‘HINULID’: THE SORROWS OF SITA and THE POLITICS OF MYTHS AND MEMORIES

By: Tito Genova Valiente

REELING

Business Mirror

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Source:

http://www.businessmirror.com.ph/hinulid-the-sorrows-of-sita-and-the-politics-of-myths-and-memories/

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AN old song is recited, and it pleads with all the torment of love: “Sa aldaw, sa banggi, di ka malingwan pa [At day, at night, you will not be forgotten].” It is the voice of Nora Aunor, the timbre recognizable all over this nation.  The voice continues: “Mga inagrangay idulot mo sa Diyos [All your torment you offer to God].” It is a love song that fuses religion and sensuality, coming from a region where faith flows in the narrow strait of the mythical and the real.

They come in threes. The Three Dead Christ, real in the town of Gainza, is shown being worshipped by devotees. Three corpses float, disturbing in the velvet garb of the Christ. Three woman are raped and three men—triplets—are tortured. Men and woman violated are transformed into banana stalks, a belief that is common among Bikolanos and their tales of enchantment. Against the verdant field is seen the statue of Death, a skeleton dressed in red velvet, an icon in the land of icons. The woman who pulls Death is also the woman who appears and reappears with the icon of Death and, in unexpected places, is seen before an old sewing machine finishing something that can never be finished. Death is there but separate, the healer explains. A song of lament is sung by a male choir, the phrasing unique because the singers are from Buhi, the Bikol language which is marked separate from the other Bikol languages. The non-Bikolano need not know this but for the Bikolano audience, a crisis has been averted in the film: the actors have been allowed to use their own “first” Bikol language. Nora herself uses her Rinconada language from Iriga. Raffi Banzuela, who plays the priest, speaks his own Camalig-Albay Bikol. (The mother tongue expert should watch this film.) Against all this, a train seemingly with a life of its own navigates the marshland and meadows of the land called Kabikolan, on a trip with no beginning and with no end. Like memory. Like the endless violence that wracks this land. Images and images, with tension created between some of them, with meanings apparent in many of them, abound in this film called Hinulid. The title, which literally means “laid to rest”, refers first to the three images of the Dead Christ, unique and aberrant. But the title could also mean the grief that comes with Death.

Nothing is laid to rest, however, in Hinulid. By the fact that the people have made three statues resurrects the Tres Persona Solo Dios (Three Persons in OneGod), a system of belief prevalent in mountain cults. Nothing, indeed, is finished and resolved in Hinulid. It’s on this that the poetry of the film soars and takes us on a journey that works of great art are able to do. Instead of  being diminished by the absence of resolution, the film, in fact, produces a discourse that is politically realistic out of scenes and events that are magical, mythical and full of marvel.

But if we notice and are touched by the poesy in the film, it is because there are prosaic moments. These are the realistic moments when we see Sita talking with the school authorities and the character of Lucas is evaluated. If not for the consistency in the presentation, where Sita is almost an audience, not engaging the other characters, the scenes would have weakened the film. As it is, some of the scenes that are devoid of the poetry appear to stop the mind travel. The audience, thus, waits for the train, and when it does pass—because it never arrives—we are enthralled by the seemingly boundless procession of personages and personifications.

Those who compose the local cast don’t disappoint. One can’t imagine it is their first time to appear before a camera for a film, and without the benefit of a workshop.

The Night Express Does Not Stop Here Anymore is the title of the fiction written by Carlos Ojeda Aureus, which, according to Kristian Sendon Cordero, the director, inspired the film.

The train is the magical motif that rumbles across the screen, connecting sorrow with rage, loss and recovery, justice and disorder. As this train moves, a story is told about a mother who comes home to bring her son to rest in peace. But this is merely no coming home, and this is merely not a train. It is the land where mountains come alive and where distant islands are monsters that fell as stars from the sky. The train knows it and Sita, the keeper of the urn of memory and justice, is also the keeper of the tale.

Predictable as it may seem, the coming of the train at every turn of the film, something inside that train is not within our control. The film offers us the interior of the train, the inner workings of remembrance. For inside the train is Sita and her son Lucas, appearing bodily beside her at different junctures of youth—at 9 years of age, at 15, at 25. Each appearance brings us the life of Sita with the son. Terrific and terrifying is the image of Sita carrying the urn with the ashes of Lucas, while Lucas sits there beside his mother. The proximity of  life to death, or the lack of difference between Life and Death, is the message of the film.

We know where the journey is going when, at last, the older Lucas now appears beside Sita. Tender, yet horrifying, is this moment, with Lucas grabbing a kiss from his mom who does not, of course, feel it. But we feel it, this love that cuts across space and time.

As the older Lucas, Jess Mendoza has reached a maturity, the rawness of which was already greatly visible in his first film, The Natural Phenomenon of Madness. With a masculine charm not present in our crop of actors, Mendoza rightfully claims that space with Sita, as played by Aunor. Mendoza is the rightful object of Sita’s memories, with a face that seems to be of the Past and now glows because it is part of another world, not distant but not anymore within grasp. Mendoza has a presence that hovers. We can watch him over and over again because he makes eternity possible.

Aunor as Sita, as the one who remembers, makes everything possible. She helps us endure the long travel in the train, because we believe in her character. Leitmotifs are literary tricks and they can be tricky but with Aunor as the mind that recurs and connects the points in the cosmos, the return to the train turns into an act so magnificently compelling. Each time the train comes in all splendid angles, we look forward to being there with Aunor as Sita. Each time we are with her, we see a different face, a different emotion. We see her silent but with rage somewhere in that frail body. We see her smiling through the tears as the landscape moves outside the window. We see her in darkness. We see her standing, as if burdened by all kinds of loneliness. We see her tired, with memories about to fade. Then we see her again, recoiling, grabbing from the night the thoughts of her son, and her mother’s love. The night train could go on because the mind of Aunor, as Sita, makes visible the invisible. Toward the end, Lucas seen and unseen, felt and unfelt, longingly moves Sita toward him, telling his mother to rest because the night will be long. The camera crawls toward Aunor. As her eyes begin to close, sadness and joy and aloneness and anger flit back and forth, nuances of emotions painted in hues. Then rage and love, frustration and fulfillment, even sleep and death and all the multitude of contradictions, begin to be etched in that old face, growing older each second, aging because the land is ancient as only Aunor—as Sita, as Mother Incarnate, as Life facing Death—could summon to obey.

