rent.

Gah.

In both cases, artists always seem to get the short end of the deal.

On another note about Stanley Fish, he posits that Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman's Howl (2010), the pseudo-biopic of the poet Allen Ginsberg (played here by the swoon-worthy James Franco) is the first film to be a perfect demonstration of literary criticism at work. I cannot wait to see this film in New York.

Labels: art and culture, economics, issues, rants

[5] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich

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Thursday, June 25, 2009

11:41 PM | The Thing About Indie Films

By Vincent de Jesus

"An independent film, or indie film, is a film that is produced outside of the big and commercial studio system. The term "independent film" may also be used interchangeably with the term Art film." From Wikipedia

Baptism of Fire

The very first “indie” film I ever got to score was Ellen Ongkeko’s Angels back in 2001. It was a small movie about two blind masseurs played by Gina Alajar and Nonie Buencamino. And though it didn’t get it's much deserved movie theater run and went straight to video I was happy to have been part of the film production. It was, in my honest opinion, well-written, well-directed, well-acted -- decently made.

I’ve known Ellen Ongkeko since the mid-80s through PETA and as a friend I agreed to score the movie even with limited budget. (Limited budget means you have quite a comfortable budget to work with. Minimal budget means having very little to work with. No budget means humanda kang mag-abono.) Yes, Angels' recording budget was limited but Ellen as our director still found ways of coughing up the the extra amount when music revisions were needed, mostly coming from her own pocket. As a friend I would’ve willingly absorbed part of the recording expenses as a sign of my support but she insisted she pay even when she was obviously running out of resources. I admire her for validating the importance of a good musical score by not telling me “Puwede bang libre na lang ang music?” No, she never said that.

Since then I have had the pleasure of doing the musical score of indie movies like Aureus Solito’s multi-awarded Pisay, Cinemalaya's and Dennis Marasigan’s Tukso, Tony Gloria’s and Gawad Kalinga's Paraiso and Cinemalaya's and Jay Abello’s Namets. Aside from being, in my opinion, well-crafted indie movies, the directors and producers of these films are also friends of mine. And how can you say "no" to friends, di ba? Siyempre tutulong ka. There was very minimal budget to make the score but at least there was a budget to work with. Thankfully, these people were aware that they should include MUSICAL SCORING in the production budget at hindi ganoon kalaki ang inabonohan ko. At the end of the day, again just like Ellen Ongkeko's Angels, I was happy to be part of these indie films because they are films I can be proud of. The money and talent I invested was well worth it. Such is the reality of indie film-making: You don't become a millionaire but it leaves you with a sense of achievement you can carry to your grave.

But sadly not all indie films, or any other form of art for that matter, are of good quality. A famous actor-friend once told me "Okay lang kung walang budget basta maipagmamalaki ko ang produkto. May redeeming value man lang sana. Pero kung T.Y. na nga, abonado pa ako tapos ang chaka pa ang film parang gusto kong magtago sa Angola." Let's just hope there's a thriving movie industry in Angola. (Of course, debatable kung ano ang "chaka" sa "hindi chaka." That topic deserves another blog.)

Anyone Can Do It

The thing about independent films is anyone can do it. All you need is a camera (heck, a handicam will do), an editing software (pirated version from Greenhills), a desktop (kung pa-sosi ka preferably a Mac?) and voila! You have a movie! Nagkakatalunan na lang talaga kung sino ang merong magaling na “movie craftsmanship.” And just like any other form of art, merong matitino diyan, merong hindi, merong good intentions, merong hanggang good intentions na lang, may balahura, may soft porn pretending to be an art film, merong walang good intentions bukod sa kumita ng pera, merong nagkakamali, merong sumasabay lang sa uso, merong passable, merong puwede na, merong tsumatsamba, at marami namang consistently of good quality. And that's good! People are now experimenting with different forms and styles. Some succeed, some fail, but I guess that's the whole idea: to see what works and what doesn't work. People are doing edgy films which you rarely see in big, studio-produced formula movies.

