or How I Made Movies Between Hollywood and Bollywood or Sex, Bombas and Pitopito

Bridging the gap between the Lino Brocka generation of Philippine filmmakers and nowadays comes Jeffrey Jeturian, whose first two films, Sana Pag-ibig Na (1998) and Pila Balde/Fetch a Pail of Water (1999) are both critically acclaimed. Fetch a Pail of Water, a moving account of slum life in Manila, bagged Gold Prize at Houston-Worldfest 2000 and a NETPAC Jury Prize at the 2000 Cinemanila International Film Festival. His third film, Tuhog/Larger Than Life, will be competing at Venice 2001 in the Cinema del Presente section. Filmfestivals.com caught up with the promising Jeturian at Udine 2001.

How did you get into films and what kind of system, or difficulties did you have to face making your first movies in the Philippines?

Ever since I was in high school, it was my dream to be a film director. I was exposed to the films of famous Philippine directors, such as Lino Brocka, whose films were presented at Cannes in the seventies. In the early 80's, I took up broadcasting communication - there were no film schools in the Philippines at that time. But since I wanted to become a filmmaker, I got into film and television work. I started as a production assistant for Marilou Diaz-Abaya, a director who was able to penetrate the international film festival market. I worked also as a script supervisor, production designer, both for television and the movies, and as assistant director before I finally did my first film.

But before that, my first directorial effort was for a television soap opera. So that when I was given a break to make my first film, the conditions given to me were that I shot it in ten days, with 20,000 feet of film negative -- which means about 15 rolls -- for a budget of only $40,000. But I was quite ready for that, because in television I shot the installments of the soap operas in two shooting days only and did the editing very fast. This implied shooting around 50-60 scenes within two days. So a 10-day shooting was quite a picnic for somebody who was doing movies for television in two days... (smiles) But anyway, I was that desperate to get my break. And it's a good thing that my first film got critical acclaim, even if it bombed at the box office.

Tell us a bit more about your debut film Sana Pag-ibig Na...

It was a family drama, a coming-of-age story in which a young guy discovers, on his father's death, that the father, whom he quite looked up to, had a mistress. He went to the mistress with the intention of confronting her, but ended up falling in love with her, because the mistress, at that time, happened to be pregnant with the dead father. So he ended up taking care of her during her pregnancy. And when the mother learnt about that, she felt betrayed by both the son and the father. But the son showed the letter to the mother. It was a goodbye letter by the father to the mistress telling her that he couldn't go on with the affair anymore because he loved his family. So it was a simple story, though quite melodramatic! (laughs) But it got critical acclaim, and even though it bombed at the box office, my producer, Lily Monteverde, thought I could do more films! So she gave me one more chance with Fetch a Pail of Water.

Lily Monteverde is one of the most prolific producers in the Philippines. She's been doing films since the seventies, she's produced films by Lino Brocka. So she's carved her own niche in Philippine cinema. So she gave me the chance to do Fetch the Pail of Water, but under the same stringent conditions: about $50,000, with 25,000 feet of film negative, and 13 shooting days. Just to give you an idea of how stringent it was, for the fire scene - the finale - I was given $500 only to set up the whole thing (laughs). But I think it's quite a good discipline, you have to think up your shots, pre-edit your shots. But what I'm very particular about is the material because I know that if I have a good story, a good screenplay, no matter how crude the execution is, that film can stand on its own. And I think all of my three films have something to say about life, society, people. That's why it was heartening to note that, even if my film didn't have the gloss of other Asian films, it got quite a good reception with the audience.

Something I read about Philippine culture was like: "400 years of convent, and 50 years of Hollywood"...

...So that leaves us very confused! We're a confused culture! (laughs) Spain used religion to control us, and America used education also to control us - plus 5 years of Japanese rule under WW2. So, now, even if we are exposed to different cultures, somehow it affects the psyche of the Philippine people, because the effect of all these foreign cultures on us is that we end up thinking that our own culture is not good. And we keep comparing ourselves with Americans, Westerners, so anything Western is superior to our own culture, and this is somehow reflected in our films. Even in our film industry, we have been imitating Hollywood, from the fifties to the present. So when the trend in Hollywood was for the escapist films, we also did films that were escapist, so anything that was a box office hit in Hollywood was remade in the Philippines.

