delaCerna,MarkVincentCarreon IVBSMSChemistryminorinEconomics AteneodeManilaUniversity

Reflecting Lenses
(A Reaction to the Focus on the Global South's The EDSA Film Festival)
The following article is about EDSANGANGDAAN: The EDSA Film Festival sponsored by the Focus on the Global South. While this will focus on the discussion provided in the open forum of the event, the article might also say something about the event proper, the movies, the audience and the directors and movie-makers themselves.

The main focus of the event is to remember one of the milestones in the history of our country the EDSA People's Power Revolution; and the problem that they mainly discussed is how it could be remembered by the new generation, those who were born after the EDSA and how it could be significant in their and today's Filipinos' lives. They chose to bring forward their ideas, opinions and insights through film an audio-visual media. Watching the trailers of the different films, one can notice that most of them are stories of ordinary people living in modern Manila our time. They were the vendors, the families, the Filipinos who live in our day and time. It was hard for me to think of the movies as something related to the EDSA Revolution, except, of course, for those who explicitly showed videos from the revolution itself. The stories were varied they told of electoral politics during the post-EDSA era, the lives of peanut vendors, the life of a single mother and yet, all these were rooted at one singular event that is the People's Power Revolution that happened some 25 years ago. That was the power of their chosen media. Like literature, they had the freedom to create metaphors and in their case, to give lives to these metaphors. They can, in fact, create lives and people and share the lives of this people to a wider audience through words and actions on screen. Perhaps one important aspect of films, is that since it presents life and interaction of portrayed people, it can effectively show emotions and thus, provide an authentic relationship between the film and the audience. By letting the audience have the opportunity to participate in the lives of these characters, the viewers are given new sets of lenses, eyes that could see more than the ordinary, through the lives of others. This was discussed in the open forum where it was mentioned that there is not one single EDSA story. Yes, there is a main event with people being called to stand up and fight, but beside what was televised throughout the world, there are lives of peoples, the masses, and they too had their stories. And in a way, this Film Festival wanted to capture that, they wanted to use those stories to be able to show the relevance of EDSA even after 25 years. During the talk of Seymour Sanchez, the director of Patron ng Laging Saklolo, he mentioned that it is surprising that after 25 years, the students of today only remember a single person when EDSA is mentioned Cardinal Sin. I was actually taken aback when I realized that I, too, thought of the cardinal first every time I was asked about EDSA. Of all people, someone from the church was remembered. This, according to him, was a problem as the stories of the ordinary Filipinos have been diluted, their varying views and experiences were all chunked into a single event called the EDSA and all them were categorized under one single name that is Cardinal Sin. His goal was to break this, and to show that the church may be a part of the history, but there are lots of various stories than that. If you come to think of it, perhaps it is this misrepresentation of EDSA or perhaps the failure to represent others that allows it to simply fade into our history. A lot of students now knew that there was an EDSA, but nothing more than that. They take it just as a matter of fact because that is how they were taught about the event. It was a people's movement that ousted the dictator. In a way, this is an oversimplification of

history. Of course, it is impossible to share the stories of millions of people who partook in the EDSA event, but the point is that to some extent their stories should be told, as those are the ones which we can relate to for they are the lives of ordinary persons, not the minority of the Elite. Humor, on the other hand, was the focus of Hubert Tibi, director of Mani. According to him, making a serious movie about the problems in the society would only make sad the people who watch it and thus increase their burden. Humor was the shining light that kept the Filipinos sane and which keeps us going. It is our culture to laugh and smile about problems, to be optimistic and slow things a bit when they get too serious. He acknowledge the seriousness of the events of EDSA but his medium was humor. In my opinion, this could be a very effective way you get people's attention, but you still make them learn and reflect. This is actually a point of Mr. Tibi when he said that in watching his comedies you will just laugh and laugh, but after the whole movie where you just laughed most of the time, you suddenly come back to reality and realize what the whole movie was about and that, according to him, is powerful. There were still other speakers during the session who mentioned several other topics regarding the life of the Filipinos during the EDSA; but for me, the things shared by Mr. Tibi and Mr. Sanchez were the most striking. On the one hand, it was the expansion of the horizon, breaking the powers and making you realize that there are other stories which is a strong point, and I think, would be a move of an activist who really wants to point something out, perhaps about the system, while still sharing his views and experiences during EDSA. On the other, it was a transformation from a serious and heavy event to a lighter one. Both, however, still had in tact the points that they wanted the viewers to get. In the end, my realization would be that films are a great way to show history. They give life to events and peoples and elicit a more powerful emotion from the viewers who can possibly related to the characters. Though, this might not be a great way to teach the objective history and the events themselves, this is a great way to get across the lessons and the significance of the events even to people of the younger generation. It is perhaps better that the whole class was taken to the whole event so that our lectures in Hi 165, will be supported by the lessons we can get from the films. In general, it was a great learning experience for me, and surely, it was one of the best ways to learn something new. The directors were great and they were very open about their opinions, the analysts too were great in articulating their insights, giving out strong ideas and opinions that fight against something. The discussion or open forum alone could provide a lot of great insights, what more from the films. Lastly, there was a message by one of the persons who shared in the event: the films they show do not, in any way, make our country look bad. That is not their goal, and if that is what is being shown, what they are trying to do is show the mistakes of other people, so that they may correct themselves. The stories may be highly varied showing people of different walks of life, of hardships and of things that one can do when pressured by poverty but all these are facts that we should face, and some of these we can relate to EDSA. It was mentioned, also, that the revolution will never be over for what is happening is just a shift of power in the upper classes. The EDSA will be a reminder of the power of the people and the desire for something better; but the revolution is still on-going, and it is this memory of EDSA that allows us to keep on saying that there is still hope.
--Author's Note: The author was only able to attend the open forum due to conflicts in schedule and so all opinions regarding the films were either from the discussions during the event or insights taken from the trailers which were made available online. Nonetheless, the author did not put speculations regarding the films in this article so anything relating to the actual film that is mentioned here was mentioned by the analysts or the directors themselves. Mark Vincent Carreon dela Cerna | IV BS MS Chemistry minor in Economics | Ateneo de Manila University | History 166 | Meynardo Mendoza, Ph.D