CONCERNS about the health of Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) Governor Nestor A. Espenilla, Jr. have not roiled market sentiment, with players still expecting a firm hand on monetary policy and financial market reforms to continue.
Mr. Espenilla on Sunday bared his bout with early-stage tongue cancer that was diagnosed in November 2017. The central bank chief, 59, said he is now cancer-free after surgery and radiation therapy, with full recovery expected in a month or so even as he now bears some speaking difficulty.
Sought for comment, economists and fund managers said the market has not been shaken by the news, given the assurance that Mr. Espenilla is recovering.
“No jitters. We believe it is minor and he healed,” said Eduardo V. Francisco, BDO Capital & Investment Corp.
“At this point, I do not think the situation is a hindrance to continuity. As long as he can fundamentally carry out his duties as chief banks regulator, I see no immediate concern about the future of monetary policy and central banking in the country,” Ruben Carlo O. Asuncion, chief economist at the Union Bank of the Philippines, said in an e-mail, even as he noted that such news could leave some “unsettled.”
A bond trader also said that Mr. Espenilla’s health concern will “not affect” markets, even as another noted there could be some “disruption” should his condition worsen.
“Meanwhile, it’s work as usual for me. Onward with financial market reforms,” Mr. Espenilla said after sharing his story with reporters.
Mr. Espenilla took the helm of the central bank in July 2017 after he was appointed successor to former BSP Governor Amando M. Tetangco, Jr. He has been on a pilgrimage in Israel with his wife and friends since Feb. 16.
“I don’t see any adverse market reaction. The decline of stock prices [from Feb. 21 up to early Monday afternoon] is a mere continuation of the consolidation we’ve been seeing the last few days. I think monetary policy transcends beyond the governor’s health,” added Augusto M. Cosio, Jr., president at First Metro Asset Management, Inc.
The Philippine Stock Exchange index closed 0.38% higher at 8,499.98 on Monday, while the peso strengthened to end P51.86 to the dollar from its P51.89 finish on Friday.
“Remember that there’s a complete macroeconomic staff that supports policy decision of the Monetary Board. The gradual increase in interest rates is still what market participants expect,” Mr. Cosio added.
The Monetary Board opted to keep policy rates steady at 2.5-3.5% during its Feb. 8 review. This was followed by an “operational” cut in bank reserve requirement the following week, which Mr. Espenilla said was in keeping with plans to deepen the debt market and should not be taken as an easing of monetary policy.
Bank economists expect the BSP to raise interest rates this year to keep up with rising inflation, given expectations that prices will surge past four percent for the full year.
In August last year, the BSP and other government agencies unveiled an 18-month road map meant to deepen the local debt market. The goal is to provide an alternative source of financing for companies, especially for long-term borrowing for big-ticket infrastructure projects.
The central bank has also been leading efforts to spur wider use of digital platforms for payments and fund transfers, as part of its financial inclusion drive.
By Santiago J. Arnaiz Multimedia Producer andGretchen Malalad*
LATE LAST YEAR, Apple, Inc. took down a number of Filipino-developed mobile games after over a hundred organizations called for their removal, claiming they “normalized mass murders and impunity through virtual games.”
These games, the groups said, actively promoted murder, extrajudicial killings, violence and the Philippine war on drugs.
While no longer on Apple’s platform, the games are still available on Android, Google’s mobile operating system and the most widely used platform in the country. Since they were launched 18 months ago, these games have been downloaded millions of times.
Tsip Bato: Ang Bumangga Giba!, a game endorsed and co-developed by the Philippine National Police (PNP) itself, had more than 500,000 downloads before it was taken down from the Apple marketplace.
Launched on Aug. 8, 2016, just six weeks after President Rodrigo R. Duterte’s inauguration, Tsip Bato shows a cartoon PNP Chief Ronald “Bato” M. Dela Rosa barreling through an endless highway and shooting criminals.
The PNP billed Tsip Bato an “entertaining and educational game” meant to teach children the dangers of doing drugs. The game features cartoonish acts of violence against drug suspects, with the avatars of Messrs. Dela Rosa and Duterte shown running over the suspects with a truck, gunning them down with an assault rifle, or blowing them up with a missile launcher.
The game was released when the administration’s drug was just over a month old, and the police and unidentified gunmen were hunting down and killing scores of suspected drug users and dealers in Metro Manila’s poorest communities.
These games may seem harmless and fun out of context, said the 131 human rights and drug user rights groups that signed a petition against Tsip Bato and similar mobile apps.
But set against the backdrop of the ongoing war on drugs — a war that’s seen, and continues to see, thousands die — the games take on a more sinister tone.
Tsip Bato, in particular, raises concerns for being a government-sponsored project, specifically in its purported goal of educating the youth on how to fight drugs in their communities. By focusing on killing, the game signals that extreme solutions are needed to fight the drug scourge. Wittingly or not, it justifies, and in the view of the games’ critics, also valorizes and normalizes the drug war killings.
Hoping to capitalize on the meteoric rise of President Mr. Duterte’s popularity and his campaign to end the illegal drug trade, developer Ben Joseph Banta got his team working on a game built around the PNP’s new mascot, P01 (Police Officer 1) Bato. Mr. Banta had previously found success developing games for the Philippine Basketball Association and was on the lookout for his next big project.