It is said that Aunor mockingly sighed as she watched the rushes and said: “I am old.” She has, indeed, grown old in this film, a testament to her dedication to the craft. But more that, she has, in Hinulid, became an even greater actor, if such were still possible with an actor who has already been hailed as the greatest.

Cordero can heave a sigh now. He has completed a film that he thought, like the train journey, could never come to a stop. An awarded poet, Cordero has brought his keen confidence in what words can do to this film. His use of voiceover has brought the old device into a different dimension. Jesus Volante is the voice behind those lines.

But don’t ever think that Cordero is saying memories could heal. Memory is more powerful than justice and, in some of the words of the healer, memory also serves a great warning. The romantic in Cordero, however, remains: in the sublime and highly textured cinematography, in a grand animation done by animators from Ateneo de Naga, meteors fall and light up the sky behind the sacred mountain. The train blazes with the fire of a thousand fireflies and resumes its journey through mythical time, where mothers can never forget their sons, where villages will not be ignorant of the politics of violence, where numbers rule our destiny because sons are murdered and we turn to memory for justice.

NORA AUNOR: GAWAD CCP para sa SINING

Citation

Nora Villamayor, better known as Nora Aunor, began her life in the late 60s as a singer, singing songs of varied sources and initiating the resurgence of different vocal music.  She knew hunger before her golden voice brought her to the attention of the nation.

Her journey from a young girl selling water in the train station to someone providing the wishes and hopes of the nation’s masses is no less than epic.

Nora Aunor would join TV and cinema with that entry, she would change our colonial perspective about physical beauty.  She started in musicals and melodrama that served as escape for the many looking to her as inspiration.  Soon, she would make films that subverted politics and politicize subversion.  In her many films, she helped us escape from stereotypical women as she fleshed out the possibilities of Filipina womanhood.

Aunor would perform theater pieces proving the legitimacy of that genius.  In plays and movies, she played characters that were current to the country’s crisis and concerns – migrant labor, rebels, and ambitious lovers.

Aunor’s acting styole would create a massive shift in the performance traditions that were already entrenched.  She would change all that with her portrayal of characters that were marginalized but, with the strength and conviction of her skills, became central in the nation’s imagination.

For an ordinary person transformed into an extraordinary thespian whose legacy to the performing and media arts are the expressions of a magnificent face that can show triumphs and defeats, pains and joys all at the same time in a silence and subtlety that is as disturbing, as enduring and as endearing as the struggles of the nation.

The Gawad CCP para sa Sining (Film and Broadcast Arts) is given on this 17^th of Septem,ber 2015 to Nora Villamayor.

By Tito Genova Valiente

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Source:

Gawad CCP para sa Sining

Pages 70 -74

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Poverty and politics are the birthright of Nora Villamayor, more popularly known as Nora Aunor.  It does not matter really when she was born.  That she was born very poor matters because, like in the many narratives of her films, she would rise from that squalor into a status that symbolizes and, at the same time, subverts social mobility in this nation.  This is where politics enters into Aunor’s birth: her person will form an actor and an acting style that may not be always explicitly but are a subtle and succinct commentary on how power is used and misused in the societies of the republic.

In the summer of 2015, Aunor was honored with the honorary Nagueña Award.  It is her fate that Aunor would alweays stand for something bigger than where she physically came from, the town of Iriga then.

Geography and genius would explain the influence of Nora Aunor on the cinema of the Philippines.  Iriga was a small town when she joined the amateur contest in the city of Naga.  That town is part of Rinconada, a term which means “corner.”  In her career as an actor, Aunor would portray characters who were either outcasts or t the outskirt of social groups.  By being born in a town that was at the periphery of a region that was also not mainstream in the thought of the dominant culture of this country, she would have in her spirit a marginalized that is beyond compare.

In her speech in Naga City in March of 2015, Aunor would share with the audience how they were so poor that they, as family, would take turns borrowing from the neighborhood store.  Born to Antonia Cabaltera ans Eustaquio Villamayor on May 21, 1953, Aunor remembered a childhood not sad but extremely subsistent.  She knew hunger before songs.  She was the most patient of the siblings to wait on her father who worked as a stevedore in the train station.  At the sound of the train whistling, her father, Aunor recalled, would wake up immediately because that sound meant work, and work meant food on the table.

Who would ever think that I, an ugly girl, would ever be an “artista”?  Aunor asked will all candor that night.  She would not ask the question that the critics would ask later: Who is this woman and why is she able to alter the cultural landscape of cinema in this land?  That question was no question but a defiant answer to a query on art made relevant and new.

Nora Aunor would sing first and win a national singing competition: the respected Tawag ng Tanghalan.  Gone was the girl who had to stretch out her neck to listen to the songs played over the radio of  a neighbor.  Gone was the girl who sang for food.  On that stage, the wisp of a girl sang “Moonlight Becomes You”, defeating singers more educated and with more capital to fund a better dress.  She looked at the sky only she could see with those searing eyes and sang to the moon and the night and the music.

In career that spans almost half a century and continues to this day, she has made more than 170 movies, numerous TV shows and concerts, three plays, and more than 50 music album.  Her TV show Superstar was one of the longest running.  The word Superstar would mean nothing without her.  Her numerous vinyl albums would revitalize the Filipino music industry at a time when foreign artist dominated the recording scene.  Her drama anthologies on television, like Makulay na Daigdig ni Nora, served as a spawning if not training ground for directors who would become master filmmakers.

