Rafael, do you think you’ve found your voice as a filmmaker?
I hope not! I think that finding your voice is like a becoming that never becomes. I hope to keep learning and discovering, learning how to be more visual, learning more about film and how to execute my ideas. My journey into filmmaking has been a very slow and gradual one, and I like that. I studied visual communication and philosophy, and then I worked in advertising, although I knew quickly that it wasn’t for me. I really enjoyed the medium, audio and visual, so I started thinking about filmmaking as the natural next progression from that because I loved the visual side of things. So I’ve enjoyed growing into this role slowly, and I hope to keep doing that.
What kind of lessons have been essential for your growth as a storyteller during this time?
Well, aside from film school, I’ve participated in some programs that have been very filmmaker-centric, like a master class, talking about craft for the entire two hours with other film students and directors. But recently, I spent four months in China with Jia Zhang-Ke for the Rolex mentoring programme — of course, he is the leading filmmaker of the sixth generation, he’s really entrenched in Chinese culture and filmmaking, which is really different from the West where narrative has a sort of tyranny over everything else. And working with him closely, I was able to see what he gives importance to, which is emotional clarity.
“What’s more important than people understanding exactly why something happens is them emotionally understanding what the scene is meant to to give them.”
What do you mean?
It’s like, what’s more important than people understanding exactly why something happens is them emotionally understanding what the scene is meant to to give them. And I think that's also beautiful, because it leads to more openness and a multitude of of interpretations of something as opposed to: “This can only be interpreted one way.” That has really opened me up as a storyteller.
Did you also find a kinship with each other given that both your filmmaking styles explore really specific parts of your native culture, politics, and society?
Definitely. Though, I think one main difference between us is that I left my country and my most of my consciousness as a filmmaker has come from my time spent abroad, even though I'm always writing about the Philippines, the capitalist and societal issues specific to my home country. I think one thing that I really am learning from Jia is to hone in and connect and explore what it is you know, and what it is where it is you came from. And that’s been such a good reminder and example for me as someone who moved to the West, who's getting more assimilated into the culture here, and who has all these pressures to become Western.
The Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho once said Parasite’s resonance with people around the world made him realize that although we’re all different, we all live in the same capitalist world. Does that resonate with your work?
One hundred percent, you know, the global nation of capitalism, it's something that really resonates with me in terms of my work. It’s something that I really want to explore; the gentrification of the world, hyper consumerism… Although the Philippines is a developing country, hyper consumerism still does very much exist there.
Even though the details are specific to the Philippines — like the world of the golf course in your film Flipiñana —those are themes and motifs that really are universal and relatable.
Absolutely, and I think this is not only true for film, but also for music, for architecture. I think with any kind of art, it's about how it resonates across audiences. It’s a trope, right? You become very specific with your art, but the more specific you can get, the more universal something becomes.
Filipiñana
was apparently first conceived as a feature film, but you couldn’t secure the funding so you edited it down into a short film. What was that experience like?At the time I just was about to graduate film school, and so I was very naive on how finance in the film world works. They don't really teach you that. So I went to the Philippines and gave myself six months to try and raise the finance for for a micro-budget feature, and I couldn't even raise that. But I did get some really good advice from an experienced Filipino producer who told me to take the funding that I was able to raise and shoot a proof of concept for it. I decided to make a short film that could stand alone as its own thing. So instead of lifting scenes that I had already written for the feature that I was planning on doing, I wrote an entirely new script that was kind of like an introduction to this world that I wanted to explore, the golf course that you mentioned. The film industry hasn’t really found a way to exploit the short film for profit yet, so it’s a good space for young filmmakers to explore. So I started to develop my visual language and the cinematic grammar that we wanted use.
It sounds like an incredible learning opportunity for you in terms of developing your style.
Exactly, the main focus of the short really became developing that visual language, immersing myself in the visual and sonic elements rather than figuring out the narrative. It’s not a very narrative heavy film, so it was interesting figuring out how to keep the audience immersed beyond plot points.
Certain visual and sonic elements — like the playful wide shot of Isabel lying in the sand bunker, or the sound of cicadas — really stuck with me when watching the films. The cicada soundtrack even continues in your next work 102 Narra.
Thank you, yeah, I’m really influenced by the films of Jacques Tati and Federico Fellini, I love tableau vivant, extreme wide shots… My cinematographer and I love to get really inventive with our shots and blocking and the way the world moves within our films. The sonics are important as well, the cicadas that you mentioned and also certain bird sounds, tonally, they add a lot of heat. It’s a very Filipino experience, hearing these sounds, it’s a tropical country, it’s very dense, and these sounds are a good way of translating that. I’m very interested in reframing these social cues and themes and making them accessible through sound and blocking.
And now you’re finally developing Filipiñana into the feature film it was meant to be. How has that process been? Did you feel the loss of that freedom you mentioned earlier?
I'm very fortunate to have such a good team around me, who really care and believe in the the film that we're trying to do. We're doing it as a production between the Philippines, Singapore and the UK. And I feel like we've all been team players. And obviously I have to think about certain things that I wasn't thinking about in the short when I was producing it myself and with my friends; we didn't have to pay people that much, we weren't worrying about monetary market pressures. But I'm just taking it as a chance for growth and maturing in the industry. Some directors make a feature and they never do another short again, but so far I love both formats, and it's really my aspiration to continue doing both.