Some have said "Huy, indie movie. Panoorin natin! I'm sure maganda yan." Uhrm... hindi rin. Like I said, depende yan sa gumagawa at sa dahilan ng paggawa. Dahil nga maliit ang budget, one would hope babawi na lang sa aesthetics. Pero minsan, unfortunately, sumasablay din. Some indie movies have big budgets pero unfortunately hindi nadaan sa dami ng pera ang pelikula at ayun... sumabit din. Meron namang film na dumaan sa napakaraming problema at hindi mo akalain magiging maganda pala ang kalalabasan. At siyempre meron diyang napakaganda ng pelikula pero galit naman lahat ng production staff at mga artista nila dahil binarubal sila ng mga mayayabang at nagpapaka-"holier-than-thou" nilang producer o director.

I guess, at the end of the day, the important thing here is people are consciously trying to make better films -- better stories, different styles, etc. Yun nga lang, some people are artistically well-equipped while some... urhm... grope in the dark with only their softwares to compensate for whatever they lack in... ahem... talent. Ouch.

Starving the Starving Artists

Indie movies, because it's not backed up by big studios and advertisers, have very little budget. Some have none at all. And quite a lot of new “indie movie makers” have very little or no experience at all in running a movie production team. Maganda man ang intensiyon, ang main focus nila ay gumawa ng pelikula at medyo deadma na sa business side of the production. This is well and good when everyone concerned with the movie have willingly “donated” their services -- meaning working for free. But the reality is, artists like cinematographers, writers, actors, scorers, and production designers need money to survive to be able to do their “art” well. They cannot live on a movie’s good intentions alone. We keep hearing horrors stories about actors getting stuck in endless shooting days in the middle of nowhere with beginning directors (with a lot of attitude) without pay. Kahit pumayag silang umarte ng libre, umaabot din sa pagkakataon na napapagod na ang mga artista -- at mas madaling mapagod kapag wala kang bayad, hindi ba? I'm not suggesting you shower these actors with million peso paychecks. At least give them spending money to get by, feed them well, konting gasoline money or transpo allowance, or pick them up and bring them home. These actors are not rich. They need to survive. They need food to help nourish themselves and internalize their roles.

(In fairness, marami namang matitinong indie filmmakers. Marami pa rin namang producers diyan na alam pa rin ang tama sa mali, nadadamay lang sila sa ilang pasaway na abusado.)

Some actors have told me na sana sabihin na lang ng producers from the very beginning kung walang budget o walang sulweldo para alam nila kung ano ang pinapasok nila. “Tatanggapin ko naman kung sa tingin ko maganda ang intentions ng film. Pero sabihin nila lahat ang dapat sabihin para wala nang gulatan at habulan.” Some do tell you right there and then na wala silang ibabayad sa iyo, but when you turn down the project bakit parang ang dating sa kanila ay dahil mukha kang pera? Huwag naman sanang ganoon. Most artists find it difficult to or don't have the capacity to negotiate for fees because basically artists are better in creating and not in negotiating. Kaya nga may mga talent managers at agents ang iba. Siguro kung beterano ka na sa kalakaran kaya mo nang makipag-negotiate. Pero in reality mas marami ang nahihiya at hindi kayang makipag-haggle for fees. That's the reason why a lot of talented people end up working for free most of their lives because they don't realize how much their talent is worth. At inaabuso ito ng iba! At eto na nga... dinadaan na lang sila sa libre porke't "indie" lang daw. Which is, I think, very unfair. Huy, mahiya naman kayo sa mga artista.

Director's/Producer's Responsibility

Lately, I’ve noticed, that there are more and more producers/directors who DON’T EVEN TRY to look for money to finance their indie movies--- which I think is wrong, irresponsible and totally unacceptable. What are we making here? A high school project? Some producers and/or directors would call you, pa-feeling close, and make ligaw for you to get involved in their "dream" movie but then during the last day of shoot, you’ll find out wala palang kahit katiting na compensation at kailangan mong maglakad pauwi kasi ni singkong-duling wala kang sinahod. As if parang itinago talaga nila ang usaping pera? Tsk tsk tsk. At kung meron mang naipangakong kapiranggot na honorarium DAW... kadalasan hindi pa maibibigay sa iyo. One actor said, “Kaya nga indie film. Indi nagbabayad. Indi kumikita.” Ayan tuloy. Nagkakaroon ng pangit ng reputation ang indie filmmakers in general. Kasi some producers wouldn’t even answer your calls when it’s collection or reimbursement time, and if they do take your calls, they'd say the movie didn’t make money and they can't pay you. Ni hindi man lang mag-thank you.

