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Independencia
English Translation: Independence
Year of Release: 2009 / B&W
Director: Raya Martin
Screenwriters: Ramon Sarmiento & Raya Martin
Producers: Cinematografica, Arte France Cinéma, Atopic, Razor Film, & Volya Films
Cast: Sid Lucero, Tetchie Agbayani, Alessandra de Rossi, Mika Aguilos, Bodjie Pascua, Lui Manansala, Richard Gonzales, Carl Lawrence Lagasca, Bong Cabrera, Lav Diaz, Arnold Reyes, Angeli Bayani, Adriana Agcaoili, Arleen Cuevas
As American forces invade the Philippines during the late 1890s, a mother and her son settle in a jungle to hide from the ongoing chaos. One day, the son finds a wounded pregnant woman (everyone is unnamed in the story) who later becomes part of the family. Years pass but as a storm approaches and American troops wend their way through the jungle, the family’s peaceful existence could soon come to an end.
The reflexive strategy, where an artwork exposes its creative processes—a novel about a novel being written, for example, or a painting of the painter finishing a painting—succeeded in film more than in any other medium, for reasons that we take for granted today: its photographic nature guarantees a “real,” as opposed to abstract, experience; its use of actors provides the lure of star-worship; its commingling of all the other art forms that preceded it allows it to be indirectly self-referential in focusing on a non-filmic occupation. In this respect, the deep reflexivity that Independencia extends bodes well for literate film entertainment. Handling a late 19th-century fictional situation with late 19th-century cine aesthetics, Raya Martin renders the anachronism with such bravura expertise that we wind up accepting his stylistic strategy as an appropriate means of framing the narrative. In retrospect, silent-era cinema’s bold artificialities also enable our better-late-than-never response to the just-as-blatantly fake anti-revolutionary propaganda films churned out by Thomas Edison et al. for the US colonial government. An additional danger, that of fantasizing that Independencia is actually a piece recovered from an early-film archive (which is how the movie presents itself), may be a source of pleasure that the nostalgic-nationalist viewer can be forgiven for indulging in.
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