In the early days of the Duterte presidency, pictures of the bald, wide-smiling mascot based on Mr. Dela Rosa went viral on Facebook and Mr. Banta saw it as an opportunity to garner some attention for his growing game development company, Ranida Games.
The Ranida Games team spent weeks designing a basic “endless runner” with P01 Bato zooming down a highway collecting tokens. Teaser videos of the prototype began to garner attention on Facebook — so much attention, in fact, that the PNP took notice and reached out.
“I received an e-mail from the PNP and, honestly, I was quite scared to open it,” Mr. Banta said.
“After working on that game for weeks, I didn’t want it to be pulled out.”
But instead of the cease-and-desist order he was expecting, Mr. Banta got an invitation from Chief Superintendent Gilberto DC Cruz, then-director of the Police Community Relations Group, to work with his agency on making their prototype an official game of the PNP.
Mr. Cruz says he bonds with his children by playing video games with them. Noticing that they were constantly playing games on their mobile phones, he toyed with the idea of creating mobile games as a way to bring the anti-drug campaign to younger audiences.
Stumbling upon Ranida’s prototype, he believed he had found just the way to do it.
“The game back then was really raw,” Mr. Banta said.
“There were a lot of ideas coming from [the PNP] — the looks, following [Mr. Dela Rosa’s] clothes, his biceps, the aesthetics and messages they wanted to appear.”
Mr. Banta said the PNP wanted a strong-looking protagonist to match the high-octane gameplay.
Together the team designed a game that it hoped would promote the government’s deadly crackdown on drug users and peddlers, while still being fun to play. The result was Tsip Bato: Ang Bumangga Giba! — its name a suggestion from Mr. Dela Rosa himself.
The game made headlines when it was released, with footage of Mr. Dela Rosa gleefully controlling his gun-toting digital avatar spreading through social media. Thanks to the news coverage, Tsip Bato pulled in 195,000 downloads in its first month, peaking at a rate of four thousand users an hour.
Mr. Cruz attributes its popularity to the fact that the game is just fun to play.
“I asked my children when they started playing it: They loved running and avoiding those obstacles, and they loved the shooting. And they were learning,” he said.
“They told me that they saw those ads and they saw those signages inside the game. ‘Avoid drugs’, ‘drugs kill’, ‘say no to drugs’. I was happy when they told me that they saw those.”
In the game, the endless highway that players navigate is lined with billboards plastered with anti-drug-use messages. The main menu has Chief Bato (or Mr. Duterte himself, depending on the player’s chosen character) standing on a podium bearing the words Oplan Tokhang, tying the game to the PNP’s real-life campaign.
A student of the University of Caloocan City plays Tsip Bato. — SANTIAGO J. ARNAIZ/GRETCHEN MALALAD*
According to Mr. Cruz, the game is a success because it teaches players a lesson about the ills of drugs. This, he says, is the main intention of the game.
The game’s messaging does warn against the dangers of drugs, but it doesn’t spell out what those dangers might be.
What it offers instead is the image of a police chief taking down drug suspects with assault rifles and rocket launchers.
Jocelyn “Joie” A. Sales is the chairperson of the game development program at iAcademy, where she teaches not only the skills needed to create video games, but also the ethics involved.
According to Ms. Sales, Tsip Bato is a very fun game. And it’s the fact that it’s so fun that makes it so concerning.
“The thin line between studying and learning is fun,” she said. “When you cross that line, and they’re having fun while they’re studying, that’s the time that they’d actually accept anything.”
She calls this the “flow state,” a technical term for the point of extreme focus when players become actively engaged with what they’re interacting with. In this state, Ms. Sales says players become incredibly susceptible to messaging.
This would be a good thing for a game so saturated with slogans admonishing drug use.
But Ms. Sales explains that because the player’s focus is on gameplay and the messages sent there, details elsewhere get lost in translation.
Gaming companies hoping to capitalize on the popularity of the drug war, she said, may not be sensitive to the ethical implications and psychological impact of the games that they are putting on the market.
“Developers should be very careful as to what they want to give these kids,” said Ms. Sales.
“Kids are like sponges… If you actually use the flow state to your advantage and you are an unethical person, you can manipulate that person. When they’re in that state, you can put any kind of image you want.”
In the case of Tsip Bato, the central message presented is not the anti-drug poster lost in the background as the character speeds by, but the image of the man in the middle of the road, gunned down or blown up by the player himself.
Alfred Cholo Peteros is a 19-year-old studying communication at the University of Caloocan City. Like many of his classmates, Mr. Peteros lives in Caloocan, a city known to be one of the hot spots of the war on drugs.
Mr. Peteros says he’s a fan of mobile games and so was thrilled to see a fun, locally produced app like Tsip Bato. He, along with some of his classmates, enjoyed taking on the role of Mr. Dela Rosa’s avatar in killing criminals.
It was only upon further reflection that he grew concerned the game might actually present a skewed version of reality. According to him, if children were to play games like this, they might imagine that this is what the drug war is about, that this is what the criminals look like.
“In reality, this game isn’t what we see every day,” Mr. Peteros said.
