Lessons From The Metro Manila Fim Festival ( MMFF ) :

by Carlo Cielo

Moral lesson of the story :
The Filipino Film industry should be allowed not only during Christmas break. It should be allowed all days of the year.

A lot of films get ignored because you have an ENTIRE spectrum of a film scene being compressed within a short while. How can you properly appreciate, say, the intricacies of RPG :Metanoia ( and there are many ), or the poignancy of what appears to be Dolphy's swan song, when you don't have the latitude to appreciate each at their own time.

Instead, you are forced in a situation where you're deluged by a sturm un drang of Filipino product, showing their wares for a limited period before they are literally shooed off the streets. Naturally, the loudest ones get picked up first, and nothing else would be said of it. There is only so much you can consider and sift through. You do not have time to linger.

And often, the products aren't prepped for the long term. They had to make it as flashy and as noisy and as instantly consumable, or they're immediately passed by. Under the wretched market principle that defines their activity, they are left with no choice.

This is what you get when you have a neo-liberal economy that is slave to Western transaction, and is prone to dire straits. Obviously, we have to get a bit of self-respect now, and that this must not go on.

Filipinos shouldn't have to live by technocratic pipe dreams; they should be able to live by theirs, and they should be allowed to do that in their own cinema. And not be treated like insurgents/terrorists/traffic obstructions whenever they dare to frickin' do so !

Feel Good Sick :

‎" Celebrity courtiers, masquerading as journalists, experts & specialists, identify our problems & patiently explain the parameters. All those who argue outside the imposed parameters are dismissed as irrelevant cranks, extremists or members of a radical left. Acceptable opinions have a range of A to B. The culture becomes a world of cheerful conformity, as well as an endless & finally fatal optimism. "- Chris Hedges

The Killing Of Veronica Guerin

by Carlo Cielo

Judge has ruled that all truth will be fined guilty. Sentence is maximum intolerance for all the plaintiffs. Full gunshot blast through the head. The verdict is final. Objections overruled. No witnesses allowed.

So it goes.

And that is the state of 'truth-telling' nowadays. If you try to do so, you are labelled a terrorist. In the case of Julian Assuage, founder of Wikileaks, you are deemed a pederast. Invectives that carry in them a death sentence, that is ironically a form of rape. And so we get the sleazy, complicit 'media' we have nowadays, living in seems by their all-too-easy manifesto : “ If you cannot tell the truth, might as well make the news.” And the 'news' that they spurn and generate all throughout are the exact type of noise the powers just want, to obfuscate and blur what are otherwise their clear acts of menace. Throwing the whole 'gray area' blurb when they find it especially convenient. A bloated 'media' eager to earn their 'Fourth Estate' cred like a reserved seat on the table.

We have a Big Media today that goes like this, like we have children now that goes like this. Children who want exactly to do whatever the grown-ups say. I just had this conversation with an Anthropology Professor in UP CSSP, and she's complained about how talking to today's kids is like talking to their parents. While I agree with the geist of the conclusions, I do feel it masks a falacious argument that only serves to absolve for example the quasi-'rebels' who practically laid the foundations to their current 'surrender pose' with their Gloria vote in 2004. Moreover, this denies the nature of history as continuity, not as mere affectation or lifestyle. Because, what we're faced with isn't really an entire new breed naturally failing on their accord, so much as a downward trajectory humanity has been taking since it started doing away with social safety nets in the '80 - of simply hurtling into collective disembowelment. History, after all, has been deemed to have ended by the fall of the Berlin Wall, and we're being geared towards sociological Big Crunch. All the apocalyptic hoopla of the '90s should account for this, as well as the continuing apocalypse in this era's more decadent minds, who now live and fester in the subcultures and the academe. Basically, this is what the chief industrialists and players mean when they launched the 'New World Order' worldwide with the rise of the first Bush and the formal aggression in Iraq at the start of the '90s. Before, it's all covert stuff and selling arms to pit nations against each toher. Now, the key plan is to plain wipe out everything for the free market.

This it seems, was why Veronica Guerin had to die.

First, they wage war against Communism and generalized rebellion & dissent. Then, they wage war against art & science and journalism. This kept most people and minds devastated, perhaps, as this growing allergy towards pro-people initiatives makes clear, so they could conveniently be taken out of the picture, and all their planes and landscapes be cleared - in the name of absolute capitalism. Such economic ideology has been taken to such a positivist extreme, disregarding all human factors and side effects, that it's become its own nihilist type of metaphysics in all its termination sequence. It can be said that adherers are simply sticking to its formula, the only promise it has for the world : namely, that all things human and natural be purged, until there is nothing left but 'supply and demand'. Pesky reporters and noisy types had to be eliminated to accommodate the transfer of goods, either in the form of oil, cannabis, or drugs. There will be outcry, and its govts. would try and save face, but amid scores of broken bodies and left traces of the disappeared, is the need to simply reposition the same product in another way. Sometimes, it takes the form of new wars; sometimes, new regimes. The macro-schema remains. It is sold as a finished stasis we are all holed up in. A punctuation mark that closes an axiom. A done deal.

****
Apocalypse frightens them, ennit? It really does, and yes, I do find it amusing. Which is why I feel the current impunity we are in is less a fluke of a worthless generation, so much as the fathers of a failed one returning to abandoned patriarchy, and calling on the sons of the new so they could help share in their shameful dearth and regression, & make them feel right about turning away from the march of progress that went right past them during their time. Apparently, there is 'no other sociological alternative'. So these louts of NAFTA, Softcore, and Duty Free, who were at the front row seat to the most awe-striking revolutions, could only grab the young, and tell the young to hold back Embracing as they both approach the fall, finding no shelter in or out of themselves, as they close their eyes and pray.

