Director Kidlat Tahimik and his son Kidlat de Guia
Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky
Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky
Filmmaker Kidlat Tahimik
Filmmaker Kidlat Tahimik and his mother
WHY IS YELLOW THE MIDDLE OF THE RAINBOW? (Bakit dilaw aug
gitna ng bahag-hari?) A
aka: I Am Furious…Yellow
Philippines (175 mi) 1981 – 1993
d: Kidlat Tahimik
How are we going to
finish this film? We could just wait for
the spaghetti to run out.
—Kidlat Tahimik
This rare film was originally scheduled to be screened at
the downtown Drake Hotel in Chicago as part of the Prak-sis New Media Art Festival, a three-day
conference offering artistic responses to the legacy of Cold War-era social
upheaval in southeast Asia, but the 16 mm print, the only surviving copy in the
world, repeatedly stuck in the projector, inflicting severe print damage causing
the celluloid to burn, so the screening was re-scheduled a week later to the
School of the Art Institute, where only a handful of people were fortunate
enough to see this remarkable film. Kidlat
Tahimik, a Tagalog translation of “silent lightning,” remains an obscure underground
filmmaker, considered the “Father of Philippine Independent Cinema,” but is
also a writer, artist and actor who was born Eric de Guia in Baguio City, Philippines,
who grew up in a life of privilege in a summer resort community located in the
presence of several U.S. Military bases, an experience that heavily influenced
his films, which tend to be scathing critiques of the aftereffects of
colonialism. Graduating from the
University of the Philippines in Speech and Drama, Tahimik studied at the
University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, earning a Masters degree
in Business Administration, working as a researcher for the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris from 1968 to 1972, an
organization committed to spreading Western technology to lesser-developed
countries, where he wrote fertilizer distribution reports while working on a
farm in Norway before returning home to become a filmmaker. Tearing up his diploma and changing his name, Tahimik
lived in various artist communes, including one in Munich that attracted the
attention of Werner Herzog, who cast him in a small part in THE ENIGMA OF
KASPAR HAUSER (1974).
Bryan L. Yeatter describes Tahimik’s life during the 70’s in
his book Cinema of the Philippines:
Tahimik traveled to Europe where he
was going to try to make a living selling trinkets, but somehow along the way
he managed to make contact with Werner Herzog, and using borrowed equipment,
outdated film stock, and stock footage, he put together his first film [in
1977], Mababangong Bangungot (Perfumed Nightmare) for a mere $10,000—a
remarkably low cost even in its time. The film mirrored his own experience as
Tahimik played the lead, a young man who dreams of escaping the stifling
existence of his isolated rural community and seeing the modern world. Through
an American acquaintance, he travels to Paris to run a gumball concession, and
later ventures to Germany, ultimately concluding that the modern world may have
much to offer, but has also sacrificed much of importance in the process of its
development.
Under Herzog’s tutelage, he took up filmmaking, making his
first film, PERFUMED NIGHTMARE (1977), a mixture of documentary, diary film,
fictionalized autobiography, cinematic essay and ethnography, and winner of three
awards at the Berlin Film Festival, where Tahimik is appalled by the massive
expansion and pervasive influence of Western technology while raging against
the colonialist impulses that led France and then the United States to make the
Philippines their own exclusive property, where the economic model was much
like the slave trade, using cheap exploited labor to ravage the nation’s
resources in order to enhance the quality of living in America while leaving
the Philippines in dire economic straits.
Screened by Tom Luddy (Telluride Film Festival co-founder) at the
Pacific Film Archives in Berkeley, Tahimik met American director Francis Ford
Coppola (who distributed the film in the United States) just about the time he
was envisioning shooting his film APOCALYPSE NOW (1979) in the
Philippines. Commonly associated with
the Third
Cinema movement that rejects the Hollywood model of making films as
escapist bourgeois entertainment, Tahimik was a pioneer in embracing indigenous
culture, redefining Philippine art in personalized terms that goes far beyond
the nation’s social history. Co-founder
of the Baguio Arts Guild, integrating indigenous and avant garde subjects into
his aesthetic, making technically unpolished films, Tahimik’s work as writer,
director, editor, actor, and cinematographer has led the path for an
independent Philippine cinema for over thirty years.
