Sine Gabay: A Film Study Guide

By Nick Deocampo

Sine Gabay contains a compilation of 100 Filipino films that Deocampo had featured in his numerous film screenings and lectures. Included are titles of classic feature-length films like Bata, Bata. . . Paano Ka Ginawa?, Burlesk Queen, Himala, and Oro, Plata, Mata, as well as documentaries, animation, experimental films, and even propaganda movies. The book serves as an excellent teaching module containing valuable lessons and informational data about the chosen films. Listed inside are the films’ synopses, filmography, audience suitability and MTRCB ratings, recommended study areas, guide questions, and a valuable resource of contacts where to rent, purchase, or borrow viewing copies.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anvil Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 30, 2017
• ISBN: 9786214201792

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

THE FILM LITERACY PROGRAM

I was in a remote town in Polomolok located at the southern tip of Mindanao when it dawned on me how far I have traveled to show films to countless students in the country. In rooms packed with students during hot, sweltering afternoons, no amount of cover could stop the sun’s harsh light from entering and blurring the moving pictures that were hardly discernible on a makeshift screen. Despite the heat, schoolchildren stayed on to watch the films. Although bathed in sweat, we all later engaged in dialogues to talk about the things we learned from the films we saw. We called the process—film literacy, which is what this book is about.

It was perhaps too ideal an experience traveling across the archipelago in a span of twenty years in order to bring films to students as remote as Tuguegarao in Isabela in the north to that pineapple plantation community of Polomolok in South Cotabato in the south and passing through the country’s varied topography: the mountainous terrain of Baguio; the fish pens of Pangasinan; the rice fields of Laguna; the seashores of Camarines Norte; the islands of Mindoro, Panay, Negros, Bohol, and Cebu; the northern Mindanao corridors of Davao and Cagayan de Oro. Showing films and meeting all kinds of experiences in introducing students to film education made me think about how cinema could be tied up with learning.

As a filmmaker, the experience of bringing films from city centers to distant villages, where students hardly visit air-conditioned malls to watch films, made me realize how motion pictures might be utilized to serve what I felt was (and still is) the country’s most pressing need: education. This was when I started seeking ways of making films more accessible as a tool for learning through film literacy.

As it stands, more than twenty million students are currently enrolled in the country’s schools and universities. In an educational system where the book-to-student ratio is embarrassingly low, one begins to think of how the new media spawned by digital technology can be brought to play in advancing knowledge to millions of students. This becomes more critical in the years ahead as student population gets bigger and resources more limited. Is it not time to think of possibilities to expand education and knowledge beyond books and classrooms? In the age of digital technology, how can education make use of the available media and platforms to access and disseminate knowledge?

Those years when I had the privilege to look into the eyes of students as they soaked in the moving pictures they saw on screen have inspired me to write this book and offer it as a humble proposition to use film in the age of digital technology in order to promote education and learning.

FILM LITERACY DEFINED

Simply defined, film literacy is the act of acquiring knowledge and values through the use of movies. A film that serves this purpose promotes literacy be it a feature film, documentary, animation, short film, digital video, television program, or interactive media. Film, being a popular term, is used here to refer to moving pictures and the moving picture media in any of the forms previously mentioned.

Here, literacy is defined as a person’s ability to read audio-visual symbols (although not all may be able to produce these symbols as in the act of writing). The notion of literacy goes beyond mere comprehension to be able to adopt cognitive ways for a more functional and critical regard of media in their contents, forms, and functions. To be film literate is to be able to use media for personal or social development rather than to be merely used or manipulated by media.

Film literacy may be easily acquired. It is no different from learning how to read a book or write an e-mail. You read a film when you decode the audio-visual symbols you see onscreen very much like deciphering the letters that form the words while reading a book. But unlike the words used as symbols in books, it is the moving pictures and sounds that you need to decipher when reading a film. While strategies may differ, the simple way of watching a film may find similarities in our act of reading a book.

In the same way that learning a skill may involve the learning of new technologies (like in sending an e-mail, we need to know how to operate a computer), in watching films, we also need to have knowledge on how to manipulate machines (like the DVD player or projector); (or run a camera), if we are to produce moving pictures. While the act of watching films makes us film consumers, acquiring the ability to make motion pictures urges us to gain another set of skills necessary in becoming film producers.

Let us begin our study of film literacy with an understanding that film consists of moving pictures. Film combines sight and sound to produce an experience that brings us close to a lived reality. This verisimilitude ought not to preclude our notion that persons and events we see on film start and end through our imagination; while things really do happen in the actual world we live in.