With this, they can only part us a single advice, as the motorcycle people approach with their guns :

Think fast.

Punishment Park ( 1971 ) - Peter Watkins

Readings Into Lino Brocka's 'Bayan Ko : Kapit Sa Patalim' :

by Carlo Cielo

And so we return to the scene of the crime.

Turing is down to his last set of chips. He’s taken all his bets as far as these could go. There is only just his gun, his bellicose pal, the bloated hostage, and a barrage of law enforcement agents waiting to lunge straight at them, while the media gadflies buzz around. Only the most futile of pedestals keep them from heading straight into judgment. The fort they’ve made of the factory has long been infiltrated now; his troops have all been taken out. Numbers are running thin, and there is a shot yet to be fired. Then, a plea. Few minutes ago, his former activist wife called upon him, through police blow horn, to desist. Beckoning him to pry open the last defenses his meager income has left him with: the wobbling doors and fortifications which maintain the protest in his head. Seems none of this was good enough, wasn’t enough seizure of a future that’s been long denied them. The rest cannot see that, or look past incident. They can only be intimidated by the action.

So, Turing relents, and lets her arrive. Some, however, ain’t so giving.

Quickly, his felon buddy grabs the well-stuffed Mrs. Tan, and sticks his gun into her temple. Within the few seconds the heathens land in their uniforms, it’s a free for all. He chucks his bullets onto that stout piece of crap, while Turing and his wife ducks for cover. Several blasts raze through tight air, as the multiple hits tear up every fiber of the brigand’s body. In a few seconds, he is dead. Turing is immediately held down the ground, his wrists tied together in cuff links. His wife walks beside him, smug and content that he’s gonna be kept safe by the type of ‘justice’ with which they mock the uninitiated, knowing full well he hasn’t seen the last of oblivion....

***

It is in this final sequence where the film really shows how it’s firmly held together, not just in terms of culminating narrative threads, but in the utter completeness of cinematic visions merging with sentiment – from the props, the focused sense of geography, right down to Turing’s uniform, as he marches into battle, and makes that climactic assault in the printing press. His dress evokes NPA, with the bandana and the ragged guerilla clothing and strut. The laborer attacking capitalist machinery's a shocking proposition enough as it is; his address to the Filipino people more so. While registering more as cheap satire 25 years on, that scene of him prior talking at length about worker’s rights and oppression while holding an AK-47 at his lap ( far as I remember ) is a sublime act of cinematic provocation buried underneath the proceedings, and could have been among the reasons why this film got banned by the Marcos regime in the first place. All these events occur in a tight room, with the principals up front and human collateral behind.

Yet this is where Lino Brocka breaks with posers exploiting terrorist chic mileage. Said scene is as much informed by revolutionary insight. It owes more than to mere petty theater, or bourgeoisie cynicism, that he had the goon guy take the mic from Turing as he berates him. Both he and Pete Lacaba know their politics enough to not entrust the uprising to these lumpen scalawags.

Even if it’s only on film. In fact, this unified sentiment informs the rest of the creative choices made all throughout. The people who make up the ragtag crew, for example, don’t act like they abide by any principle, and are anything but heroic, or even protagonist. They’re every bit the villainous henchmen in random Filipino action flicks, and to see these bumbling felons walk alongside the lead, and the lead, played by an action star, mind you, being so helplessly dependent on them, lends a filmic sense of tension to the whole ordeal, highlighting the utter recklessness of Turing’s actions, and giving it a palpable sense of believability. As if his mission is bound to crumble at any minute, with his buddies being creeping antagonists that run beside him, instead of charging straight at him, guiding him to his fall through a false sense of cathartic victory. Not just any sort of ‘achievement’. The punishing lighting brings this to bear; drenched in shadows, yet illuminated enough for us to see who exactly is messing with which – not sparing us from the total humanity of the guilty.

And you can find little that is as visceral a stand-in for capitalist machinery as the printing press. I am permanently reminded, for example, of a short story I read, where a worker gets so worn down by his condition, that he sleeps and falls into a printing machine, tearing him to bits. The film ‘The Machinist’ uses it in the same way as well, in the scene where a blue-collar fella gets his hand chewed up by it pretty bad. There’s just something inexplicable about the construction of these printing machines, their overall forms; a troubling oddness in these hostile shapes, where it’s not as comprehensible as say, the assembly line , where there is a conveyor belt, and a generally horizontal A to B trajectory where you know where the raw material goes to die, and where the product comes out to bury it into utility. Not so much in the printing machine’s case, which doesn't correspond as easily with the environment, with its twists and turns and convolutions, and some messed up parts of it suspended, while absent souls are forced to work its grind, even as it doesn’t know what its flowing into or where it's take them, and is as divorced from their conditions as it could get. The machines in this movie produce children’s books, happy shit that have zero relevance in their lives, this end-product being simply random and alienating. Among other things that make the usage of such, and the printing factory being setting, an accurate artistic choice relating to the purpose of the entire work.


