Monday, March 30, 2026
9:00 AM |
The Return of Silliman Film Open
It has been more than a half a decade since Silliman University—via the College of Mass Communication and the Culture and Arts Council—was able to hold the Silliman Film Open, the university’s festival of student films that used to be the one date every year, usually around February or March, when budding campus filmmakers tried their hand at cinematic storytelling.
Last March 7, we finally unveiled its latest edition—the fifth under its current name. Although if history has to be told, this endeavor started in 2009 as the 61 Film Festival [because it showcased the final film requirements of the students of Communication 61]; and then briefly, beginning in 2012, as the Dumaguete Shorts Festival, where it became a showcase of short films being created by Dumaguete filmmakers [regardless of whether or not they were Sillimanian]; and finally as the Silliman Film Open [or SFO] in 2015, this one designed to be more insular, screening only the works of currently enrolled students. [By then, other schools, like Foundation University, were already offering their own festivals. We had to change course.]
What happened after its fourth iteration sometime in 2018? There were some unfortunate shenanigans I really cannot be bothered to rehash, but ultimately it was really because of the pandemic, which made organizing it an impossibility. Although, truth to tell, COVID-19 had no power over some of SFO’s alumni, the likes of Andrew Alvarez and Ara Mina Amor and Von Adrian Colina, who went on to make fantastic films on their own while the world stood still in quarantine.
I began missing it though.
I missed it the way one would miss a calling. In 2008, I was invited to the Cinemalaya Film Festival at the Cultural Center of the Philippines to take part in its Film Congress, and I was there to represent Dumaguete filmmaking. At that time, I’ve only had one short film to my name, and when I was asked in my panel what the best practices of Dumaguete filmmaking were, I could only say one sad thing: there was no such thing as Dumaguete filmmaking.
Granted, we have our very own Eddie Romero, a renowned National Artist for Film. Granted, we have some filmmakers from here, such as Ramon del Prado, Jonah Lim, and Seymour Barros Sanchez. And granted, Dumaguete seems to be a favorite place to shoot for commercial films. But in terms of grassroots filmmaking, at that time, there was nothing. Hence, no best practice.
But I told the audience at the CCP that perhaps we could start some change, however small. When I got back to Dumaguete, and then to my film class at the College of Mass Communication, I had one resolve: to jumpstart filmmaking in this city, by hook or by crook. There are no filmmakers willing to make films? We will move heaven and earth then—and by “moving heaven and earth,” I mean requiring my film class to go beyond just writing film criticism of the movies they saw in my class. I quoted the French director Jean Luc Godard, who once said: “The only way to critique a movie is to make a movie.” Make a movie, I told my classes. They were scared out of their wits, and they were understandably reluctant—but they did manage to turn out films, which to me were minor miracles borne out of sweat, liters of Red Bull, endless coffee, endless bickering among the crew, sleepless nights, panic attacks, and even minor emotional breakdowns. Then again, who said filmmaking was easy? You have to be insane to set out to make a movie, I told them—but the dividends are fantastic.
And what are the dividends so far? We are now on the fifth iteration of the SFO, and many of the films we’ve exhibited in previous editions have gone on to be included at Lutas Film Festival, at the Sine Negrense, and at the Cinema Rehiyon—and one film, Razceljan Salvarita’s I Am Patience, was actually nominated for the Gawad Urian for Best Short Film. The future could bright for Dumaguete film if we actually create an ecosystem where film practice could be established. It is still a fledgling thing—but at least it shows some signs of thriving. Here’s to this batch of student filmmakers, and may they go places indeed.
The filmmakers behind Silliman Film Open 5, with jury members Andrew Alvarez, Tara De Leon, and Renz Torres, festival director Ian Rosales Casocot, and College of Mass Communication Dean Irma Faith Pal [fourth from right]
For the fifth edition, which we dubbed our “comeback season,” we screened only seven short films of varying genres, which included Karisa Marie Barote’s 404: Self Not Found [a science fiction take], Olivia Anne Cabral’s Girls Next Door [a romantic comedy], Jurielle Cornelia’s After the Silence [a domestic thriller], Ryan Rikaz Ibrahim’s Second Best [a crime film that turned out to be campy comedy], Samuel Lagulao Jr.’s Run on Empty [an actioner], Jullan Louise Sido’s Ang Dili Kahulat [a comedy], and Zschaielle Ainsh Tiglao’s When the Wind Blows [a melodrama]. All of them are students of Communication 62, a directing course, and Literature 30, a course on film and literature. [Three other filmmakers, unfortunately, were not able to make the deadline for the festival.]