This act of make-believe underscores film’s significance as a medium of symbolic re-presentation. By bringing to consciousness the symbolic signs used to represent objects in reality, we allow ourselves to disengage our minds from a film’s illusory reality. On many occasions, a disregard of this symbolic reconfiguration makes us wallow in film’s imaginary world and makes us mistakenly believe that what it shows us is true and not constructed illusions. Aiming to know how film produces an imagined world, through film literacy, will allow audiences to become aware of film as a medium made up of symbolic images and sounds produced and delivered through technology.

Our familiarity with the moving picture medium since childhood affords us to take for granted much of the abstraction that may be found in film. With little effort, we understand how actions form a story despite the separate shots that compose them brought about by an assembly of frames, editing cuts, or a combination of plots, not to mention the aural codes (sounds). But what is this thing that we react to when watching a film? Why are we able to find meanings in the concoction of audio-visual materials brought together by what seems to be arbitrary ways of assembling them? Looking closely, even at the most shallow of film entertainment, film performs functions that many other symbolic media also do, i.e., mainly communicate. Film’s symbolic signs (like words and sounds that include music) are produced to mean something. It is through this effort to produce meaning that film becomes a form of communication. Its elements are vested with the nature and functions of communication. It is an unsaid assumption (and as such taken for granted) that when we watch a film, we look for meanings (actively or not) in those images and sounds we see and hear.

While we take film as a set of moving pictures with sound, the first thing we need to know about film is exactly how the medium makes us understand what it tries to communicate. It is worth underscoring that moving pictures are encoded with meanings, no different than words being given meanings in literature. In the same way that words as printed letters on a page produce meanings to describe elements of reality, moving pictures coupled with sounds are also given symbolic significations in films. It is through our understanding of what these symbolic meanings suggest that we are able to decipher and understand the meanings a film gives. But while we have schools to learn how words form meanings, taking many years of training to master our reading and writing skills, many times we are left on our own to decipher what images and sounds mean in films.

Still, despite the lack of a formal schooling to learn how to read and produce moving pictures, film continues to be understood by many. How this works and how else we can improve our understanding of movies for the purpose of gaining knowledge is what the following brief introduction is about.

READING SIGNS: FILM AS CODED MESSAGE

It must be said again—film functions as a form of communication. It transmits meaning through a film text (the visuals we see on screen and the soundtrack). The visuals and sounds we experience create meaning that we can recognize as significant in many ways, but mostly this meaning helps us understand ourselves and others better.

A picture speaks a thousand words is a phrase that well describes film’s capacity to communicate. Let me usher you briefly into the workings of film as carrier of meanings by answering the question: How is meaning produced in film? In answering this question, we need to know how film is materially composed resulting to its expressive form. As a narrative medium, film goes beyond its literary attributes (i.e. script providing story and characters) in order to produce meanings. It is not just in the story, script, or dialogue that meanings in film can be found; a film also produces meanings of a cinematic kind. A cinematic meaning is derived from elements which are inherently to be found in the film text such as those listed below. Which of film’s elements produce meanings that go beyond literary signification and validate film as an articulation expressed through motion pictures and sounds? The following are the filmic elements that provide what may be considered as textual meanings or meanings of a cinematic kind:

- Story and Characters

- Directing

- Cinematography and Lighting

- Design

- Editing

- Sound

- and Music

Initially, you the viewer are introduced to the film’s story and characters. You may begin by asking yourself simple questions like What is the story about? and Who are the characters? These initiate you into the act of meaning making. Inferences and assumptions taken from the plot and character relations create meanings that make you understand the film you are watching—narratively. Finding out the story may even help you infer about themes and ideologies that produce meanings of a more contextual type. While it cannot be over-emphasized how important the story and characters are to your understanding of film, quite sadly, many do not move on to find in the films they watch meanings generated through other cinematic elements.

By virtue of cinematic authorship, the director produces meanings beyond what a scriptwriter accomplishes through the literary script. The job of putting filmic elements together allows the director to engage in a creative act of meaning production. The finished work becomes proof of the director’s intent to create meaning as an assembly of images and sounds are made to make sense in order to tell a story or formulate a statement. As the art of motion pictures, lighting and cinematography play important functions in producing meanings in film. The way an image is composed, what is shown onscreen and what is left out produce meanings that enrich our understanding of the film and what it tries to say. This is enhanced by the design of sets, costumes, and make-up that visually define characters and what they signify. Assembling the shots through editing produces meanings that arise not merely from what is seen in the shots but also from what is omitted in the interval produced by a cut between shots. Finally, sound and music provide meanings in the aural dimension that complement what we see.

