By: Iris P. Concepcion
Show me a film that can expand my visceral and tactile functions and I shall brave any storm to look for it.
There is an ongoing film festival (European Cinema Fest) that shows how splicing can be good for the psyche, that it could be an art form, that it actually speaks straight to the brain without even trying hard.
I have thus far experienced an alternative form of education on creativity, politics and let us just say, human relations in general.
My top picks in the ongoing series are Philanthropy (The Baron). An eternally elegant lady was giving a spontaneous critique while the reel was being shown as I did my own talking contribution in that mutual sense of familiarity and respect for the medium (I watched this twice; the first one an eye-opener; the second one, a feel of visceral burst).
This is a story about a man who had been racking up on bills, is not enjoying the good varieties of life simply because he was writing literature. A reverse, blunt essay to the creative soul, I was struck most by its Shakespearean parlay of communicating this lack of sense for the truly essential: it stares us right through our eyes and wouldn't even dare give it a blink.
A maestro is thus put into the celluloid as a (good) Devil's advocate with his splendid harangue of verbal laments that turned into a comical, lunatic even, soul-knifing dialogue. Here, the man, that most benevolent benefactor of truth, spoke to the craftsman: "Please, make me move, give me tears, write about your apartment!" as waste is done outside spent on booze and fancy eating and excessive sexual sojourns. One is not lost by the fact that art, in this paradoxical beauty, is its biggest casualty.
He saved his best crippling sentences to those who had lost their creative trances to senseless unuse of the brilliant medium: "What, pity you creep? I am a beggar's writer. It is better to beg than to steal."
Or something to that effect. Catch this students: it is being reshown in future dates. This could make you compose, create, think, live better than before as I shall do.
The next movies I liked are these:
An Education (United Kingdom). I like this film as the woman thrust upon choices followed her own heart and eventually got what she had aspired on her own terms. A student wanted to learn cello but was instead dangled by the riches of the world. She became desolate for it. She talked back to the teachers ("Show me the life that I must create", she seems to be saying, "and I shall show you my brilliancy!"----Rocket, am giving that line for you for free) and made her choice finally. Music came after her, humming wildly and freely.
El Greco . The resurgence of the nagging Maestro again: He wanted himself painted but the painter could only give him a substandard pittance worth of brushstrokes. I laughed out loud and it seems, only me and the culprits would nod to this familiarity of the sublime.
Soul At Peace. A moving, gut-wrenching confessional of a man's spiritual transformation that speaks of in-your-face sincerity.
I was once advised to enter a classroom to feed my words their lilt, stroke, action and nerve. It is not that I am not open to these possibilities but this time around, I am having it from the pavements of streets, from every spoon of soup and dish fed to my mouth, from the mind entrenching encounters with unique strangers who had given me lessons about life, spirit and transformation and even, funnily, from people who speak candidly about how to build strong legs.
If I had travelled luxuriously, I would give back to this country the richness of these experiences in various mediums only in exceptional, if not perfect, renditions. That is being demanded for every creator and for every man who dreams of altering, giving this world even, a little paint here and there, for a sunshiny embrace of life: no poor nor rich man can argue with this, that is the essential thing you must not blink out on.
The kids I am writing about here know best the works for they have experienced them: they have been there and are incorporating this in their practical life. My appreciation then, dear readers, is not founded on false grounds.
They DO create.