Then there was the film industry beckoning her, machinery that was built on actors and actresses that had the Caucasian features, the so-called mestizos and mestizas whose images resembled Hollywood celebrities.  And yet, she would conquer this terrain and win over to her side a newly formed critics’ group called Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino.  In 1976, she won the first Gawad Urian for Best Actress, a star and a thespian vanquishing those who ever doubted her.  The film was Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos, where she played lead but thematically a villain.  She was not only an actor in the film; she was also the producer.

She would produce more and act in the films she funded: Bona would join other films as the best in the world, to cite one example.  She would portray Elsa, a reluctant faith healer, in Himala, a film that would be declares the best in Asia by CNN-Asia Pacific Screen Awards in 2008.  The role has been lauded by film scholars attributing the mystique of the performance to the fact that Aunor’s fandom parallels the fanaticism and faith of people.  Iconic is perhaps the most abused term writers can give to a celebrity but in Himala, Aunor was Elsa becomes the icon around which doubt and belief circumnavigated, in which religion becomes not a refuge but a refutation.  One can safely say that if an actor can give a hundred shades of black and white, a magnificent canvas of chiaroscuro describes Aunor’s Elsa – timid, manipulative, victim, aggressor, confronting and retreating, in sorrow or in joy – an art to behold and trial to witness by those who believe that cinema is not merely images on the flickering silver screen.

Nora Aunor would win awards in several continents.  The label “Superstar” is never ridiculous when attached to her name.  Lately, she is being called “The Grand Dame of Philippine Movies”’ indicating not her age but her wisdom, not really her longevity but the amazing perpetuity of the acting acumen that has brought forth women whose decisions about loyalty and love, self and nationalism have been questioned.  In Aunor, these women responded back.

Formidable are the characters that Aunor has fleshed out through many decades.  She slept with the enemy in Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos and lived in the home of the enemy she planned to kill in Bakit May Kahapon Pa?.  She lived in Merika and made us think of those decisions to stay in a foreign land all for economic survival; she offered us the terrible options to go to America even if some soldiers of that land could mistake our brothers for pigs in Mina’y Isang Ganu-Gamo.  She looked at the eye of the storm in Taklub and only saw our sense of self; she collected umbilical in Thy Womb because she could not produce one herself.  She, in fact, played mothers and lovers whose duplicity enabled us to gaze not at morality but at the complexity of humanity.

She has won all the acting awards.  She has been elevated to the many Halls of fame.  The world has seen her, and bestowed the accolade on her because she holds the oar and she freely navigates the sea of humanity, ferrying us from shores of ignorance to some afterlife of knowledge through a genius in performance that could only come from poverty, politics and geography – the schools of acting that have given her the boon to share with the many who believe in her.

IN HONOR OF NORA AUNOR

By Tito Genova Valiente

Business Mirror

September 23, 2015

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Source:

http://www.businessmirror.com.ph/in-honor-of-nora-aunor/

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ON September 17 Nora Aunor was given the highest honor the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) could give an artist. Consistency was the rule that the award enforced. Not one but a long line of excellent body of works is needed for an artist to be given this recognition. There is no doubt Nora Cabaltera Villamayor—or simply Nora Aunor to admirers past, present and future—more than fills up the requisites of the award.

A few minutes past 3 pm, the rites for the Gawad CCP Para sa Sining had not started yet. Someone in the back muttered, “Nora is not yet here. She is always late.” I turned around and briskly informed the elegantly dressed but ill-informed woman that Nora is not late, that she had been there backstage accommodating guests who wanted their photos taken with her. The lady quieted down.

That would be the spirit of the afternoon. There were a few people who were there waiting for Nora to fail again. And yet, there were people who were there to show their gratitude and love to this artist.

A few minutes after, a voice announced the parade of members of CCP Board of Trustees and past recipients of Gawad CCP Para sa Sining. They all walked down the left side of the CCP Main Theater. After them, the present recipients followed. Loud applause emanated from the theater. They all walked down. When the name “Nora Aunor” was mentioned, whistle and shouts and applause rose from the crowd. I shouted “Bravo!” I had a personal stake that afternoon. I was given the task and the honor to write the short bio of Nora Aunor and the citation that will be part of the program.

Herein follows the short life history of Nora Aunor that became part of that ceremony:

“Poverty and politics are the birthright of Nora Aunor. It does not matter really when she was born. That she was born very poor matters because, like in the many narratives of her films, she would rise from that squalor into a status that symbolizes and, at the same time, subverts social mobility in this nation. This is where politics enters into Nora Aunor’s birth: the person will form an actor and an acting style that may not be always explicitly about portrayals of inequality but subtle and succinct commentary on how power is used and misused in the societies of this republic.

“In the summer of 2015 Nora was honored with the honorary Nagueña Award. It is her fate that Nora Aunor would always stand for something bigger than where she physically came from, the town of Iriga then.

“Geography and genius would explain the influence of Nora Aunor on the cinema of the Philippines. Iriga was a small town when she joined an amateur contest in the city of Naga. That town is part of Rinconada, a term which means ‘corner’. In her career as an actor, Nora Aunor would portray characters who were either an outcast or in the outskirts of social groups. By being born in a town that was at the periphery of a region that was also not mainstream in the thought of the dominant culture of this country, she would have in her spirit a marginalization that is beyond compare.

“Nora Aunor would sing first and win a national singing competition: the respected Tawag ng Tanghalan. Gone was the girl who had to stretch out her neck to listen to the songs played over the radio of a neighbor. Gone was the girl who sang for food. On that stage, the wisp of a girl sang ‘Moonlight Becomes You,’ defeating singers more educated and with more capital to fund a better dress. She looked at the sky only she could see with those searing eyes and sang to the moon and the night and the music.