(Paano nga pala kikita ang film hindi naman sila marunong maglako ng pelikula kasi nga walang alam sa business side ng movie-making. What happens to the film? It sits in the attic collecting dust just like the diary of Anne Frank.)

In my case, since I do the musical score during post-production and I don’t have my own studio -- which means I rent a music studio per hour -- kadalasan abonado ako. When I did Pisay, Namets,Tukso, and Paraiso it was clear to me that there was minimal budget to produce the musical score but I accepted it anyway because I believed in these films. Malinaw sa akin kung ano ang pinasok ko. Malaking tulong din na matino naman ang kinalabasan ng mga films na ito kaya okay na okay lang. Namets even made me a co-producer so I’ll eventually recoup (hopefully) the money I invested if ever it gets a successful commercial run. I wish all indie producers can be this honest because, after all, wala na ngang pera sa indie films you can at least be generous with honesty. Be transparent.

Producing an indie film is no joke. Hindi mo yan madadaan sa chika. Indie movie-making is not some poetry reading event that you can just organize overnight and serve tuna sandwiches and iced tea. Even if you have many friends to support you, darating ang panahon na siguradong mapapagod din ang mga friends mo at kailangan nilang kumita ng totoong pera para mabuhay.

You Can't Live on Good Intentions Alone

As movie-makers, indie or mainstream, you have a responsibility to your cast and artistic staff. Hindi na dapat isama pa sa pagdurusa ang mga artists na kinuha ninyo sa dahilang kayo bilang producers ay hindi handa financially and artistically, walang production management at business skills. Real artists will grab a good role any time, and will do their jobs for very little, but my God, please let’s not take advantage of them. Bad yan. BAD.

If you feel you have a good story and you feel you can direct and make a movie out of it, the first thing you have to do is GO AND LOOK FOR THE MONEY TO PRODUCE IT. Don’t start shooting with only your kiddie savings account in hand. Look for real funding. If you’re so passionate about your "dream" movie, go sell your house or pawn your jewelry collection. If you’re not ready to part with your worldly possessions, then save up until you’re financially ready. At please lang... kung may pera kang pagbayad ng cameras, ilaw, at sound equipment, dapat kaya mo ring magbayad sa mga artista, artistic at production team mo. One new “director/producer” told me once “Puwede bang libre na lang ang music? Wala na kasi akong budget to pay for actors and musical score, kasi naubos na sa camera rental at sa baranggay tanod.” Pucha naman oh. Nakakaloka. I told him, "Gumawa ka na lang ng SLIDE SHOW."

Don’t take your people for granted dahil kung wala kang mga taong gumagalaw sa harap at likod ng iyong camera -- wala kang pelikula.

The industry has to police itself and make sure people aren't taking advantage of the "spirit of indie film-making." The industry has to professionalize its working process by issuing contracts to talents and artistic staff to assure them that they will be taken cared of. Siguro kahit sa mga magkakaibigan na involved sa isang production maganda ring magakaroon ng "written agreement," kasi minsan kahit friendship nanganganib kapag nagkaroon ng mga problemang hindi inaasahan. If the production has limited resources--- I suggest join festivals, and apply for grants. Huwag niyong pasanin lahat ng gastusin. I would even go as far as making key persons in your production as co-producers. Or create an artists-producers cooperative. So when the movie makes money, with crossed fingers, everybody makes money. That way, everyone has a stake in the film, it makes your people feel they're more than just underpaid artists -- if they were paid at all. Don't get me wrong. This is not just about MONEY. It's about protecting and respecting the rights of everyone involved.

When you make a film you hope to recover your investments, right? But if you're making a film just so you can pat yourself on the back and say, "Man, I'm a good filmmaker," and have something to watch during the Lenten Season break with your friends while drinking wine -- you better rethink your filmmaking dreams. Nagtatapon ka lang ng pera at sinayang mo ang oras ng mga taong naniwala sa iyo na hindi mo naman binayaran. Films should be watched by other people, not just by those who created it.

It’s this simple: if you can’t afford to make an indie film, do not make an indie film. There are other forms of art that require less money but give you the same artistic fulfillment.

