Siftings
‘Abo sa Kulon’: In the Mode of ‘Yanggaw’, ‘Katay’, etc.?
It came as a pleasant surprise for me that the Division of Humanities has a collection of short films dealing with folk stories gathered from various places in Western Visayas. Fresh from a cinematic revisiting of old classics like the pre-Lenten Week showing at the UPV Cinematheque on the Iloilo City campus of the first Cinemascape production (1951) of “The Robe,” and the more recent showing of famed Director Elia Kazan’s “On the Waterfront” (1954) starring the great Marlon Brando, I was intrigued by a colleague’s claim that the Hum-Div has a collection of short films about Visayan folk tales. Immediately, what came to my mind was “Yanggaw,” a short indie film that’s been going the rounds of film buffs which I was able to watch. Could these films be something worth watching too? So, to make the story short, my friend lent me a film from the Hum-Division so I can judge for myself how a slim budget has been utilized to come up with a production that can sustain my interest and engage my critical eye.
The film is entitled “Abo sa Kulon,” and the story deals with the possession of supernatural powers. Based on a story told by an informant from Negros Occidental, the filmization is understandably low-budget and suffers from the limitations of such a circumstance. But it is precisely this lack of capital outlay that has made the film a valid showcase of the simplicity, rusticity, even naivete of the tale itself. With a script written, produced and directed by Prof. Emmeline Cabalum of the Humanities Division and Mae Guillergan, with cinematography by Rupert Quitag, the film captures the rustic ambiance and naivete of rural folk among whom tales of wonder and the supernatural are still circulated, although with increasing rarity these days.
The story is simple enough: twin sisters have supernatural powers. One of them loses her powers and is eventually victimized by her live-in partner, who also abuses her twin-children by her first husband. She dies of an unknown disease, giving her children instructions about burning her corpse in a red cloth (probably asbestos) and putting her ashes in 2 clay pots which they make out of clay on the riverbank. When her children get hungry, they simply ask their respective pots with their mother’s ashes for food and it materializes in front of them. Meanwhile, the remaining twin sister gets a premonition about her sister’s children and pays them a visit. Here, the story takes on a more violent turn until the stepfather gets his comeuppance and the children are taken by their aunt to her place where they can be cared for. The moral of the story? If one insists on looking for one, it scores high on family values. Blood is thicker than water. And a mother’s love extends beyond the grave in its desire to care for her orphaned children. So, it ends happily ever after as the two children and their aunt walk away from their sad past towards a brighter horizon. The visuals are pretty emphatic about this, as the three go forward to a brighter, more lighted scenery at the end.
In fact the visuals in this film tells the story much more than the dialogue does. Genuine filmmaking is really more visual that aural, because its medium is the camera, in particular the lens, which function as the eyes that can see more than the ordinary, average human eyes can. It records emotions, reactions, and changes in the atmosphere; predicts a future action; or follows a character’s development. And often, this minute recording of physical and emotional changes are given emphasis by the music: the sounds and rhythms of the natural environment. The sounds created by a gong and a flute in this film create an appropriate atmosphere of suspense, of a sense of impending doom which is sustained until the climactic end of the villain-stepfather.
But it is the cinematography that gives texture to the tale. Close-ups of characters have a chiaroscuro effect which, in combination with the panoramic panning sweep of brooding nature by the camera, points up the tight little drama unfolding on the screen.
This short film has a rough-edged completeness. No complexities or subtleties to boast of. It is a simple visual representation of a wondrous tale kept in the consciousness of a simple, unsophisticated, unlettered man; as such, it is a manifestation of the simplicity and lack of sophistication – and therefore, artifice – of the simple, unlettered, marginalized poor people of this country, whose natural resources could have provided them ample food but which have been sadly mismanaged, abused, exploited, sold to foreign investors, etc., etc., by the rich and the powerful in this country!
It is the simple soul of the Filipino untouched by civilization’s scientific advancements, modern technology, skepticism, and loss of the sense of wonder that can serve to remind us that we are humans, and not gods. Did you ever imagine that human ashes in a clay pot can grant your wish for food when you get hungry? This tale did, because of hunger pangs in the poor man’s belly.
Beyond the niggling thought that this is a tale for children only, let me remind you that tales like this, where wishes are granted and evil is punished, are the poor man’s inventions to enable him to survive the harsh realities of his circumstances. Without money, property, education, a steady paying job or a home to shelter him and his loved ones, the poor Filipino invents a world where everything is possible, where Good reigns supreme, and life can be lived happily ever after.
“Abo sa Kulon” and other tales like it deserve to be filmed and watched, if only to remind us that we were once innocent in the dawn of creation, but most of all, to affirm that this innocence is as necessary and life-sustaining as the air we breathe, no matter how polluted it threatens to be.
Prof. Cabalum and her staff should be commended for 3 things this film has accomplished: 1) that they have graphically brought to our attention the worldview of a sector of our countrymen whom we often bypass in the reckoning of our national affairs; 2) for reminding us Ilonggos that we used to have a sense of wonder, and an innocence about the world we live in; 3) that we should retrieve, as soon as we can, this sense of wonder before we lose it forever in the technological abracadabra sparked in cyberspace by omniscient, omnipotent computer-gods which seem to have taken the place of God.
For these reasons,films like these should be seen, and not be left to gather dust in some obscure library of film archive.
