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azheepineda's blog

azheepineda

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azheepineda31 yo
Sampaloc
Philippines

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  • Created: 29/12/2009 at 12:15 AM
  • Updated: 02/01/2010 at 7:51 PM
  • 14 articles
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My archives (14)

  • University of Santo Tomas: A Rich Heritage...
    DORIS GAMALINDA. Eric Gamalinda. Natasha Gama...
  • University of Santo Tomas Graduate: Campus...
    THERE is no balm in writing,” the father told...
  • Gatekeepers of National Pride: Alumni of...
    By JOSEINNE JOWIN L. IGNACIO, ROMAN CARLO R. ...
  • University of Santo Tomas Graduate: a National Artist for Literature

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University of Santo Tomas Filmmakers

GREAT films are made up of moving pictures with much of the strips drawn from the inspirations and lives of the filmmakers themselves.

That's a grain of truth for Thomasian filmmakers Milo Tolentino and Brillante Mendoza whose distinct opuses echo much of their peculiar interests from the ordinary to extraordinary, whether personal or public.

Milo's mysteries
Tales of ghouls and goblins shaped the world of Communication Arts alumnus Tolentino—who has earned a name in making independent horror films—even when he was a kid.
Back then, Tolentino was an aloof kid who didn't play much with other kids his age as he would prefer to unwind at the backyard of his grandma's house in Lipa City, which overlooked a misty, serene river. Around this setting, his lola would tell stories about the supernatural, which roused Milo's interest in the netherworld.
“During those days, my lola never failed to mention about legendary fireballs, tikbalang (half-man, half-horse giant), and all those types of monsters in Batangas,” he said. “At first I was scared, but as she shared more afternoon stories with me, my fear of the unknown grew into fascination.”
Not only was Tolentino fascinated with the uncanny. He became a bookworm and developed a penchant for the theatrical arts. This enthrallment for the mysterious hooked him to Stephen King's best sellers and Steven Spielberg's blockbusters.
Fantasy stories and other forms of fiction transformed Tolentino into a fan of magic realism. He carried this obsession through high school and later on to his filmmaking career. Although Spielberg's fancy visual effects lured Tolentino's gaze toward the mystics, these did not make him readily fall in love with the film craft. Instead, Tolentino channeled his inclination to writing.
“I never imagined myself making a film,” Tolentino said. “The people around me saw my potential as a creative writer instead.”
On his sophomore year at UST in 1987, Tolentino joined the Varsitarian and was assigned to the News section.
“Since my style of writing was very descriptive, I felt really out of place as a news writer,” he said. “But although that's the case, I never lost touch with my literary forte.”
While writing news articles, Tolentino would contribute poems and short stories to the Literary section, as well as art critiques to the paper's Circle (arts, culture and media) page. He was promoted to Literary editor the following year.
“My first fiction short story was titled Dawn to Dawn, which was very much like the theme of my second Cinemalaya short film Orasyon,” he said. Both of his creations deal with the agony of ageing, as he was nostalgic of his grandmother.
While helping edit the Varsitarian, Tolentino was also an active member of the Salinggawi Dance Troupe, which granted him a scholarship. He was also the musical director of the Artistang Artlets and a member of the AB Enrolment Committee all at the same year. Tolentino managed the pressure of handling four extra-curricular activities simultaneously. In fact, he said he prioritized his non-academic affiliations over his academics.
“UST gave me venues that made my talents more mature and more visible,” he said.
Right after college, Tolentino worked as a junior copy writer for ADSystems where he previously had his on-the-job training. While into mountaineering, Tolentino embarked on photography with the prodding of his colleague, former Varsitarian photographer Roderick Javier. Within two years of taking images in black and white, Tolentino was able to put up two major exhibits, Earth Spirits and Heavenly Bodies, which both had fantasy themes.