Here’s to the good, honest, capable and talented indie directors, producers, actors, artistic and production teams that have made the Philippine movie industry its much needed boost. I pray the time comes when you are allowed to practice your craft in a more inviting, creative space and ultimately a healthier artistic environment to nurture your artistic souls. God bless you all for your tireless efforts.

Labels: art and culture, directors, economics, film, issues, music, rants

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Thursday, July 03, 2008

11:32 PM | A Brief History of Dumaguete's "Finest" and Oriental Negrense High Society

Purely by accident, I came across last May’s issue of Philippine Tatler, the country’s local glossy which highlights the oh-so-beautiful life of the Filipino elite and the landed—those dahlings who populate the column-inches of our society pages, glittering in gold and diamond, and signature wear, and the irrefutable air of perfumed privilege. Those dahlings who are, as F. Scott Fitzgerald once described them, very “different than you and me.”

The magazine’s immediate attraction was the cover—quite an unusual one for a rag given to photoshopped worship of its society denizens, both the Gucci-ganged young and the Botoxed old, who are given to posing with stiff-backed patrician postures for Philippine Tatler’s cameras in resplendent clothes and in equally sumptuous—if bordering on baroque—settings. The May cover instead was an artful nude of some female model done up with stylized hair ornaments, and offset by a background that was a shock of Matisse and Gaugain put together. “The Art of Beauty,” the big headline blared out, promising the “sensational images by international photographer Nigel Baker.” I have always had a strange compulsion for magazines, and I thought that perhaps this issue of Philippine Tatler was worth picking up and skimming. The price is hefty at P200 per issue, and when I do buy it I make sure it is for a good reason. Then again, it has been a while since the last issue I read. And besides, there was that certain perverse pleasure to be had in scanning the pictures of our supposed “betters,” mock-envying them their comforts in Forbes, their vacations in Capri, their dancing nights in Majorca, their shopping in Rodeo Drive. (A boy can hope for the good life…)

And then there it was, in the inside pages: a generous portfolio of “Southern Gentry,” with several pages devoted to portraits of, and short articles about, “Dumaguete’s finest.” As with the case with anything, nothing comes close to gripping anyone’s interest but stories of home. Gripping it was indeed—and there was also that wild sense of vindication for the native in me, one who recoils every time I hear (or come across) suggestions that Dumaguete is probinsya through-and-through, with all the attendant connotations of the uncouth, the unwashed, and the uncultured. We already suffer enough from the indignities of having a name we have for our people and our culture—bisaya—becoming a curious synonym for baduy, no thanks to the enduring caricatures we bear because of Manilyn Reynes and Annabelle Rama hamming it up, hard accent and all, in the wild terrain of local popular culture.

But I say this beyond typical native pride: Dumaguete may not be a big city (and hopefully it will never be), and it may still teem with occasional barriotic tendencies, but uncultured it is not. Together with Baguio (which is tropical Dumaguete’s cool-climate twin), we may be the most cultured city outside of the four main metropolises (Manila, Cebu, Davao, and Iloilo) in the country. Tatler’s recognition that there is a well-spring of, ehem, “social finesse” in our midst is heartening. It may be artificial recognition, but nevertheless.

I know of a writer—one Lia Bulaong—who, upon stumbling on one of Manolet Teves’s society columns in The Visayan Daily Star online, was tickled pink at the very idea of “high society” in Negros, thinking the combination highly unlikely, given the—ehem—provincial tones of our lives here. That’s typical, of course, of many Manileños, and we have all somehow learned to forgive the prejudiced short-sightedness of some of them. Then again, she may not have recognized that the “true-blue high society” she knows of from her native Manila actually spring from four (very interconnected) points of the Visayas—Iloilo, Bacolod, Bais, and Cebu—who go by the names of Lopez, Lhuiller, Villanueva, Preysler, Del Prado, Arroyo, Ledesma, Teves, Osmeña, Vicente, Romero, Garcia, and what-not.