The film also achieves wholeness through the rigorous significations of the character quirks and traits, both symbolic as well as functional : of suggestions which are brought in early and adequately pay off later ( you get to know why one of the goons is named after fecal matter ), or say, petty views which unexpectedly lead to, even hint at, grander progressive action, which then ironically drives its adherer to the sidelines. The latter would feel jarring at first, and risks turning such character into mere convenient mouthpiece for the both writer and director’s positions at a given time – in this case, the female worker and vice president of the union – but a closer inspection reveals that her actions indeed follow consistent logic. Albeit one that could potentially cloud any sense of nobility her actions exuded earlier; her proletarian affectations, while largely meant, largely serving as a means for her to reinforce her inexplicable fixation towards the lead character. Anything to drive Turing in a corner, and make him look like either an inordinate thug, or a wayward embarrassment that needs our ‘guidance’ and ‘understanding’. Which is to say that he can never do anything right on his own accord. And it’s ruthlessly exposed on live television, unhinged in all its ghastly pandering, dramatic sighs and all, even as the dullards behind the camera are tainted and compromised. Making that social point, and doing it right on celluloid, not only requires not only sharp sophistication, but also the effective integration of all collaborators’ efforts. That it is being noted at all points to the precision of the film’s mise-en-scene.


***
Saw this first in B&W VHS tape, and while a recent 33mm screening took some of the excellent rawness away, the film concludes beautifully all the same : with the Filipino teetering to the edge.

Family.

Question :  " What will be the influence of the communist order of society on the family? "

Answer :  " It will make the relations between the sexes a purely private matter which concerns only the persons involved, and in which society must not intervene. It can do this since it does away with private property and educates children on a communal basis, and in this way removes the two bases of marriage up to now -- the dependence of the wife on the husband and of the children on their parents resulting from private property. And here is the answer to the outcry of the highly moralistic philistines against the communistic "community of women."

Community of women is a condition which belongs entirely to bourgeois society and which today finds its complete expression in prostitution. But prostitution is based on private property and falls with it. Thus communist society, instead of introducing community of women, in fact abolishes it. "

- Frederick Engels, 'Principles of Communism'

The Absent Violence :

by Carlo Cielo

It's not the gash and wounds that repel; it's the contempt in the infarction.

There is this misconception about violence, that it is unacceptable to show it, because it's always gory, that it is always messy and blatant, with the blood splatters and spurts, and the membranes pried out like fruit pulp and such like. In the same way that sex is all in the copulation of the organs, so it is for that. And its not.

Basic communication is enough of an act of violence. When a neuron fires electronic signals on the nano level, and the nearest neurons is simultaneously threatened and responds, there's your brutality already there. Then, this gets replicated on a macro level, between two organisms with their own complex neural systems, in interpersonal affect. Man starts of singular and fends off for his own. Any outside stimuli is provocation. Whether it's unwelcome suggestion or transmitted message, it all does the same thing; it jolts, it starts off flight or flight albeit in small doses. Either you call these assaults premeditated or deem these accidental, it's up to you. It's what even keeps humans in a daily regimen of survival and persistence : the muscles suffer micro-tears so that its fibers can produce new striations to fortify, and it would be due to natures that hit these on a daily basis.

Sometimes, it would be simply encoded in the words that one speaks, in all the wide range of effects. So in terms of broadcast, how do you draw the line ? And where do you draw it ?

Well, someone tried. In Maguindanao. It led to the inexplicable deaths of 56 journalists. Deaths the rest of our elite, self-interest driven media can only honor, not in the lost lives per se, but in the magnanity of such type of reprisal; and its threat to go on under the terms of their common Yellow Banner - in all its feudalism.

It's not the gash and wounds that repel; it's the contempt in the infarction.

Lino Brocka, On Morals :

" To the best of our abilities, and even if we often times fail, we must produce films that will hurt, films that will disturb, films that will not let you rest. For the times are bad and, given times like these, it is a crime to rest....

Although it is the duty of the artist to work for what is true, good and beautiful, first we must expose and fight what is wrong."

Satur Ocampo ( # 37 ) and Liza Maza ( # 33 ) for Senator :

# 37



# 33

My Sentiments Lie With The Workers, by Brig. Gen. Danilo Lim :

" Message for the Laborers:


It is no secret that my incarceration has largely been due to the fact that I have been completely against the rule of a singular privileged class.The military is supposed to be a level playing field where merit alone determines your position. But we all know that isn't true.


My concern for the working class has always been lack of mobility and the increasing power of those in whose hands capital wealth rests. This imbalance worsens the societal imbalance and renders useless the Constitutional guarantees of social justice. Not only do workers fail to get decent wages, but also they continually lose their voices in addressing labor issues. This situation becomes far more grave when those in power are members of that singular privileged class, the same class that holds the wealth, dictates wages and determines the fate and social standing of millions of impoverished laborers.

I cannot stand by and let this situation continue. My sentiments lie with the workers. I am with you because, I have always been you.

Mabuhay ang uri ng manggagawa! ( Long Live The Working Class ! ) "



DANILO D. LIM ( #28 )
Senatorial Candidate (IND)

* General Danny Lim is currently incarcerated for calling on President Arroyo to step down back in 2006. It would be wise to vote for him in this upcoming elections. Yes, this is an endorsement.

Statement c/o his spokesperson Izabelle Palanca Enriquez.

I'm Voting For The Green Candidate :

No, not that guy. The other who isn’t a fascist lapdog weasel.

Former relies on his diplomas and ‘perfect attendance’ to seem ‘intelligent’ to lazy minds. My candidate, meanwhile, has the real smarts.

But it was this blog which made me finally decide.

Well, this quote, anyway.

" Truth to tell, it’s jamby madrigal and nicanor perlas who are running on platforms of CHANGE, and noynoy and the rest should be giving way to them, i.e., if we are to go by EDSA. "

Basically true.

We need an upheaval right now, which is determined towards achieving a more participatory, engaged and surgical transformation of our society. This should be fine.