“Then there was the film industry beckoning her, a machinery that was built on actors and actresses that had the Caucasian features, the so-called mestizos and mestizas whose images resembled Hollywood celebrities. And yet, she would conquer this terrain and win over to her side a newly formed critics group called Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino. In 1976 she was the first Gawad Urian for Best Actress, a star and a thespian vanquishing those who ever doubted her. The film was Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos, where she played lead but, thematically, a villain. She was not only an actor in the film; she was also the producer.

“She would produce more and act in the films she funded: Bona would join other films as the best in the world, to cite just one example. She would portray Elsa, a reluctant faith healer, in Himala, a film that would be declared the best in Asia by CNN-Asia Pacific Screen Awards in 2008. The performance has been lauded and written about by film scholars attributing the mystique of her portrayal to the fact that Nora’s fandom parallels the fanaticism and faith of people. Iconic is perhaps the most abused term writers can give to a celebrity but in Himala, Nora as Elsa becomes the icon around which doubt and belief circumnavigated, in which religion becomes not a refuge but a refutation. One can safely say that if an actor can give a hundred shades of black and white, a magnificent canvas of chiaroscuro describes Nora’s Elsa: timid, manipulative, victim, aggressor, confronting and retreating—in sorrow or in joy, it is an art to behold and a trial to witness to those who believe that cinema is not merely images on the flickering silver screen.

“Nora Aunor would win awards in several continents. The label ‘Superstar’ is never ridiculous when attached to her name. Lately, she is being called ‘The Grand Dame of Philippine Movies,’ indicating not her age but her wisdom, not really her longevity but the amazing perpetuity of the acting acumen that has brought forth women whose decisions about loyalty and love, self and nationalism have been questioned. In Nora, these women responded back.

“Formidable are the characters that Nora has fleshed out through many decades. She slept with the enemy in Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos and lived in the home of the enemy she planned to kill in Bakit May Kahapon Pa. She lived in ‘Merika and made us think of those decisions to stay in a foreign land all for economic survival; she offered us the terrible options to go to America even if some soldiers of that land could mistake our brothers for pigs in Minsa’y Isang Gamu-Gamo. She looked in the eye of the storm in Taklub and only saw our sense of self; and collected umbilical cords in Thy Womb because she could not produce one herself. She, in fact, played mothers and lovers whose duplicity enabled us to not to gaze at morality but at the complexity of humanity.

“She has won all the acting awards. She has been elevated to many Halls of Fame. The world has seen her and bestowed accolades on her because Nora Aunor holds the oar and she freely navigates the sea of humanity, ferrying us from the shores of ignorance to some afterlife of knowledge through a genius in performance that could only come from poverty, politics and geography, the schools of acting that have given Nora Aunor the boon to share with the many who believe in her.”

Writing the citation was terribly difficult, as I was asked to compress in mere paragraphs the decades-long sterling records of Nora Aunor. I must confess that this citation went through rewrites. Hermie Beltran of the CCP had to push me, at a certain point, to complete the citation. After several cups of coffee with Nora Aunor songs playing endlessly, interspersed only with songs by Billie Holiday, Peggy Lee, Eva Cassidy and Ella Fitzgerald, I completed the citation on August 22, just a few weeks before the awarding.

Here is the citation, which was translated also into Filipino:

“Nora Aunor began her life in the 1960s as a singer singing songs from varied sources and initiating the resurgence of a different vocal music. She knew how to be hungry before her golden voice brought her to the attention of the nation.

“Her journey from a young girl selling water in the train station to someone providing the wishes and hopes of the nation’s masses is no less than epic.

“Nora would join TV and cinema and with that entry, she would change our colonial perspective about physical beauty. She starred in musicals and melodramas that would serve as escape to many looking to her for inspiration.

“Soon, she would make films that subverted politics and politicize subversion. In her many films, she helped us escape from the stereotypical women to flesh out the possibilities of Filipino womanhood.

“Nora Aunor would perform theater pieces that would prove the legitimacy of that genius. In plays and in films, she played characters that were current in the country’s crisis and concerns: migrant labor, rebels and ambitious lovers.

“Nora’s acting style would create a massive shift in the performance traditions that were already entrenched. Nora would change all that, with her portrayal of characters that were marginalized but—with the strength and conviction of her skills—became central in the imagination of the nation. If one is to consider Nora Aunor’s legacy to the nation’s film industry, it is in those expressions on a magnificent face that can show triumphs and defeats, pains and joys, all at the same time in silence and subtlety that are as disturbing, as enduring and as endearing as the struggles of our nation.”

THE NORA NIGHT

Column Life Show by Tito Genova Valiente

REELING

Business Mirror

July 8, 2015

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Source: http://www.businessmirror.com.ph/the-nora-night/

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THE night of June 16 has already been told. Many tales have been shared with the public. The stories filed were about the winners. The public was once more treated to what is already perceived and traditionally acknowledged as a singular set of standards in film appreciation by which the Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino (MPP) has long been noted. I say that with all intelligent objectivity—and unashamedly—as a member of this group.

Social media has bannered photos from that night, along with the speeches of the winners. One speech stood out as it was for the highest award the Manunuri could give: It was the speech of Nora Aunor.

It was rambling and charming, with pieces of paper falling off the souvenir program she had carried with her to the stage. The speech was full of emotions. It summarized a lifetime of excellence and participation in film histories. It was sincere. It was a speech of the night, a speech of life.

There were, however, moments that were not captured by the camera and in the media coverage—not because they were not points of interest, but because they were fleeing. Some took place between Nora and the Manunuri. Some happened in the lull of the proceedings. Some were noted because something was not done that should have been done.