More than a decade in the making, this is nothing less than
revolutionary filmmaking, where the film “defies summary simply because of the
sheer volume of ground it covers,” according to author and professor
Christopher Pavsek, becoming a magnum opus that questions what it means to be a
post-colonial Filipino, where the director had to wait until his oldest son was
old enough to narrate a large portion of the film, creating an epic film diary
spanning the decade of the 1980’s as seen through the eyes of Tahimik and his
family. What is singularly unique about
this film is the pervasive use of children, whose point of view is the focal
point of the picture, as the film is a coming-of-age essay that coincides with
a child growing up, curious and inquisitive, asking questions about the world
around him, where the director acts as a father-figure narrator, where the film
is largely a dialogue between father and oldest son, Kidlat de Guia (now a
talented filmmaker in his own right), who ages noticeably as the film
progresses leading up to his entrance into high school. Tahimik met his wife Katrin de Guia, who is
also an artist and writer, while in Germany, seen throughout making stained
glass artworks, where they also have two younger children, Kawayan and Kabunyan
de Guia, where art defines how this family expresses itself. Calling the film a “celluloid collage,” we
watch the family on overseas vacations, participate in school projects, and
capture a child’s first steps, while also using a series of newspaper headlines
and archival television reports to delve into national stories. Tahimik seamlessly blends the two together,
where the personal becomes the political, all corresponding to a progression of
the director’s life as a Filipino father.
Using surreal imagery that often challenges the logic of the narrative,
this three-hour diary incorporates contemporary history of the Philippines,
Tahimik’s own family, found footage, newspaper headlines and TV broadcasts,
home movies, travel footage, and documentation of public events and political
demonstrations, where documentary footage is mixed with scripted
performances. The film begins in Monument
Valley, the site of many John Ford westerns beginning with STAGECOACH
(1939), where the family is seen posing for pictures at John Ford's Point while rousing
Hollywood music plays for what the director calls spaghetti movies, as the
filmmaker and his son hitch a ride with (the unidentified) Dennis Hopper in his
old Cadillac, which raises the question of how Indians were portrayed in the
movies, continually shown in stereotype as the archenemy of the original
American settlers in the West, where Indians were portrayed as savage creatures
who were less than human, yet this was their land that was being trampled upon
and stolen from them, where they had to be pushed aside by force to make way
for the advancement of the “white man.”
Following a similar theme, Tahimik identifies the Philippines as a Third
World country (Third
World definition - Third World Traveler) that was formerly colonized by
First World nations, where the differentiation between the two can be expressed
in their use of machines, as First World nations use machines to perform much
of the work that in the Philippines is still performed by human labor, what
Tahimik proudly tells his son is “people power.”
"Towards a
Third Cinema" Towards a Third Cinema, by Fernando
Solanas and Octavio Getino
The anti-imperialist struggle of
the peoples of the Third World and of their equivalents inside the imperialist
countries constitutes today the axis of the world revolution. Third cinema is,
in our opinion, the cinema that recognises in that struggle the most gigantic
cultural, scientific, and artistic manifestation of our time, the great
possibility of constructing a liberated personality with each people as the
starting point — in a word, the decolonisation of culture.
Tahimik is an unusual sort of film pioneer, relying upon gentle
humor and a sharp wit, not to mention spashes of avant garde, experimental
cinema used in a playful manner, with inspired
musical choices like Carl Orff’s Carmina
Burana Carl Orff - O
Fortuna ~ Carmina Burana - YouTube (4:51) and surprise appearances from
unidentified film artists like Francis Ford Coppola, Werner Herzog, and Andrei
Tarkovsky (the only time he came to America in 1983 for the Telluride Film
Festival), as Tahimik points out the vast economic divide between the rich and
the poor, offering a sharp critique of capitalism and Western technology that
refuses to recognize the human value contributed by each individual, where
society becomes slaves to technology and machines, including industrial
advancement that exploits the poor with low wages and poor working
conditions. In the mountainous region of
Baguio City where this family lives, the indigenous community co-exists with
the locals, even though their ways and understanding of their own history may
be different, where the director seems to take great pleasure profiling local
craftsmen and women, offering images where people power is seen moving massive
rocks and boulders into a line to build a bridge across the river. Expanding on the historical confusion, the
local community is seen embracing the colonial influence of the United States,
where the presence of American military camps are scattered everywhere,
including nearby Camp John Hay which always celebrates the 4th of July
with fireworks and family games while distributing ice cream for all the kids,
where Filipino’s also grew up thinking this was the Philippine Independence Day
as well, as it was one of the few holidays everyone celebrated together and
overshadowed their own country’s national holiday (Araw ng Kalayaan).