“It isn’t what you hear or see on the news.”
In reality, the drug war is butchered bodies wrapped in packing tape. It‘s bloody crime scenes. It’s murdered youth and grieving families left in their wake.
On the evening of August 16 last year, 17-year-old Kian delos Santos was shot and killed by plainclothes officers in Caloocan City. Official reports claimed he was an armed drug runner who shot at the police as they gave chase.
But CCTV footage showed he was dragged to the spot where his corpse would later be found. One eyewitness claimed the boy had begged for his life before he was beaten and murdered. At the end of the investigation, the autopsy showed that the Delos Santos boy was shot three times: two shots to the ear and one to the back of the head — execution style.
Kian delos Santos’ murder triggered an outrage from the public and other sectors of the government alike.
But the killings continue. According to the PNP, nearly 50 people suspected of using and selling drugs were killed by officers of the law in the past two months.
“There’s something missing to make [Tsip Bato] actually educational,” said 18-year-old Valerie Rosaldo, Mr. Pateros’ classmate in the University of Caloocan City.
“I don’t think it’s advisable for kids to play it. It’s still about killing people.”
The PNP isn’t the first government agency to look to mobile games to promote an agenda.
Countries all over the world have been developing games as a way to tap into the minds of their citizens for years.
The most striking example of this comes out of China.
In 2015, the Chinese government launched Sesame Credit, a joint venture between game development company Tencent and Ant Financial (an affiliate of e-commerce giant Alibaba) that hopes to attach a social score, much like the American credit score system, to Chinese citizens.
But instead of tracking credit history, this system rewards citizens with points for acts deemed patriotic and demerits for acts that are considered unpatriotic.
All of this is based, in part, on data gleaned from citizens’ social media activity. In effect, the users’ entire life becomes the game. The app is simply the reward system.
For current users of Sesame Credit, a higher score garners real-world incentives, like discounts on online shopping. But in a move straight out of techno-dystopian TV series Black Mirror, that score will also dictate what services users can get from government offices, their likelihood of getting a loan approved and even the range of job offers they can access.
Sesame Credit accounts will be mandatory for Chinese citizens come 2020.
While mobile games like Tsip Bato are far less sophisticated and overtly controlling than Sesame Credit aims to be, any game mechanics that reward pro-government actions and enforce government agendas can only point to one thing: propaganda.
According to PNP’s Mr. Cruz, it was difficult grappling with the possible outcomes of this game.
“Is it worth it to create a game like this? Can we achieve what we really want to achieve?” he said.
“Maybe, instead of them learning, we promote a culture of violence.”
Mr. Banta , the developer, said that glorifying violence was never the goal of the development team.
“We created the game, made it fun for the kids to be interested in it, so they could receive the message,” he said.
“So we added features in the game that would make it fun. Shooting criminals was to make the game fun, so we can solidify the gameplay.”
Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook never formally responded to the organizations, led by the Asian Network of People Who Use Drugs, that wrote the October 2017 open letter calling for the takedown of five mobile games, including Tsip Bato. But a month later, Apple silently complied with their request.
The same week, Mr. Dela Rosa was quoted welcoming the decision to take them down, saying the games misrepresented the point of the government’s anti-drug efforts.
Given the chance to change any aspect of Tsip Bato, Mr. Cruz said he would want to somehow incorporate rehabilitation efforts into its gameplay. “Once the criminal was placed there, points will be given when they were rehabilitated and got out”, he said.
If Mr. Cruz were to have his way, the PNP — and the government at large — would continue exploring mobile games as a way to reach the community.
To that end, Ms. Sales suggests exercising caution.
“There are so many things you need to look into,” Ms. Sales said.
“That involves a lot of people, not just a few [game] developers. It involves psychologists. It involves educators. You can’t just publish a game right away because it’s fun.”
Following the initial outcry against Tsip Bato, nonprofit advocacy group Drug Policy Alliance has called for Google to follow Apple’s lead in taking down the pro-drug war games from the former’s Play Store.
Hannah Hetzer, senior international policy manager of the Drug Policy Alliance, called these games inhumane and horrifying.
“This is a real tragedy, not something to be turned into a game,” Ms. Hetzer said.
“If these game developers wanted to be helpful in reaching out to youth, as they have claimed to, they should design games that give real, honest and evidence-based information about drugs, health and harm reduction, not create games that glorify murder.”
Earlier this year, Google announced it had taken down tens of thousands of apps from its Play Store for “containing or promoting inappropriate content.”
But Tsip Bato, along with a number of similar games, is still available on the Android marketplace.
*Gretchen Malalad is a freelance journalist and videographer.
This story was produced in collaboration with the PCIJ Story Fund.
MANILA ELECTRIC Co. (Meralco) reported a net income of P4.46 billion in the fourth quarter of 2017, up 27% compared with P3.5 billion a year earlier as new consumer accounts and high consumer spending boosted electricity sales, the distribution utility said on Monday.
“[Fourth-quarter 2017] sales volume [at 10,701 gigawatt-hours] is 7% higher than 10,039 GWh in the fourth quarter of 2016 mainly due to new residential accounts and ramp-up of accounts energized in 2016 complemented by high consumer spending,” said Betty C. Siy-Yap, Meralco senior vice-president and chief finance officer, in a press conference.
