As a child, I was raised in a
fishing village in that part of my country where violence and impunity were
ordinary day-to-day occurrences. It was the dawning of the two decades of the
Marcos dictatorship right in the bailiwick of the dictator, the Ilocos region
in the northern provinces of the Philippines.
Though belonging to a lower middle-class
family, I chose to mingle with neighbors existing in utter poverty and whose
children 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 supposed 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 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.
Fast forward to today, in a world overwhelmed by a deluge of misinformation, where
the line between truth and fiction blurs, the urgency for HAYUMA's cinematic
realization intensifies. With the Philippine political landscape degenerating
to a Shakespearean tragedy, where the preceding tyrant and his successor whose
despotic father he idolized clash in a vicious battle of accusations and
mudslinging, the film's message of resilience and truth-seeking resonates with
a profound immediacy.
The ugly head of a dark
era gone by lurks again as the once-vaunted banner of unity under which the
heirs of autocracy engineered their ascent to power now flutters like a
tattered rag, rotting away on the precipice of disintegration. And as the
father and daughter duo teeter on the brink of scrutiny from a global judicial
body, while the namesakes of the fallen dictator and his mother's copycat first
lady revel in a string of all-expenses-paid gallivanting spree, globe-trotting
with their entourage of family and friends at the expense of the people they
continue to plunder, the terrifying past
looms ever closer, poised to devour the present whenever it chooses.
History repeats itself in
a drama of Machiavellian proportions, where the ghosts of a dark, oppressive
past haunt the present, when the progeny of tyrants engage in a macabre dance
upon the graves of their victims. The horrors of those dark, oppressive years
resurface as the once-hallowed team of unanimity of the forces now in power
erodes, the lofty promises tarnished one after the other by their corrosive
stain of greed and deceit.
As the wheels of accountability
begin to turn against one faction of the privileged elite embroiled in
conflict, while the opposing faction seeks refuge in a lavish lifestyle funded
by the spoils of their ancestors' misdeeds, mocking the very people they
continue to subjugate, and signifying that the horrific past never really left,
that oppression, impunity, and state fascism were here all the while, embedded
in the very fabric of a society rotten to the core, camouflaged in fraudulent
shape, veiled in deceitful form.
Amid all these, HAYUMA whimpers to
be born.
"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 over a one hundred million individual Filipinos. Right now."
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 over 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.
Updated 25 August 2024
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