The instruction for the MPP was to be seated at past 7 in the evening. As early as 5 in the afternoon, more than five of us were already in Studio 10 inside the ABS-CBN compound in Quezon City, where the ceremonies were to be held. We surveyed the place and worried about being able to read our spiels. The awards night was going to be taped as live, and time was of the essence. We were advised to shorten our remarks on why a particular artist was recognized for that category. We were all unhappy about this development because the Manunuri has gained credence for the citation they belabor for each achievement. In the end, essential time was given to the presentors.

Manunuri Beni Santos, poet and academic, was the exception. She went into her pavane of a citation, relishing each word, articulating each sentence. By then, I was finished with my citation for Best Short Film and Best Documentary. With a tinge of regret, I told myself that I should’ve done also a Beni Santos.

But I’m getting ahead of my telling. Many things happened even before we navigated the slippery darkness of that stage in Studio 10.

To continue the story: there we were early at 5 in the afternoon. But Nora was there already in the makeup room—even before all of us.

A day before, on June 15, we got a message during rehearsal that Nic Tiongson would not be able to make it. His back was killing him and he had to see his doctor. That was bad news. We operated like a gang. Our strength is in our presence, the presence of members. But at 7, we were pleasantly shocked to see Nic, hale and happy. A little later, Bien Lumbera would arrive in a wheelchair, his back also bothering him.

At about quarter to 8 in the evening, I felt a commotion at the entrance to the studio. I did not look back but I knew: Nora had arrived. Soon, her group led by Boy Palma, her manager, and Adolf Alix, her director for the short film Kinabukasan, inched its way to the second row. When they were all seated, I turned around and Nora was there directly behind me,

“Gayun-gayon mo na, Manay [You are so lovely, Big Sister],” I greeted her in Naga Bikol. Nora speaks most of the time in her Rinconaca/Iriga language.

“Dai man po [Not really],” she responded. The “po” in that sentence became one of the first trademarks of Nora when she was just starting out. For Bikolanos, however, that honorific is common in many places. It is perhaps only in Bikol where old people use “po” to address younger persons, especially strangers.

Anyway, Nora was lovely indeed that night. The gown was white except for the few black beads forming curlicues on the bodice. Before we could talk some more, I sensed heavy air in front of us. I turned and saw photographers, three persons deep, all clambering to get a good short of Nora. All of them were inches away from toppling us from our seats. Gigi Alfonso, the present chairman of the Manunuri, turned to me and asked: Is this going to be the situation the whole night? Maybe, I answered in jest.

Soon the floor managers came and requested everyone to be seated. The photographers all did. Every now and then, some person would walk up to the front row, turn around and say, “Hi, Ate Guy.”

The program began. The awards were given.

The night went on. A voice announced the names of Darren Espanto, Gwyneth Dorado, Kyla and Jed Madela. The songs started to flow: “Windmills of Your Mind”… “People.” The voices blended and the memories came back. The lyrics were flawed as Darren and Gwyneth sang. There were awkward preposition combinations but it was not the night of lyrics but of melodies and monumental remembrances.

The camera could only show Nora gazing with intent, the cheekbones aged to perfection, the eyes wise and deep with the pains and the joys of life. If she was beautiful that night, it was also because Nora has accepted what destiny has gifted her—the sorrows, the ills, the gains, the victories—and the country’s critics came together as one that evening to tell her: You and your art have made the cinema of this nation worth the writing and the thinking of people.

The songs kept coming. Nora had covered them during a period when songs came from outside. Instead of diminishing her stature, the songs elevated Nora into a singer who sang and acted out the lines with a voice whose training was not in musical conservatories, but in a universe that made it possible for a girl—dirt-poor and thin and sickly—to conserve a genius that allowed her to rise from poverty. That night, Nora returned the boon to society with records of her excellence.

The songs went on. “This is My Life.” Theatrics and tragedies are packed into that song. I turned to Nora and assured her: “Magayonon baga….” I was referring to the song this time, but I was also assuring her that, yes, we remember that deep, glorious and honeyed voice of hers. When everyone thought musical number was over, the four fine singers went on to do a rousing version of “The Greatest Performance of My Life.” I looked back at Nora once more. She cupped her face with her two hands, her whole body taut but trembling.

That night at Café Ysabel after the awards ceremonies, Nora Aunor was with the Manunuri. She was in a gray shirt, at ease with everyone. She was hugging Manong Bien Lumbera. She walked tugging at the hand of Nic Tiongson as they took more photos. Beni Santos eased her way down to sit beside her.

Nora was at home. Nora was at home with the critics who first noticed her and took the mighty risk of proclaiming her their First Best Actress.

NORA IS ‘NATATANGI’: Distinct, singular

By Tito Genova Valiente

Reeling

Business Mirror

May 27, 2015

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Source:

http://www.businessmirror.com.ph/nora-is-natatangi-distinct-singular/

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ON June 16 Nora Aunor will receive the Natatanging Gawad Urian. The award recognizes and celebrates the actor’s body of works in cinema.

It has been a long journey for Nora Aunor from the time she sang with dwarfs at the backyard in a film that was more about the lack of magic in our life, to essaying the role of a mother searching for life in the valley of death in the aftermath of a most terrible storm. It is one huge filmic arc that, despite the lows in personal life, sustains a high in acting unseen heretofore in this industry.

As always and even with the expectations by the many, when the award was formally and officially announced by the Manunuri  ng Pelikulang Pilipino, there were sectors who asked that the recognition be justified. The question is not impertinent; the question merely demanded an answer.

And there are many answers.

There is the social history of cinema. Before Nora, there was the dominant ideology that required all actresses to be fair-skinned, tall and beautiful in the Caucasian way. More than the physical appearance, these actresses had to flesh out roles that conformed to the template of the idealized woman, the one who would do everything to keep the home intact. The actress/woman’s duty was to maintain along with the home her virginity, if she was not married, and her purity, if she was a wife or a mother. The allure of the leading lady was that she was part of the breathtaking landscape. The force to reckon with was this woman who was lovely in her fragility because the men around her were robust in masculinity. When Nora came, even early in those silly musicals, she stood there passive-aggressive in simplicity and unadorned humility. If she had purity, it was shrouded in sincerity that bordered on the naive.  The Great Unwash, if we may use the term, was making herself heard. The voice was Nora’s and the body was instinct and genius.