Adjusted for one-time transactions, core net income rose by 5% to P4.84 billion for the October to December period, from P4.62 billion previously.
“For the commercial sector, the real estate, hotels and restaurants and retail trade drove the volume growth,” Mr. Siy-Yap said. “On the industrial front, semiconductor, basic metals, food and beverage industries continued to provide additional volumes.”
For full-year 2017, Meralco core net income rose 3% to P20.2 billion, before exceptional items. Reported net income was up 6% to P20.38 billion.
Core income excludes the effect of foreign exchange gains or losses, impairment charges, mark-to-market adjustments, gain on disposal of investment and other one-off items.
“2017 turned out to be another good year for Meralco,” said Oscar S. Reyes, Meralco president and chief executive officer, citing an improvement on both the commercial, operating and financial fronts.
Consolidated energy sales volumes went up by 5% to 42,102 GWh despite the cooler temperatures during the first four months of 2017. Meralco breached the 41,000-mark at 41,528 GWh, while unit Clark Electric Distribution Corp. posted 574 GWh.
Mr. Reyes attributed higher energy sales to the “combined effects” of a growing customer base and positive economic conditions, with gross domestic product growth of 6.7%, moderate inflation at 3.2% and the softening of the peso at P49.93 to a dollar. He also cited stable power supply and lower power plant outages.
The Meralco official said billed customers continued to grow at a healthy 5%, with a year-end tally of 6.3 million accounts or a net additional 288,000 customers.
Mr. Reyes said 2017 ended with no significant rate issues, with the average retail price recorded at P8.03 per kilowatt-hour (kWh), the second lowest since 2010, although P0.53 per kWh higher than the 2016 rate.
Gross revenues increased by 10% to P282.6 billion in 2017, as result of higher volume and pass-through generation charges resulting from rising fuel prices and the weakening of the peso.
“Electricity growth continues to be a barometer of the economy’s expansion. In 2017, consumption on the demand side, and services on the supply side, remained to be the mainstay of the economy, contributing to the 6.7% GDP growth,” Meralco Chairman Manuel V. Pangilinan said in a statement.
Mr. Pangilinan said Meralco is well-positioned to support the government and enable the government’s “Build, Build, Build” infrastructure program aside from the anticipated approval of unsolicited proposals covering rehabilitation, maintenance and operations of the country’s infrastructure facilities.
On Monday, shares in Meralco rose by 0.25% or 80 centavos to close at P320 each.
Meralco’s controlling stakeholder, Beacon Electric Asset Holdings, Inc., is partly owned by PLDT, Inc. Hastings Holdings, Inc., a unit of PLDT Beneficial Trust Fund subsidiary MediaQuest Holdings, Inc., has interest in BusinessWorld through the Philippine Star Group, which it controls.
By Krista A.M. Montealegre, National Correspondent
A SUBSIDIARY of Ayala Corp. acquired a majority stake in a manufacturer of innovative solar solutions that will enable the conglomerate to bolster its global manufacturing presence and put the company in a position to disrupt the solar energy industry.
In a disclosure to the stock exchange, the Ayala group said AC Industrial Technology Holdings, Inc. purchased a controlling stake in Merlin Solar Technologies, Inc. where the group made a minority investment in 2016.
AC Industrials, through subsidiary ACI Solar Holdings NA, will own 78.2% of Merlin after the transaction and completion of other related activities.
ACI Solar held an 8.2% interest in Merlin prior to the transaction, according to regulatory filings.
Based in San Jose, California, Merlin is developing products with high durability, flexibility, and increased solar power output using differentiated solar solutions.
This will allow AC Industrials to produce potentially innovative applications in areas with demanding environments, such as transportation and infrastructure — areas of investment of the Ayala group.
Merlin has manufacturing facilities in Thailand and the company plans to expand in the Philippines through Integrated Microelectronics, Inc. (IMI), a subsidiary of AC Industrials.
The acquisition is in line with the Ayala group’s strategy to “boost its presence in the global and domestic industrial technologies spaces by capitalizing on opportunities arising from disruptive technological shifts, changing industry landscapes, and increasing demand from end-users.”
AC Industrials Chief Executive Officer Arthur R. Tan said Merlin’s patent and intellectual property portfolio allows the Ayala group to offer a differentiated value proposition in solar which, when combined with AC Industrials’ core strength of providing manufacturing scale through IMI’s global platform, will give the group an opportunity to disrupt the solar energy industry.
“The proprietary solar solutions that Merlin brings to the table are key to AC Industrials’ strategy of working on disruptive technologies, and aligns with the Ayala group’s drive to invest in emerging, innovative spaces, such as in e-commerce and (financial technology),” Ayala and AC Industrials Chairman Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala was quoted in the statement as saying.
“In addition, Merlin is highly complementary to various Ayala businesses, such as the renewable energy generation under AC Energy (Holdings, Inc.). We strongly believe that Merlin’s solar technology has the potential to profoundly impact people’s lives in the coming years,” he added.
The Ayala group consolidated its automotive and manufacturing assets under AC Industrials last year after transferring its ownership of IMI to its wholly owned subsidiary.
