At a time when the world is on the verge of collapse, when news reports demonstrate the regressive directions to which many countries are turning, the necessity of creating critical spaces becomes more urgent.  

The latest decision of the UK Supreme Court defining women as purely biological is just one of the cultural, political and social directives impacting communities. The new US administration has also enabled actions (among many other things) that facilitate the erasure of achievements by women of color on the government websites. The Philippines certainly isn’t far from deterioration either. With the midterm elections nearing, we are witnessing candidates emboldened to issue the most chauvinistic remarks in their campaign sorties.

So when Bea Mariano, a filmmaker and poet, offered a moment to end the Women’s Month of March with the launch of her new initiative WE Film Philippines (or Women’s Experimental Films Philippines), her gesture can be read as a reminder to continue harnessing spaces that foster thinking.  

WE Film is a salon screening experimental films, video art and other time-based media by Filipino women. Bea, who holds a degree in art studies from the University of the Philippines, has been quietly gaining ground in the film and experimental video scene. Her work, Dominion, has been included in various festivals. With her slow and purposeful immersion in this field, she has been nurturing the seed of an idea to screen works by women for some time now. 

Stall 9 at Cubao Expo in Quezon City was packed that Sunday afternoon for the inaugural watch of WE Film Philippines’ first program, Time After Time. I was late to the event but managed to catch some short films/videos. I scanned the crowd and saw familiar faces: artists, writers, university professors, and cultural workers. The others, I assumed, were from the niche audience of film screenings. The works shown were a collection of both raw and developed pieces by 24 women, including students, new graduates, and recognizable names in the film world such as Kiri Dalena and Pam Miras.

Polite applause filled the room after each piece was shown, and Bea’s voice was occasionally heard from the dimly lit space where she handled the projector. All the works we watched were under 10 minutes, per Bea’s instruction in her open call. Some of the submitted pieces clocked more than the prescribed time, in which case the audience was shown excerpts of these longish oeuvres. 

The program was split into two parts: Program A, “Ennui, Alienation and Memento Mori,” focused on the quotidian. Program B, “Annotations on Longings, Anxieties, and the Political,” consisted of works that Bea described as being more “affective.” I was one of those who heard and heeded her open call; my work, Tropical Loop, was included in the second group.

Adding texture to the gathering were performances of spoken word poetry that served as brief program breaks. Nanette, whose son was a victim of the extrajudicial killings in the past regime, had written a poem for the first time and read it to the audience.

Language

The language of experimental images, much like poetry, follows a nonlinear logic in interpreting information. Such works invite the audience to experience and absorb unorthodox types of storytelling. Bea formulated the structure of “making videos as basically playing with duration, space, light, shadows, and sound.” It involves an experience that, for her, “has to be a poetic and an aesthetic encounter, or about witnessing too.” 

To discuss video-making/filmmaking as method is to ride on what Bea sees as “videos or films as a vehicle or point of convergence for other art forms.” Pushing boundaries in the creative fields can mean finding ways to reorder and redefine the expected and the predictable. One can hope that how an individual is encouraged to comprehend diverse forms of art can mean needing to interweave, converge and synthesize all sorts of knowledge. Bea articulates it as “about allowing the possibilities of translating one form to another.”

A screening of experimental films may leave the fledgling viewer to think that works of this genre are about the absence of a (conventional) narrative. Others, too, may (hastily) define the category as primarily about visual and editing effects. And yet, while these observations may be argued as inaccurate (or even reductive), to define experimental is a theoretical discourse in itself.

Much of the works that we saw that day examined themes that revolved around the metropole, the rural, the act of travelling, and even capitalist alienation. There were also works suggestive of love letters, personal stories and even hints of violence. Others explored camera techniques and creative image-making. And a few centered on the subject of identity, the diaspora and family.

Intentional spaces

More than a month since WE Film Philippines’ first screening, my continuing conversations with Bea delved into her general plans for the initiative.  

To hold space for women to showcase their works was her active response to her noticing that not many women are included in screening programs. Although she admitted that she has no statistical data to back her observation, she (still) feels that male filmmakers or video artists seem to occupy more space. Considering that there is no shortage of (women) artists doing experimental works, and (literal) art spaces are hardly scarce anymore, Bea believes it’s the lack of programming that needs addressing.

Bea emphasized that it’s not about leaning toward the rhetoric “kaya rin ng babae ang kaya ng lalaki” (women can also do what men do). “Isn’t that already given?” she said. The significance of representation is raised, given much of women’s tangible reality demands always needing to assert one’s right to have or be given space.  

Despite the longtime presence of other experimental film initiatives—for instance, Lost Frames and Los Otros (the founders and members of both “collectives” being her friends, colleagues and mentors)—Bea contends that WE Film is not about replacing (or, perhaps, even replicating) others. “It’s not about being alternative to the alternative,” she said. “It’s more about [expanding and] filling a gap and/or being generative.” In short, it’s basically about having or providing a room for everyone.

For whom and by whom

The first iteration of WE Film was a survey, Bea said. It was a general mapping of works or “impulses of the themes.” In making the open call at various social media channels, she wanted to explore what the women-identifying practitioners were interested in and how they have come to define or approach “experimental” film or “video art.”  

There are plans of evolving this project into something more para-academic, where people can find (or build) a sense of community that can “think more deeply about their craft and what art means.”

In continuing this undertaking—and wishing for an eventual more organic structuring of it—Bea is seeking to open a space, a setup, where people can continue to discuss, share, think together, and collaborate. The aim is for it to be critical and, at the same time, fruitful, safe, and inclusive.

For updates on present and future WE Film activities, visit @we_film_ph.