Came 1976. The Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino, battling what it perceived to be the lack of ardent film criticism (and we are not even talking about the absence of an institutionalized film education), rose to the occasion with a radical choice and chose Nora Aunor as its very first Best Actress. The film was Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos. The story was set in the Second World War; the enemy was played by a matinee idol about to become a multiawarded actor. Nora played Rosario, leading lady in form but in content a complex person who would sleep with the enemy and allow the generation of audiences to ask the unsettling question: Was that our war we died for?

It was the new world. The country was rushing away from the memories of the Great War. Japan, the grand nemesis in many war films, was becoming a superpower. It was time to dilute or question the collective memory. It was time for the leading lady to question life by embodying all the complexities of love, loyalty and fealty to a nation. Even if in the end, Nora Aunor’s Rosario dies and the notion of the nation as a punisher is promoted, we see the audacity of an actress to embrace what all leading actresses of the period avoided: to die at the end of the movie.

Nora, already a phenomenon at the time, became an actor in Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos.

It is often a question I ask: Are the fans of Nora Aunor aware that in most of her heralded portrayals, Nora inhabits roles that are duplicitous and convoluted, tortured and twisted in her understanding of the commonly acceptable valuations of roles and mores in society? Nora taught us the sins of the world not by denying them but by displaying the ineptitude and incoherence.

In Bona, Nora Aunor is this daughter who will never be the ideal member of a Filipino family. It is thus, the vindication of community values when Bona is mauled by her brother when she tries to sneak into the house so she could view the remains of her father. It is our fear and shame that this insensibility will befall upon us and Nora is the persona to show us all this. The show is not the crass, sentimental plot about a fallen woman played with flamboyance by Rita Gomez and Charito Solis, but a quirky ballet about religion, fanaticism and the tragedy that shuttles between poverty and identity.

For all the tremendous mystery of the apparition, Elsa in Himala will declare at the end not only the absence of miracles but the end of transcendence. “Tao ang gumagawa ng himala.” Man makes miracles. Leave it to Nora Aunor and her amazing thespic range that each pause, each taking in of the breath brings us to wonder if we could really believe her Elsa. If we believe in the Virgin Mary appearing before the simple girl, then we are the accomplice to a church that upholds the divine vision; if we affirm Elsa’s declaration that there is no miracle, then we are at the mercy of a cult. It is a baffling situation and Nora is part of the puzzle, never completing for us the picture because we are ourselves part of the big picture.

Faith is both shaken and stirred in Himala. A film that brings out of the closet all the tricks of apparitions and faith healing is also the film that represents who we are as people in religion. At the center of this order and peace is this wisp of a woman—unpredictable as a person but predictably excellent as an actor—who unfolds her own mysteries before relentless cameras that never seem to get enough because the actor before the lenses hides and shades her own tremor as a human being. That is acting, that is incarnation, when the word is made flesh and is made to dwell among the viewers.

The new performance and the seeming lack of fear and bias toward any roles enabled critics to look at the performance than the celebrity, the role rather than the royalty. It is late 197os and the military rules but the new film criticism is born, addressing without timidity and this time without question the politics not only of films but of those who make the films.

The extracinematic is born. Nora Aunor’s character in the film is judged within the context of the plot and the resolutions. The same character is investigated following Nora’s fandom, her personal stories, and her politics that while critiqued for unpredictability are, otherwise, always sustained by a sense of daring and independence, even recklessness, rarely seen within the perfumed enclaves of show business. The lines between the reel and the real are once more blurred, this time not for the invasion of the actor’s privacy but for an incursion into her politics and psychology.

If there is a milestone in the career of Nora as an actor, it was in her gradual shift to portraying roles that stopped addressing the vagaries and vulgarities of commerce.

Nora Aunor’s career swung from those monster box-office hits (that satisfied many) to films that did not cause lines to form outside theatres but inside the minds of the enlightened, Nora’s public who care to learn from this most popular of art forms, the movies.

With the roles and films, there was ultimately the formation of new ways of reading cinema. Nora was still the leading lady but there was no more the leading man. In fact, her leading ladies led only because she was Nora Aunor in the film; otherwise, in the narrative they were peripheral personas, not template for good behavior but trails to a forest of symbols. The characters are not always likeable, better for us to look at how life can be unfair and, well, better. Without us knowing it, Nora has lifted the contravida from the dark side of the stock and the stereotype into the center, the spotlight of importance for us to contemplate both the evil and the good, for us to savor the grays and the anomalous, those inscrutable in-betweens that mark us imperfect, human.

In Thy Womb, Shaleha the midwife holds the child that her husband had fathered with another woman. She praises the heavens but could not let go of the infant. When she does, the camera follows the sky. The woman is lost in the eternity that appears to be made for man. Before we got there, we are treated to how an actor suffuses the screen with awesome ordinariness that appears only ordinary because the mind behind those gestures has the gift to make the everyday profound.

Which came first, good criticism or good film? That, of course, is a chicken-and-egg predicament. What is clear is that there is a Nora Aunor, whose manifold characters can bring in a slew of questions. Love her or leave her; take her or leave her. Good critics can disagree with her, dispute the best and worst in her but no good critic can ignore Nora Aunor in cinema. Ever.

Nora Aunor is the Natatangi, separate, singular, distinct for the Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino.

The incurable sanity of ‘Dementia’

‘DEMENTIA’ Review

By TITO GENOVA VALIENTE

BusinessMirror

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Source:  http://www.businessmirror.com.ph/the-incurable-sanity-of-dementia/

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SANITY is the main problem of the film Dementia. Sanity is also the boring concern of the film. In the process, Dementia loses its grip on us, and we are better demented than sane to enjoy what could have been a majestic project for Nora Aunor.

