‘Photojournalism” is the only word that greets us in the first of the four-part monologue, called Tao Po. It is not a seductive word given how photojournalism has been bandied about for many years. The fear that this presentation is going to be a didactic one, the usual in-your-face activist propaganda, is an immediate impression. Then, a figure in black walks to a table, grabs a white or beige jacket and puts it on. The costume does not readily make that person the photojournalist but it allows us to see how the individual who entered has transformed “himself” into someone else.
That someone is the photojournalist, the actor is Mae Paner, the performance is about extrajudicial killing. The language is in English, in general. The critic in us whispers that this will not play. But the photojournalist begins by narrating how he is happy (nostalgic) being back in his old school. He talks about how he came to this career. Like a prescient lecturer, he goes for the interactive.
What would you want to write, if you were given the opportunity? One volunteers an answer. The journalist probes some more. To this, another response echoes back: beauty pageant. There is a slight pause from Paner. Is that a twitch or a smirk? The camera does not linger on the judgmental aspect of the performance. But we are judging. We are the ones smirking. We want to scream.
No one talks of beauty pageants, for heaven’s sake, when people are dying each day because they are suspected of being into drugs!
The episode that we thought would fail has us hooked. The relentless happens—Paner channeling Raffy Lerma begins to click on his PowerPoint and—gradually, dazzlingly, deathly—photos appear on the screen. These are the images that graced the front page and grazed our consciousness when the war on drugs began in 2016. The accidental and bloody mutilations of vehicular accidents favored by newspapers have been replaced by documentations of photojournalists who were there on time and in time to catch the warm details of fresh killings.
If the history of photojournalism of this generation shall be written, then these are the photos that will form of our collective consciousness. Where the previous generations of photographers were lauded for capturing wars—World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the encounters between the military and the NPA, the insurgencies in Mindanao—here we are looking up unsure whether we will applaud or turn away at these masterpieces of violence and executions.
The photojournalist shares with us the difficulties involved, how a matter of minutes can change a photo documentation. A few minutes after, the lifeless body sprawled on a pavement has now a gun beside it. Each photograph comes with a back story and Paner, the photojournalist, brings them forward even as she is almost deadpan in recounting the seconds leading to those tableaux of brutality against humans.
The triumph of this first part, which serves as a bloodstained introduction to the whole issue of EJK and state-sponsored violence against its citizens, can be attributed to Paner who, as the photojournalist, surrenders the power of human presence and his words to the photographs.
Three more parts follow Tao Po. The second is black comedy. That term is by practice almost an invention of Filipinos. We find humor in tragedies and deaths, in conditions that push us to the limits of our humanity. This is not that dirty word called “resilience”. This is not even a coping mechanism, a very middle-class sense of triumphing over adversities. Laughing when surrendering is the option is really our version of standing up to a government or institutions that favor only the wealthy and those in positions of power. Thus, you need to look unflinchingly at Rosing, a Zumba instructor who, in the middle of her session, is visited by her husband and son, both victims of extra-judicial killing. Paner as the instructor heaving her way through those steps while confronting the memories of loved ones killed helplessly is as insane as the society that has spawned those violations.
The most disturbing episode of Tao Po comes after Rosing’s dilemma. In this third narrative, Paner is transformed into a vigilante/hitman who, in the course of the conversation, puts on the policeman’s uniform. The person who creates order in society by the use of force is also the same being who dispenses violence under the guise of an official costume. While in the first part the cool delivery of the photojournalist disarms the audience, in the third part the methodical storytelling of the vigilante punctuated by his own amusement of the proceedings is the bad joke of governance. And we are not laughing.
Tao Po ends with a young girl visiting the cemetery. She lights candles for the dear departed, all of them dead by summary execution. The names are familiar: Kian, Jen Jen, Reynald…. They are part of our memories in the same way that, for Vanessa, a child learns to say tokhang like a nursery rhyme.
Tao Po is a film adaptation of the play written by Maynard Manansala, produced and directed for film by Mae Paner. The spare imaging is brought about by the cinematography of Aki Pantaleon and the editing by Chuck Gutierrez. Credit for the sound design for film should be given to Andrea Teresa T. Idioma and Albert Michael M. Idioma. They make us realize the value of silence and stillness. Photographs used were by Raffy Lerma. Moira Lang, Maynard Manansala and Rody Vera serve as coproducers.
Tao Po is an offering from the Juana Change Movement. There will be weekend streamings of the film via Cinemalaya (www.cinemalaya.org) on September 17, 18, 24, 25 and October 1, 2, 8, and 9.
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