How an Ilonggo indie film cottage industry grew and grew

By Menchu Aquino Sarmiento

RIGHT UNDER Imperial Manila’s cultural radar, the Bantayan Film Festival in Guimbal, Iloilo is now on its 14^th year, making it even older than the Cultural Center of the Philippines’ Cinemalaya by at least a year. True, the Bantayan output are all short films, budgeted in the low five figures. But it’s all part of the kasadyahan (merry-making) to celebrate the town’s Bantayan Festival. The festival itself began in 1998, a five year build-up to Guimbal’s tricentennial in 2003. It’s called Bantayan because of a centuries-old tradition of watching out for seafaring marauders along the Guimbal coastline. Sentries would sound the alarm by pounding on the guimbal: a hollowed out coconut tree trunk with a deer skin drumhead held fast with maguey vines.

Towards the end of Guimbal’s tricentennial year, in December 2003, then mayor Oscar “Richard” Garin, Jr. (now Iloilo 1^st District Congressman) was watching the Metro-Manila Film Festival awards on TV, and had a eureka moment. He decided that their town, a 4^th class municipality with 33,000 people, should make movies too. Serendipitously, Guimbalanon Cirio Ray “Rayboy” Defante Gibraltar, a Mowelfund (Movie Workers Welfare Foundation) alumnus, was on the mayor’s staff. Mr. Gibraltar had sought a respite in his hometown, being burned out from toxic production work in Manila.

After the holidays, Mr. Gibraltar started a search for participants for the 2004 Bantayan Film Festival, looking for home-grown films on bravery and heroism. Teachers from each of the four high schools (Camangahan, Igbaras Particion, Nalundan and the National High School in the Poblacion) with high school students in tow, were conscripted to participate in an introductory film production workshop conducted gratis by Philippine cinema luminaries such as Bacoleño directors Peque Gallaga and Khryss Adalia, and cinematographer Ogi Sugatan. But all the attendees wanted to be in front of the camera, acting. No one wanted to direct or to shoot, so the mayor directed the teachers to get behind the camera themselves.

“We knew nothing about filmmaking, or even about films outside of Hollywood or the local mainstream,” recalls Margie Bisnar, a Filipino teacher at the Particion High School.

“Each of the teacher-led high school teams had to come up with several short film concepts. We chose the best four to get made,” Gibraltar relates.

They had barely two months to prepare. The mayor gave each team P5,000 as their total movie production budget.

“The only camera in town belonged to an OFW family. That Sony Handicam Hi8 was passed around among the four teams,” laughs Malu Nalupano, a language arts teacher from Camangahan, who had herself spent seven years working as a domestic helper in Hong Kong.

Shooting took place outside of the few remaining “uncompromised school days” when no absences were allowed. The newbie filmmakers, their family and friends, also acted in each other’s productions and sponsored meals.

Mr. Gibraltar had to edit all their footage on a PC in the LGU office, with software donated by E.J. Salcedo who owned a production house in Manila. The first-time directors hovered over Mr. Gibraltar’s shoulder, or napped on the wooden floor as they awaited their turn.

That first Bantayan Film Festival in 2004, held on a balmy evening in the town plaza, was encouraging. The winners got trophies by rank, but the same modest P1,000 prize. By 2005, residents who were not from the high school, like seaman Remuel Gellegani, had joined. His documentary, Salome, about an abandoned wife who overcomes the many challenges life has thrown her way, won first prize in St. La Salle’s Piaya Film Festival. Bubon by Skim Guevarra, who is the current president of the Guimbal Film Society, got 3^rd place.

By 2007, there were six Guimbalanon film production teams. The LGU bought its own mini-DV camera. In 2008, each high school got a digital camera for its SPA (Special Program for the Arts). The budget had grown to P10,000 per production team and the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) gave another P150,000 as part of the Cinema Rehiyon program spearheaded by Teddy Co, who now heads the NCCA Sub-Commission on the Arts. Mr. Co considers Cinema Rehiyon a mere aggregator of all these very varied films coming from various nooks and crannies of the Philippines. The Bantayan Film Festival remains nativist and indigenous to Guimbal. The dialogue is in Kinaray-a, with English or Filipino subtitles.

By 2008, the Guimbal Film Society settled on four genres: horror, action-thriller, family comedy, and, of course, rom-com. From the initially clueless bunch of high school students and teachers, a crop of young Guimbalanon professionals whose backgrounds had some connection to communication or media arts were making films. It was timely, as Rayboy Gibraltar had just received a Cinema One Originals grant. He moved back to Manila to make Wanted: Border, which won first prizes for both the screenplay and direction in 2009.

Now, there were new filmmakers like Arnold Casas, owner of the town’s portrait photography studio, who had started out just helping his neighbors with the videography. In 2006, he took a workshop and made his first short, Regalo, in 2007. Audy Guerrero, a call center agent, had some theater experience at the Central Philippine University. After a workshop in 2010, he got hooked on film. He started in 2011, as part of the production team of Abroad by Timay Villarta. Then he directed Transferee (2015; about school bullying) and Perdubal (2016; about delinquent teens). His 2016 film Hinulsol (Regret) won 3^rd Best Picture and the Best Director prize for him in Cinekasimanwa, the Western Visayas film festival.

There are even those whose livelihood and educational backgrounds are so far-removed from the world of indie films, that only passion must drive them. Louis Gargarita, a waiter at a local resort, started his own production company made up of his fellow wait staff, cooks, and gardeners.

Now there are over a dozen Guimbalanon film production teams. The LGU-sponsored workshops in directing, cinematography, production design, editing, screenplay writing, and acting continue at the start of each year. Generous souls like Oskie Nava, John Iremil Teodoro, Ned Trespeces, Cesar Hernando, Elvert Bañares, Nick Deocampo, Moira Lang, Tara Illenberger, T.M. Malones, Bebs Gohetia, Topel Lee, Hector Macaso, Menchie Robles, and Sunshine Teodoro keep on sharing their expertise.

After their Bantayan premieres, the little films may get shown at the Iloilo Cinematheque and in other Western Visayas venues through the Cinekasimanwa directed by Mr. Banares. In 2016, NCCA’s Co curated a Cinema Rehiyon Western Visayas program at Quezon City’s TriNoma which showcased Eden Gilpo’s Lumon (surreal horror; Ms. Gilpo is now with the Iloilo Division of City Schools as a coordinator) and Timay Villarta’s Kagat (2012; a fanboy homage to The Walking Dead).

In 2017, the spotlight shown unusually bright on the 13^th Bantayan Film Festival with the attendance of VIPs like Film Development Council of the Philippines (FDCP) Chair Liza Diño-Seguerra and FDCP Executive Director Wilfredo Manalang, and Quezon City Film Development Commission Executive Director Ed Lejano, Jr. (whose roots are also in Iloilo). Ms. Diño-Seguerra marveled at how Guimbal had realized her vision for Philippine local cinema. Writer-actor-producer Moira Lang, who had once facilitated a workshop there, was blown away by how far they had come.

“To the Guimbal Film Society,” she posted. “Wala kayong katulad. (There is no one quite like you.) Seeing your homegrown films, works of pure love and imagination, and witnessing your whole town ooh and ahh and shriek and roar and clap at them, may just have saved me.”

For no matter how terrible things may seem for in the Philippines, art may yet save us, even from ourselves.

The 14^th Bantayan Film Festival of Guimbal, Iloilo is from April 2 to 5.