It cannot be denied that Nora Aunor is the main reason we are all excited about a film regarding a woman who does not recognize anymore reality as we know it. We expect a complexity that may pose once more a challenge—to use that trite word—to this actor that has done practically all kinds of roles, and has hurdled the most layered, severely difficult of characters and personas. When the project was announced and the location revealed, we looked to no less than a grand opus because, if there is what you may consider a limitation on Nora, it is that she is wasted in ordinary roles. Nora Aunor is just a force of art that to contain her in scene after scene of deleterious ordinariness is to question the logic behind the decision to even consider the genius of this actor for the role.

Thus, when Dementia opens with the wide expanse and a boat zealously entering the inner waters of a port, we respond to or retreat from the tremendous mystery of the space. The distant hills and dales, the crags and cliffs are astounding characters that add chill to this homecoming. This is location as location should be—trembling and surrounding. There is enough chill and nip in the air. Our character is coming home to a place that is supposed to welcome her back with an embrace, with memories.

The boat disgorges its passengers and one of them is Mara Fabre, effaced in the crowd. She looks around and the camera turns to the other actors to announce and tell us she does not remember anything anymore. We wait for that close-up, an elementary rule in film language to establish the character of this narrative. There is none. Well, not the kind to exploit the skill of this actor who is credited for establishing the primacy of nuances and subtleties in Philippine cinema. If there is a person whose money shot is in those close-ups and extreme close-ups, it is Nora Aunor. The next minutes have Mara walking up and down and into hallways. There are many shots of this walk. If these long tracking shots are metaphors for the return to an origin and a search of the well of remembrances, then they are ineffective. The walks are tedious and they are not marked by the presence of the character, with the camera committing the grave sin of omission. In these walks, Nora Aunor as Mara is not served at all by the cinematography. The long minutes of Mara in the isolation of the landscape fail to capture the delineation of an actor who is able to sublimate all kinds of theatricality to serve an intense recipe of homegrown guilt and hurt. The story is promising; could it have been the screenplay that neglected to honor the presence of a great actor?

The opening of Dementia reminds me of that of Mes de Guzman’s Ang Kuwento ni Mabuti: the protagonist stands and a thunder rumbles from a distance. Mabuti, as played by Nora Aunor, looks up at the sky and with a face that is grazed upon by pains and doubts, introduces to us the parable about good and evil. The sound we hear seems to be heard also by Mabuti. We are there in her story. We are inside her thoughts. The opposite seems to take place in Dementia. The music remains non-diegetic—they are music provided by the mind of the filmmaker in aid of his own literary legislation. The music is no more pervasive as it is intrusive. In effect, the music scorer does not seem to trust the time-tested grace of Nora Aunor to provide the scene with the music—and rhythm—coming from her body, from that legendary gaze and those expressive hands that laurelled performances in Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos and Bona, just to cite two major examples.

There are moments of awesomeness in the film, as when the camera pans over the mountains and swoops into crevices and crevasses and the sea stretches into an idea of infinity. This is the Batanes we would like to know more. This is the forgotten island that affirms also the forgotten place in the mind of our Mara. Then we have glimpses of the Nora Aunor that we know, the intensity bridled and caged. And insane! We look at her and wait for that magical moment, when Nora seizes the scene, and tears it apart to leave us not with the violence of the act but with the carcass of a pain, a space, a time. The fans know this in their hearts. They know it when it is there. They know this when it is not.

In the interstices of this story of Mara, the viewers must deal with many questions. Is the film a psychological thriller or a gothic parable? The genres of horror and whodunit are explored and exploited as when hands from nowhere appear to shock us, only to find out that they are of a friendly nature. Almost in the end, the old man of Lou Veloso, outstandingly stereotypical, looks back to the house. This is a mandatory gesture in horror films to indicate that horror never ends. But the film does not end there; it ends—or, at least, flashes back—to a time when Mara Fabre was in the hospital. If there is a certified Nora Aunor moment, it is in the scene when her psychiatrist asks that she be given the chance to read the diary. Nora’s Mara looks at the doctor and in those few seconds registers shadows and light and more shadows from that face. The eyes relent and show that the mind has altered, and the smallest of rage covers her facial landscape. That is the Nora we know.

Bing Loyzaga turns in a lovely performance because it is simple and heartfelt. Jasmine Curtis-Smith shows that in her generation, she is the one who knows the way to good acting. Yul Servo does not serve any purpose in the film. Remove him and the film survives pretty well.

As for Nora Aunor, it is her fate that many of her memorable performances have always been part of many flawed filmmaking. In Dementia, the question begins when her Mara exhibits fear of the unknown and the unseen. Or when she is benign with the phantom of her past. Demented, should Mara be nervous of doors closing? With fire raging in the oven, she stands by the window stoic.

In the small island of Batanes, can one hide a little girl without the neighbors finding out and talking? What is the personal psychology of the adoptive parents of Mara that they would adopt a young girl while enduring their imprisonment of another? A death by jumping off a lovely sight is never investigated? When one gets sick in Batanes, the folk healer is the option. As Yul Servo’s Rommel puts it, there are no doctors in the island. And why are faith healers in films costumed always as if they are bartenders of high-end bars in some Caribbean resorts?

What is really dementia? Is the indie filmmaker and poet Kristian Sendon Cordero right when he asks: Is the real dementia in Batanes brought about by politicians who neglect to put doctors in the islands?