In the end, the jury composed of local filmmakers Andrew Alvarez, Tara De Leon, and Renz Torres, gave generously and selected a wide swath of titles for awards, including Best Poster to After the Silence; Best Original Song to Le John’s “Naiilang” for Ang Dili Kahulat; Best Production Design to Olivia Cabral’s work in Girls Next Door; Best Make-up Design to Ryan Rikaz Ibrahim and Kessiya Silva for Second Best; Best Cinematography to Ben Guarin, Jeff Jamolod, and Roll Borres for Run on Empty; Best Editing to Angelina Rival for Second Best; and Best Screenplay to Samuel Lagulao Jr. for Run on Empty.
The award for Best Supporting Actress went to Franz Tolentino for Second Best. Ryan Rikaz Ibrahim, who directed that film, won Best Supporting Actor for another film, 404: Self Not Found. That film also garnered Best Actor for Vince Gerard Balbuena, while Best Actress went to Kessiya Silva for Second Best. Jurielle Cornelio was named Best Director for After the Silence, and a Jury Award was given to Zschaielle Ainsh Tiglao’s When the Wind Blows. Ryan Rikaz Ibrahim’s Second Best was finally named Best Film. All in all, a happy ending for a film festival no one thought would make a comeback in 2025!
It was a journey—painstaking and demanding—for all of them.
Samuel Lagulao, for example, is a Creative Writing major, and he had no inkling that the semester that just passed would require him to make a short film. “My fourth year as a graduating student was already heavy with thesis work, my mythology class, and other subjects, but this [film class] was the hardest for me,” he wrote. “The whole experience taught me a great deal, not only about writing itself, but also about the publishing and marketing side of it. Making a film forced me into a different kind of education to what you would normally expect from literary and creative writing classes, one that had less to do with words and more to do with logistics and money and weather and scheduling and accepting the limits of what could actually be done… In film work, [I learned that] talent is important but reliability [on my crew] also matters just as much. A project can survive a lot of limitations, but it struggles when people cannot be there.
He continued: “There were moments when I wanted the camera to hide too much, or the edit to fix problems that should have been solved in the actual shoot, with one scene especially that made that clear when I had wanted to make it look as though a conversation was happening naturally, even though it would really be stitched together from separate footage of people performing against empty space. On paper, that seemed possible. In practice, it was not convincing enough … That was one of the hardest lessons the process taught me. Writing can make almost anything happen because the page is obedient. Film is not. Film depends on bodies, places, light, timing, weather, equipment, and the availability of other people. The actors could not always make it. Some shoots had to be rearranged because one person was free and another was not. One day was cancelled because of the weather. The easiest scene [to shoot] turned out to be the one inside a classroom, probably because it was controlled and contained. Everything else felt exposed to interruption.
“… Now that the film is finished, I remember the strain of it but I also see it more clearly for what it was. It was one of the few times in my student life when I had to move beyond writing something good on paper and face the mess of making something real with other people. … It was tense, expensive, and often frustrating but it also taught me what kind of work filmmaking really is. [But] I am grateful that the process was not smooth since it forced me to understand that a film is never built by imagination alone. It is built through people and limits and corrections and persistence.”
A scene from Samuel Lagulao Jr.'s Run on Empty, which won Best Screenplay and Best Cinematography
For Ryan Rikaz Ibrahim, winner of the top award, joining the festival—and making the film—was a humbling experience. “The most difficult stage was getting the screenplay approved,” he admitted. “… My early drafts were met with strong criticism, [and] at one point, the feedback was direct: the story needed to be rewritten or reframed, because it did not make sense. As someone who was confident in my writing, hearing this was difficult. Each revision felt like going back to the beginning, and the process slowly chipped away at my confidence.”