As a freelance photographer and a mountaineer, Tolentino also contributed travelogues to the Women's Home magazine where he worked with Manila Times journalist Tess Pacheco-Mapa. With much admiration for Tolentino's writing and photography, Mapa boosted Tolentino's enthusiasm for filmmaking. Tolentino soon enrolled in several film classes in the University of the Philippines in 2003.
“When I knew that I could enroll for a post-graduate course in film, I took the opportunity and indeed, it was worth it,” he said.
Majority of Tolentino's preliminary projects were flavored with the horror genre. Faithful to his childhood fascination with the eerie, his first short film, Buog, which he began filming as a student, featured a ghost. Tolentino competed in Cinemalaya in 2005 when his second short film, Alimuom, about a murderer's agony over the reappearance of his victim's vanished cadaver, became a finalist. Although he did not bag the Balanghay trophy for the best short film, Tolentino was ecstatic.
“My priority was just for my film to be screened and be appreciated by people in Cinemalaya since I think it's the best venue for launching indies,” Tolentino said.
Alimuom was followed by another thriller, Orasyon, in 2006, which was also a Cinemalaya contender. The 30-minute monochrome feature tells about a pious widow's vulnerabilities with the arrival of a nosy, meddling housemaid. This time, Tolentino took home the grand prize and earned the respect of colleagues in the field.
“Even before the awards night came, Orasyon was an early favorite for the top prize, which really surprised me since it was the least likely to win, being in the horror genre,” Tolentino said. The film was also screened in the first UST CineVita film festival last March, for its theme on faith and care for the elderly.
Tolentino's roster of films includes his experimental project featuring hermit crabs in Pagudpud Beach titled Uwang-uwang: The Hermit Chronicles, and his Cinemanila workshop short about the feet, titled Apak. Recently, Tolentino submitted his reedited, three-minute feature, The Boy Who Loves Flowers, to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (Unesco), which granted him funds after his story was selected last year. Tolentino was the sole Southeast Asian filmmaker included in UNESCO's top 10 grantees. He is also currently working with the production company, Studio Indio.
Now, Tolentino is keeping his fingers crossed on his latest short film, Kanlungan Sa Impyerno, for the Cinemalaya 2007.
“Just like Orasyon, we shot Kanlungan in Lipa too,” Tolentino said. “I really hope it would fare well to be a finalist in this year's Cinemalaya.”
The brilliance of Brillante
Thomasian indie film director Brillante Mendoza loved surveying his environment. It's as if everything that surrounds him holds a story to tell. The most vivid of these images were those he encountered during his bus trips back home from UST.
“Whenever I took my bus ride home, I made it a point to look on both sides of the vehicle: the glass window where I witnessed the nostalgic sights from the highway and the center aisle where I observed my co-passengers,” he said. “As I gazed upon these characters, I was already inventing stories at the back of my mind.”
Mendoza is a true-blooded Kapampangan. In fact, his three films, Masahista (2005), Kaleldo (2006), and Manoro (2006), were all shot in the scenic plains and spots of Pampanga.
“Besides the fact that I grew up in San Fernando, there were really a lot to observe about Pampanga,” he said. “Pardon my biases, but Pampanga is really picturesque even after it has gone through disasters such as the deluge of lahar (volcanic ash fall).”
Mendoza entered UST in 1979 as an Advertising student. Throughout his four years of stay in the University, he impressed his professors and peers with his dexterity in the visual arts by winning numerous intercollegiate art competitions year after year. Aside from these, what made Mendoza's sojourn in UST most memorable were the times he spent with his colleagues such as Egay Litawa and the late Tatus Saldana, who both became line producers for films.
“I will always cherish the bonding we had during those days when we had to beat deadlines and spend overnight group works just to finish our art plates,” he said.
Mendoza pursued a Master's degree in Advertising at the UST Graduate School after he graduated from the old College of Architecture and Fine Arts (Cafa) in 1983. But he discontinued his studies after he discovered his interest in TV production.
