ONE fine weekend afternoon, we shot the initial sequences of our short film at Davao City's Rizal Park.

The film, tentatively titled Way To The Sunset, its plot is set in present-day Davao City; it revolves around Jann, a nikkei-jin (Japanese descendant) and Hiroku, a Japino (Japanese-Filipino parentage). The two meet up for an "eyeball" date.

Sun.Star accepts donations for victims of Typhoon Ondoy

The day is spent strolling around the city taking pictures and talking about their shared Japanese lineage.

As sunset approaches, the two realize that the bond between them is a fate stronger than their Nippon ancestry.

Though inspired by Japanese and Korean popcorn flicks, Way to the Sunset is a short film whose theme also explores the remnants of Davao's Japanese heritage found in the small number of Japanese descendants or Nikkei-Jins living in the city.

It also touches with the lives of "Japinos" or children born of mixed Japanese-Filipino parentage.

Since it is Japanese inspired about 90 percent of the film is in Japanese language. Some of the film's look and visuals are patterned commonly seen in Korean and Japanese films.

This is a deviation from the gritty poverty look of many current Mindanao filmfest shorts

The film is written and directed by Bagane Fiola, a multimedia graphics artist who has been involved in several video productions, and has been my collaborator in my recent music video projects.

In Way To The Sunset, I am the film's assistant screenwriter and researcher.

Apart from Way To The Sunset, some short films have been completed or in production in preparation for the Fifth Mindanao Film Festival this December.

The "ber" months are considered as the busiest and most exciting time of the year for the local filmmaking community as this will be the time for making their own cinematic shorts.

This is the time of the year when one sees a small production crew shooting across the city may it be in the middle of downtown area particularly San Pedro street, in the middle of a slum community in Piapi Boulevard, a house in a subdivision or perhaps in the bucolic rural areas.

This is the time when acquaintances or friends are egged on to act in a film usually without a talent fee, all for friendship, for experience, for passion or simply just for relatives sake.

The Festival will be divided into two categories namely Open and Guerilla competitions.

Open competitions are those films completed after October 2008 but not later than September 2009 and were not screened in the previous Mindanao Film Festival.

While the Guerilla Film category are those filmed in October 2009 not later than the deadline set for the submission of entries for the 2009 MMFF.

Meanwhile, after filming Way to the Sunset, we proceeded to Matina Town Square where we met filmmaker Pepe Diokno, whose film Engkwentro was a big winner at the Venice Film Festival it won Debut Film in the Orrizonti (New Horizons) competition and the Luigi de Laurentiis (Lion of the Future) Award for a debut film.

The film inspired by the Davao Death Squad is a story of two brothers involved in gang violence and at the same time hunted down by death squads.

Pepe says Engkwentro will be screened in this year's Cinemanila International Film Festival currently held in Taguig.

The 22-year-old Diokno, grandson of the late Senator Jose "Ka Pepe" Diokno, is a film major at UP Diliman and writes a weekly column for the Philippine Star.

For his next film project, Pepe says he will be collaborating with Palanca award-winning Dabawenyo playwright turned filmmaker Arnel Mardoquio for a full-length film about child warriors and which will be shot here in Davao utilizing local actors and crew.

Slowly with these recent developments, the dream of a southern Mindanao regional Hollywood is slowly turning into a reality.