There were other production challenges, like scheduling the shoot with actors, or even finalizing something as primary as having a cinematographer in place. “But slowly, things began to fall into place,” Ryan said, and then a lot of learning had to be done when shooting commenced. “One moment during filming stood out in particular. While shooting the interrogation scene, the entire team began contributing ideas to improve the sequence. The actors, the videographer, and even I, as the director, experimented with different angles, deliveries, and approaches to the scene. What started as a simple shot turned into a collaborative effort, and that moment reminded me that filmmaking is truly a shared creative process.”
But for him, the real turning point came in the post-production phase. “When my editor, Angelina Rival, sent the first draft of the film, I immediately felt something had changed. The scenes were arranged in a way that matched the vision I had imagined from the beginning. Her work with camera angles, pacing, and sound design brought the story to life in ways I could not have achieved alone. At that moment, the film I had struggled with for weeks finally started to feel real.”
When Ryan’s film was announced as the top winner, he was “genuinely stunned.” He said: “In that moment, it became clear that the victory was never mine alone. It belonged to my actors who poured their energy into every scene, to my editor who shaped the film with remarkable creativity, and to my entire team that helped transform a difficult idea into a finished story. [But] looking back, this entire process taught me the value of humility, perseverance, and openness to criticism. There were times when every correction felt discouraging, and every revision felt like starting over. Yet those moments of struggle slowly revealed an important truth: growth often happens in the most uncomfortable situations. More than anything, I learned that filmmaking is not just about having a vision. It is about trusting the people who help bring that vision to life and allowing yourself to grow through the process.”
A scene from Ryan Rikaz Ibrahim's Second Best, which won Best Film
Filmmaking as a metaphor for processing life. I hope that’s one good lesson instilled with fervor in our current crop of campus filmmakers who made Silliman Film Open 5 happen. Congratulations, everyone!
A scene from Jurielle Cornelia's After the Silence, which won Best Director
A scene from Zschaielle Ainsh Tiglao's When the Wind Blows, which won the Jury Award
Labels: art and culture, dumaguete, film, silliman
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Saturday, March 28, 2026
6:35 PM |
Winging It [Long Version]
At one of my lowest depths in the days of the pandemic, when I was struggling mentally to just live through each day, I was tasked to teach a writing workshop for [bleep]. This was before I was diagnosed, by the way, and was properly medicated. [Or was this after I was diagnosed, but quit medication for more than a year because I thought I didn’t “really” need it? Who knows.]
But I accepted the challenge of a workshop, because the organizer is a very good friend, and I believed in the project. And the project paid. Anything that paid in the pandemic was a good thing. The thing was, the date of the event did not even sink into my consciousness, nor the brief. I forgot all about it.
Eve of the first day, I was reminded by my friend that the whole thing was starting the very next morning. Fine, I said. I can wing it. That next day, on the way to the venue, I realized it was to be a writing class with regional languages in mind. Fine, I can wing it, I thought. I’ve taught a workshop on writing in Binisaya before, anyway. But then when I was finally facing the participants, I realized that they came from all over the Philippines, and Bisaya would not be the primary language of most of them.
Dear God, I don’t know how I got through those three days just winging it—but I did. And actually did supremely well, and their final activity, which involved a performance of some sort, was a highlight of the closing program. We even made a zine of their outputs! How did I do that? I have no recollection whatsoever. I winged it.
But I will never recommend doing the same thing—winging it—to anyone. I think I was just lucky I had stock knowledge to impart, and a well-spring of bravado and guts. I can start talking, and talk for hours. I can make people do activities on the fly, and somehow string them all together in the end to create a kind of wonderful synthesis.
