Kanana Kanu

LAST year, UPB’s Jimmy Fong organized a film workshop that ran from September to November. It was open to UPB faculty, students, and the general public.

We met on Saturdays. With Koji Imaizumi, we watched and discussed film classics from various eras and genres. I was forced to sit through the genre I could never but never take to: silent movies. But the force feed did me well. I learned to appreciate the brilliant Chaplin. To have to say this so late in my life is perhaps awful, but there you have it.

On the last day of the workshop, the wife of one of our participants, Raffy Capuno, sat in. Her name is Jocelyn Banasan Capuno. The day she sat in, our own Baguio Cinematheque’s Art Tibaldo was there to announce a deadline extension for a then ongoing screenwriting contest being held by the Film Development Council of the Philippines.

It later turned out that Jocelyn had joined the contest, to win a grand prize of P500,000 with which to produce her award-winning screenplay. Sometime early this year, Jimmy told me that that Jocelyn had won the contest and was already off in Kalinga, shooting.

Jocelyn shot, edited, and finished her movie in record time. She was done by May. Last week, on July 27, UPB premiered her movie, “Kanana Kanu” (S/he said, it is said…”

“Kanana” takes us to a little town in Kalinga as a half-Kalinga, half-American young man named John goes home to visit his grandmother. Once there, we are loaded onto a cultural narrative that leisurely takes us around town, playing their games, singing their songs, planting their fields, doing their things. As this is happening, we are also treated to an epic story that John’s grandmother is relating to him. When it is time for John to leave, we come away with him, richer for the cultural ride and the epic story.

My best scene is one where the village people are watching the field spirits dance, as lights, in the fields. The script tells us that when these beings of light are seen dancing in the rice fields, the harvest will be a good one. Love that.

After the showing, a small group of us stayed to discuss the film, ask Raffy questions (Jocelyn could not make it, but Raffy has producer credit), just shoot the breeze, and rejoice that an indie film about Kalinga by someone form Kalinga was actually done and showing. We took hours to do that – good fun. To cap the night, Koji unwrapped a banana cake which we had with some red wine, also courtesy of Koji. We toasted to a mixture of “Salud” and “Banzai,” – as we raised our glasses to…

Jo! Matagutagu tako!