As for Nora Aunor, there is no question about her Mara Fabre. Given the small space to prove her case, Nora Aunor reminds everyone that when it comes to delivering intensity of character, she remains without peer. On the way up the hill that ends in a cliff, Nora Aunor as Mara falls on her knees as the past unfolds before her. You could count up to 20 (the fans would provide you with more) shades of lucidity, realization, and sorrow on that wondrous face and be shaken by an actor that, despite the refinement of her craft through the decades, can still go back to rawness and wound all with her gift. That scene must be one difficult scene for future impersonators. The words are gone; only that face and the world that went away. At the cliff, Nora Aunor embodies the liberation that the mind offers in madness or in rationality. The calmness that overcomes Mara’s many years of forgetting and the smile that rekindles resignation to memory is once more proof that Nora is still the greatest film actor this small republic of ours has ever produced.

In fact, it is this greatness that is the problem of any young filmmaker who considers working with Nora Aunor at this stage of her career. Perci Intalan need not grieve. The director will be blamed; the scriptwriter will be blamed; the cinematographer will be vilified; and the soundman will be accused of dementia. But no one can blame Nora Aunor. All we ask of her is the next great Nora Aunor film.

‘The Nora Cause’: Nora Aunor and the Bikol Imaginary

By TITO GENOVA VALIENTE

REELING

BusinessMirror

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Source: http://www.businessmirror.com.ph/the-nora-cause-nora-aunor-and-the-bikol-imaginary/

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LAST October 6 Bikolano scholars officially claimed Nora Aunor as their own.

The event was called “The Nora Cause” and it was designed to be an academic convocation. Then the chief executive of the city of Naga came. He was not formally invited, although he was aware that something had been brewing in the Ateneo de Naga for a long time. That was such a gesture. The event became even more festive.

The event had a keynote speaker in the person of Dr. Patrick D. Flores, scholar and critic. Flores is one of the first critics to devote his academic concerns to the life and career of Nora Aunor. He titled the talk “Ang Gawa ni Nora, Ang Likha ng Sining at Balos ng Bayan.” He focused on the works of Nora, the works of art, which refers to the works of Nora, and the nation giving back (balos) to Nora the gratitude, the respect. Nora has given so much to this nation, and it is good to look at how this nation is now giving back something to her.

To see the gift of Nora, according to Flores, is to see how she was formed by her community, by her surroundings, by this region called Kabikolan. The term hubog was used by Flores. Nora was hinubog (formed) by the people, by the land. But Nora did not stop there. According to the scholar, Nora worked on her craft and she herself reformed the world around her—hinubog din ni Nora ang kanyang paligid.

Flores reminded the audience that Nora is a power. If politicians and leaders are a power, Nora is also that—a power, a potency. In the audience were some young students who call themselves “Neo-Noranians.” These are young men and women who are just getting to know Nora.

Two Ateneo de Naga University professors, Adrian Remodo and Dennis Gonzaga, were tasked to discuss two of the most significant films of Nora Aunor: Bona and Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos. The two are expected to come up with academic papers that may see publication soon.

Of course, what is a Nora Aunor forum without the National Artist issue being raised? A student came up to ask whether they would be aware of Nora Aunor presently without the snub the actor got from the president. Flores thought this was a good question. Flores spoke of the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. Nora went through the process and her artistry, her contribution to the arts and cultures of the land is undisputed. As such, Nora is a national artist. The nation has recognized Nora; the nation-state would not. The spirit of the law was on the side of Nora.

In the afternoon, a roundtable was initiated. Kristian Sendon Cordero called it a combo of a fan, an artist and a critic, with the latter played by this writer. The artist was Frank Peñones, cultural leader and poet and an Irigueño like Nora Aunor; and Rico Raquitico, an Ateneo de Naga University professor in the College of Nursing and a theater actor, was the rabid and avid fan. Peñones admitted how proud he is as an artist because Nora is not only a Bikolana but an Irigueña, as well. He exults in the iconic nature of Nora Aunor’s persona. He told the crowd that Nora has played a great part in his being a poet, an artist.

Unabashed about his memories of Nora, Raquitico regaled the audience with his anecdote. He was proud that the air he breathed from their home in Iriga was the same air Nora Aunor breathed. He remembered—and this is classic—how he spent the whole day somewhere in a Quezon City home many years ago to wait for Nora. How Nora suddenly appeared at the top of the stairs and how he just found himself face to face with his idol. And how he managed to simply say “hi” to Nora. And how everything else about that meeting became a blur.

Songs made popular by Nora Aunor were sung by the members of the Ateneo de Naga Choir, under the direction of Joseph B. Reburiano. One song was “Moonlight Becomes You,” Nora’s winning piece in the Tawag ng Tanghalan.

The event was opened by the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Dr. Ronald Elicay, and ended with a speech from Dr. Noel Volante, director of the Ateneo de Naga Center for Arts and Culture, a speech that was ushered in by Nora Aunor’s voice singing “Yesterday When I Was Young” and closed by “The Music Played”. Sentimentality and scholarship, emotion and erudition. Anything and all for Nora Aunor.

Kristian Sendon Cordero, convener of the forum, described the event as “the first time in history of this region that Bikolanos in academe talked about Nora Aunor and her contribution to Philippine arts.” He described it as “a conscious effort on our part to claim her as one of us, as one of Bikol’s most iconic phenomenon: that the country or the rest of the world should not imagine her without imagining Bikol, our tierra de rinconada, our region, our language, a kanatung baluy [our home in the Rinconada language of Nora Aunor].”

The proceedings of this conference is envisioned to appear in the second issue of the Bikol Studies Journal by the Ateneo de Naga University Press, which will be edited by scholar and critic, another Bikolano, Dr. Jayson Pilapil Jacobo of the Ateneo de Manila University.

The conference was an initiative of the Ateneo Center for Arts and Culture, headed by Dr. Noel Volante as director; and the Institute of Bikol History and Culture, headed by Prof. Tito Valiente, who also sits as chairman of the film desk of the center. The Media Studies Department and the College of Arts and Sciences and the Office of the Academic Vice President supported “The Nora Cause.”