Independencia

(Philippines, 2009, 77 mins, 35mm)

Exec. Producers: Antoine Segovia. Christophe Gougeon
Producer: Arleen Cuevas
Writers: Ramon Sarmiento, Martin
Cinematographer: Jeanne Lapoirie
Editor: Jay Halili
Sound: Ronald de Asis, Arnel Labayo
Music: Lutgardo Labad
Cast: Sid Lucero, Tetchie Agbayani, Alessandra De Rossi, Mika Anguilos

Still in his mid-twenties, director Raya Martin is already a Cannes Film Festival veteran. Having attended with projects and films in 2005 and 2008, in 2009 he became the first Filipino to have two films at Cannes (a rare feat for a director of any nationality), with MANILA (co-directed with Adolfo Alix Jr.) and INDEPENDENCIA. The second of a planned trilogy on the history of the Philippines (each film’s aesthetic will mirror the era), INDEPENDENCIA takes place during the American occupation of the early 20th century, and is shot as a classic Hollywood studio film from the period, with black-and-white deep-focus photography, soft-focus close-ups and elaborately fake sets. The film’s plot is stripped to an essential framework (a man, a woman and a child hide from American patrols in the jungle rains), the better to address more weighty, complex ideas on culture, history, colonialism and cinema itself. To recreate the classic Hollywood look, Martin constructed an elaborate “jungle” set indoors, using backdrops intricatedly hand-painted by local artists. The hypnotic result recalls such studio exotica as I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE, RED DUST, and SHANGHAI EXPRESS, with cinematographer Jeanne Lapoirie (who’s worked with Pedro Costa and Francois Ozon) casting a dazzling spell of faces, bodies and movement amidst dark shadows and shafts of diffused light. “Nobody makes this kind of film anymore,” Martin recalls. “It’s more expensive than traveling to a real forest, which we have almost everywhere in the Philippines, and our audiences are used to realism in the movies. What made it easier for everyone was our child-like fascination. We were like kids reconstructing a lost world.”

-- Jason Sanders

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