BUNSO screening

Start:	Feb 24, '05 6:30p
Location:	CINEMA 6 OF SM MEGAMALL

If you missed the Premiere or if you saw the film but
want friends or family to see it too, you can catch
BUNSO (The Youngest) at Pelikula at Lipunan this
Thursday.

BUNSO is a disturbing documentary film about three
boys, Tony, Itsoy and Diosel, aged eleven to thirteen
who are detained in a jail for adult criminals. It is
an immersion into the world of the city jail with many
poignant moments from the boys who speak their truth
with innocence and street smarts, pain and humor.

The duo behind the documentary film: Ditsi Carolino
and Nana Buxani, creators of Minsan Lang Sila Bata
(1996) and Riles (2002).

Bunso is not a commercial film and will not have a
commercial run, so catch the Premiere while you can!
Hope to see you at the screenings!

*** If you have friends and colleagues who you think
would be interested in watching Bunso, please help us
spread the word and forward this email.

-----------------------
How Do We Love Our Children?
By Raymond Lee

How do you find the words to write about a film whose
immediate effect is to render you speechless?

I saw Ditsi Carolino’s film twice – first when she
showed her almost-final cut, sans music, to us her
classmates in a UP film writing workshop last October;
second at its full-house premiere at the Cine Adarna
(formerly UP Film Center) last December.

In both instances Bunso at its close was met with
silence.

Not silence born out of indifference or polite relief,
in deference to the presence of the filmmaker; but
stunned silence, and silence as defense mechanism – a
finger to a hole in a dam. When this dam burst, well,
it was visible in the faces of those who had just seen
a miracle.

“Nawasak ako,” I overheard someone say after the
premiere. She described for the rest of us our
inarticulate feelings. How do you translate this? “I
was devastated?” “Blown away?” “Flattened?”
“Demolished?” “Gutted?”

All of the above, utterly and completely.

Carolino filmed Bunso (The Youngest) in a jail in Cebu
where the child offenders were mixed with the adult
prisoners. Cheek by jowl they slept in cramped,
unsanitary quarters that leaked when it rained and
reeked any other day. Pushing and shoving they lined
up for their daily gruel.

She filmed dozens of these children – all of them
poor, most from dysfunctional families – for several
weeks. She zeroed in on three of them. They were 12,
13 years old at the time the film was shot, but none
of them looked over 10. They were, despite their age,
The Three Wise Men of this film. Life had prematurely
exempted them from boyhood, it seems.

Tony is the charmer, the natural leader among them. He
addresses the camera like a long-lost friend and makes
as if he were touring us in his own private castle. He
provides the articulate running commentary that
practically glues the film’s narrative together. He
becomes our eyes and ears into this world that has so
been misrepresented in many of our prison genre movies
more juvenile and more delinquent than any of the
juvenile delinquents here.

Same goes for these children’s parents. In one of this
film’s outstanding scenes, we meet Tony’s mother and
father. It starts with his already drunk mother
opening another bottle of beer. The camera pulls out
just enough to reveal she is pregnant. And it is just
morning. She laments her son’s plight. She blames her
husband for putting him in jail. Her husband, slick
and glib, reasons it’s for his son’s own good. So that
gives him the right to beat the living hell out of
their son, the mother asks. It escalates into an
all-out verbal war that any screenwriter (this writer
included) can only dream of writing. Mother reveals
father threatened to kill own son and promised to get
away with it. Finally the father retreats in
embarrassed but remorseless silence.

So in this world where their own mothers and fathers
break their bodies and spirits Tony becomes sort of a
mother hen to the other boys in his cellblock. He
takes under his wing Itsoy (a play on tisoy as he is
fair-skinned and handsome), the youngest and the most
feisty of them who takes on his delinquent mother in
one of cinema’s most unforgettable confrontation
scenes bar none, documentary or feature. In Cebuano he
tells her, “You call yourselves parents?! You beat me
up, you should be in jail, not me.” And he’s right.

Tony finds a shirt to give a shivering Diosel, the
third of this magical triumvirate. He is the angel
among them with an angel’s singing voice and a knack
for telling a damn funny story even if it is about him
getting caught stealing change from a store so he can
eat, the store owner showing him compassion and
forgiving him, and him getting no such luck from his
own father who sends him to jail just to teach him a
lesson.

Carolino is our most acclaimed documentarist. Her
films, most notably Minsan Lang Sila Bata (Children
Only Once) and Riles (Life On the Tracks) have
screened to international praise. They are a scathing
record of poverty amid culpable social structures, but
also immensely intimate portraits of the indomitable
human soul still standing after it has been slapped,
kicked, spat on. Bunso is no different. Only, it is
better.

It blurs the lines between journalism and literature,
advocacy and artistry. It deserves to be seen by film
students and the whole Filipino movie industry. Mother
Lily, the del Rosarios, the Lopezes, et al should
organize a conference on renewing our cinema –
something they should have done years ago – and begin
by watching this film. All Congressmen, Senators, and
government employees starting with the President must
see this film. A front row seat should be reserved for
Her Excellency. The Department of Education should
make this required viewing in all our schools public
and private.

It is said that it is in our culture, our nature to
love children to the point of spoiling them rotten.
Carolino’s film quietly asks where that love has gone.
Or, are we loving them to death, literally?