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Tuesday, May 16, 2006
Cabaero: Movie on my mind
By Nini B. Cabaero
Beyond 30
Unlike the movie “The Da Vinci Code” that is set to open in theaters worldwide this week, the movie “Bunso (The Youngest)”—that had members of the Cebu City Council wanting to be film censors —is a done deal.
While government censors are training their guns on the controversial movie version of the Dan Brown novel “The Da Vinci Code” that is due to premier on May 17, local legislators want special screenings of the movie “Bunso,” a video documentary on the lives of three children detained in a city jail, stopped in Cebu.
“Bunso” had its regular screenings two years ago yet. It was shown in many venues in and outside the country since it was completed in 2004. Its director received an award from an international film body in 2005.
The City Council passed a resolution last week asking the Unicef or the United Nations Children’s Fund to stop showing the film “Bunso” as it was damaging to the City. The resolution said the movie was made in 2001 yet and did not reflect anymore the situation of minor offenders here.
The movie reportedly is still shown in seminars pushing for better laws on juvenile justice. According to the Unicef website at www.unicef.org, the film is a “powerful advocacy tool that child rights advocates are using to generate support for the passage of the juvenile justice bill.”
The film’s director, Ditsi Carolino, received the Best Director award at the OneWorld 2005 documentary films festival held in Prague, Czech Republic.
The movie was not all about the conditions at the jail where the three children were mixed with adult criminals. It was about the poverty, the malaise that decided the fate of these children. What the local legislators were not happy about was the continued showing of the documentary without a notice to viewers that the images were five years old and much had happened since then in protecting the rights of children and of children in conflict with the law.
But a documentary film, unlike the fictional movie “The Da Vinci Code,” is presumably dated. It happened at a particular point in the history of someone or some place. A documentary is a work of non-fiction.
A decision to block the showing of “Bunso” in Cebu City would be embarrassing to these local legislators. And what is there for the councilors to ban when the commercial viewing of the awarded documentary film “Bunso” was over and all that is left are special screenings to advocacy groups?
One way for the City Government to counter the bad impression is to come up with its own documentary movie detailing the developments made by the public and private sectors in caring for the children of Cebu.
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (May 16, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
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