Was a tough choice between Jamby and Nick for me, honestly. The deal breaker, though, was Jamby coming to the aid of Aquino and DEFENDING HIM re. Mendiola Massacre. That is highly unacceptable gesture in my book, and reeks of callous opportunism, & shows her to be nothing more than a ‘wheeler-dealer’ of some kind. Whatever progressive bona fides she has accumulated all this time has been downgraded by this single act. Worse, in the event of her win, the matrix of oligarchic power play is only upheld, and calling her bluff, in a sense, would just amount to begging for a seat at their table. Perfectly good as Jamby's intentions may be. We didn’t go so far in this journey to merely want a seat in the table.

Ultimately, what won me over is that his campaign is about going beyond and transcending all that. Because we deserve better. Than this, than these insulting set of choices they menacingly throw at us. We don't have to resign ourselves to the telenovela of the yellow bastard, or the bogus b.s. of that 'mahirap' prick, or the country-killing doctrine of those who want or think they are white.

What we need, with the risk of sounding cliched, is the new shit. A clean fucking break. A fresh perspective. A plan amd aim that screams civilization. That doesn't demean us, or talk down on us, or casts us in mendicancy. That works around our country's present limitations, instead of merely being OF them.

That w/c showcases Filipino cerebral acumen as able to produce spectacular views, ways and means to achieve holistic growth, crush the structural deadweights, and totally ascend: unfurling the Gordian knot of Semi-Feudal, Semi-Colonial formulations, which has suffocated dreams and stifled capabilities, preventing a lot of us from thinking out of its grue.

One which builds on the strength of our own ideas and common purpose.

For your consideration.





*****

Nicanor Perlas’ Platform:


Oh, and please do check this out,too. This one got me started.

Burn.

Lullaby To the Big Sleep ( 1985 ) - Hiroshi Harada

Perlas/Binay 2010

This blog supports the candidacies of :



and



Vote ( #152 ) :

Report On The Current State Of Our Cinema, by Juan Antonio Bardem :

- Delivered to a film congress at the Univ. of Salamanca, Spain
May 1955


" At the present time, the world is getting ready to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of cinema. At the same time, a group of Spaniards are meeting at one of Europe's most beloved universities to talk about film.

The name of this meeting is highly significant: it is National Conversations on Film. That is to say, we Spaniards are going to discuss cinema. Within this free dialogue, this exchange of ideas and concepts, we will practice, in the most honest and sincere manner, criticism and self-criticism of our attitude toward the cinema of Spain.

A few days ago, in Cannes, celebrating this sixtieth anniversary, I saw some of the first images captured on film. I thought about Salamanca. I thought that what's really important to us Spaniards is to reflect upon our cinema, Spanish cinema. Not out of chauvinism but rather, on the contrary, in the firm belief that we can only reach the universal through the strictly, empatically, and truly national.

Let's talk, then, about or national cinema. The whole world is listening. Let's talk, from right here, from the Salamanca of Fray Luis de León, and Miguel de Unamuno, about Spanish cinema.
After sixty years of filmmaking, Spanish cinema is:


* Politically ineffective

* Socially false

* Intellectually worthless

* Aesthetically nonexistent

* Industrually cripped



* Politically ineffective: Spanish cinema starts for us in 1939. Since then, there hasn't been a single authentic political film. The ones that have attempted to claim that title are just cheap acts of fake patriotism, ending with the waving of a Spanish flag to garner applause. At first sight, Raza (José Luis Sáenz de Heredia/1942) might seem to be that political film. But is not. Raza stands out simply because it was Spain's first formally accomplished film.

This lack of authentic political films is a serious defect in a cinema run by the state. And even those films that escape complete state control are anodyne, out of sync, bizarre.The filmmaker can't believe, doesn't actually believe, in his cinema, and so he escapes. From this point of view, Spanish cinema has a name: escapism. And this is the case with all of our films, even the best of them. Surcos (José Antonio Nieves de Conde/1951) escapes by giving us an unconvincingly bucolic explanation for the rural exodus to the city. If there is an exodus, there has to be a reason for it. But Surcos doesn't even look for that reason. Bienvenido, Mr. Marshall! (Luis García Berlanga, 1953) escapes in another way, into fantasy. There the Americans just drive on by, but in reality they never did.

There does in fact exist and official cinema. But it's a conformist cinema that turns its back on reality. That official cinema has yet to create a worthy film.


* Socially false: So our cinema, turning its back to the realities of Spain, has been incapable of showing us the true nature of Spain's problems, of its land and people. This attemporal portrayal, airless and false, of the so-called Spanish reality could not be further from our extraordinary realist tradition in painting and literature. Today someone who watches a Spanish film can't know, by watching it, how Spaniards live, how thet rejoice or suffer, what problems or conflicts they experience in society. The Spanish spectator is not informed throgh national films of the realities surrounding him. The vision of the world, of this Spanish world, portrayed in Spanish films is false. Nothing is true.


* Intellectually worthless: We are alone. We who love film have had to reinvent all the theories that have already been invented , re-create the style that were already cast off. Our intellectuals have rejected film and have adopted a dangerous and antiquated attitude toward it. They have abandoned us.

Every once in a while, one of those wise, patronizing voice deigns to speak about film. If the intellectual's expertise is derived from other disciplines, those of us who work in film, rightly offended, don't even listen. The fact that our intellectuals have wholly neglected film has long weakened our theoretical position and debilitated our cinema culture.

We've had to be bold to proudly create our fragile journal Objetivo. We watch terrible copies of forgotten films in our uninviting "art houses". Today we are ignorant of 90% of world film criticism, and we haven't seen 95% of the films we should have seen. This is a terrible disadvantage when it comes to building our own cinema. Spanish intellectuals have failed to recognize our films. I take great pleasura in the fact that it is Salamanca the is lending its lecture halls and intellectual prestige for the discussion of Spanish cinema.