For a better appreciation of how the above principles apply, the diagram below shows how all the elements relate with each other forming film’s audio-visual system:

Film Literacy Diagram

CINEMATIC PROPERTIES: FINDING TEXTUAL MEANINGS

Aside from the film elements mentioned above, films have cinematic properties such as Shot, Cut, and Movement. While the shot is most common of all, the last two may or may not be found in all films.

The Shot

A shot defines space. What we see and hear in a shot informs us with meanings far beyond what is written on script. Meanings produced in the shot come from the images and the actions we see (or do not see) as well as the accompanying soundtrack or music. The shot is a film’s visual statement to viewers. The mise-en-scene provides us with visual information that creates an imagined world and the meaning/s of that world.

A shot is contained inside a frame. A shot is taken from the time a camera starts to run until the time it ends. The action contained within this duration of time is known as pro-filmic action with sounds and/or music accompanying it. Defining film as having four sides shaped as a rectangle allows us to appreciate the materiality of the illusion we see and how this limited space both defines what we watch while at the same time repressing everything else that we do not see outside of a frame’s visual geography.

The space we see inside the frame is called on-screen space, while everything else outside it is called off-screen space. Meanings are determined by those we see on screen as those outside, it is however far easier to produce meanings from what is visibly seen than what has been repressed visually. The same is true with sound. It is easier to create meanings from what we hear, but it does not mean that silence, when rightly used, creates no meaning.

The filmic space we see in a frame may further be defined through location. The placement of an action or a character in a frame produces varied meanings depending on where they are located. Despite its flat two-dimensional space, film creates an illusion of space through the perspective (or a sense of depth) that it creates. While its three-dimensionality is merely evoked and illusionary, not real, the mind is able to see the illusion and believes it through a suspension of disbelief. While no rules are carved on stone in terms of how meanings are to be assigned in the use of filmic space, some films have maximized the production of meaning by making good use of these assigned spaces.

Spaces in a frame may refer to foreground, background, center, margins, up, and down to name some. Objects specifically placed in one of these spaces may conjure a different meaning if placed in another area. One example may be objects placed in the foreground that cast large images that overwhelm objects placed in a distant background whose size diminish due to perspective. This may be seen in an early American newsreel like ADVANCE OF KANSAS VOLUNTEERS AT CALOOCAN where images of the invading American soldiers loom large over Filipino soldiers who are reduced in size as they flee in the background. In this set up, placing the Americans in the foreground visually reinforces the meanings of power and formidability, while the background position of Filipinos shows weakness and inferiority. Encoded visually are the meanings of power and dominance favoring the Americans, while the opposite are meant for Filipinos as they scamper in the background and finally disappear. All these significations favoring U.S. superiority all speak the language of propaganda, a meaning that has contextual relevance and will be taken up later. Cinematic space, as the film shows, may be a powerful tool to articulate a film’s meaning beyond the merely literary.

Movement in space, again if appropriately used, may also provide significant cinematic meaning. Using once again the above film as example, the American soldiers’ forward movement produces the meaning of triumph over Filipinos, whose movement in the pro-filmic space is that of retreat, obviously signifying defeat. Placing the American flag at center frame validates the center as the site of authority, pre-determined in the Judeo-Christian visual convention of placing God at the center of a painting to signify power and authority. This is seen more vividly in the placement of the Eye of God at the center of an isosceles triangle to signify supreme dominance in the equidistant space. Substitute God with the U.S. flag and the flag becomes endowed with authority and superiority symbolically ascribed to God. Moving from frame left to frame right, background to foreground, up to down – all these are not to be perceived as innocent or neutral spaces devoid of meanings. In films that matter, placements of actions or characters and objects produce significant meanings that will help us understand not only the story but the film’s significance as well.

Cut and Movement

While the shot provides a visual rendering of the story, whose meanings may be found in what is seen, the cut keeps meanings in the interval of those shots. Achieved through editing, the cut defines a film’s temporal progression as it assembles frames of varying actions. Meaning becomes deposited in between the shots to suggest a movement in action or story – either forward or backward in time. The sequencing of shots provides the rhythm and tempo of the film’s linear or non-linear narrative progression.