Ayala Corp. has diversified business interests that include real estate, financial services, telecommunications, water infrastructure development and electronics manufacturing. It has recently entered new sectors with investments in power generation, transport infrastructure development, health care, education and e-commerce.
Shares in AC added P5 or 0.47% to close at P1,065 apiece on Monday.
CEBU LANDMASTERS, Inc. (CLI) unveiled two projects in Negros island with a combined sales value of P3.54 billion, as it looks to provide housing for employees of the booming information technology-business process management (IT-BPM) sector in the area.
In a statement on Monday, the listed property firm said it will develop a residential condominium project in Bacolod City called MesaVirre Garden Residences, consisting of 1,072 units covering 22 to 40 square meters (sq.m.) of space. The units will be spread out across three buildings, valued at P2.63 billion.
The launch of MesaVirre Garden Residences would bring the total number of units under the housing brand to 4,474, as CLI also has projects under the brand in Cebu City, Cagayan de Oro, and Davao City.
CLI’s second project in Negros Occidental is Casa Mira Coast. Under CLI’s brand of economic townhouses, the project in Sibulan offers 543 townhouse units sized from 38 to 58 sq.m., with sales projected to reach P908 million. The location is near Dumaguete City, considered a destination for IT-BPM firms.
Housing units under the Casa Mira brand will hit 5,300 upon completion of the Sibulan project. Other projects under the brand are located in different parts of Cebu, namely Naga, Talisay, Guadalupe, and Tabangon.
CLI’s decision to put up more projects in the Visayas region comes as IT-BPM firms look for more expansion opportunities in the country outside of Metro Manila.
“We’re seeing a lot of economic growth in the South and where there is growth, demand for housing follows especially among the emerging middle class,” CLI President and Chief Executive Officer Jose R. Soberano III was quoted as saying in a statement.
The company cited a study by real estate consulting firm Leechiu Property Consultants (LPC), which revealed that 11% or about 644,000 sq.m. of office space set to come online from 2018 to 2023 will be in Cebu and other parts of Visayas. IT-BPM firms will most likely be taking up these spaces, according to LPC.
“We are now replicating our housing successes in Cebu in other cities in the Visayas with relative ease given our strong relationships in the area and keen understanding of the market,” Mr. Soberano said.
This year, the company targets to launch a total of 16 projects, as Mr. Soberano noted it is “definitely the right time” to continue developing the real estate market in the Visayas-Mindanao region.
CLI aims to book a P1.7-billion profit in 2018, 41.7% higher than its projected net income in 2017. Revenues are expected to reach P5.3 billion, 47% higher than its revenue goal of P3.6 billion in 2017.
For the first three quarters of 2017, CLI’s net income stood at P960 million, as revenues came in at P2.77 billion for the period.
Shares in CLI gained two centavos or 0.44% to close at P4.52 apiece at the stock exchange on Monday. — Arra B. Francia
RETURNING for its fourth year, the Sinag Maynila Film Festival presents five full-length features which have yet to grace Philippine cinemas (but which may have been presented in international film festivals) alongside six short films and six documentaries.
“[This year] we didn’t consider the year of production,” festival director Brillante Ma. Mendoza said during the launch on Feb. 21 at SM City North EDSA, Quezon City.
Sinag Maynila was the brainchild of Mr. Mendoza and Solar Entertainment president Wilson Y. Tieng and was initially started to screen films that appeal to an international audience.
“Sinag Maynila is here not to compete with other film festivals. We are here to become venues for filmmakers so they can show their films,” Mr. Mendoza said.
“We decided to make it less restrictive because, at the end of the day, we want to have good films regardless of [date of] origin or anything. The only [stipulation] is that it hasn’t been shown yet in the Philippines,” Mr. Tieng explained.
Included in this year’s festival, which runs from March 7 to 15, is Ralston Jover’s Bomba (2017) which tells the story of a deaf/mute taking on the toughest jobs made more difficult because of his condition. Bomba’s Allen Dizon and Angelline Nicholle Sanoy were named Best Actor and Actress respectively at the 33rd Warsaw International Film Festival in Poland.
Meanwhile, Abomination (2015) by Yam Laranas is a story about the search for identity. A woman found unconscious in a city street is brought to a psychiatric hospital. There she claims to be someone — who it turns out has been brutally murdered two months before. She then escapes in order to prove her identity.
El Peste (2018) by Richard Somes is about a man who works for a pest control company who enters into an illicit relationship with a client. The film, which has been in development since 2013, will be shown for the first time in theaters at Sinag Maynila.
Melodrama/Random/Melbourne! (2018) by Matthew Victor Pastor — about a feminist documentarist, a pickup artist, and a virgin, and how the lines between reality and fiction blur and blood is shed on the streets of Melbourne — is billed as “Cinema-o-ke,” with lyrics of songs in the film shown on screen.
Completing the Sinag Maynila lineup of full-length finalists is Joselito Altarejos’ Tale of the Lost Boys (2017), about the friendship and romance between a Filipino mechanic and a Taiwanese aborigine, highlighted by a road trip which reconnects them with their mothers and the discovery of identity and freedom.