* Aesthetically nonexistent: Our films lack form beacuse they lack content. Not even our style is any good. At best it is at times simply correct. On the other hand, I don't believe in style for its own sake. The lack of rigorous and true content produces an absurd aesthetic. Our films lack beauty because we haven't been able to create beauty, because we haven't been able to support beauty with a real and solid structure. Our films lack beauty because we haven't learned how to see this beauty. And so, thanks to this insincerity that blinds us, we haven't been able to grasp beauty.


* Industrially crippled: Our film industry has no market, smothered as it is by a protectionism that at first seems generous but in reality feeds on the blood of Spanish cinema. The equipment in our studios is outdated and scarce. Talent can sometimes be a replacement for the best cameras, but a standard level for a national cinema can only be reached through and adequate provision of material means and professionalism, which we are far from having. Let's not trust all those Americans who fill up our movie studios. They, too, will just be passing through, leaving nothing behind them.

We need new laws for our cinema. We need new forms of protection that don't isolate cinema froms its base, the audience. We need a different attitude from the state toward our cinema. We need the state not to view cinema as an enemy, not to restrict it or suffocate it. We need censorship to openly show its face, to direct us to the exit of its labyrinth, and to explain clearly what's forbidden and what isn't. We need an honest attitude from film professionals. They should see cinema not as a means but as an end, they should love it deeply, and they should not praise their own work to the skies when they clearly don't deserve it.


In the history of film, there are no Spanish names. Now we want to fight for a national cinema, with love, with sincerity, with integrity. Spain is close, at the edge of the heart. Through our cinema we want to be in contact with the people and lands of Spain, with the people and lands of the world. Maybe you think this assessment is too grim. Good.

Let's shake things up a little. We need to provoke a reaction. That way we can salvage something. We can at least salvage our desire to build a national cinema. Yes, we want to build our own cinema, Spanish cinema. Just as was said of a man eight years ago, so we can say now of our cinema:


" God, how fine the vassal. If only his lord were worthy! "


Source


*****

Sums up the current Philippine film scene in general.

Legitimacy.

“There is nothing wrong with being leftist. It’s a legitimate political tradition."
- Liberal Party senatorial candidate Risa Hontiveros.

by Carlo Cielo

Hmmm. So Leftism is just a 'tradition' to Risa Hontiveros. A 'legitimate' one at that. It's neither a point in an ideological spectrum, nor a choice in a so-called 'marketplace of ideas', nor a stance in a forum or debate. NOT LEGITIMATE POLITICS.

It is only a pose, a rhetoric that has to be assumed to simulate its existence in time of elections. Otherwise, the hegemony must still remain in all its oligarchy. Single type of rule is maintained. A status-quo persists, unchallenged, never to be replaced. There is only one trajectory for the nation, and that is one it has started with, and shall continue towards 'till the end of time. Each and every election circle is meant to produce the same set of platforms, the same set of agendas, the same set of formulations, as conducted by the same set of authors, and nothing else. No need to defend or to lobby for this or that on a parliament, since there's no one else to contend with. There is simply no other side.

But at least you get to keep face.

You get to go through these...plays and perform your part in them. You get to fulfill your bullshit role in these escapisms, these illusions of freedom due to the 'presence' of options and voting. One of which is democracy.

Leftism's individual dignity, integrity, and actual merit, as well as of those who live & fight under its Red banner, is disregarded, and is perfectly nullified.

That's why Leftist candidates here are treated as 'terror' suspects.

That's why Leftist groups are immediately being marginalized and disenfranchised. That's why Leftist views can only be vilified with no need for consideration. That's why Filipino Leftist activists, journalists, and professionals are repeatedly harassed, mugged, humiliated, or even shot down in the streets. Because they simply weren't supposed to be treated as real people. Because they simply weren't meant to be.

We will see then who is legitimate.

Pitch of the Day : Nardong Putik Remake

Shamelessly ripping off this regular feature 'coz I've got enough time to waste. Game?

The Dark Knight Meets Silence of the Lambs Meets Balibo


Poster of Orig. Version, 1974


________

Terror

by Carlo Cielo

Political suspense thriller. A deglamorized, gritty, no-holds-barred take on Leonardo Manecio a.k.a. ‘Nardong Putik’, a true life bandit rumored to have wielded a magical amulet, who sowed mayhem in the Phil. countryside from the late ‘40s onwards, culminating in the notorious Maragondon massacre of 1952.

Informed by contemporary post-911 reality; ‘Terror’ dispels convenient myths and perceptions about vigilantes in general, portraying them as sinister, selfish nihilists who are more often subject to social/political forces than being beyond them. Nardong gets used by members of the establishment and the police to perpetuate their sick barbarity onto the public.

This also depicts how people like him would often be seen as divine & heroic by battered and superstitious Filipino masses, because it is the easiest thing for them to do so...

Narrative would carefully set-up the incidences and actions, the maneuvers and double-dealings of the various players, suddenly culminating in the knifing of the police chief, the mayor, and several policemen in Maragondon, Cavite. Should go on a bit from there, I suppose, as we see him meticulously plan several attacks for the next few decades.

Then, a post script about his eventual arrest in 1971, where it becomes clear that not only does he gain public sympathy, but also aids in the political rise of the one who led the operation against him; that particularly overzealous public servant becoming governor from 1979 to 1995, furthering the system which gave rise to the likes of Putik in the first place.