Even though we are a Catholic country, there is a lot of sexual promiscuity in our films, which says much about our confusion. At the same time that we are conservative, we try all those things... (laughs) But I think for a Philippine director to make his mark on the international market, he has to have his personal stamp, style, and his films have to reflect the culture they come from. The same with most Asian directors - I am a big fan of Zhang Yimou, I like his Story of Qiu Ju very much, even if the pace is very slow and so un-Hollwood. A good film in any language will be a good film anywhere, whether in its own country or in different countries. Because we still hold some things dear that are universal, like love, family,...

In terms of films and filmmaking, what do you remember from the seventies and eighties, which were the times of the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship?

The government made it appear to the public that everything was right. But at the same time that we were operating with strict censorship for our local films, they brought in all these films from Europe, from the States, from Japan, that had so much sex in them, and showed them in the theatres that were venues for international film festivals. So we, Philippine people, were confused - we were forbidden to put sex in our films but at the same time we were exposed to international films that had so much nudity and, of course, different cultures. It was the same principle as the Roman circuses, they fed the crowd, and that's pretty much how they ran the government also.

Several directors went to prison at that time...

It was usually because they fought for their political beliefs. We weren't allowed to deal with political subjects at that time. Ishmael Bernal's Manila by Night, which pictured Manila the way it really was at that time, didn't sit well with Marcos's wife, that's why it didn't go to Berlin. And it had to be cut severely to be allowed to go to other festivals, under another title, 'City After Dark'. Even Lino Brocka's Bayan ko: Kapit sa patalim (1984) was also banned from being shown in France. At that time, Lino was already quite popular and had connections in Cannes. So in that sense, we were under a dictatorship, but for me it was interesting, because I was absorbing all these influences -- films of Truffaut, Bergman, Kurosawa, and they were alternatives to the Hollywood films that were shown commercially.

Fetch a Pail of Water is quite a sexy film. Was it intentional to make it sexy?

The very first thing that my supervising producer asked me to do was to make it very sexy. I thought the material could stand some sex, though it was a commercial compromise on my part to bring in the audience. But that's how conditions really are in Philippine movies. If you've noticed, there is a lot of sex in our movies, even when the sex is not part of the story.

You're talking here about the "bombas" films...

Yes, when the film industry is down, it's the sex film, the "bombas," that keeps the business going. It's happening again now. Because of the piracy. But we have a new board of censorship that is more conservative, and which will pose problems to most of our producers and will affect the business. The influx of Hollywood films are eating into our audience, and there's the prohibitive cost of tickets - we are up against all this right now and we have to keep the industry going.

Do you feel it's a good or a bad thing if the censorhip board cracks down on sex in Philippine movies?

The new censorship board was installed on recommendation of the church. So that means that maybe we cannot make films like Fetch a Pail of Water anymore. There's too much sex in it. In some way, it's a good thing because, then, the producers will not demand from us to inject sex into all our movies. But somehow, there's something about sex that adds a certain grit and reality to the films that we make, so it makes it look like they're not sanitized. In a way, I find it necessary having sex in my movies, but I don't overdo it. I hope the new censorship will be a good judge of films, because then you wouldn't see the sex scenes independently of what the movie has to say.

In Fetch a Pail of Water, using water as a vessel, you go through several social layers, from the low class to the bourgeoisie...

It's a good thing that you point that out, but it may not have been intentional. In fact, I started and ended the film with water, after the tenement houses are all burnt down. So I think it's a symbol that even if the poor people don't have their dwellings anymore, life will still go on.

Fetch a Pail of Water shows the struggle of city-dwellers to, at the very least, keep a life despite the conditions they are in. The leading character, aside from fetching water, also drives a tricycle and does sexual favours just to bail his girlfriend out. And it is true for most poor Philippine people - they're forced to be inventive about earning a livelihood, to do little jobs to keep them going. That's how difficult city life has become for most of them.

