The UP Fighting Maroons lost to the Ateneo Blue Eagles in their basketball game last Sunday at the Ninoy Aquino Stadium. The last time I watched a UP-Ateneo game, the Maroons lost too. Sad. But I’m sticking to this team.
Posts published during July, 2006
Classes were suspended in most of the country last Thursday because of typhoon Florita. The initial announcement was that classes would be suspended until Friday–which was why, despite the bad weather, I asked my orgmates if they wanted to watch a movie in the cinema since the assumption was that there were no classes the next day. I skipped all my homeworks and went off with my friends to SM North to watch Pirates of the Carribean. At the middle of the film, I received text messages from other friends telling me that it had just been announced that classes would resume the next day. Right after the movie, I rushed off to have prints of some of my digital photos developed, aside from running a few other errands. I also had to go home earlier than my friends to accomplish more stuff for the next day. That was a bummer.
The prints I had developed were for my Conceptual Photography class the next day. I’m starting to appreciate photography more because of this class–more than its traditional aesthetics and confines. There are time I start feeling like I’m not artsy enough or my concepts aren’t “weird” enough. I haven’t had enough artistic inspiration lately.
For last Friday afternoon’s Film Production I class, we just had a small film language workshop to re-familiarize ourselves with, what else, a whole bunch of technical terms and to re-orient ourselves with what it feels like to do productions again, since it’s been a semester (for most of us in class) since our last production class.
While walking outside the Ishmael Bernal gallery, I came across a corpse of a cat. It doesn’t appear to have been run over a vehicle since the body appears to be in-tact, except for the eyes whose balls have come out from the sockets. The poor thing was probably one of Florita’s casualties.
I spent the rest of my Friday night at Green Papaya in Teachers Village for an art circle discussion with Sir Jason Banal, our Film 115 teacher. Nosebleed! I’m really not into all these elite art circle things.
We had a pseudo-entertainment quiz show last Thursday at Vinzons the rooftop activity hall for the members of UP MCO (and some freshmen, supposedly). It was to serve as a test run for the real entertainment quiz show we’re going to stage as part of our anniversary week next week.
By the way, please answer my survey. It won’t even take a minute for you to answer it. Everything is anonymous and confidential. I’d really appreciate your participation. 
The fourth issue of the Philippine Collegian may be downloaded here.
From this issue’s editorial:
“It is no accident that the hundreds of journalists and activists killed [almost 700 since Arroyo became President] were all known critics of the government. There is nothing random about [General Jovito] Palparan being “happy” about the disappearance of Karen Empeño and Sherlyn Cadapan, fellow iskolars ng bayan who dared to integrate with the impoverished peasants and fisherfolks of Bulacan. It is not random circumstance that [President Gloria] Arroyo is “not in the mood to resume peace talks with the CPP-NPA-NDF…”
“This regime’s enemy is not the several thousand reported members of the NPA. In this supposed war, the Arroyo administration has engaged the millions of Filipinos stripped of their civil rights, the people denied the right to oppose the evident violence, corruption and inutility of this government.”
Two student activists from the university were abducted almost two weeks ago in Bulacan. They are Karen Empeño, a BA Sociology student of the College of Social Sciences and Philosophy, and Sherlyn Cadapan, an award-winning triathlete from the College of Human Kinetics and was its representative to the University Student Council a few years back.
They remain missing up to this moment. Witnesses, who are now in hiding for security reasons, and who were also present during the abduction, claim that vehicles used during the capture were military vehicles. The army denies these accusations. However, General Jovito Palparan, popularly labeled as a butcher of leftists, issued a statement saying that these women were better off gone because they were New People’s Army members who extorted money from the townsfolk anyway. What the hell? These two ladies were simply volunteer researchers for a peasant group. For the sake of argument, let’s say they were NPA members, does it justify that they be abducted helplessly? Who knows what have become to the two right now. If they were indeed NPA members, then file charges against them! Abduction is never justified. Gloria Arroyo’s administration hark the “rule of law” and “due process” everytime accusations and cases are hurled against her and her allies but whenever an acitivist gets assassinated or abducted, everything just gets shrugged off! Nothing can justify enforced assassinations or enforced abductions!
This administration is really bent on crushing not only the New People’s Army, but all other legitimate groups expressing legitimate dissent. Karen and Sherlyn are two new additions to the growing list of hundreds of abducted, arrested, and assassinated activists since President Arroyo came into power five years ago.
I spent the entire morning with Con, posting publicity materials for UP MCO’s application period. Then I had lunch with her, plus Kim and Patty.
I didn’t have class yesterday. Communication Research 101 was cancelled because of UP Gawad Plaridel.
Gawad Plaridel is an award given annually by the College of Mass Communication to Filipino media practitioners who have “excelled and performed with the highest level of professional integrity.” That, along with other subjective factors, I suppose. Last year, the award was given to Ms. Vilma Santos for her influential work in the film industry. This year, it was given to someone in the field of radio broadcasting, Fidela Magpayo, popularly known as Tiya Dely.
The ceremony was (relatively) short and simple–an opening and a closing speech, an audio-visual presentation, and of course a speech, which was more of a radio spiel, from Tiya Dely herself. I don’t remember actively listening to Tiya Dely’s program but her voice and her lines are very familiar to me, and much more to those who are older than me, I assume. She’s been on air for more than sixty years! She’s a very funny old woman. She even joked during her interview (shown in the audio-visual presentation), “Ang pinakamadalas na reaksyon ng ibang tao pag nababanggit nga ako, hindi pa ba siya patay??” Then she just laughed it off and said, ewan ko ba. (Okay, I’m not sure if I remember them verbatim or if I’m making these up). Well, I hope she does live much longer.
Also present during the ceremony was last year’s Gawad Plaridel awardee, Ms. Vilma Santos. It was actually kind of bizarre, but understood, that when the ceremony ended there were so much more people surrounding her for autographs and interviews, than this year’s Gawad Plaridel awardee herself. Anyway, while I paparazzied around, I overheard her interview with a reporter from The Buzz. Ms. Vilma Santos promised that she has no plans of running for any popularly-elected government position in the national or local elections next year and all she wants to do right now is to finish her term as mayor of Lipa City. There, let’s take her word for that.
Today in photos are here.
Our Film 113 instructor took some days off to watch the World Cup in Germany, but he left us with a viewing assignment last Friday, Citizen Kane. I have seen it already though, and we have discussed the film in Film 100 class back in freshman year, so it was nothing new. Since there was no instructor, some of my classmates (who have seen the film before too) left class after signing the attendance sheet. I would have done the same but I was too lazy to do anything else and I wanted to stay in the airconditioned videotheque. I took a nap instead.
After waking up from the short nap in the middle of the film, I decided to warm up outside the room. I went to the place behind videotheque, which served as a storage area for tons of documents. I often pass by there but I never really got interested as to what the documents were. I went through them last Friday and it turns out that they are files about different Filipino movies. It was an entire archive of scripts, movie posters and thousands of photo stills of Filipino movies. There were also stashes of old magazines and books. The thing is, those things are just lying around there, like some forgotten garbage. If I was a memorabilia collector, I would’ve just taken my picks of old photo stills or old showbiz magazines I desired. There were also photo stills of those old bomba films.
Victor Villanueva
law student, leftist, national democratic, film school graduate, photography hobbyist