Historically, Negros Oriental has a rich history of the burgis and the elite. The landed hacenderos of the island—which includes Negros Occidental—often keep track of each other, attend each other’s parties, and intermarry. They may have different “kingdoms”—the Bais-Tanjay-Dumaguete-Pamplona families, the Victorias-Cadiz-Sagay families, the Bayawan-Santa Catalina-Basay-Sipalay families, the Kabankalan-Ilog-Himamaylan families, the Canlaon-Guihulngan-Vallehermoso-San Carlos families, the Bacolod-La Carlota-Silay-Talisay families—but most are sugar barons welded together by common crop, a shared fortune, as well as accidents of history.

In the best of our old times, some Negrense girls used to make their debutantes balls at St. James Court in London. This glittering world is partly chronicled in the pages of Kabilin, the now-rare coffee table book of the province’s history, published when Negros Oriental turned a hundred years old in 1989. That world though has mostly disappeared, precipitated by the sugar crisis that decimated the ranks of the hacenderos and robbed them of much of their wealth in the 1970s and the 1980s. And all that are left are their slowly disappearing acreage, strong memories of the golden age, and—to borrow a devastating quote from Savannah’s Jim Williams (who was immortalized in John Berendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil)—“their good manners.” Manolet, in one of our talks about Negrense history, calls that bygone era as the days of Tara, a name borrowed of course from the gilded pages of Gone With the Wind. I plan to write about that conversation soon, when Manolet waxed nostalgic about the parties in Azucarera de Bais, before hard times—and the conquering barbarians—crashed the party, and ended everything.

And for that, perhaps it is best to quote the full text from Fitzgerald’s story “The Rich Boy”: “Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft, where we are hard, cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand.” That suits perfectly well the cycles of fortune of our local high society.

But to go back to the list of Dumaguete’s finest according to the gospel of Philippine Tatler… It was a good enough feature written by Marge Enriquez (with great photography by Wig Tysmans). But the first question that held me was: when did [a certain person] ever become a historian of Dumaguete? I bet Valentino Sitoy and Caridad Aldecoa-Rodriguez would probably disagree. Still, the Tatler story gathers a well-deserved and merry bunch that groups together such local social butterflies as Mariant Escaño-Villegas, Manolet Gonzales-Teves, Rico Absin, Chiquiting Sagarbarria, Jack and Pristine Raymond, Herminio and Victoria Teves, Victoria Del Prado-Carballo, Amanda Diago-Vicente, Irene Villanueva-Wicklein, Virginia Teves-Laurel, Maria Lourdes Vicente-Ortiz, Alexandra Teves, and Lucille Raymond-Villanueva. Most of them Teveses.

And yet I can’t help but feel that the true cross-section of Dumaguete high society has not really been fully represented in these glossy pages. Not that I’m complaining. Unlike most of the Philippines whose idea of “lordship” and “society” bears a strong Spanish aquiline nose, Dumaguete is unique with its strong American influence that has produced an upper/upper middle class of mostly non-Spanish stock (including those with Chinese roots) who holds great sway in local things political, social, economic, and cultural.

What the Spanish traditionally contributed to local high society was their sense of fabulous fiesta, especially during sipong, their annual celebration of harvest, a fête that ran from Canlargo in Bais to Tanjay to the sugar houses along Avenida de Rizal in the famous Boulevard. What the Americans brought with them was a sense of high culture, and that was when Negros learned to appreciate Shakespearean plays, operas, dances, and concerts. From Silliman University, for example, came two of the best hostesses the province has ever produced or nurtured: University First Ladies Pearl Gamboa-Doromal (daughter of an ambassador and wife of President Quintin S. Doromal) and Francisca Ruiz (wife of Chicago-based consul Leopoldo T. Ruiz who became Silliman’s first Filipino President), both of whom set the highest standards for hospitality in Silliman and the rest of Dumaguete.

Thirty or fifty years ago, Negrense society can be best described as mostly Spanish—but not so much anymore. You can feel it in the way many of the subjects in Tatler’s pages describe their daily lives: quietly living in the countryside among the sugar canes, pushing for what they call life rendered in simplicity, and staying away from the social and cultural limelight as much as they can. That’s a sad shadow of their immediate past, something I wish they can recover from, because these people—when they really want to—can really help transform Dumaguete and Negros Oriental’s future for the better. New York and Boston and Detroit and most of the best cosmopolitan cities in the world are the way they are because of strong patronage by their wealthy and their “high society” to help their hometowns attain strong footing in cultural currents. Think the Rockefellers. Think the Vanderbilts. Think the Kennedys.

