Ebarle's Pinagmulan Exhibit @ UST Museum

EBARLE’S “PINAGMULAN” EXHIBIT AT THE UST MUSEUM

One Woman Exhibit
Jane Arrieta Ebarle
July 4, 2009 to August 1, 2009

Opening on July 4, 2009 at the UST Museum is Jane Arrieta Ebarle’s second one-woman exhibition titled “Pinagmulan”. This exhibit will feature paintings that continue to be stirred by the art of indigenous Filipinos. Resplendent in bold colors of blue, yellow, red and green, her latest series displays her sensitivity to the motifs found in their art. Coming from outside the villages of these largely unknown artists, Ebarle not only borrows from them. She also pays homage to them.

In her recent paintings, the influence of patterns and colors she has seen in both traditional and contemporary textiles, pottery, baskets and even paintings of Filipinos sometimes identified as ethnic groups is vital. This time she does not only salute the intricate patterns in the art of the Maranao, she embellishes them with a layer of tracery that is distinctively hers. The energy and passion palpable in her paintings seem to indicate a creativity that she must have recently rediscovered is in her. Finally Ebarle is coming out as an artist even if ironically she shrouds her paintings in veins of veneer.

This bold move began a few years ago when the artist decided to devote more time to her craft. Ebarle has joined several group exhibitions in the past. Her themes then focused on female figures in various forms such as dancers in the middle of a movement or women in repose. She adapted a style akin to impressionists. It was also during this period when she became a more active member of the Kasibulan, the only women artists’ organization in the Philippines.

These were familiar subjects she has created from her college years when in between working for her degree in advertising arts at the renowned University of Santo Tomas College of Architecture and Fine Arts, Ebarle would dabble on painting. Her personal circumstances, such as taking on a full time career plus motherhood, did not deter her determination. But eventually like many women artists like her, being a painter needed to be temporarily cast aside.

Having achieved professionally in her career (Ebarle manages the marketing of Faber-Castell in the Philippines), having advanced her education (she is finishing her MA in Women and Development at the University of the Philippines), with her children grown and deciding careers of their own, she is at last able to return to her painting. Perhaps it is her involvement in the Philippine Art Educators Association of which she is now president that has spurred her drive to paint with fervor.

“Pinagmulan” is an exceptional homage to indigenous art. It is also a testament to an artist’s determination to articulate her inspiration and find the vocabulary to evoke the creative energy she has found from art made by fundamentally unknown artists.

(The UST Museum of Arts and Sciences is located at Mezzanine Level, Main Bldg. UST, Espana, Manila. The exhibition will run until August 1, 2009. For details, please call UST Museum 781-1815.)

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Cinevita Film Festival Schedule

Schedule: CINEVITA FILM FESTIVAL, March 5 to 7, TARC Auditorium, UST

*FREE ADMISSION, but only local films are open to the public
(Organized by The Varsitarian, official student publication of the
University of Santo Tomas, and Institute of Religion in with UST
Journalism Society, UST Literary Society, and Concilium Philosophiae)

March 5, Wednesday
8 A.M. OPENING CEREMONIES
*Registration
9 - 9:30 A.M. A CHILD FROM CHINA (documentary, Aurora Santiago)
*Registration
9:40 - 11:10 A.M. FOSTER CHILD (full-length feature, Brillante
Mendoza)
*Lunch break and registration
1 - 3:40 P.M. FIVE PEOPLE YOU MEET IN HEAVEN (foreign film, Lloyd
Kramer)
*Registration
4 - 4:20 P.M. SA KAMBAS NG LIPUNAN (documentary, Joey Velasco)
*Registration
4:30 - 6 P.M. ENDO (full-length feature, Jade Castro)

March 6, Thursday
8 - 8:15 A.M. ESTROPA (documentary, Sheryl Rose Andes and Michael
Juancho Galang)
*Registration
8:20 - 9:50 A.M. TRIBU (full-length feature, Jim Libiran)
*Registration
10 A.M. - 12:10 P.M. SHADOWLANDS (foreign film, Richard Attenborough)
*Lunch break and registration
1 - 1:15 P.M. AMBULANCIA (short film, Richard Legaspi)
*Registration
1:20 - 2:50 P.M. TRABAHO (full-length feature, Ned Trespeces)
*Registration
3 - 4:15 P.M. ANINO (full-length feature, John Isiah Reyes, UST
College of Nursing)
*Registration
4:20 - 4:40 P.M. TUNAY NA BUHAY (documentary, Jasper Chavez Zarzuela)
*Registration
4:50 - 5:20 P.M. LABABO (short film, Seymour Barros Sanchez)
*Registration
5:30 - 7:10 P.M. CHINA CRY (foreign film, James F. Collier)