What I do remember most about those three days is not the teaching of that workshop but the strange elasticity of the self under pressure. Of how it stretches to meet the moment, and how it becomes a version of itself that seems, in retrospect, almost comically fictional. Because I look back at that person that I was—the one who stood in that room at the university library, which was humming with air-conditioning, fluorescent lighting, and low-grade anxiety—and I do not fully recognize him, to be honest. Here is the truth I rarely admit: I have always relied on winging it, even before the pandemic made that improvisational instinct feel like a survival mechanism. Teaching, writing, and living … these have often been acts of performance for me, of stepping onto a stage with only the barest outline of a script, and trusting that language, that old unreliable friend, will arrive … just … in time. Sometimes it does, which is great. But sometimes it leaves you stranded mid-sentence, grasping for coherence.
In that long ago workshop, though, something else happened. The participants, who were tentative at first, gradually bloomed into confidence, and began to take ownership of the space I provided even with my winging it. They spoke and wrote in their own regional languages, and in the cadences of their own homes, and what began as a logistical nightmare for me transformed into something almost magical. I understood that we did not need a single language to understand one another, not Tagalog, not English. We needed only attention, that rarest of currencies. We listened to poems in Hiligaynon. We responded to stories in Bicolano. We made do with what we can in works written in Waray. Somehow, we all understood what we were all trying to do, and appreciated the effort.
But I think now that what saved me from utterly failing that time was not bravado, not really, but the quiet discipline of having done the work before. Years of reading, of writing sentences that did not quite work until they did, of standing in front of classrooms and learning how to read a room … these had all sedimented into something like instinct for me. The truth is, when the mind falters, the body often remembers, at least for me. So when panic threatens to take over, I find that my habits can step in and say: “Just begin.”
There is, of course, a danger in romanticizing “winging it.” My story tempts you to conclude that crisis reveals hidden strengths, that we are at our best when cornered. Nah. This is only partly true. And dangerously so. For every story like mine, there are countless others where the strain breaks something essential, where winging it leads not to triumph but to quiet collapse.
I was really just lucky. Luck, I have come to understand, is both circumstance and timing. It comes at the moment when your accumulated fragments of knowledge align just enough to carry you through. But, mind you, luck should never be a strategy. It is not something you can depend on all the time. Not if you care about your own well-being.
But on the whole, I was winging it because I was mentally flailing. And one needs to understand that one needs to seek help if one feels like flailing, like a bad storm, in life. Especially if you have undiagnosed mental health issues. When I say this, I do not mean this statement as a moral injunction or a tidy lesson. I mean it as a practical acknowledgment of limits. There are just things we cannot improvise our way out of. There are battles that require more than instinct and accumulated skill. There are days when the self does not stretch. We can fray, trust me. We need help.
And yet, even now, I still do wing it actually. I actually think this is how Dumagueteños do things all the time, winging it. Last Sunday, for example, we gave outgoing Silliman University President Betty McCann a tribute and a farewell in a program filled with speeches and outstanding performances. True, the group that planned it met once or twice. And true, we did our utmost to get the best people to do the talking and to do the singing and the dancing and the instrument-playing. But we rehearsed just once at 1 PM that same Sunday, straight on until 3:15 PM. Then open house at the Luce at 3:30 PM, with the final program beginning at 4 PM. And it turned out to be a beautiful, beautiful show.
But we were winging it.
Perhaps winging it for me, and for Dumagueteños in general, will never change. But there is a difference, I think, between winging it alone and winging it with the knowledge that there are structures in place to catch you when you fall. There’s medication, there’s therapy, there’s friendship, and there’s the slow and deliberate work of understanding yourself.
That long-ago workshop remains as a kind of minor miracle for me. This is not because I performed well in the end, but because it showed me both the resilience and the fragility of the person I was becoming. It taught me that survival, like writing, is often a matter of revision: we return to the page, to the self, and trying again, this time with a little more care.
So, please, seek help if you feel like you’re flailing and cannot wing it anymore. I finally sought help a few years ago, and my life has been better because of it. [Although I still mostly wing it with life, to be honest.]
Warlito and I winging it for the tribute for Ma'am Betty the other Sunday.
Labels: life
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Wednesday, March 25, 2026
7:00 AM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 284.
