Critical survival: Gawad Urian in October 2020

WITHOUT the virus, we would have given out already the Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino’s annual Gawad Urian, the most sought-after award for any film practitioner. But things have stopped since March 15 of this year. That was the day the lockdown of Manila and, later, the entire Luzon was declared. Individually, we were sending messages to each other as we grappled with other things more critical. Yes, even for film critics, there are things more important than reviews. And that is a critique of society from which springs cinema and other hyperrealities about ourselves and the nation.

The lockdown was a misnomer: only citizens and communities were isolated from each other. Government functionaries were physically meeting; officials were converging to decide on policies that had nothing to do with health.

Press freedom was one of the main targets in these months. Film criticism, of course, thrives only when people become audiences free to choose the films they want to watch; filmmakers have the liberty to move around, introspect, examine and make sense of the world gone mad or beautiful; and critics can go to town literally to guide audiences through feature films, short films, documentaries or any other forms beyond classification.

Art is at the center of this freedom; around it are communities and artists pushing boundaries and challenging conventions if only to articulate, for example, lies disguised as monumental if not aberrant concepts of nationalism. Or subvert that dumb value of resilience if only to keep the citizens docile.

On my part as an individual, I realized those four months were a prison. While the lockdown failed in arresting the surge of infection, those days labeled as enhanced, general and modified quarantines had triumphed in keeping me away from my own community. I was writing—and thinking—in isolation. I had to nudge myself from spiraling down to writing bittersweet epistolary to lost lovers and youth, or developing a diary of a man pretending to be a madman if only to powder-puff the inanities of imaginations with a bit of relevance. Depression, with due respect to those who have gone through it, can be an instrument of a hack writer. It calls attention to yourself and removes the attention from the writing, which has by then become the real depressing product.

It is without exaggeration that I felt good seeing the other Manunuris again last Sunday, July 19. We did not go immediately to films. We were not eager to rush to the discussions. Each mention of a process in review was interrupted with personal questions. How are you? What have you been doing? I cannot really write well. I am able to do research. Oh, the time has given me lots of spaces to write about many things.

To be candid, we thought of not having the Gawad Urian this year. The feeling was justifiable. We know how we discuss the films—the process is timeconsuming and we know it worked well only in faceto-face interaction. In the end, we felt it was our duty to ourselves and to the industry that we should have the recognition in whatever form.

If the arts could survive, criticism should survive. We met for the first time after the lockdown via Google Meet. For the first time, our meeting did not begin with a dinner.

Gary Devilles, our present chair, had the long list of 122 films released this year. It was from this list that we were to create our first short list, which ended to be still long following the standard of Manunuri. After deliberations, we had 26 films.

These 26 films are now technically filed “For Consideration” for nominations. We made sure we had hard copies of the screeners of the said films, or links at least to soft copies. Many of us had seen these films but for those who may have missed some, then we are all given a month to view or review these films.

After the full-length, we had to list down the documentaries and short films. As of now, we are gathering the other documentaries and short films that are not in our chairman’s spreadsheet. These two categories have become important for us for two reasons related to those forms. Documentaries have assumed new forms and approaches, with the so-called creative documentary blurring the line between a documentary and a feature film. Short films are treasures of independent filmmaking; in terms of sheer number, judging them can be exhausting but fun.

The next online meeting in August shall be our Nominations Night. With the Gawad Urian slated the middle of October, we will have the entire September to think about our choices when we vote days before the handing of trophies. How we will give the trophies has to be decided yet.

Even as I write this, all of us in the Manunuri are already thinking of how we can retain the salient

content of the awarding ceremonies despite the present limitations we face. Definitely, we will still have the specific reasons why a film or filmmaker wins in a particular category. We will retain the practice of a critic or two writing about the films nominated for Best Picture. Those reviews will appear in the new web site the group is launching soon. Between now and the next meeting, our thoughts about the Awards Night (or Day!) will keep us busy in the lockdown.

There is a good news in these months of isolation.

A short film, Here, Here, is going to compete and have its premiere at the Locarno Film Festival in Locarno, as part of the Pardi di domani Competition. Locarno has been described as the summer capital of auteur cinema.

Here, Here, one of the 43 films selected from more than 2,200 entries, is directed by Joanne Cesario.

Quiet but thickened by tension, Here, Here consistently, if not insidiously, builds up the theme of loss on characters who speak past each other, on the absence of persons in empty chairs, in the very simple act of looking for a plant, or something that is not there. Lights are to dark spaces and we are left to wonder what the two voices are not able to see, or what the search is all about. The waiting is broken by an old record, whose defects play lines repeated over and over, as overheard the vow of not forgetting nags those who care to listen to sweetly, bitterly surrender to some memories. All this in the muted issues of mining and degradation of surroundings.

The short film is produced by Alyssa Suico, herself an up-and-coming filmmaker. The film was one of the entries to the 2019 QC International Film Festival. The festival will run from August 5 to 15, with a mix of online and physical screenings. n