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Huling Balyan ng Buhi o ang Sinalirap nga Asoy Nila
Alternate Title: Huling Balyan ng Buhi
English Title: The Last Priestess of Buhi or the Woven Stories of the Other
English Translation of Alternate Title: Last Shaman of Life
Language: Cebuano
Year of Release: 2006
Director & Screenwriter: Sherad Anthony Sanchez
Producers: Cinema One Originals, Salida Davao, Alchemy of Vision and Light, Loyola Film Circle, North Cotabato Provincial Government
Cast: Jelieta Mariveles-Ruca, Marilyn Roque, Jun Lizada, Manay, Ronald Arguelles, Connie Bordios, and Barangay Napalico, Arakan Valley, North Cotabato
The balyan or shaman of a small rural town in Mindanao traverses her native territory as well as that of an army camp; she complains about the soldiers’ presence but they regard her as an eccentric person, affirmed by her advanced age, malformed body, and bleeding hands, occasionally offering young boys a glimpse of her pussy in exchange for money. She complains about her treatment to Jun, one of the soldiers, who is infatuated with Valerie and keeps asking about her, while the rest of the men bond over so-called boodle fights or communal eating with hands, open-air basketball games, and drinking sessions where they imbibe tubâ or palm wine. Unknown to them, a band of rebels has set up camp just outside the town, nursing a wounded comrade, attending indoctrination lectures, and singing revolutionary anthems. Two of them quarrel by a river where a lady emerges; they don’t seem to see her but their anger is appeased. One of the rebels later discharges his rifle accidentally and kills their wounded comrade; he flees the camp and returns to his residence in the town. When the balyan bleeds out and is in danger of dying, two of the soldiers carry her in a hammock. Their paths are about to cross that of the rebels, who’re transferring camp; a kid they ask for directions runs away to warn the other side.
Huling Balyan ng Buhi was welcomed as the film that set the template for millennial-era regional cinema in the Philippines, signaling a clean break from the genre-oriented and star-driven orientation of past practitioners. Remarkably, digital production was just about to entirely supplant celluloid production in the country, with director Sherad Anthony Sanchez developing a workable system out of an annual film festival’s subsidy: by locating production activity far from the capital area, he was able to devise a narrative with epic elements that would have required a beyond-average budget for a Manila celluloid project. The fact that nearly all the other independent productions boast of this potential today should not detract from the guts that HBB’s emergence required, which was why most knowledgeable reviews began with a recounting of the circumstances of its origin; even Eloisa May P. Hernandez’s Digital Cinema in the Philippines, 1999–2009 (University of the Philippines Press, 2014) acknowledged HBB as the originator of digital-indie practice in the country. Like several of his colleagues, Sanchez never stood idly by until the opportunity came along. Proof lay in the complex narrative and stylistic approach he lavished on the undertaking, with a humanist orientation (per his confirmation) deployed as his means of upholding the Mindanao natives caught in the figurative crossfire between army combatants and rebel fighters. The former necessarily come across in more idealized terms, since they function openly, unafraid of displays of playfulness and bonding, with the townspeople as their audience. It is the guerrillas, however, who exhibit dramatic turns one after another, including the narrative’s singular supernatural event. Sanchez’s refusal to resolve the tension between the two groups enables the focus on the town’s Others, specifically the balyan and two forest-dwelling orphans, to raise the open-ending query of what their fates might be. Not everyone will be satisfied with such a treatment, but then the parallels with Philippine history will yield the same type of frustration in the end.
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Jungle Love
Additional Language: Hiligaynon
Year of Release: 2012
Director & Screenwriter: Sherad Anthony Sanchez
Producers: Salida Productions, Gaps Philippines, Brass Knuckles Productions
Cast: Gloria Morales, Mae Bastes, Martin Riffer, Edgardo Amar, Aldrin Sapitan, Edgardo Amar, Melbert Pangilinan, John Grino, John Paul Fernandez, Aryid Abes, Jay-Ar Abes, Janice Fernandez, Melvil Gonzales, “the people of Minalungao”
Forthcoming.
Forthcoming.
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