John Bengan
A girl named Elena (Alaska Ordona) shows a younger girl how to make the sign of the cross in front of a statue of the Virgin Mary. “Our Holy Queen,” Elena adds. The younger girl replies quickly, “My mother is also a queen.” Later, Elena likens the Kingdom of Spain to a tree with many branches. One of these, Elena says, is the Philippines. “Where is that?” the young girl asks. “This,” Elena says, naming the ground beneath them, “is the Philippines.”
Such are the stark, fable-like exchanges that animate Gutierrez Mangansakan II’s scrappily ingenious Masla A Papanok (Bird of History). The film begins with Bai Intan (Quennie Lyne Demoral), a princess who fled from an arranged marriage. After a long trek, she collapses outside a convent in Tamuntaca, a settlement near the mouth of the Rio Grande de Mindanao, a place known today as Cotabato. As nuns in dark robes flock around the princess and carry her to the convent, the camera ominously takes a bird’s-eye view. When Bai Intan wakes up, she finds herself in the company of Christianized Indios and Spanish missionaries who baptize and name her Clara.
(Still photo courtesy of Teng Mangansakan)
The Spaniards regard Clara as a trophy of their progress in “civilizing” what they consider as inhabitants at the “end of the world.” Clara notices the kind, biracial soldier Jorge (Krigi Hager), whose mother had converted to Christianity. In the succeeding days, Elena teaches Clara Spanish grammar, needlework, and Catholic fatalism (“Wounds are the opening of our bodies for divine light to come in.”). When not tutoring Clara, Elena is seen prostrate before an altar, or flogging herself in penance. Meanwhile, one of the nuns suspects Clara’s wandering outdoors as a ruse to get closer to their lone Moro gardener.
Mangansakan recreates two temporal boundaries—historical and mythical—occupying the same contested space. Bai Intan’s seizure at the convent begins the distortion of her identity and cultural memory, which happens shortly before the burning of a Maguindanao village, and the sighting of an enormous bird believed to be a herald of misfortune. The film sheds away the opening sequences’ stifling black-and-white and renders in soft colors the ensuing scenes of life outside occupied territory.
(Still photo courtesy of Teng Mangansakan)
These events converge in a ritual. As Spanish and Indio soldiers, led by a ruthless gobernadorcillo, invade a ceremony where villagers are communing with spirits, the omen erupts into history. The villagers, including the Datu and the Bai, are massacred, leaving Bai Intan’s cousin, the young Dumingel (Ameir Hassan), the responsibility of seeking justice.
After this terror of the real, an enchanted maiden rises from the river, traipsing under the moon. Soon after, a crocodile attacks the Spanish soldiers’ campsite. Only two survive the incredible assault straight out of a folktale: Jorge and his superior, the gobernadorcillo. But fearing the young man will bear witness, the gobernadorcillo turns to Jorge. “No one must know what really happened,” he eerily foretells the logic of many atrocities to come.
(Still photo courtesy of Teng Mangansakan)
Language plays a prominent role in Mangansakan’s vision. The many tongues spoken in Masla A Papanok represent cultures and worldviews thriving in Mindanao before the arrival of Spanish colonizers. However, the film’s multilingualism also reveals flaws. Apart from a noticeable spartan production value, the acting and stilted diction of the actors portraying European characters momentarily distract. Even so, Mangansakan positions his actors in such a deliberate manner, as though these figures are speaking from old photographs that have never been seen until now. He offers us emblematic tableaus of Mindanao at the turn of the century, but in moving images.
Perhaps in the Centennial Year of our cinema, something must be said about the depiction of white colonizers in Philippine movies and our discomfort in seeing them not so realistically depicted. Has there been a Philippine film that featured Spanish characters speaking in impeccable Castellano? Have Spanish filmmakers ever reckoned with our shared past, and done so using Tagalog, Cebuano, Teduray, Maguindanao and many others of our local languages? If at all, how often and how accurate? To his credit, Mangansakan allowed his Spanish characters to speak their language, fluency notwithstanding. How many times can this be said about Spanish cinema with respect to the histories of our islands?
Certainly, there are recent Filipino films with higher production values, boasting of industry-grade polish. And yet a lot of these productions rest the blame on the audience—and the larger population—for our seeming indolence in the face of treachery, abuse, and historical amnesia. Austere, improvisational, truly independent in spirit, Masla A Papanok points in the right direction regarding who among us wanted our stories left unremembered and untold.