taking the high road to kalimugtong
IN AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW, DIRECTOR “MES” DE GUZMAN 
TELLS DANIEL BETANCOURT ABOUT HIS EXCITING NEW PROJECTS
The best films stand alone without endless rounds of celebrity interviews or the hoopla of press coverage. The same goes for the film-makers. Filipino Ramon “Mes” de Guzman belongs to the breed who does not need a loudspeaker or a carnival to stand out.
Clad in jeans and a T-shirt, de Guzman’s unassuming demeanor hardly announces the dozens of national and international citations under his belt. Yet, hearing him talk, it is apparent that his success comes from heart and imagination — and that is the kind that speaks for itself.
IN THE BEGINNING
The director first began as a writer.De Guzman’s collection of short stories, Barriotic Punk, was penned during his master’s course at the University of the Philippines. The university press liked it so much they decided to publish the manuscript. It became an instant best-seller and is now on its second print-run.
Alongside the success of his short stories, de Guzman wrote a selection of screenplays which bagged four Carlos Palanca awards, the country’s highest literary commendation; and in 2004, his novel Rancho Dyanggo won the Grand Prize from the National Commission for Culture and the Arts.
Despite being on his way to the top of the writing profession, de Guzman made the gutsy move to put down his pen and picked up a camera instead to explore unfamiliar celluloid territory. In 2001, he worked on the 15-minute, 35-mm Batang Trapo, his first foray into film.
RAGS TO RECOGNITION
The story of Batang Trapo is spliced from the life of two young boys (Renante Huerte and William Cajilig) who sell rags at an intersection of one of Manila’s main thoroughfares. When the traffic lights stop, they walk to cars to peddle wares or beg for money. In between, they dream of an education and a meal at McDonald’s.
It took de Guzman eight months to shoot the short film. He cast real street kids, worked on film stock donated by Fuji, and edited the reel himself, something he admits he didn’t know anything about back then.
But the results were good enough to be caught on the global film radar. Batang Trapo was invited to be part of the selection at the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival in France. From there, it started traveling the short-film circuit, covering places from Singapore to New York. At the Marrakech Film Festival, it won the Golden Star for court-métrage.
WALK IN DARKNESS
The follow-up to Batang Trapo was the highly anticipated Diliman, de Guzman’s first digital feature-length film. It revolves around a young activist writer, haunted by his decision to start writing romance novels. His confusion is mirrored by mysterious sightings of a doppelganger, in the form of a suicidal neighbor.
However, despite the sucess of de Guzman’s earlier film, this black-and-white feature was not well-received, perhaps because of its long, reflective, philosophical style.
De Guzman acknowledges that the film mirrored his mood at the time, which stemmed from the burnout he experienced when traveling. Like all artists, he had entered a blue period. But Diliman seemed to have emptied him of such angst, rejuvenated his spirit and made him fit to return to “the road”.
THE ROAD TO KALIMUGTONG
His childhood was where de Guzman drew inspiration for his next project. He was born to a public school teacher mother in 1971, in the province of Nueva Vizcaya. The family was based there before moving to Manila. De Guzman clearly remembers asking his mother why some of the children always came to school wearing flip-flops caked in mud.
The Road to Kalimugtong is a simple, searing story about two orphan siblings who live in the mountainous region of Cordillera. Played by Rhenuel Ordonio and Analyn Bangsi-il, the children would walk some 15km everyday to go to school, come sunshine or rain.
Amazingly, this digital film was shot in just a week, without a script and with a crew of four.
De Guzman simply presented the actors — all amateurs — a list of scenarios, and they started talking impromptu before the camera, in Ilocano, their mother tongue.
For some, the roles were not too far from personal experience. Baguio City-born Hallen Joy Sumingwa was the real-life teacher who played the children’s mentor. In an interview for a northern Philippines newsblog, she revealed she had to walk through rice paddies and cross raging rivers just to go to school as a child.