As shot defines a film’s visual space, the cut defines a film’s temporal movement (or time-related progression). As action is visualized in a shot, that action is made to move in time through the process of editing, or the sequencing of shots. We comprehend a film’s action or idea as editing combines images in ways that will put an order to the flow of images in order to compose an action or tell a story.

In the documentary, EDADES, there is a cut that shows how this process works. In one shot, a boy is flying a kite in an open field as the young Victorio Edades sits on top of a carabao watching the kite fly through a piece of glass. As the kite flies out of frame in the preceding shot, the following shot shows the same kite as it drops to the ground and a pair of feet appears into view. A young man picks up the kite and it is revealed to be the young man, Victorio. In putting the two shots together, the boy Edades grows up into a young man collapsing the time of his growth in the process. That split-second cut is not without meaning. One may read in it the following meaning: Edades grew up from a small farm boy to become a young man. On the soundtrack, this meaning is affirmed as the narrator tells viewers that the young man we see is Edades who now goes to school in the town’s American-run high school. Editing has been effectively used to forward the story.

Movement shows the evidence of motion in a film through camera movement, pro-filmic action, editing, narration, or other means. Movement provides the flow of action and gives a sense of direction for the film to follow.

Camera movement provides the most cinematic means of creating meaning. This happens in a number of ways: tilt, pan, dolly, track, zoom, crane, swish, and handheld, among others. Using any of these technical means to move a camera, if thoughtfully used, can provide meanings that will deepen one’s understanding of the story or the film. In the short film TRIP, there is a shot of a policeman and a criminal bound together inside a jeepney on their way to court. As the camera pans to the sleepy policeman, the criminal is placed off frame and what we see is only the policeman dressed up in his uniform. But when the camera pans left, and this time the policeman is off screen, the criminal is no longer wearing his bonnet hat but the policeman’s cap. The camera returns to the policeman and now we see him not only wearing the criminal’s bonnet but also his shirt. When the camera finally ends up with the criminal, we see him in full police uniform. By moving the camera to and fro, the two characters switch their identities. What makes humor possible in this scene and how does camera movement help produce meaning? Analyzing how the scene is set up, we see how crucial the camera movement is in creating the meaning of reversal of identities by showing how a law enforcer becomes a criminal and a criminal turns into a law enforcer. We laugh at how meaning takes the form of satirizing police authority. And we arrive at it through camera movement. Although this technique is achieved through a sequence of shots punctuated by editing, the revealing technique shows the way that the camera is made to move, hiding one piece of information first and revealing it in the next.

CONTEXTUAL MEANINGS

The above examples provide us with ways to find meanings in a film textually. Using the Edison film again as example, let us see how meanings may also be produced contextually. While the film text ADVANCE OF KANSAS VOLUNTEERS AT CALOOCAN shows us images of two warring camps out to eliminate each other, is the film’s meaning only about soldiers fighting? As far as the film text shows us, this is all there is to it. But we are not satisfied with the film’s ambiguity. We want to know who these soldiers are and why they are fighting. What is the consequence of one set of soldiers winning over the other? As it turns out, if we are not satisfied with the meaning produced by the text, do we have other sources to provide us with a more satisfactory meaning? In an interplay of textual and contextual analyses, let me walk you through the film and hopefully find some meanings that will become more satisfactory.

The first visual we see in the shot, as the film starts, are soldiers described in program notes as Filipinos. At close range, we find that African-American actors confirmed by documents coming from the period when the film was made play the so-called Filipinos. After firing at their unseen enemies off-screen, U.S. soldiers invade the on-screen space. Their foreground position makes them loom large over Filipinos seen at the background. The U.S. National Guards advance from their foreground position forcing Filipinos to retreat and disappear. At film’s end, American soldiers colonize the screen.

As mentioned earlier, while the film shows two armies fighting, its meaning does not end there. The film appears to signify something beyond what the film text shows us. We want to know who are fighting and why they are killing each other. We get one clue of one army’s identity with the appearance of the American flag. The stars-and-stripes banner reveals the soldiers to be Americans. Now who can be the other set of soldiers? This is when we get to look for answers outside of the film text and into other sources. To answer this question, I had to look for answers somewhere else. I had to do research. It led me to look for program notes contained in sales catalogs selling the film, film encyclopedia bearing annotations about the film, printed advertisements promoting the film, copyright documents, newspaper articles, as well as other scholarly publications written about the said film.

My research revealed a rich load of information coming from sources outside of this 45-second film. I found that the contextual meanings I have unearthed far outweighed in significance the film’s thin