If I can add to that Tatler list of Dumagueteños who deserve being profiled as one of “society’s finest,” I would put in Arlene Delloso-Uypitching, who is fast becoming the best hostess around town, one who gives exclusive and very fabulous parties in her two homes in Valencia town; Dennis Trillo, favorite son and now famous matinee idol; Josie Sy-Limkaichong, who has redefined public service in the third district of Negros Oriental; Wing Del Prado, who is reasserting an artistic claim to her family’s old-name heritage; Patrick Sy Chua, who has become both first-class dentist and patisserie connoisseur; Cecille Hoffman, who spearheads local awareness for gender rights and environmental concerns; Angeline Dy, who is fast-becoming both the ice cream and computer queen in the city; Adrian Arnaiz Dionaldo, who is slowly redefining the idea of real estate in Dumaguete; Rowena Tiempo-Torrevillas, who has inherited the literary greatness of her parents, including National Artist for Literature Edith Lopez Tiempo; Heinz and Esther Windler, who are environmental stalwarts, and whose beautiful house was once featured in Architectural Digest; Karen Villanueva, Bais City’s first daughter; Dean Sinco, Foundation University’s favorite son and now sought-after architect; Mike Romero, son Miguel, and uncle Eddie Romero (our National Artist for Film), who are continuing the grand Romero legacy of the province; Laura Teves-Sy, who is the perfect marriage of the local Spanish and Chinese communities; Angel Amigo, a former fashion model who comes from old wealth; Gilbert Uymatiao, the foremost organic farmer in the province; Cahirup Armogeña, who is helping slowly regain for the family their old glory in the hotel-and-restaurant business; Pia Francisco-Sy, former Miss Silliman and sister of top fashion model Ana Francisco; Pearl Gamboa-Doromal and daughter Meg, who are practically Silliman royalty; Rajo Laurel, top fashion designer; Mike Butler, transplanted Australian entrepreneur who has made Dumaguete his home and has helped revitalize its sense of tourism and culture; Jacqueline Veloso-Antonio, one of Dumaguete’s legendary beauties who is making a reputation for herself as a savvy businesswoman; Annabelle Lee-Adriano, who has transformed Antulang into an increasingly world-class resort; Joy Sanchez-Bobon, who is one of the most successful businesswoman in the city, and is known as “the quiet entrepreneur” of Pamplona; Mel Montaño, a native son who has come home from abroad to help the city become an unlikely BPO powerhouse; and Suzanne Lu-Bascara, one of the original beauty-and-brains from Dumaguete who now wields clout as the head of a local BPO. There are countless others…

Which just means that, even more than sugar cane people, Dumaguete absolutely teems with “high society” who truly makes things matter in this city of gentlest people, dahlings.

Labels: dumaguete, economics, history, issues, magazines, negros

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Thursday, May 29, 2008

1:47 AM | Is There a Class Line Online?

When the Internet was new, we were beguiled by the promise of democracy it offered. "It will level everything," they said. Not so, it now seems. The class line proves significantly harder to cut. There's one kind of Internet for those with broadband or wifi straight to their Macs in the privacy of their bedrooms and offices, and there's another kind of Internet for those who frequent Manong Nat's Eezy Breezy Internet Cafe with its Pentium 2 PCs that come cheap at P10 per hour.

Case in point: some people I know are abandoning their Friendster accounts to transfer to Facebook, because Facebook, they say, is classier. Plus, in Facebook, you can poke each other and give each other li'l green patches. "Friendster is so baduy na," someone recently confessed to me, "so jologs, what with its inane usernames with asterisks and zeroes and apostrophes and what-not before their stupid names -- ****arlheneluvzdude! -- just to get a higher placement in the alphabetized order of friends! -- and everybody, including my aunt's maid, is there." Everybody, including people like mHariZa, a true-blue metlog as far as the hilarious Metlogs or Rurogs is concerned.



Meet mHariZa. Enjoy the sheer artistry of her profile picture. Her Friendster profile reads, in part:

Occupation: collage student
Movie: the ant
About Me: ahm.......about meeh!!!??? ATTITUDE? kind,suplada minsan.. pro most of da tym mabait meeeh..., makulit, lagi na nka-smyl ngaun... talented pa! i can dance. i can sing....i can fly basta ba my wings, eh...he!he!he! OUTLOOK? syempre maganda,noh! alangan nmn laitin k ang sarili koh...height koh? 5'3'' ASSET KOH? my legs sbi nila.... taken na meehh....... ...should i say yes!?