“My friend, Cafa professor Rey Maniego, encouraged me to join a film class organized by Ateneo De Manila University and the Mowelfund Institute,” he said. “That was when I met director Peque Gallaga whom I believed gave me the break in the film industry as an art director for Virgin Forest.”
Fresh from his filmmaking classes, Mendoza became Chito Roño's production designer for the director's first film, Private Show in 1986. Other movies where he aided in production design were comics-inspired films such as Baleleng at ang Gintong Sirena in 1988 and Valentina in 1989.
Mendoza has also worked on TV commercials. His latest commercial is the Smart mobile phone ad featuring Sam Milby, Angel Locsin, Dennis Trillo and Anne Curtis. To date, Mendoza has been a production designer and art director for nearly two decades.
“Although most of the time exhausting, I had so much fun doing the creative background for these movies and commercials,” Mendoza said.
During his stint as a production designer, Mendoza used the name “Dante” for himself. Back then, he felt the name “Brillante” was a very common name.
“After Masahista competed in Locarno, Switzerland, I used again my real name which was actually an advantage for my film to be more recognized by foreigners, especially the Hispanics, who have a clue of my name's etymology” he said.
Masahista took home the Golden Leopard Award, the top award in the digital competition of the 2005 Locarno International Film Festival in Switzerland. After the victory, international distributors in Europe started mailing Mendoza to buy the rights for commercial reproduction of the movie. The erotic but socially sensitive movie about a young Kapampangan masseur was also exhibited in other five international film festivals such as in Toronto and in Belgium.
Meanwhile, Mendoza's short film Manoro bested six other competitors in the local digital film category for the best film award in the 8th Cinemanila International Film Festival last year. Manoro also served as the opening film for the first UST CineVita film festival for its multifarious take on the Ayta indigenous community, literacy, and education.
Mendoza has his own production company, Center Stage Productions, which produced Siquijor: The Mystic Island (2007) and Mel Chionglo's Twilight Dancers (2006). In all the movies that he has produced and directed, Mendoza has always wanted to convey his reflections of honesty and truth.
“Whenever I make a film, I always remain faithful to the truth,” Mendoza said. “For me, it is important to translate reality on to the screen for the audience to realize the truth.”
Mendoza has recently finished his fourth full-length movie, Foster Child, which stars Cherry Pie Picache and Jiro Manio in a story about a mother's bitter struggle to have her child adopted. Foster Child was screened in the Director's Fortnight of the Cannes film festival on May 17-27, only the second Filipino movie to be featured in the important Cannes program introducing to the world new directors. The first Filipino director to be featured at the Director's Fortnight was Lino Brocka–in 1978, when “Insiang” was screened in Cannes.
Mendoza is again filming another movie, Tirador, which deals with the lives of small-time snatchers during the election season.
Both Mendoza and Tolentino share their sentiments on the growing industry of films in the digital and video format.
“It's great to know that there are film festivals in the country that aid in the commercialization of independent films and the separation of the high-quality stories from the substandard ones,” Tolentino said.
“For as long as you have the right subject matter for film, embedded in an honest, well-woven storyline, the format should be the least of your worries,” Mendoza said.
According to these two Thomasian directors, aspiring filmmakers should take note of three values when crafting a film: sincerity, passion, and dedication.
“When I make my films, my whole mind, body, and soul are very much drawn to the whole process,” Mendoza said. “That is why after bringing my films to their completion, a distinct kind of fulfillment seeps into me.”
With several years more ahead of their budding careers as filmmakers, both directors promise more unconventional stories and stirring ideas in the future.
“I haven't thought about and made my dream project yet, and I'm not going to stop filming until I do so,” Tolentino said.
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#Posted on Saturday, 02 January 2010 at 9:19 AM

