DON’T BE SCARED. “Skull 3”, pencil on smooth Bristol paper. Illustration by Sara Blake

(First published on Rappler.com on February 12, 2014) MANILA, Philippines – What does it take to live a life less ordinary? At the recently held Graphika Manila 2014, luminaries from the creative world shared the stage to talk about their creative process, their best work, the mistakes they’ve made, and lessons they’ve learned along the way. We saw from their individual journeys that whatever the speakers’ backgrounds—whether they hailed from Barcelona or Bacolod, were a newbie or a veteran, worked freelance or in a studio—they…Continue Reading “Feeling uninspired? Wise words from top creatives (Rappler.com)”

Published in Rappler.com (August 14, 2012) MANILA, Philippines – Watching Jim Libiran’s movies and listening to him talk with passion about the impact he hopes his work will bring to marginalized communities, you begin to wonder if “filmmaker” is an apt word for the man in front of you, considering his past lives as activist, award-winning writer and Xerex Xaviera alter-ego. Perhaps “social auteur” would be a better term. Libiran, whose feature films Tribu (2007) and Happyland (2011) have revealed unique angles about urban poor communities in his beloved…Continue Reading “Jim Libiran: The social auteur (Rappler.com)”

Published in Rappler.com (August 13, 2012) MANILA, Philippines – If you’ve seen or heard of the indie film Ang Babae sa Septic Tank (The Woman in the Septic Tank, 2011), Philippine cinema’s highest-grossing independent film to date, then you will have an idea of the kind of sensibility that it takes to capture a subject so irreverently yet so truthfully. In the film, 3 film school graduates take on the lofty dream of producing an Oscar-worthy independent film about — what else? — poverty and prostitution in the Philippine…Continue Reading “Chris Martinez: Bringing Pinoy humor to life (Rappler.com)”

Published in Rappler.com (August 6, 2012) MANILA, Philippines – Everyone goes through periods of loneliness. It is a universal feeling — one that does not require a common language or culture to be understood. In the case of Adolfo Alix, Jr., loneliness has become a subject of exploration and discovery, a theme that has allowed him to stretch the boundaries of filmmaking to see just how much he (and his audience) can discover. “I read somewhere that one (feeling) that lingers the most is loneliness…Continue Reading “Adolf Alix, Jr.: On loneliness and the cinematic experience (Rappler.com)”

Published in Rappler.com (August 1, 2012)   MANILA, Philippines – Twenty-eight-year-old filmmaker Raya Martin sure seems to love defying expectations. His debut into the Philippine filmmaking scene took industry insiders by surprise, as the then-fresh graduate of the University of the Philippines Film Institute was unsuccessful at early attempts to get a job in Manila. What he got, instead, was a filmmaking residency at the prestigious Cinéfondation Residence du Festival de Cannes in Paris, France — becoming the first Filipino filmmaker to be selected for…Continue Reading “Raya Martin: The enigma that is (Rappler.com)”

Published in Rappler.com (July 27, 2012) MANILA, Philippines – He has had no formal training in filmmaking, and his path had once led him to playing guitar for the band DaPulis and a year of culinary studies in Florence. But for first-time filmmaker Jay Ignacio, the unspoken stories around Filipino Martial Arts became such a compelling theme that he spent 3 years of his life documenting some of the Philippines’ most prominent, living Filipino Martial Arts (FMA) legends in a full-length documentary called The Bladed Hand….Continue Reading “Jay Ignacio: Unsheathing the bladed hand (Rappler.com)”

(Originally published in the blog Out of the Universe, and in Inquirer Blogs)   In his piece on Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight for Time, Richard Corliss writes, “Nolan has a… subversive agenda. He wants viewers to stick their hands down the rat hole of evil and see if they get bitten. With little humor to break the tension, The Dark Knight is beyond dark. It’s as black—and teeming and toxic—as the mind of The Joker.” Having watched the film twice—first on Imax and next on a regular theater—I can’t help but agree that…Continue Reading “Why We Need The Joker… and 4 Other Political Lessons I Learned from The Dark Knight (Inquirer Blogs)”