Cinema One Originals 2013:The Journey, Day 1

Aside from Cinemalaya, another long-running and highly-anticipated Filipino independent film festival here in the metropolis is Cinema One Originals. If the previous editions of the festival featured around 6-10 films, this year the annual event will showcase 15 new works from both first-time and established indie Filipino full-length filmmakers. I have long marked my calendar for this film event and now that it has finally arrived, it will now be the start of my cinematic journey (for this fest, that is). Today marks the 1st day of the festival and as a buena mano, this film junkie saw Arnel Mardoquio's "Riddles of My Homecoming". 

Arnel Mardoquio's "Riddles of My Homecoming":A symbol for violence

Let's check out the film: 

Mindanao-based filmmaker Arnel Mardoquio's latest work (his 6th during the 6 years that he has been making full-length films - 1 per year - according to the director, who introduced the film during its premiere screening) may only be close to just an hour-and-a-half running time, but the film is such an opaque and perplexing work that one wishes that it could have been a little bit longer to be able to fully grasp its myriad meanings and oblique puzzles. True to its title, the film offers a riddle-filled viewing experience that may be challenging for adventurous film-lovers, on the one hand and off-putting for casual movie-goers, on the other hand. If the director's Cinema One Originals entry last year, "Ang Paglalakbay ng mga Bituin sa Gabing Madilim", evoked the mood of a Nuri Bilge Ceylan opus (with bits of Akira Kurosawa) in its endeavour to paint a picture of the larger-than-life conflicts that have been besetting his native land for decades, while still being astonishingly subtle and serene, his entry in this year's festival recalls an Alejandro Jodorowsky avant-garde work ("El Topo", "Holy Mountain") and cinema's lost golden era of silent films. And as we have come to expect, such a cinematic nod serves only as a springboard for a much broader and serious canvas that is urgent and relevant to the director's land of birth. By way of a Lumad folklore that tells that after a person dies, his/her soul returns to his/her birthplace to settle some unfinished business and eventually become a guardian of nature (land, water,  etc.), the film confronts the violence, its manifestations and nature, both on a personal and grand level, that has long been plaguing the filmmaker's birthplace and its people. The enigma here is that, even with the succession of one startling image after another, the violence being put under scrutiny in the film is not that easily discernible - I mean, in the concrete sense. One particular act of violence or instance of tragedy here may only be a conglomeration of various acts of human cruelty or an oblique reference to another type of human violation that one's filmic viewing, rather than as a tool for easy judgment, becomes a spur to probe further. Violence becomes a symbol or a metaphor for another violence. The film's visual and aural aesthetics (altogether mythical, lyrical, spiritual and biblical in their evocation) underscore such a grim assault on the individual and the community to the extent that intimacy and tranquility (here, symbolized by the fish) have become mere "interruptions" to such a "normal" flow of life. If such is the culture, can there ever be an end to the cycle of violence? (It suddenly sprung on my mind that such question may have been posed as well by Chito Rono's "Badil", a similarly superior film in last September's Sineng Pambansa.) "Riddles of My Homecoming" is one complex fine art that its merits may lie more in the meaningful questions that it thoughtfully poses than it endeavours to answer. And we, the viewers, are simply riveted.