19 January 2011

"Tatlo, Dalawa, Isa" and the short form

In Laurent Tirard’s book Moviemakers’ Master Class (Private Lessons from the World’s Foremost Directors), German director Wim Wenders of Wings of Desire (which critics hailed as the best film of the 80s, later remade by Hollywood into City of Angels – dreadful!) laments how students and young filmmakers “no longer start out by making short films but shoot commercials or music videos instead”.  Their priorities have changed since Wenders’ generation where telling a good story is more important than visual gimmickry.

A sweeping statement , I think.  There are directors today, younger than Wenders, whose filmographies are quite impressive, and they started out in advertising.  From the Philippines, there's Cannes winner Dante Mendoza,  Mark Meily and Chris Martinez.  David Fincher (The Social Network), Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich) and Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) also did a lot of commercials and music videos before making it big on film.

But it seems true that the primary impulse amongst Gen X’ers and Millennials is to make beautiful images, at the expense of creating narrative.  Could this be the influence of the graphic novel, considered more engaging than John Steinbeck or F. Scott Fitzgerald?  Or, could it be a nagging feeling that every story told had been told; so why bother creating new ones?

I really don’t know.  I may also be generalizing.  But it certainly wouldn’t hurt to hone one’s craft by making short films or shorter features.  We don't have as much access to such films these days.  The last significant collection of shorts would be Paris, je t'aime (2006).  Every serious DVD collector must have Paris, je t'aime, by the way.




Doing ‘featurettes’ or trilogies was quite popular in the 70s and 80s in local cinema.  A classic was Lino Brocka’s Tatlo, Dalawa, Isa (1974), a trilogy of shorts.  The short form gave Brocka the sense of urgency.  With not much time to spare, he had to tell a story quickly and tightly. The result was powerful, despite (or on account of?) the simple camerawork.  When Lolita Rodriguez screams “Sakim!” and "Mamatay ka! Mamatay ka!" in the episode entitled Bukas, Madilim, Bukas, you’d know what I mean.

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