That's Friendster. Bow.

But for me, the day I decided Friendster had gone to the dogs was when I opened my account one day, and there, on the sides of my profile page, were pictures of Ruffa Gutierrez, Gretchen Barretto, Judy Ann Santos, and Claudine Barretto selling Pantene. It felt like an invasion into my private space. Yes, these social networking sites do need ads to survive, but that was so ... cheesy.

In other similar news, YugaTech claims that "the poor use Yahoo and the rich use Google." Go figure.

Labels: blogging, economics, humor, issues, life, web and tech

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Saturday, March 22, 2008

7:07 PM | Ranting Against Chinese Bullshit

[This is a strange, rare rant about world politics, and I might erase this post soon because I'm no political scientist -- but this is what you get when you watch too much CNN during Holy Week.]

Lately, I’ve been thinking about that neighbor of ours up north. I can’t help it: China hogs world headlines these days, and even here in the Philippines, the current political scandal that has made the acronym NBN-ZTE a household term has a Chinese side.

And I have somehow come to a conclusion that may have been festering inside me for the longest time, but never bothered to concretely form: I don't like China, or at least its current geopolitical reality. It has all the makings of a new neighborhood bully -- and when they say this sleeping giant is slowly stirring, it can mean that there may come a day that whatever China wants, China gets. What's to stop it from doing anything? Like crossing over to Palawan while we sleep and claiming it as the new Chinese province of 新的天堂? Sure, we can fight back -- but our hapless military against the Chinese Red Army with its current budget of $59 billion will not be a war of equals. There are portents that point to such possibility, however remote and fantastical. Recent history has shown China's tendency for power-grabbing, brutality, stubbornness, and shameless capacity for spin even in the wake of massive international pressure and condemnation. Nobody blinked when China effectively demolished Taiwan's sovereignty in the 1970s. (Now it exists in a geopolitical netherworld, an independent nation, and once recognized as such, in a community of nation that denies that independence.) We all howled when Tiananmen Square was splattered with blood in 1989 -- but China knows the ultimate lesson of history (something that Imelda Marcos knows by heart): people will always forget. And so it clamped down hard on those 1989 students protesters; the world, of course, showed its disgust and called for "something" to be done (but nothing was done); China didn't budge; and tired from all our shouting, we moved on... It will do exactly the same thing to Tibet, even as the region blazes under the gun as the headlines of Tibetan unrest grip the world today. China knows that we may huff and puff, but we also have a short attention span. Think of it: almost twenty years after the massacre in Tiananmen, we all gaily hopscotch towards China's doors upon invitation to its grand coming-out party, the Olympics. U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is right when she said this week that the situation in Tibet is a challenge to the "conscience of the world." It is a challenge because our conscience is always fleeting. It disappears readily like yesterday's headlines. Pelosi also said: “If freedom-loving people throughout the world do not speak out against China’s oppression in China and Tibet, we have lost all moral authority to speak on behalf of human rights anywhere in the world.” This post is my own contribution to the outrage.

What actually amazes me about China's rise to power is that it has largely benefited from the greatest of today's ironies: free market capitalism has actually made rich a staunchly communist would-be rogue. It seems that all that China-crazy businessmen today just see is the profit to be had from this giant -- never mind its record of human rights abuses, never mind its shape-shifting snake of a government. It's all in the numbers, really: 1,321,851,888 people. That's more than a sizable market, 'nuff said. Which all saddens me because it illustrates one more thing about the world: it never operates in a fair scale, especially when there's money to be made. For example, the Philippines may be chaotic and messy, but at least this country has deeply-rooted (and functional) democratic pretensions. And so where does the capital go? To a communist country -- where there's no democracy, where the same messiness occurs (and more often, bloody ones, too) ... it just happens to have "better" market potential. Think about this as well: every time some economic crises come to threaten the region (such as the Great Asian Crash of the mid-1990s), the Philippines always seem to be largely insulated from the worst effects, faring even better than the so-called economic tigers Thailand, Indonesia, and South Korea. But we always get the worst economic reviews, and foreign investors always threaten to pullout at the slightest hint of domestic turmoil, like carnage in a small island down, down south. What gives? I certainly don't believe we are really the most corrupt nation in the region. There's corruption in all levels of our government and business structure, yes, but are our neighbors really that saintly? Or is it just because our vibrantly free press readily fesses up to the charge and does not hesitate to put corruption stories in as front page news? The not-so-free press of the rest of the region ... well, they certainly don't. (Can you imagine Chinese newspapers pulling off a Philippine Daily Inquirer-style headline of ''most corrupt nation in region"? I don't think that will ever happen.) In a sense, we get unfairly crucified because we have the one thing capitalism is supposed to demand for a society: a working democracy, warts and all.