These true-to-life characters and their interpretations certainly made an impression on film festival organizers around the world. Kalimugtong was screened to rave reviews at last year’s San Sebastian Film Festival, the biggest in Spain and the oldest in Europe. It received the Altadis New Director’s special mention, from a jury that included Mexican actress Patricia Reyes Spindola (Before Night Falls), Danish actor Per Nielsen (Dogville) and Scottish writer Gilbert Adair (Bel Canto).
The following October, the Film Critics Circle feted de Guzman with the Urian Award for Best Director and his colleague Noel Montano for Best in Production Design. Ordonio and Bangsi-il were also nominated in the Best Actor category.
In November, Kalimugtong was screened at the 7th Asiatica Filmmediale in Rome, Italy, following several runs at universities in Manila. De Guzman also plans to bring the film to provincial schools in an effort to promote the value of education. The film recently finished its tour of Nueva Vizcaya and Benguet.
BALIKBAYAN BOX
Though Kalimugtong has by no means reached the end of its shelf life, de Guzman has another surprise brewing in his pocket. The yet-to-be-launched Balikbayan Box will complete the trilogy he had begun with Trapo and Kalimugtong.
For the upcoming movie, de Guzman went to Nueva Ecija in Central Luzon to film the impact of the Philippines’ unending mass emigration. Official figures from the National Statistics Office state that over 1.3 million Filipinos are working overseas and this phenomenon has the most pronounced effect in the countryside.
These days, new businesses and concrete housing in the provinces mainly belong to the emigrants who have made their money abroad and invested in the land upon their return. Though the financial rewards for those who leave are undeniable, emigration on this scale means a generation of Filipinos grow up without their parents, and the towns they leave behind experience a social void. Balikbayan Box was previewed at the 36th Rotterdam International Film Festival in the Netherlands last February. Shown under the “Cinema of the Future: Sturm and Drang” cycle, it shared the bill with other projects by young avant-garde film-makers from Russia, France, UK, Malaysia and another Filipino director, Raya Martin.
FILMING RESPONSIBLY
Like Trapo and Kalimugtong, de Guzman’s latest work revolves upon a socio-political issue, a feature of Philippine cinema that is understandably common and that, some argue, has given the country’s filmic output a degree of predictability.
To a certain extent, de Guzman agrees, but he contends that it reflects his milieu in the way that German and Korean directors produce from their own distinct surroundings and histories, providing a texture that is evident in their films. The same goes for Filipino films, he explains:
“These stories [our stories], are not fiction. They really happen. They exist. And you cannot cover them up or escape from them,” he says. “As a writer and as a human being, I have a responsibility to give [my works] a social role.”
He feels fortunate having grown up both in the countryside and in the city because he has a wellspring of inspiration to utilize.
He does not need to research his material; he has witnessed it first-hand. And you can see the relative ease with which he moves from the rural to the urban, and back.
He also attributes the success of his films to his training as a writer. There are many directors working, some much younger than himself, but the problem that he sees with their projects is the rush into the experimental, skipping over an important aspect: narrative.
Story-telling, a talent normally polished in literature and writing classes, is essential in giving cohesion to a series of images. A film should not only attract the eye; it must also involve the brain and the heart.
KID STUFF
In Balikbayan Box, we see one of the boys from Batang Trapo again, now older and wandering through abandoned provincial homes instead of Metro Manilan streets. De Guzman says it is just a coincidence that he worked with children again. In all sincerity, he actually doesn’t like them. “I have nephews and nieces,” he jokingly complains. But the reason he keeps children on board his projects is the “magic” they possess and bring to the film. He gives them some direction, and they face the camera and immediately blend in.
“Kuhang-kuha (They get it exactly right).” Maybe it is that. But perhaps it is also the child inside de Guzman that easily enables him to create a special rapport with his young protagonists.
De Guzman acknowledges that he has been lucky to be successful as a film-maker, even though his career is officially just six years long. He is very careful not to rest on his laurels.
In any case, he has other things in mind. He wants to paint. He wants to sculpt. He wants to make the biggest Pinoy action flick, car chases and all.
The way he talks about it, with the usual glint and glimmer in his eyes, he is certainly very convincing. And he doesn’t need to hire a loudspeaker or carnival to announce this to the rest of the world.
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