Aside from the full-length films, Sinag Maynila will also be screening six short films: Cesar and Magda (2017) by Pamela Barrios, Firestarter (2017) by Jill Urdaneta, Halusinasyon (2018) by John Agcalis, Kalye FM (2017) by Tom Nava, and, Pompoms (2017) by Angelo Amar and Odin Fernandez.
Completing this year’s festival are six documentaries: Am-amma (2017) by Dexter Macaraeg, Halaga (2018) by Vandam Arambulo, Mahal (2017) by Janine Santos, Journeyman (2017) Albert Almendralejo, Tsuper (2018) by Rina Abary, and Voltaire (2018) by Jaimee Bernardo.
Sinag Maynila will run from March 7-15 in select cinemas in SM North EDSA, SM Manila, SM Bacoor, SM Megamall, SM Fairview, SM Sta. Mesa, SM Southmall, and SM Mall of Asia.
For more information, visit www.sinagmaynila.com or follow its social media pages. — Zsarlene B. Chua
BERLIN — Touch Me Not, an experimental Romanian docudrama exploring sexual intimacy and the fears around it, won the Golden Bear top prize at the Berlin film festival Saturday in a strong year for female filmmakers and women’s stories.
First-time director Adina Pintilie, 38, clutching the trophy after her surprise triumph, said the movie was intended to “invite you, the viewer, to dialogue” with its graphic portrayals of nudity and disability.
US filmmaker Wes Anderson clinched the best director Silver Bear prize for Isle of Dogs, an animated allegory with political bite and an early favorite among the 19 contenders.
Actor Bill Murray, who voices one of the pack of pooches in Anderson’s first animated feature since 2009’s Fantastic Mr. Fox, picked up the award for Anderson.
“I never thought that I would go to work as a dog and come home with a bear,” he quipped.
“Ich bin ein Berliner Hund (I am a Berlin dog),” he added, riffing on John F. Kennedy’s famous speech.
The runner-up Grand Jury Prize went to Polish social satire Mug by Malgorzata Szumowska, the second winner among four women in competition.
It tells the story of a man who is shunned by his community when he has a face transplant after a horrific accident, in a plot examining tensions over identity and exclusion in eastern Europe.
Szumowska said the film “reflected problems not only in my own country” but around the world.
“I am so happy that I am a female director, yeah!” she added.
WOMEN ‘FIGHTERS’
Ana Brun of Paraguay won the Silver Bear prize for best actress for her role in The Heiresses as a middle-aged lesbian whose partner has to go to prison for their spiralling debts.
“I’d like to dedicate this prize to the women of my country, who are fighters,” she said.
France’s Anthony Bajon won best actor for an emotionally raw portrayal of a young man struggling to beat his drug addiction at a Catholic Alpine retreat in Cedric Kahn’s The Prayer.
Museum from Mexico, starring Gael Garcia Bernal in the true story of a daring 1985 heist by two students at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City, bagged the best screenplay award.
Austria’s The Waldheim Waltz by Ruth Beckermann about the scandal surrounding the Nazi past of former UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim claimed the best documentary prize.
Despite critical accolades, wrenching drama U-July 22 about the mass murder of 69 mainly teenage victims on the Norwegian island of Utoya by far-right militant Anders Behring Breivik in 2011, left the ceremony empty-handed.
#METOO CAST SHADOW
In a year in which the #MeToo movement cast a long shadow over the Berlinale, with several topical films screened and a raft of industry initiatives launched to combat sexual exploitation and discrimination, women proved to be the big winners.
Touch Me Not, which also picked up the best first feature prize, shows Pintilie on screen interviewing a range of protagonists about their intimate lives.
Although the stories are fictionalized, the actors include a transgender sex worker and a severely handicapped man and his able-bodied partner discussing how they came to feel at home in their bodies. Later all three visit a sadomasochistic sex club to explore their fantasies on screen.
A middle-aged British woman, Laura, who finds it difficult to be touched, enlists the help of call boys — whom she only watches — to work through her own, unspecified traumas.
Film industry bible Variety called the movie “divisive” but praised its refreshing approach to standards of beauty and “normal” sexuality.
“If anyone is shocked by Touch Me Not they’re not getting the point,” its reviewer said.
Pintilie, the sixth woman to the Berlinale in its 68-year history, admitted that the film might make many viewers uncomfortable but called it a “necessary” provocation.
“The fear of the other is growing and there is so much conflict all over the world,” she told reporters.
“The film is an invitation to empathy and to embrace otherness and to reconsider everything that you know.”
Last year, a tender Hungarian love story set in a slaughterhouse, On Body and Soul by Ildiko Enyedi, captured the top prize and is now nominated for a best foreign language film Oscar. — AFP
TO CELEBRATE International Women’s Day which falls on March 8, a series of movies directed by Spanish female filmmakers, called “Espacio femenino: Spanish Female Directors,” will be shown at 6 p.m. every Saturday at the FDCP Cinematheque Manila. The film cycle aims to highlight the relevance of female filmmakers in the film industry.
The films are presented by the Instituto Cervantes, the Embassy Spain, and the Film Development Council of the Philippines (FDCP).
The lineup is composed of award-winning films such as the poignant drama La novia (The Bride), the comedy Requisitos para ser una persona normal (Requirements to Be a Normal Person), Vicky Calavia’s documentary María Moliner (2017), and Riot Girls, a set of short films directed by Spanish female filmmakers.