Flash forward to current times. Holding Nardong Putik’s amulet which got passed onto him in some way, a highly-decorated general tries to shield himself from human rights litigation, by running as governor in an undeclared province. Film ends. ( This part is fictional, but is inspired by actual news… )

****

My intent is to put the original 1970's Ramon Revilla Sr. starrer through the prism of our contemporary, far meaner times. Peeling away the folkloric touches, taking away the mysticism, into presenting these type of characters and events as we would understand them now - informed by Jason Ivler road rage & police shootout, reality TV, and the Ampatuan Massacre. Meaner. Grislier. Crasser.

Perhaps an argument can be made about how Nardong Putik represents another time with a different set of values, a different moral system, different sensibilities, and it would be inappropriate to cast his story in the light of today's more blatant predation. Nonetheless, I feel this should be effective means with which to expose the actual barbarism and lumpen brutality of his agenda and methods, which aren't in line with genuine struggle, and is still all about avarice.

And Nardong's aim to share this avarice with the less fortunate doesn't make his story a relic of a bygone era, despite the current 'anti-poor' climate. Rather, it is reflective of the parasitic system of patronage that lingers on and continues to produce class thugs to this very day. Its undercurrents of superstition and longing for corrupt Messiahs making the potential film more immediate.

That's it.

The Judge Of It All

by Carlo Cielo

One of the most significant realizations I’ve ever had, the one which put my intellectual journey across the noughties in full circle, is how Ayn Rand was a piece of shit all along.

See, I’ve always thought of Rand as a sort of ‘loyal opposition’, an ideological counterweight to smarmy pervert dogmas and philosophies that are all about subjugation and intrusion in your life. And yes, some threads within her philosophy are still relevant – at least the operant argumentative tract – and can still be utilized. They still do provide a counter-offense against trespass of unwanted kind - of neo-liberalism, among others.

What I never knew was an Ayn Rand who was a full-on, disgusting human lesion, who groveled at the feet of child murderers, and specifically because of the fact they’re scum. Perhaps enthralled by their resoluteness in representing a defined side of a moral spectrum. Nonetheless, someone who actually ends up LIKING corruption & evil, and subjugation in the end, and is perfectly fine with any of these.

Guess this serves to expose what made my previous predicament so wrong the first time I halfway bought into Objectivist philosophy, peaking at the years 2003-2005. Being so trapped by these mindsets, these doctrinal pissings I got tied up in. And the single most dangerously ironic flaw in Rand's philosophy : its exclusive investment in psychic income; where all of reality collapses into that wonderful space between you and your precious little thoughts, and intellectuality coming down to satiating that condition.

This insularity obviously results in paranoias, in claustrophobia of all correspondences and struggle & feedback being kept within one's own, the absolute goal being nothing more than to slog endlessly through those rationalizations, that internal discourse; and its incentive, the stress. There may be supplemental outside interactions, yes, but the back and forth between that person and the surrounding reality and actual society remains largely transactional, with little acceptance of their separate value and worth; as reason & comprehension is singularly governed by egoist subjectivity, and its indolent emotionalism consuming perspective.

You can only be besieged by pent-up, thought-out ‘claims’, and these are only what would mean anything in your life.

And some of those 'claims' do start to get untenable, even as they all do purport to one thing, and one thing only. If it’s not God, Jesus, or a buncha telepathic aliens you read in the Bible or somewhere, then it’s this illusory, pictured entity of fiction of 'self' - that glorious construct all these would run in contact against, all of which made of personal suggestions themselves, the only responsibility being to preserve and maintain that internal cacophony at all cost.

‘Self’ that has nothing to do with the term. 'Self' that is a construct than the actual subject - or object. 'Self' that isn't the tangible, flesh and blood of your actual organic being, much less the materiality of your being’s welfare. ‘Self’ that is not of the psycho-somatic, yet forcibly maltreats and obligates the psycho-somatic into endlessly feeding its crushing psychopathy. 'Self' that basically comes down to insular bloviation projected on the many.

Amazing how I've managed to maintain my generally ‘Leftist’ footing even as I've been knee-deep in that state. Perhaps it may have been that footing's ingrained angst w/c helped keep up such condition : the adversarial & antagonistic tact, of course, being removed from respective issues and context, and co-opted and utilized to feed EGO : repurposed to prop up & fulfill a tract of arrogance, a juvenile, self-authored modality, waxing right to (over)compensate for its invalidation – a material ‘fix', a special high, along the lines of drugs, ‘90s angsty-shit music, erotic bullshit, and synthetic post-traumatic ambiance. What has probably reduced ‘activism’ into ‘puberty phase’ for most people, and I guess still does.

Thankfully it didn't come down to that for me. I started embracing the substance of Left positionalities, before it was too late.

It helps to claw out of such confinement. It's good to get out of the self-absorption of that view. It aids to wake up to the inanity of it, and see the rudderless world outside, and how inferior the self-inflicted and futile the Objectivist set-up is in comparison, & truly moribund and abandoned by dynamic time. To fully grasp the understanding that you are concurrent to immediate reality, and what is at stake is EVERYONE. And so the single best therapy to this pointless morass - spiritual, political, psychological, or otherwise - is direct social engagement.

It also helps to realize that intellectuality goes both ways : it's not just what your thoughts say about the real world, but what the real world is telling you right now. Once you start accepting this, then you begin to matter again. Inspecting the bullshit, clearing out the mental filters, and looking at the merits and substance of things, and their respective functionalities and practicalities, and APPLYING their lessons, rather than merely using them to satisfy sensation for its own sake.

It’s what ultimately unshackles the Chinese Garter of such elite-engendered formulations. Of their superstructures specifically meant to stifle and disarm, and punish for some reason. It’s what would clear things up and make you realize that this one thing here for example is a wreck, a matrix of corrupt views, there is zero need to defend or suffer or wallow in these, and we should ought to invest our energies and castigations on the attacks from outside. Instead of spending all of those times brutalizing the Self.