Seven presidential bets troop to UST

FOR THE first time since the filing of their candidacies, seven presidential hopefuls trooped to UST along with their supporters to face each other in a forum last December 2.

Former defense secretary Gilbert Teodoro, senators Benigno Aquino III and Richard Gordon, former president Joseph Estrada, Olongapo councilor John Carlos de los Reyes, environmentalist Nicanor Perlas, and evangelical preacher Eddie Villanueva answered questions from students and personalities in “Harapan,” the presidential forum organized by the ABS-CBN News Channel, UST, Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting, and the Commission on Elections.

Nacionalista Party standard-bearer Manuel Villar backed out at the last minute, according to news anchor Ted Failon.

Questions ranged from light ones such as “What vice or luxury can you not live without?” to those asking their opinions on President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's bid for Congress, political dynasties, the Maguindanao massacre, and the reproductive health bill.

Two bets—cousins Teodoro and Aquino—appeared to have softened on their support for the population bill. Aquino did not say whether he would vote for it, but pointed out that the government should help parents decide on the number of children, and that the Church has a role in educating couples.

He noted that the population had doubled in the last 20 years. “We cannot deny the problem.”

Teodoro said the state should not have an active role in controlling the population, and that there was no need for a reproductive health bill.

“It is the moral responsibility of those who don't want legislation to control population, to do it themselves in the way they think is moral,” he said.

Gordon proposed to renegotiate with the country's foreign creditors, to free up the budget for more spending on social services.

Many of the candidates hit Arroyo for seeking a congressional seat in Pampanga to stay in power.

Teodoro, the candidate of Arroyo's party Lakas-Kampi-CMD, said he would “do the right thing” as president in response to a question on whether Arroyo as House speaker would have a negative effect on his administration.

On the Maguindanao massacre, candidates blamed President Arroyo for tolerating warlords in Mindanao, but Teodoro said the real issue was lack of money to strengthen the police and military.

De los Reyes, running under the Ang Kapatiran Party, said: “Kung hindi pinadrino 'yan ni President Arroyo, hindi 'yan mangyayari,” referring to the brazen slaughter of 57 people in Ampatuan, Maguindanao last November 23.

Partido ng Masang Pilipino candidate Estrada, who played the crowd, said: “I will not tolerate warlords in the area. If I were president, they would all be arrested in 12 hours.”

The debate happened four days before the proclamation of Martial Law in Maguindanao, which drew flak from lawmakers, who questioned its legality as there was no rebellion in the province. President Arroyo lifted the declaration on December 12.

Asked by the Varsitarian whether he would do ban so-called political dynasties, Liberal Party bet Aquino said the term “political dynasty” should be defined first, and that acts rather than personalities should be the basis so as not to restrict people from being in government for having the same surnames.

Villanueva of Bangon Pilipinas Party said he would exercise “moral and righteous” governance and won't allow relatives to abuse power.

“I would automatically resign in case my immediate relatives commit corruption or crime against the government,” Villanueva said.

The auditorium was filled with around 800 people, most of whom were supporters of the candidates. Prominent political figures such as Ernesto Maceda, Partido ng Masang Pilipino spokesperson, and Bayani Fernando, Gordon's running mate, were also present.

'Presidential alumnus,' barred

Ernesto Ramos, presidential candidate of the Democratic Party of the Philippines and alumnus of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters (now Arts and Letters), said he was “barred” by ushers of ANC from entering the Medicine Auditorium to join the forum.

“I feel there is discrimination here. It was my first time to step again in the University after almost 30 years of stay in America. I feel that I am not welcome in my own alma mater,” Ramos, who graduated in 1960, told the Varsitarian at the sidelines of the forum.

Ramos, who tags himself as “The Alternative Leader,” said he was a speech writer for United States Rep. Carrie Meek in Washington, D.C. before he decided to “come home.” Danielle Clara P. Dandan
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#Posted on Saturday, 02 January 2010 at 9:05 AM

UST researchers enter global tilt finals

THOMASIAN researchers were named finalists in the Global Development Awards and Medals Competition 2009 for a research proposal dealing with the impact of the economic crisis on overseas Filipino workers.