March 7, Friday
8 - 10 A.M. PAY IT FORWARD (foreign film, Mimi Leder)
*Registration
10:10 - 10:30 A.M. KARSEL (short film, Rianne Hill Soriano)
*Registration
10:40 - 11:10 A.M. TUTOS (short film, Louise Anne Yamsuan)
*Registration
11:15 - 11:45 A.M. UNCONVENTIONAL WARFARE (documentary, Anna
Isabelle Matutina and Herbert Villalon Docena)
*Lunch break and registration
1 - 2:50 P.M. BARAKO (full-length feature, Manolito Sulit, UST)
*Registration
3:15 - 4:50 P.M. TIRADOR (full-length feature, Brillante Mendoza)
*Registration
5 - 5:30 P.M. SONDA (documentary, UST College of Nursing)
*Registration
5:40 - 7:20 P.M. STILL LIFE (full-length feature, Katski Flores)
CLOSING CEREMONIES

*Registration: first-come, first-served basis (4 classes per film
showing)
*20-30 seats will be reserved for guests and walk-in audiences
*Foreign films are exclusively for UST students, professors, and
officials
*Audience for each film are requested to be in the venue 15 minutes
before the showing starts (for registration)
*OPEN FORUM for films with attending directors (or cast/crew)

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Human Freedom: Beyond Literature

HUMAN FREEDOM: BEYOND LITERATURE
By Bonifacio P. Ilagan

(Paper delivered for the conference “The Ethics of
Writing” in the panel “Literature and Human Freedom”
of the Philippine Center for International Pen; 25
November 2006, St. Thomas Aquinas Research Center,
University of Sto. Tomas, Manila.)

Our gathering today brings back a memory.

As the historic decade of 1970 was ending, I caught
the tail-end of the polemics about literature and
society that pitted Jose Garcia Villa against S.P.
Lopez. With some understanding of what the writers
were debating, I felt inclined to be on the side of
the S.P. Lopez school of thought, although a couple of
years later, enraged by the fatal shooting of the
University of the Philippines student Pastor Mesina, I
would lead a mob that stormed his office by the
Oblation, cursing him and throwing sticks and stones,
one of which found its mark right on his chest. That
ushered in the so-called Diliman Commune in 1971.

Such was the turmoil swirling during the decade. One
found little time to wade in the angst of aestheticism
and existentialism of the generation that went before.
When I started writing, a line had already been drawn
that separated writers, with one camp laying down, in
caps and bold, a code for writing that conjoined
literature and society. “Committed” was how it was
described.

Committed literature wielded freedom in a sense that
shocked hardcore aestheticians and transformed
existentialists. If one had to write, so the ethics of
committed writers went, one had to be partisan, and
his or her writing ought to serve the people in ways
that addressed not merely, as my prison mate Jose
“Pete” Lacaba once said, “the dandruff on my scalp or
the private aching in my heart.”

If writing were to express human freedom, it must be
able to say what was precisely forbidden by the
power-wielders. Literature must be unhampered by such
restrictions as the Presidential Proclamation 1017 or
any manifestation of the so-called “calibrated
preemptive response.”

In citing these indications of repression, I am
already talking circa 2006. In fact, here we are,
allotting a session in this conference to discuss
“Literature and Human Freedom” --almost four decades
since the connection started charting a life for the
generations of writers whom poet Emmanuel Lacaba
addressed in this wise:

You want to know, companions of my youth,
How much has changed the wild but shy poet
Forever writing last poem after last poem;
You hear he's dark as earth, barefoot,
A turban round his head, a bolo at his side,
His ball pen blown up to a long-barreled gun:
Deeper still the struggling change inside.
Like husks of coconuts he tears away
The billion layers of his selfishness.
Or learns to cage his longing like the bird
Of legend, fire, and a song within his chest.

(From “Open Letter to Filipino Artists”)

Becoming an activist sometime in the 1970s, poet Eman
Lacaba immersed himself in the workers' movement in
Manila-Rizal. Martial law found him joining the New
People’s Army in Mindanao, where he was captured and
summarily executed by elements of the government armed
forces on March 18, 1976.