The recent exposes on Ayn Rand shows real damn well the decrepit nature of her discourse, in all its pointless violence, the type of which governs our decade's most prominent fuckers as well : namely, the intellectual class parasites who have since nested themselves inside the belly of this socio-cultural imperialism. The creoles heathens who are more than eager to rave about a Filipina's rape-slay on celluloid – in how it’s such an ' uncompromisingly profound acceptance of human ruin '. And what tasty human ruin !

The rest of us just can't appreciate, 'coz we're the ‘masses’. We’re 'little people'. We’re ‘lice’, the ‘ naked, twisted, mindless figure of the human Incompetent’, ‘mud to be ground underfoot, fuel to be burned’. That’s why we don't deserve a piece of the wealth. That's why we ought to 'wait our turn', instead of threatening freedom - their freedom - with demands for equity. We do not deserve to be recognized by these haughty, Dionysian Supermen.


We'll be the judge of that.

Synthesis.

"What is synthesis? You have all witnessed how the two opposites, the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, were synthesized on the mainland. The synthesis took place like this: their armies came, and we devoured them, we ate them bite by bite."
- Mao Zedong

My Politics ( 2010 ) :

Manderlay ( 2005 ) - Lars Von Trier

Are Leftists In The Phils. Liberal, or Is It Just The Liberals ?

"In every community there are many shades of political opinion. Among the shadiest of these are the liberals. Ten degrees to the left of center in good times, ten degrees to the right of center if it affects them personally." - Phil Ochs

by Carlo Cielo

Thing about Philippine culture and society is, the usual paradigms tend to not apply.

For example, if one’s social politics is potable clear water, ours is slimy sewerage. There's various structural debauchery and pollution to sift through, that others may have already overcome. Filth and trash in various layers, that once Western paradigms get cast here like the rays of light they purport to be, these often get refracted : muddled, severely distorted.

And normally doesn't settle. There's the films of grime such as landed oligarchy, bureaucrat capitalism, and neo-colonial/imperialism to deal with. They may still keep the vernacular and tone, but they get spelled out in a different context and intent; one which loses the already maudlin spirit these were supposed to have.

I've had teachers who scoff at Bush and fanatical Christian faith, yet would put SARAH PALIN to shame in their praise of corporate dictatorship. Let's just say that, soon as a prominent, debutante socialite here starts mouthing off about her being 'completely liberated', she ain't referring to freedom from patriarchal, feudal structures and constraints; she's only saying she's free from everyone else. And in ways w/c would probably not endear her to the Filipino feminists – you know, the types who'd march in the streets, fighting for actual liberation.

So true progressives here tend to scoff at the term, much less being labeled with it. And definitely, I'd be among those people.

One reason is semantics. The word 'liberal' recalls 'neo-liberal', a market fundamentalist ideology of ruthless deregulations and foreign usurpations w/c has since created more injustice - unacceptable, of course, to any self-respecting Left. Another is because it's really a bourgeois smokescreen by these dominant caciques who never meant to be liberal. Hence, a bourgeois construct in and of itself : one that is content with giving lip service to pet causes, is divorced from the conditions on the ground, and could only propose 'diplomacy' and 'politeness' in the face of open threats, including those which are legitimate.

That’s how you've got censors here supporting free speech. Or abusers espousing 'human rights'. Or militarists preaching 'non-violence'. Or rich trophy whores flaunting ‘empowerment’. Or plutocrats vying for univ. health care. Or friends of oil companies espousing green tech. Or ‘liberals' supporting a fascist. These are all perfectly acceptable in the land of impunity.

You've got sisters of land barons here scolding the farmers they deprive, and blaming their dispossession on the fact they won't take the pill !

'Liberal' can only leave a bad taste in the Fil. proletarian's mouth. To the mind of the powerless and deprived, such only seems like a buncha sympathies the well-fed could afford to have. It is so damn elitist in context, and reactionary in application, that it becomes RIGHTIST.

This is an extreme rightist nation, after all, weaned on rightist thinking, and ruled by rightist hegemony. So, whenever ‘liberalism’ rears its ugly head in these parts - say, wagging a finger to those who had to burn old chairs to keep their education - it won’t be that a few caring for the many, but a clique of right bastards flaunting ‘liberalism’. Liberalism that aims to 'spray the skies with pesticides' and exterminate the peasants, with weapons and tools funded by liberal ‘democracies’.

You see this 'freedom' ? They will hit you with it.

Once menace comes into play, the dichotomies unravel.

*****

So where was I ? Oh, yes. Feudal.


Filipino-style liberalism:

"We are socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are determined to destroy this system under all conditions.” - Adolf Hitler, 1927 [1]

"Our adopted term ‘Socialist’ has nothing to do with Marxian Socialism. Marxism is anti-property; true Socialism is not. " - Adolf Hitler, 1930 [2]

Fooling people all the time.

[1] Hitler’s speech on May 1, 1927. Cited in: Toland, John (1992). Adolf Hitler. Anchor Books. pp. 224-225.

[2] Carsten, Francis Ludwig (1982).The Rise of Fascism, 2nd ed. University of California Press, p.137. Quoting: Hitler, A., Sunday Express, September 28, 1930.

Beta Version - UP KILL :

* New edit is forthcoming.

Torching The Campus :

Fixed and reedited for Blog Action Day for
Education.
Please check out the Kabataan
Partylist website :
http://kabataanpartylist.com/blog/
march-29-is-blog-action-day-for-education/)
for more details.
It is also a personal response
in light of recent events.
The Polytechnic University of the
Phils. ( PUP ) students
lit up broken chairs, but who
were BURNING STATE UNIVERSITY
DOWN THE GROUND ? And who were
ones hard pressed trying to put it out ?!?
I'm just going to say, they
didn't start the fire.