The proposal titled “Crisis-generated Socio-economic Coping Mechanisms by Overseas Filipinos” by Alvin Ang, director of Research Cluster for Culture, Education and Social Issues, and Faculty of Arts and Letters professor Jeremaiah Opiniano, bested over 140 participants across the globe to become one of the three finalists in the competition together with researchers from Brazil and Uruguay.

This marks the first time in 10 years that Filipinos made it to the final round of the contest.

Ang and Opiniano were nominated for the Japanese Award for Outstanding Research on Development category, with the theme “International Migration: Crossing Borders, Changing Lives?” The merit is given to “exceptional, on-going development projects that have given maximum benefit to local communities and need further financial assistance to scale-up the project.”

“Our research aims to determine how overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) are coping with the impact of the global economic crisis on their jobs, income, and family welfare conditions,” Ang said.

The study will discuss how OFWs in Taiwan and United Arab Emirates (UAE) were dealing with the economic meltdown. Taiwan and UAE are countries which have the highest number of displaced workers in the electronics sector.

Ang said the study would focus on how the government could provide medium- to long- term responses to the prevailing economic crisis.

“In a situation where the Philippines remains dependent on overseas employment and remittances, the crisis will still see no end until the government responds,” Ang said.

Just last September, OFW remittances reached $12.8 billion, a year-on-year increase of 8.6 percent, data from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas showed.

The final round will be held at the Global Development Network's Annual Conference in Czech Republic from Jan. 16 to 18, 2010, where finalists will present their proposals before a jury.

Joining Ang and Opiniano in the finals were “Regional Impacts of the Global Economic Slowdown in Trade Flows: the case of Brazilian states” by Gilberto Libanio (Brazil), and “Survival of Uruguayan Manufacturing Firms in a Trade Openness Process” by Dayna Zaclicever (Uruguay).
By ADRIENNE JESSE A. MALEFICIO
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#Posted on Saturday, 02 January 2010 at 9:01 AM

University of Santo Tomas : Youngest Civil Law dean appointed

COMMERCIAL law professor Nilo Divina is the new dean of the Faculty of Civil Law, starting his tenure as the youngest dean of the oldest law school in the country in the second semester.

Divina, 44, took over officer in charge Augusto Aligada, who replaced former dean Roberto Abad who was appointed to the Supreme Court last August 10.

Divina said his objective is to put UST in the top three law schools of the country during his three-year term.

“I know it's a gargantuan task, but it can be done,” he said.

To do this, Divina has set a three-point agenda. “[These are]: improving the roster of faculty members, improving the Civil Law facilities, and recruiting the best students not just from UST, but also the best from all over the country,” he said.

In the recent listing of the Commission on Higher Education, UST was ranked 7th among law schools nationwide based on the bar exams passing rate. But Aligada, in an earlier interview, dismissed the listing as “inaccurate” since it lumped all law schools in one listing without taking into account the number of lawyers they produced.

Aligada cited the case of the newly established La Salle-Far Eastern University MBA Juris Doctor program. It placed fourth because of its 77 percent passing rate, with 24 bar takers passing the test. UST, meanwhile, had a lower passing rate of 51.81 percent, but was able to produce 100 new Thomasian lawyers.

Divina said his office would coordinate with the Office for Alumni Relations to attract “well-meaning” patrons and friends to raise funds.

“Coupled with a scholarship grant, it would be easier to attract the top students from all over the country to enroll in UST if you have the best faculty members and the best facilities,” Divina said.

Moves to establish the Center for Commercial Law started under Abad's tenure will have to wait, he said.

“Bobby (Abad) had laid the groundwork for the establishment of a commercial law center. We will continue that. But first, my priorities are fixed on my three-point agenda,” Divina said.

Divina also plans to put a website for the faculty, which would serve as a legal search

By Darenn G. Rodriguez
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#Posted on Tuesday, 29 December 2009 at 12:17 AM

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