Every time I see all these television shows (or read endless newspaper and magazine articles) about the golden times to be had in China today, something twitches inside of me and I cannot help but think: What about all those poor souls who, in the spirit of anti-capitalist purging, died in the name of communism in the dark days of the Revolution, during the disastrous Great Leap Forward, and during the murderous Cultural Revolution? All these grandiose Olympic preparations, all these swanky new boulevards and skyscrapers in Beijing and Shanghai, all these shiny new wealth... they all come from blood money. I don't begrudge any nation its path to success, but you can't have a bloody history of anti-capitalism and then change our mind all of a sudden just because. Which may be why I don't trust any communist country at all, or any insurgencies of red stripes: in the name of the people, they somehow always become breeding grounds for tyranny and oppression (name one communist country in history that is truly a "people's republic") -- and then, once firmly entrenched on top with most of the populace reduced to robots, they start raking the dollars in.

But this is neither here nor there. The concern of the now is this: Free Tibet! You invade a free country out of the blue in 1951, the most moral thing you can do is get out of it. Free Tibet!

Labels: economics, history, issues, politics

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Sunday, April 22, 2007

7:17 PM | Sunday Readings

In today's Sunday Inquirer Magazine, Ruel S. De Vera has a great feature on Dean Alfar and speculative fiction in the Philippines.

In the New York Times, reporter Jason DeParle has a well-written reportage on the OFW phenomenon, and does a fine job of fleshening out the complex issues of the Philippines being increasingly a migrant nation.

Labels: economics, magazines, media, philippine literature, society, writers

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Wednesday, March 14, 2007

6:49 PM | The Folly of Tim Yap

What a schmuck. But we always knew that.



Bloggers who think and who have souls (here and here and everywhere) are taking note of Tim Yap's feckless comments about the devil-may-care party-going mindset of his (and unfortunately also my) generation:

There is this mind-set, which I think is so passe, that says: 'The country is in shambles and the country is having a hard time and you are out there partying.' But this generation is guiltless when it comes to that.

It's enough to just give up, and curb any hope for this country.

There's another word for the guiltless in an orgy of evil, Tim: a sociopath. Which suits you: you are sosyal and you are pathological. But if it's any consolation to everybody else, here's one poem by Amado Bajarias which I liked very much, and which was published in the pages of Philippines Free Press...

Bring Me the Head of Tim Yap Superstar Columnist!
By Amado Bajarias

infecting the feckless
world
with their mi-droga tu-droga
faux naif venom
Manolo Blahnik et Prada et Miu-Mui
as Weltanschaung chi-chi

these post-Weltschmerz,
post-kitsch, post-irony,
post-cynicism, post-posturing,
post-superficiality, post-hype
post-hubris, post-epater les bourgeois
Nosferatu kindred
with their Roppongi pallor
cultivated in the ciggie-smoke
miasma
of buy-this-and-buy-that
blather

I need to see them tortured, squealing
like abattoir pigs

My God Marcos was right
to ban them society pages
with their pasty-white
vampiric
flash-bulb denizens
sassing
each another
fawning fake-smiles for photo ops
in the Grand Guignol style

I need to see them
faute de mieux disembowelled
slowly
on a rotating spit

Marcos was right to shut them down
a pity he stopped short
of giving them a coup de grace
to their oh-so-chic
beaucoup heads

I do renounce Tim Yap and his ilk. He does not speak for me.

Labels: celebrity, economics, issues, life, poetry

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