Labels: poetry
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Tuesday, March 24, 2026
I was walking home just now. The streets, although well-lit, were mostly empty because it was midnight. I found myself walking right behind a young woman, who looked like she worked as a nurse at the nearby hospital. The sidewalk was wide and also empty, but I found myself crossing the street, to walk in the same direction but on the other side. It was a subconscious thing that I did, and there really was no reason to. But a thought came to me later that I wanted to avoid being a possibly menacing presence for this woman, just because I was a man walking right behind her. Labels: life
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Sunday, March 22, 2026
I’ve calculated my 50-year-old body’s response to stress now, and I think I need at least a week between events to fully recover and commit. I had two two-day workshops for the past two weeks, wrapping up with a grand tour on Thursday. Rested for two days. And then I had a directing stint today, started rehearsing at 1 PM for a 4 PM show that lasted three hours, and now I’m in bed, dead tired, and laughing at how pooped I am. But it was a beautiful show, and I was glad to do it.Labels: life
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Wednesday, March 18, 2026
7:00 AM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 283.
Labels: poetry
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Tuesday, March 17, 2026
6:30 PM |
Classes, Done!
It was a marathon of workshops but I finally held the last of my classes today! A huge sigh of relief, really. Now, it’s just all about the waiting and the receiving of my students’ final requirements, and then the grading. Can’t wait for this semester to be over! It was extremely short, which created a lot of class management problems, but I’m glad it’s almost over.Labels: silliman, teaching
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Friday, March 13, 2026
At one of my lowest depths in the days of the pandemic, when I was struggling mentally to just live through each day, I was tasked to teach a writing workshop for [bleep]. This was before I was diagnosed, by the way, and was properly medicated. [Or was this after I was diagnosed, but quit medication for more than a year because I thought I didn’t “really” need it? Who knows.]
But I accepted the challenge of a workshop, because the organizer is a very good friend, and I believed in the project. And the project paid. The thing was, the date of the event did not even sink into my consciousness, nor the brief. I forgot all about it. Eve of the first day, I was reminded by my friend that the whole thing was starting the next morning. Fine, I said. I can wing it. That next day, I realized it was to be a writing class with regional languages in mind. Fine, I can wing it, I thought. I've taught a workshop on writing in Binisaya before, anyway. Then when I was finally facing the participants, I realized that they came from all over the Philippines, and Bisaya would not be the primary language of most of them.
Dear God, I don’t know how I got through those three days just winging it — but I actually did supremely well, and their final activity, which involved a performance of some sort, was actually a highlight of the closing program. We even made a zine of their outputs! But I will never recommend doing the same thing to anyone. I was just lucky I had stock knowledge, and a well-spring of bravado and guts.
Please seek help if you feel like you’re flailing. I finally did a few years ago, and my life has been better because of it. [Although I still mostly wing it with life.]Labels: life, mental health, psychology
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
7:00 PM |
Let's Get Lit!
It’s the weekend, and I can honestly say the past week has been one of the busiest weeks I’ve had since the year started! A ton of academic work [with a looming graduation ceremony bearing down our necks.] And a lot of literary campaigns for the Dumaguete UNESCO City of Literature, particularly, and especially for the upcoming Dumaguete Literary Festival this April.
Today, March 13, we had a school caravan at NORSU, but last Tuesday, March 10, we did the same for Silliman University where I gave a talk educating Sillimanians about what it means for Dumaguete to be a UNESCO Creative City of Literature. Alana Narciso helped out by sketching the influence of Edilberto and Edith Tiempo on Philippine literature, and Kaycee Melon was part of a panel on AI and writing. Patch Puengan is the firebrand behind the Let’s Get Lit campaign. Medyo kapoy baya, pero padayon!
[Photos from The Weekly Sillimanian, slightly modified by me]
Labels: city of literature, dumaguete, dumalitfest, literature, philippine literature, UNESCO
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Wednesday, March 11, 2026
7:00 AM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 282.
