The best Filipino films of 2021
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Loading... - Sofia Chew
- 12 Jan 2022
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The trend in local filmmaking and reception for years remains that films should concern themselves first with sending messages. While this is noble, insisting that films can only be didactic devices or social commentary degrades film itself, along with our capacity to investigate what we want to say and how to say it.
The recent discourse around MMFF — and in turn Philippine cinema — has transmogrified the fact that there is a part of the audience that wants their voice to be heard. Message and moralism are also becoming the barometer by which many assess films, seeing anything on screen as endorsement and losing nuance completely.
This list celebrates Filipino cinema by choosing a selection of work that concerns themselves first with being films. Local and international film festivals have served as a home for stories and today's context has ushered in an ecological succession: providing fertile ground through which distinct voices, unconventional narratives, and exciting experiments with the form are being introduced.
While feature filmmakers are still arguing with their audiences about piracy, censorship, and distribution schemes, short films have shown how they always have been far more ambitious, accessible, attention-grabbing, and auspicious. This list is by no means a conscious effort to pick mostly shorts. If anything, this year and the limitations it brought in filmmaking and moviewatching have shown that the underappreciated short film format is still a potent medium of discourse, arguably better than features (even if some of these still did stand out).
What follows is a snippet of talents and the stories which, in any other year, would likely be ignored and pushed to the peripheries. — JASON TAN LIWAG AND JOHN PATRICK MANIO
“It’s Raining Frogs Outside” (dir. Maria Estela Paiso)
Two shorts this year highlight the obliteration of reality brought by the pandemic. For "It's Raining Frogs Outside," surrealism takes the steering wheel. It takes the audience on a trip of bombarding images and sound that is the type rarely seen in our cinema.
As frogs constantly rain outside, director Maria Estelo Paiso's persona is being drowned underwater and is choked by massive volumes of her own hair. Her body and the world around her disintegrate with time until the climax. A beautiful transformation ensues on-screen. She becomes a frog, just like those falling to the ground outside.
It captures anxiety, in such a way how the film itself feels so dynamic and alive, but the territories it explores are unfamiliar. Is it exhausting? Yes, but also exhilarating if you're up for the journey. Nothing makes sense — as it should in Paiso's filmic reality. But there's a feeling you can't shake that behind the surreal, what the main persona goes through is something we can all identify with. — JPM
“Mga Bag-Ong Nawong Sang Damgo Kag Katinghalan” (dir. Mark Raymund Garcia)
As a companion piece to Paiso's surrealism, Mark Raymund Garcia's “Mga Bag-Ong Nawong Sang Damgo Kag Katinghalan” (The New Faces of Dreams and Mysteries) exudes expressionism. It's more a performance piece than a narrative, but no way is it less an effective film.
It is concerned with making the audience interrogate how they feel, rather than making sure meaning is clearly stated. You wouldn't even know what it means, taking up only the film itself. The masked druids act as conduit for us. Using their bodies, they paint a canvas of pent up anger and frustration.
Protesting an abnormal new normal manufactured by incompetence and neglect, Garcia constructs an anarchy of images where bodies take center stage. There's still a stand of politics ingrained in both texts. But dare to say, more importantly, they are precious instances of experimentation that are bold without sacrificing technical integrity. — JPM
“On the Job 2: The Missing 8” (dir. Erik Matti)
Halfway through “The Missing 8,” Weng (Lotlot de Leon) asks Sisoy (John Arcilla) what happened to his journalistic fire. “Di ko alam,” he says, then answers with a pained laugh and tired eyes: “Nagpalaki ng mga anak?” It’s a small but powerful moment that highlights how good people are capable of abuse and can be transmogrified by their environments without really knowing.
“The Missing 8” is Erik Matti at his most assured. Trading off thrill for depth and entertainment for emotional resonance, the journalistic procedural at its core is a ghost story that explores the act of returning: to a home one longs for, an old self one tries to regain, a past one hopes to hide or correct. Matti maps a 208 minute-journey and presents an alternative reality where corrupt individuals can be reformed but only by escaping the labyrinths of lies that they themselves helped construct. — JTL
“Dikit” (dir. Gabriela Serrano)
Split screens are oftentimes gimmicky. But a great justification for it is if it parallels the dramatic journey of a folkloric creature known to split bodies. Not only a short reinterpretation of Jose Nepomuceno's seminal 1927 Filipino horror film "Ang Mananggal," Gabriela Serrano's "Dikit" is a modern queering of the manananggal concept.
Instead of literal hunger for a newborn, "Dikit" shows the longing of the manananggal to have a newborn of her own — she is unable to have one because of her nature. When a pregnant woman in an abusive relationship moves in, she starts to gravitate towards her, as they both realize who the real monster is.
The two screens show the perspective of each woman. The shots rhyme between the two frames shown simultaneously, although admittedly the beauty of each concurrent shot is disrupted because of the split. "Dikit" would've worked if there was only one screen played with vigorous editing, but it would've been a different experience, and different film entirely. — JPM
