By MURPHY RED
(Writer and Director)
Though belonging to a lower
middle class family, I had no choice but to mingle with children of neighbours
who subsist in utter poverty and who became the playmates I grew up with.
Together, we were witness to disappearances of people, the spate of killings,
and militarization that marked dictatorship and martial law.
That early, I felt deep repugnance
of the system that runs the complexities of the social system I had no choice
but endure. The culture that came with it -- mass submission to tyranny, blind obedience
to coercion, collective surrender to oppression -- brought me to the crossroad
of conformity and abhorrence. Not long after, when I went to college in Manila,
I chose to walk the road less travelled, joined the people's militant
anti-dictatorship movement. It was then that I realized that the social
conditions that I saw in my province encompasses the entirety of my country.
That realization brought me underground to join the national democratic
revolution.
Before the height of the upheaval
that commenced in the ostensible EDSA people power "revolution", I
surface aboveground and volunteered with groups documenting and campaigning for
human rights in the Philippines. And today, decades past the toppling of the
dictator and the blossoming of the so-called Philippine democracy, I remain
witness to the stark persistence of the same rotten system as prevalent in my
childhood.
Hayuma (Dragnet) Raw Trailer
HAYUMA is the encapsulation of the arcane iotas that accumulated in my psyche through those experiences that seized me all too early from my childhood and brought me to radical movement that I never since thought of leaving. HAYUMA is the volatile particle that I, time and again, refuse to let go.
The main character, Lolita, is
the emblematic depiction of my country, the Philippines, as the enduring mother
to her children, the Filipino people, in upheaval; mute as she declines to
speak of the deprivation and oppression so prevalent that her husband, Arturo,
the depiction of the militant Filipinos cannot bear and battles, and he is
disappeared by the sea monster which symbolizes the military machinery of the
State. Lolita is defined by her enigmatic behaviour, to such an extent that she
becomes a disembodied character, and defined not by her image but solely by
what she desires but cannot do.
In the muteness of the lead woman
character in the film, I and my creative team envision that the viewers begin
to understand what they face, realize more deeply the unequal relationships and
complex culture we all are unconsciously submerged into, and hear the pulsating
voice of defiance that aches to break free.
"Hopefully, HAYUMA will start a dialogue about what we see but do not hear, who we are but we do not know, and what the real situation of our country is but we refuse to believe. This film is about the openly secret lives of one hundred million individual Filipinos. Right now."
I am making this film for every
viewer around the world. For the Filipinos as alternative perception of
their experiences in connection with each other, and for all other races and
nations to fully comprehend the decline and disintegration grappled by
Filipinos in their hundreds of thousands, invisible in tourism destinations,
corporate ads, and mainstream media.
HAYUMA is a response to the necessity
that we must all comprehend the experience of being subjugated and exploited,
to see how each individual finds his or her own way in a stagnated social order.
This film explores the emotional and psychological fallout on our women, men,
and everyone in between, and our cultural experience when convention and transformation
collide.
The personal, social, and
cultural ramifications embodied by HAYUMA make up the complex underpinnings
that solidify its significance. It is the accumulation of the ideals that so
far makes up my and of those of a lot other Filipinos' set of values and
beliefs. HAYUMA is a creative collision full speed ahead, a conception of a
potent medium to alter, not just the general perception on the prevalent
Philippines social realities, but the system itself that perpetuates it.
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