Like John Ford and his movies, this is the Hollywood version of
colonialism where fantasy and fiction outweigh reality. Tahimik adopts the view that a modern society
could learn from remembering “the old ways,” suggesting they represent an
untapped resource in terms of conservation and ecology, calling it “an inbuilt
brake system” where the negative effects of technology are slowed, where
artists are like shamans, suggesting that following the First World is not
always the path to happiness. One of the
continuing narratives recounted throughout is the relationship between the
Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan and his navigator Filipino slave, where
Magellan attempted to convert the “savage” natives of the Philippines to Christianity,
by force if necessary, a plan that backfired as Magellan was killed by a spear
attack in the Battle of Mactan and was unable to complete the
first circumnavigation of the earth.
Rather than view minorities through an adverse power relationship, like
the racially superior beliefs of the colonial powers, Tahimik identifies with
the indigenous people for the cultural and artistic value they can bring to
anyone’s life, including extremely imaginative children’s folktales, where it
influences his own decision as a parent where he doesn’t allow his children to
play with guns, or see movies that accentuate Hollywood’s love affair with guns
and violence, claiming it’s a foolish imaginary world that depicts Indians as
better off dead, seeing little difference between John Hay and John Ford,
claiming they’re both the same thing.
According to Raya Martin, arguably Philippine’s greatest
filmmaker, he calls this film the best Filipino movie ever made in an October 26,
2012 article he writes for Moving Image
Source, while also pointing out:
Kidlat Tahimik’s cinema is best
summarized by a scene in the film. Footage from his infamous unfinished-to-date
Magellan project, an epic retelling of the explorer’s expedition to the
Philippines, narrates: “Magellan taught his valet the rudiments of chess. Not
only does he carve his own pieces and learns their movements, he picks up
easily the thinking patterns of being a winner. The master realizes, for the
first time, the slave is a thinking animal capable of plotting his own moves.”
“Checkmate,” says Kidlat Tahimik, who acts as the indio slave in the film.
And as the whole film is a constant
self-referential to Kidlat, the filmmaker, trying to make sense of his footage
on the editing table, the celluloid on a flatbed spills all over a printed text
by the Spanish scholar Antonio de Nebrija: Language is the perfect instrument
of Empire.
"Is it any wonder that the
indio now behaves like his master?"
One of the abrupt shifts of the film is newsreel footage
reporting the assassination of Presidential candidate Benigno Aquino (assassination of Ninoy Aquino) as he
arrives at the Manila airport, reportedly shot by “communists” say the initial
reports, though more likely the murder was carried out by the bodyguards
assigned to protect him by the Marcos government. Sitting President Ferdinand
Marcos, closely aligned with American President Ronald Reagan, ruled as a
dictator for over twenty years, the last ten under a declared martial law,
where he is believed to have looted billions of dollars from the Filipino
treasury. The outrage surrounding the
Aquino murder catapulted his widow Corazon
Aquino into the political spotlight, leading her to run for President under
the banner of the People Power Revolution, which eventually
led to the common perception that Marcos stole the election, declaring himself
the winner, where as many as two million Filipinos fled into the streets
wearing the color “yellow,” sustaining a campaign of civil disobedience, which
eventually turned the military against Marcos, leading to his exile to Hawaii where
he died soon afterwards while “Corrie” Aquino was proclaimed the legitimate
President of the Philippines. There is a
tone of true elation as Tahimik, along with all the local parents, teachers,
and school kids, design yellow signs and posters for the street demonstrations,
where a sea of yellow captures the mood of a nation, where Tahimik’s own 1986
footage is reminiscent of Oratorio
for Prague (1968), Jan Nĕmec’s street footage of an equally euphoric
Eastern European nation that believed they were on the verge of democracy
before Soviet tanks started occupying the streets of Czechoslovakia. But people power prevailed, where this film
is an outgrowth of the artistic freedom associated with that lifting of a
blanket of corruption and the repressive measures of living under a military
dictatorship. The feeling is similar to
Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien’s A
City of Sadness (Bei qing cheng shi) (1989), which also reflected an exuberant
artistic expression that was suddenly free to explore its own nation’s history
after the lifting of the ruling party’s martial law that had been in effect for
forty years. It is probably no accident
that this sudden artistic surge of the first liberating signs of freedom reveal
these directors at the height of their powers.