Labels: poetry
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Friday, March 06, 2026
I feel so emotionally bruised right now, but I really needed to be firm. What do you when a student who has not been submitting any requirements whatsoever throughout the entire semester [in a class that uses the process approach], someone who you keep reminding again and again about these requirements [eliciting only vague promises], someone whom you have told that they can approach you during consultation hours for any problems they need advise for [and never did], someone who has been absent constantly ... suddenly approaches you at the eve of the class’ big presentation day, equipped with a sob story? I had to say no. His classmates worked hard to submit things on flexible time, and bending to his sob story would be highly unfair to them. I think there’s a lesson to be learned here about work and accountability. To [mis]quote the film director Jun Robles Lana, “You can be the most talented person in the world, but if you cannot submit things on time, you’re useless.”Labels: life, teaching
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Thursday, March 05, 2026
Tomorrow is the last day of the final exams week for graduating seniors at Silliman University, and the crunch is real. So many final requirements being wrapped up, my head is spinning, I have been working non-stop just to be on top of things academic since last week, but then so are my students. I try to just keep track of things, including my health, and hope for the best. But to echo everybody's complaint: this was an unusually short semester.Labels: life, silliman, teaching
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Wednesday, March 04, 2026
7:00 AM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 281.
Labels: philippine literature, poetry
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Wednesday, February 25, 2026
7:00 AM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 280.
Labels: philippine literature, poetry
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Wednesday, February 18, 2026
7:00 AM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 279.
Labels: philippine literature, poetry
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Thursday, February 12, 2026
10:42 PM |
I Love Wuthering Heights!
I absolutely love how Emerald Fennell fucked up this material and made it suit her narrative kinks. We should all take what inspires us and mangle it to form a new kind of beastly beauty. [The rule to follow is really, “Make it work!” and she did!] I love that the film is a thesis on toxicity masquerading as love and horniness, and yet also works hard on making you swoon. I love that our main characters are the most deplorable of the lot and I love that their toxicity almost destroys the partners they chose to marry just to spite each other, and yet still have these partners being strong and very certain even in their debasements. I love that Fennell made a virtual violation scene become a mockery of consent — that was some nimble narrative tinikling!]. I love that I love the supporting characters more than I love Cathy or Heathcliff. [My order of likes: Isabella Linton [her "But I am home" is fantastically delivered] > Mr. Earnshaw [who is an absolute delight!] > Edgar Linton [who is a saint!] > Nelly Dean > Jonathan > Catherine > Heathcliff.] I love Hong Chau’s complicated Oriental. I love the unexpected textures of this film, the marrying of offal pungency with carnal sexuality. I love that this is offending so many people. Snowflakes!Labels: film
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Wednesday, February 11, 2026
7:00 AM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 278.
Labels: poetry
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Monday, February 09, 2026
10:12 PM |
And It's Now Officially Out of Print!
I’m saying goodbye to my first children’s picture book, The Great Little Hunter, with fantastic illustrations by my constant collaborator, the Dumaguete visual artist Hersley-Ven Casero, and published by our local publisher Pinspired Art Souvenirs at the height of the pandemic. We’ve now sold the last copy of the second edition, and we absolutely have no plans to reprint. This book was always meant to be a special edition. When Pinspired came out with the hardbound volume in 2023, we only wanted to print a hundred copies, because it was really meant to be an art book disguised as a children’s book, and didn’t want it to be mass market affair. We numbered all copies and signed each one to make them unique — but to our astonishment, we sold out within a day of the launch, even though it was priced quite high! There was clamor to print more, but we didn’t want to renege on our promise of “uniqueness” to the initial buyers of the hardbound book. So we opted for a paperbound edition, with a higher print run meant only for one cycle. That cycle has been completed. Thank you to those who bought the book, and supported local literature! It was a privilege to introduce Ngayam and his monsters to the world.
[With Rappler journalist and 2024 Marshall McLuhan fellow Pia Ranada last Wednesday at the new Adamo! She made sure she bought books by local authors — and she got two of mine: Bamboo Girls and The Great Little Hunter! She got the last copies for sale of the children's book, by the way.]
[I'm actually working on a second picture book right now, collaborating with Hemrod Duran. And another one, with my Palanca-winning children's poetry, collaborating with Gayle Acar. But we're taking our time.]
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Wednesday, February 04, 2026
7:00 AM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 277.
Labels: poetry
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Wednesday, January 28, 2026
7:00 AM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 276.
Labels: philippine literature, poetry
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
GO TO OLDER POSTS