And if we are going to talk about
'symbolic violence', well, it never
gets more barbaric and crass than what
those Arroyo fucktards did during the
UP Centennial.


---

by Carlo Cielo

You want violence ?





Yeah, that was what I was up to at the time. It's my idea of a parade. It's none of your business, or anyone's, but the fact. It's the least anyone can do to deal with what was , and still is, a misguided commemoration of a malaise. Of a state college that used to mean more than overpricing of public infrastructure, or fetishistic embrace of property. The lingering social question now being how to break up such impasse, esp. in the face of bad elements. Nonetheless, it's very apparent that something, or anything, has to happen.

Few hours earlier, I was with a buncha pips, the people I know, the ones left worth talking to. In the Vargas Museum, at the Coffee Shop. Was purposefully drowning out the noise of these damn 'festivities' in my head, much as I couldn't prevent myself from passing through it : the Rayadillo batch processions spilling out onto that road near the pathway between the Social Science building and the canteen, and then some folks or another who were annoying. Ridiculous. Anyway's I was like, out, ya know; nurturing my belly that's just been filled by Mongolian Rice bowl. Until the tail-end of that walk, seeing them pals, and starting conversation.

There was that fellow comic book org. member, who was also set to graduate that year of 2008, and Ernest Caliwag, who was my classmate. Talks were opened with pleasantries, then quickly led to the substantial and on-topic. We were talking about globalization and post-modernism, of the right sides to the left sides of the spectrum, and back again. Basically, on how the whimsical, nay capricious nature of vacillation between positions has left the idea of ' right and wrong ' futile, arbitrary, and temporary. Since, there are no grand theories now, no 'other' power in the world anymore, or alternative, what with all of truths dissolved by the shock-absorbing globalization. At least, that's the conclusion the comic book guy came down to, amidst sips of tea of some kind. Frankly, it was nothing much.

Without warning, a stream of angry folks descended down the road from where we sat, and I didn't need any more prodding. It was time.

This was the UP Los Banos contingent I remember joining with, helmed by pissed-off shouts, and terse invective. A dozen or hundred crescendos build up into chorus : 'No to TOFI ( Tuition Fee Increase ) ! Junk TOFI ( Tuition Fee Increase ) ! ' Further to the front of them was the militant student group STAND-UP with which, I guessed, this group was set to assimilate. All of whom have been steadfastly pushing this opposition from the very start; an opposition which I more than fully support and agree with. They were out to give all these thieving, lying fuckers a piece of their minds, after more than a year or so of their atrocious, gruesome silencing. Thought to my self, 'Hey, I wanna give these fuckers a piece of my mind, as well. So, let's go ! ' That, we did.

Jeers and sneers greeted us at every step. Stares that were suspicious and mean. Insults that came down to rambling, the perpetrators themselves too conceited to even want to be heard. Personally went past the former University of the Phils. president, whom I interviewed for a college project a few months earlier, in which he stood exposed and revealed a sycophant. He didn't seemed pleased with us; very few were. Yet we kept on, and proceeded with the red banner signs made unwanted and rejected by the climate. Like this wasn't our world and we were of a different species. As if protest never existed in this place. Or even the most administrable decencies.

Did anyone ever thought of the timing ? I wondered to myself that. Not many people I know stopped and thought why this shindig was being held smack dab at the middle of a work week. Why wasn't this done at a friendlier, and more welcoming schedule, for all students and faculty and possible participants ? Like on a FRIDAY perhaps, or a Saturday. It's always done that way, right, it's the way it works. It's how it turns. The fireworks were nice, but COME ON. This was so fucking inconvenient.

" How many more classrooms would have been bought instead of the fireworks ?", I thought. " Or personal computers ? Or books ? " Potentialities that which were smoldered into ash - with the intended benefactors footing the bill for the burning. And they never signed up for this, oh no they didn't. We didn't either. We just wanted a school to enroll in, to pass a few credits in, to graduate, and gain a diploma from, to get a job with. It's what the taxpayers all intended, when they agreed to pour their blood, sweat, and toil to build an architecture for the future - a sane and decent one for their own selves or their kids to live with. Not to be threatened by, or lambasted for, but a means with which to rise up, and get back at the daily iniquity that's casually being done to them.

The least they wanted was to have all these burned at the altar of Centennial.

But that's why these headmasters were bent on keeping out as many people as possible, these fanciful Cultists of Friedman, like they did in 2006. People would have led to more than just the altar burning. They were going to mess with the Academic Excellence, and that is blasphemy in their record !

All of which expose the disposition of a University of the Philippines ( UP ) not being about shared investments, but tribute - to the Pagan Temple of Supply And Demand. No one must stand in the way of its Free Reign.

More jeers. It gets worse. They were actively getting physical now, pushing at the protesters. Maligning, threatening, scowling, spewing expletives, scoundrels that they are. Throwing epithets or two before walking away in denial of everything. A hostile group of nitwits who cross our paths just as they would our nation's future. We're not welcome. The Filipino wasn't welcome. It was severe.

And so the show went on. A hundred folks started stepping up their place of worship; alumni, professionals, achievers with the slightest connection to the university. There was this old person, near a hundred year old, wasting her years, as she was being hailed for the fact he still lives and breathes. Odd in times of ritual sacrifice. One by one, they lit their torches, raised 'em high, and put them in the altar. The throng raised its voice and cheered.

The last one to put the torch down was Mrs. Emerlinda Roman.

Here is the campus you have built your dreams on, Filipino :




Watch it burn.