Little did the director know that this euphoria would be followed by the
startling revelation that the late dictator Marcos built the Philippine Nuclear
Power Plant directly on an earthquake fault line, where it had to be disassembled,
which was followed by a series of military officials on trial for corruption,
the devastating impact of the 7.8 magnitude Luzon earthquake of 1990, Luzon on July 16, 1990, killing over 1600
people, causing nearly a quarter of a billion dollars in damages, an event that
caused massive crippling of the economy and may actually have precipitated the volcanic
eruption of Mt. Pinatubo Mount
Pinatubo Eruption (June 1991) covering the region in ash, leading to
devastating floods, where it seemed the country was besieged by an apocalyptic
fury of nature. The uniqueness of the
film is experiencing it all through the personalized vantage point of a father
teaching his son, widened to include literally hundreds of school children as
well, where Tahimik distinctively captures them all singing Whitney Houston - Greatest
Love Of All - YouTube (4:50) while exploring the local community as well as
his nation’s history. According to
Tahimik:
[the filmmaker can either follow]
the dictum “time is money,”…or allow time to be his ally and open up to cosmic
inspirations provided by a relatively free time frame.
My footages are like tiles in a
mosaic…You shuffle them, change them around. In my process, nothing is
permanent.
Making a film is like taking a long
trip. The film voyager can load up with a full tank and bring a credit card
along to insure completion of the voyage in as short a time as possible. The
voyager can also load up with a few cups of gasoline and drive until he runs
out and scrounge around for subsequent cups of gas to get to his destination,
without worrying about how long it takes to complete his voyage… The length of
the trip […] is a matter of choice depending on the combination of ingredients
– inspiration, resources, tools, working materials available, personal circumstances
like family or emotional disturbances, etc.
According to Christopher Pavsek, associate professor of film
at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, BC and author of The Utopia of Film: Cinema and Its Futures in Godard, Kluge, and
Tahimik, Why Is
Yellow the Middle of the Rainbow? - BAM/PFA - Film ...:
It is impossible to describe Kidlat
Tahimik’s virtually unknown masterpiece, the diary film I Am Furious Yellow (or Why
Is Yellow Middle of Rainbow?), that chronicles Tahimik and his young son’s
lives as they traverse the tumultuous decade of the 1980’s in the Philippines,
so let’s just list a few of the things you’ll see in the course of its three
hours (which go by far too quickly): a great democratic revolution deposes a
dictator; a massive volcanic eruption covers the world in ash; a huge
earthquake levels a whole city and social class distinctions as well; Magellan’s
slave Enrique circumnavigates the globe (and wins a princess’s heart); storms
rage over the gorgeous landscapes of the Philippine cordillera and Monument
Valley in the U.S. Southwest; the filmmaker and his son hitch a ride with
Dennis Hopper in his old Cadillac; and a tooth is pulled out of little boy’s
mouth by a very big toe. That doesn’t even scratch the surface of this vastly
rich film, which at once demonstrates just how vital and compelling cinema can
be as well as how vital and compelling our very existences can be despite all
the disasters and catastrophes—both human-made and natural—that loom from every
angle. In an age of rising seas and collapsing economies, [the film] shows us
how to be furious at all the injustice in the world but also how to face that
injustice with the utmost joy. There are indeed few, if any, films like this in
the world.
Postscript
Why is Yellow at the Middle
of the Rainbow? (Philippines, 1994) Thankfully, the entire film may be seen here, YouTube
(2:50:10)