The cast of Fetch a Pail of Water mixes old-time professionals with first-timers...

I like working with first-time actors, because they're not mannered, they have no preconceived notions of how to do their parts. And what I was after was natural acting, I didn't want the acting to be felt, so somehow it worked to my advantage that most actors in the film were new actors. It's just a matter of telling them to relax and pretend there is no camera recording their actions.

Anna Capri, the star of the film, is also a sex starlet in the Philippines. Was it easy to get her into the film?

It was easy. Fetch a Pail of Water is what we call a "pitopito" in the Philippines, low budget films shot in seven days - "pitopito" means "seven". So my producer has a contract with a television station. She supplies movies for them for airing. For these pitopito, there is a set of actors with which we just juggle, and Anna happens to be one of them. So it wasn't really difficult to convince her, except that she wasn't really aware that this film was a different kind of sex movie. She told me after the shooting, after it got acclaim in several festivals, that she was grateful to me for being so meticulous and guiding her. Because probably, with her previous directors for other pitopito films, it was just one take and that's all. But with me, I was careful, especially because my negative was limited, so I had to rehearse every time before I could see that she did it right and I asked my cameraman to roll the camera. After this film, she was considered a legitimate actress, and somehow, I feel happy for her, because she got out of the stigma of just being a sexy star. And in fact, she won the Best Actress Award at the Cinemanila International Film Festival.

The ending of the film is quite harsh: the tenement dwellers are ousted by real-estate businessmen. Is that a common practice in the Philippines?

Well, it's not openly admitted. It's so difficult to ask the slum-dwellers to move out. They feel they have ownership of the property, even if they just squat. So it's very common in our country. They will make it appear that there's a big fire that razed down the slum community, but actually it was instigated by some businessman who had interest in that location. As we are not very strict with our zoning system, officials can easily be bribed. So sometimes it is the government people that are doing it for the businessmen. And I think it is common, also, in South America.

Dictator Ferdinand Marcos's wife was a movie starlet. President Eric Estrada was an actor... It seems movies have always had a national role to play in the Philippines!

Yes, we are so enamoured with movies, actors, that's why Eric Estrada probably got elected as president! He was very popular with the masses.

Your latest film Tuhog (Larger than Life) is competing at Venice 2001. What is this new film about?

It's about a mother and daughter who were both incest victims. A producer and a director take interest in their story; the producer buys out the story rights and when the mother and daughter watch the film, they feel raped all over again by what they see, because it's distorted, all the commercial elements that go into filmmaking are there. Somehow, it's a parody of Philippine cinema, of sex in Philippine cinema. In the first scene, there's this producer approving the project, and he tells the director right off to make it very sexy. And that's what happened to me with Fetch a Pail of Water! (laughs) So somehow, it's my revenge on my producers! Ironically, it's the same producer!

What are your hopes for your own career now and for the future of Philippine cinema?

My first hope is that I can keep on making the kind of films that I make. And for me to be able to do that, I have to develop an audience, at least locally. I want to get the Philippine audience back to watch Philippine movies. Because most of them have lost faith in our own films. It's only the big-budget dramas that make it commercially, because they have the gloss of Hollywood, and the producers make it appear that they're good films, because of the expense and the budget. So I want to develop an audience for my kind of films, to make them aware that there's a different kind of filmmaking and I hope it works, because they are not formula films.

Also, I hope there will be a new wave of Philippine directors who will make their mark in the international film community. Actually, this development of the pitopito allowed new and young directors to show their mettle. I hope others will follow suit. The film industry is on a down swing now. Two years ago, we were able to come up with about 150 films, but last year it was down to 80, and probably this year we'll be down to 50. We've been on a decline for the lats few years, but I hope we'll be able to nip that in the bud and come up with a dynamic industry, just like what is happening in Thailand. And I do hope that some of our films will be able to penetrate the international market, because then it will give hope to our local producers. So we'll be allowed to make the kind of films that we want to make.

Robin Gatto