The film cycle will kick-off on March 3, 6 p.m., with the screening of La novia, a drama inspired by García Lorca’s play Blood Wedding. The story is set in Spain in the 1930s and tells of a blood feud between families that is about to be settled by a wedding. But fate has other plans as the bride is in love with another man, and unbridled passion will set a chain of events in motion that will have devastating consequences. Directed by Paula Ortiz in 2015, the film has bagged several awards, among them the Premio Feroz 2016 to the Best Film, Best Director, and Best actress for Inma Cuesta.
The film cycle will continue on March 10, with the comedy Requisitos para ser una persona normal. Directed by Leticia Dolera in 2015, it tells the story of María, a 30-year-old woman who has an immediate goal in life: to become a normal person. But first of all she has to discern what this implies. What does it exactly mean, to be normal? After a while she creates a list of those requirements needed, and she starts a journey to reach them all.
The documentary María Moliner (Vicky Calavia, 2017) will be shown on March 17. A female presence leads us through the important events in the life of linguist María Moliner, highlighting the terms that define them, using the definitions María offers in her great work: the Diccionario de Uso del Español.
Finally, the series of short films Riot Girls: Españolas en corto will conclude the film cycle on March 24. The lineup of short films is composed of: Miss Wamba, directed by Estefanía Cortés in 2017; Oasis, directed by Carmen Jiménez in 2014; Sara a la fuga, produced by Belén Funes in 2015, and Waste by Laura Sisteró and Alejo Levis, 2016.
Entrance is free on a first-come, first-served basis. The FDCP Cinematheque Manila is at 855 T.M. Kalaw St., Ermita, Manila. For details, visit http://manila.cervantes.es, www.facebook.com/InstitutoCervantesManila, or e-mail cinematheque@fdcp.ph.
LOS ANGELES — Transgender representation in entertainment has made baby steps forward in recent years, but 2018 has seen a history-making giant leap, with two movies involving trans artists in the Oscars race.
Chilean actress Daniela Vega has won acclaim for her turn as Marina, a young waitress and aspiring singer who falls prey to the prejudices of society, in A Fantastic Woman, the overwhelming favorite in the best foreign language film category.
Yance Ford is also shattering glass ceilings for his intensely personal documentary Strong Island as the first openly transgender director — or trans man in any category — vying for a statuette.
Ford is only the third-ever openly transgender nominee, after Anohni — formerly Antony Hegarty of experimental US band Antony and the Johnsons — lost out for best original song in 2016, and composer Angela Morley, known as Wally Stott before a sex change, was nominated twice in the same category in the mid-1970s.
“It’s a pattern happening in the last few years, since Transparent or Laverne Cox in Orange is the New Black… and now the Oscars,” said Larry Gross, a social media and communications professor at the University of Southern California.
The history of transgender representation at the Oscars is predictably threadbare — but not completely nonexistent.
The Crying Game (1992) examined race, gender, and sexuality against the backdrop of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland, while Oscar-winner Hilary Swank starred as an American trans man who falls victim to a brutal crime in Boys Don’t Cry (1999).
More recently, Jared Leto won an Academy Award for his acclaimed performance as an AIDS-stricken transgender woman in Dallas Buyers Club (2013), while Eddie Redmayne was a losing nominee as a pioneer of the transsexual movement in The Danish Girl (2015).
‘SEISMIC MOMENT’
On television, Transparent, starring Jeffrey Tambor as a Californian homemaker, has been an outlier in the movement for greater representation of transgender characters in entertainment.
But that conversation quickly developed into a call for more actors who are transgender in real life to be hired for these roles, traditionally given to the “cisgendered” — people whose sense of gender corresponds with their birth sex.
“I hope I’m the last cisgender man playing a transgender woman,” Tambor said when he won his second Emmy for the hit Amazon show in 2016.
When the Academy Awards take place on March 4, that breakthrough will truly be felt.
“It’s incredibly meaningful, especially to share this with Daniela Vega. Our work hopefully transcends the fact that we’re transgender,” Ford said in an interview with AFP.
“It is a seismic moment, a tiny earthquake, and hopefully it will begin to change the field overall, and the ability of trans actors and actresses and artists of all backgrounds to have recognition.”
Strong Island chronicles the arc of Ford’s African American family from the racial segregation of the Jim Crow era to the promise of a better life in New York, shattered by the unexpected, violent death of Ford’s brother.
William Ford, Jr., a 24-year-old teacher, was fatally shot in 1992 during a trivial argument with a mechanic on New York’s Long Island.
A grand jury decided his killer had a “reasonable” fear for his life and shouldn’t be tried after Ford bizarrely became “the prime suspect of his own murder,” his character scrutinized for signs that he actually got what was coming to him.
CARICATURE
In Sebastian Lelio’s A Fantastic Woman — “a love story that happens to a transgender woman,” according to the Chilean director’s own synopsis — Vega embodies a woman almost like any other, with feminine wiles but also strength and dignity.
“Marina and I share being trans, loving to sing opera, and handsome men,” says Vega. “But that’s it.”