In the 36 years that passed since 1970, writers like
Eman more than defined literature and human freedom,
did more than compose poetry and short stories and
plays in the service of the masa. They lived – and
died -- as they wrote.

Then there is poet Axel Pinpin, who had been
originally included as a panelist in this conference.
When I saw his name in the first program that was sent
to me, I asked, has Axel been released? No, he still
languishes in jail in Camp Vicente Lim in Laguna,
having been abducted by the military in Tagaytay City
last April 8.

Axel Pinpin, together with five farmers, were tortured
and forced to admit being communist guerillas, which
they are not, and so they did not. Collectively called
the Tagaytay 5, they are members of the Kalipunan ng
mga Magbubukid sa Kabite. Even in prison, Axel upholds
human freedom in his poetry:

Ang binubulok dito’y hindi malamig na katawang lupa
kundi mga pangarap at alab na hangad ng paglaya.
Ang inaagnas dito’y hindi buto, buhok at ngipin
kundi mga karanasan ng paglaban ng kauring alipin.

(Mula sa “Pagdalaw sa Libingan ng mga Patay”)

(What is being decomposed here is not the cold body
but the dream and the passion to be free.
What are being corroded here are not the bones, the
hair and the teeth
but the experiences of struggle of my co-slaves.

From “Visiting the Tomb of the Living”)

Axel Pinpin went beyond writing. Had he not meddled in
peasant organizing, would he have still reaped the ire
of the military? I think so, sooner or later. Because
he combined social writing with social practice -- a
potet fusion sustaining human freedom, the state had
to find a convenient way to pin him down.

In the case of Eman, well, he, too, did not remain
satisfied with waxing poetic about human freedom:

Now of consequence is his anemia
From lack of sleep: no longer for Bohemia,
The lumpen culturati, but for the people, yes.
He mixes metaphors but values more
A holographic and geometric memory
For mountains: not because they are there
But because the masses are there where
Routes are jigsaw puzzles he must piece together.
Though he has been called a brown Rimbaud,
He is not a bandit but a people's warrior.

(From “Open Letter to Filipino Artists”)

Eman had to be that people’s warrior.

Fully committing their writing to society, Eman
Lacaba, Axel Pinpin and the rest of their tribe
wielded human freedom by exercising it. In the realm
of the imagination, however, the creative thought,
although liberating, remained just an idea, unable to
change society. Perhaps they realized that it could
only do so, when, grasped by the people, the people
turn it into a material force.

I have absolutely no doubt that they did.

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Manoró launches campus tour at UST

Manoró launches campus tour at UST

Manoró, a digital movie about an Aeta girl who taught adult members
of her mountain tribe so they could vote in what turned out to be
the controversial 2004 presidential elections, opens the CineVita
Film Festival on March 7, 10 a.m., at the Thomas Aquinas Research
Center, University of Santo Tomas, España, Manila.

Organized by The Varsitarian, the 79-year-old student publication of
UST, CineVita will run from March 7 to 9. According to the
organizers, the event is meant "to celebrate life, truth, and faith
and uphold the cinema as tool for meaningful expression and
authentic education." All documentaries and local films are open to
the public. Foreign full-length films are exclusive to lecturers,
film critics, and students. Admission is free.

Brillante Mendoza's full-length feature, from a screenplay by
Ralston Jover, won the Best Picture and Best Director awards in the
Digital Lokal section of the 2006 Cinemanila International Film
Festival. It also won the CinemAvvenir Award at the 23rd Torino
International Film Festival.

Manoró was also screened at the 28th Festival of Three Continents in
Nantes, France and will compete at the Bangkok International Film
Festival in Thailand this July. It was co-produced by CenterStage
Productions and the Holy Angel University (HAU) Center for
Kapampangan Studies.

Mendoza previously directed Masahista, winner of the Golden Leopard
trophy (grand prize) in the 2005 Locarno International Film Festival
in Switzerland, and Kaleldo, which had its world premiere in the
Rome International Film Festival. Both films had Kapampangan
dialogues and had been shot entirely in Pampanga.

Manoró was shot for only five days under the most primitive
circumstances at Sitio Target in Sapangbato. Its lead star, Jonalyn
Ablong, had just graduated from the Sapangbato Elementary School
(SES) when the movie producers discovered her. In fact, the movie's
opening sequence is actual footage from her graduation program.

For those interested to sponsor/screen Manoro, Kaleldo, and/or other
CenterStage productions in their schools, please contact 09229936814.

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