The actress described her character as “more elegant than me, more patient… a very peaceful woman” whereas Vega herself is “more explosive, more Latin.”
For Ford, Vega’s performance and the attention it has garnered are important because she was playing an ordinary woman.
For a long time, trans characters have been portrayed as disturbed, marginal, depressive, and on edge — one clumsy remark away from committing mass murder.
“There were a lot of psychopathic killers, like in The Silence of the Lambs,” said USC professor Gross, contrasting Jonathan Demme’s 1991 thriller with Transparent and A Fantastic Woman, and their more authentic characters.
“The media industry loves it when they know a new twist becomes possible. Often the stories are about the challenges of being different,” Gross told AFP.
“This movie, A Fantastic Woman, is an example of that. They’ve done it before with gay people, people of color, Jews — the old wine of your narrative in a new bottle… The big challenge always, is that the difference is good, rather than threatening.” — AFP
LOS ANGELES — Lisa Marie Presley, the only daughter of Elvis Presley, says she is facing financial ruin and has filed a $100-million lawsuit accusing her former business manager of negligence and mismanaging her finances. Her ex-manager has filed his own lawsuit, accusing Presley, 50, of squandering her famous father’s inheritance because of her lavish lifestyle. The lawsuit seeks $800,000 in unpaid bills. The dueling lawsuits, filed earlier this week in Los Angeles Superior Court, follow the collapse in 2016 of Presley’s fourth marriage and her announcement that she was $16 million in debt. Presley was just nine years old when Elvis died in 1977, leaving her his sole heir. Her affairs have been managed by Barry Siegel since 1993, when she came into her inheritance through a trust. Her lawsuit said Presley’s “11-year odyssey to financial ruin” began in 2005 and alleged that as result of Siegel’s actions, “Lisa has been damaged in an amount that has not yet been fully ascertained, but is believed to be in excess of $100 million.” The 2005 deal she was referring to involved income from Elvis’ former home Graceland and his intellectual property rights. The lawsuit said that by 2016, the trust was left with $14,000 in cash and over $500,000 in credit card debt. Siegel’s lawsuit said Lisa Marie has “twice squandered” her inheritance and she had been repeatedly told to curb “her spendthrift ways.” Siegel’s attorney, Leon Gladstone, said in a statement on Friday that the 2005 deal Presley was complaining about “cleared up over $20 million in debts Lisa had incurred and netted her over $40-million cash and a multimillion-dollar income stream, most of which she managed to squander in the ensuing years.” “It’s clear Lisa Marie is going through a difficult time in her life and looking to blame others instead of taking responsibility for her actions,” Gladstone said. Presley launched her own career as a singer in 2003 and has released three albums to mixed success. She is better known for her two-year marriage to singer Michael Jackson and her 108-day marriage to actor Nicholas Cage. — Reuters
MAYNILAD Water Services, Inc. has signed a P18.5-billion notes facility with various banks, which will be used mainly to refinance debt.
In a disclosure to the stock exchange on Monday, Metro Pacific Investments Corp. (MPIC) and DMCI Holdings, Inc. disclosed their subsidiary Maynilad will use the proceeds of the notes facility to refinance existing peso-denominated loans and other general corporate requirements.
The loan will have a tenor of seven, 10 and 15 years. It tapped BDO Capital & Investment Corporation, BPI Capital Corporation and China Bank Capital Corporation as lead arrangers and bookrunners for the deal.
Maynilad, the concessionaire for Metro Manila’s west zone, earlier said it is setting aside P9 billion for 2018 as capital expenditure (capex).
Two-thirds of the capex or about P6.5 billion will be spent on infrastructure projects, such as rehabilitation of water network facilities, upgrade and construction of pumping stations, and reservoirs for better supply and pressure management.
Maynilad will also allocate P1.7 billion for wastewater management projects to increase sewerage coverage and maintain network reliability. The remaining budget will go to upgrading the company’s customer service and information program.
WATER CONNECTIONS
In a separate statement, Maynilad said it connected nearly 53,000 water service connections to its distribution network in 2017, bringing the total number of accounts to over 1.4 million. Most of the new connections are in Muntinlupa, Parañaque, Las Piñas, Quezon City, Valenzuela, Caloocan, and parts of Cavite province.
As of end-2017, the water concessionaire said around 98% of its customers have 24-hour water supply. It noted all of its customers receive water at an average pressure of 7 psi (pounds per square inch), allowing water to go up to the second floor of a house.
Maynilad said it is targeting to bring water pressure to 16 psi., which is already being provided to 70% of its concession area.
“We have yet to reach more than 600,000 residents in the West Zone, who still rely on unsustainable water sources like deep wells for their daily needs. More investments are still needed to expand our distribution network so that we can provide these people with potable surface water,” Maynilad President and CEO Ramoncito S. Fernandez was quoted as saying in a statement.
MPIC, which has majority stake in Maynilad, is one of three Philippine units of Hong Kong-based First Pacific Co. Ltd., the others being Philex Mining Corp. and PLDT, Inc. Hastings Holdings, Inc., a unit of PLDT Beneficial Trust Fund subsidiary MediaQuest Holdings, Inc., has interest in BusinessWorld through the Philippine Star Group, which it controls.
