Organizer: Sulo: The Philippine Studies Initiative at NYU, NYU KJCC, International Filipino Association at NYU, and NYSEAN
Type/Location: In person / New York
Description:
Join Sulo: The Philippine Studies Initiative at NYU and the King Juan Carlos Center for a film screening which will explore a Philippine indie rock band’s attempts to tackle the devastation unleashed by the Duterte drug war.
Rebel Rebel, an indie rock band composed of sheltered teens, gets its biggest break with an invitation to a prestigious music festival. But after their celebratory performance at the local bar, they are arrested for alleged meth possession. Rogue cops haul them to the Blue Room, a detention area for the well-heeled where they are terrorized and threatened with prison time before getting offered the chance to bribe their way out. The band members have to decide whether to use their privilege to get on with their lives or to standup for what they believe in.
This debut feature directed by Ma-an Asuncion-Dagñalan premiered at Cinemalaya, the Philippines’ major showcase of independent filmmaking. It became the most-watched film of the festival with millennial and gen z audiences identifying with the protagonists in a nightmarish story that is nevertheless shot through with deadpan humor.
The film opens with hungry street kids interacting outside a high-end bar with some rich kids, members of the rock band Rebel Rebel, who would have nothing to do with them. Thus the film immediately frames the story within the social divide that has long plagued Philippine society, before training its focus on the lives of the band members, which include vocalist and keytarist Troy (Elijah Canlas), drummer Chigz (Harvey Bautista), guitarist Christian (Leoni Jin), and bassist Rocky (Nour Hooshmand) who is the sole female member of the band. Nevertheless, it’s Rocky who turns out to be the most mature, sensible, and steadfast of the group, however feistily she can dish it out as any of the guys.
An ex-member unexpectedly joins them at the performance, Anton (Juan Karlos Labajo) who was composer/vocalist before he left the band to roam through southeast Asia and then as far afield as Tibet in search of enlightenment. The gang members are mostly concerned about the usual teenage preoccupations, broken romances, stressed relationships with parents, the thrill of social media posts, and having a good time buoyed by music, booze, weed-laced cookies.
A missed traffic light while driving to get some midnight rice porridge gets the gang pulled over by a couple of wise-cracking cops (Bombi Plata and Jericho Arceo) who in the process produce a bag of meth supposedly found in the car.
They soon find themselves in the “blue room,” an area in a police station where well-heeled captives are psychologically terrorized before getting offered a chance to bribe their way out. The operation is led by sometimes solicitous, sometimes menacing, but always calculating chief Delgado (Soliman Cruz). Soon after, the band is broken up after an escape attempt by Anton who gets thrown along with Rocky into a narrow prison cell crammed with alleged drug users from the lower depths of the economic divide
Dagñalan first heard about the blue rooms in 2010 and it soon became the seed of the story. The narrow cell hidden behind the bookshelf is a recreation of the infamous “staging area” in a Manila police station that kept and terrorized detainees until they or their families could bribe their way out. (The discovery in 2017 of this secret cell was documented by Alyx Arumpac in the film Aswang and Patricia Evangelista in her book Some People Need Killing [pages 224-227]).
In the course of their ordeal, the band members discover their own deeper selves and the wider society outside of their privileged bubbles. Beyond the visceral experience of police corruption, they awaken to the inequality of the social justice system in the country. Their fashionably intellectual and facile woke-isms are replaced by a real apprehension of Philippine society’s endemic injustices.
In her statements and in the way she depicts the bungling humanity of the rogue cops and introduces a principled police officer late in the story, Dagñalan, evincing a nuanced sensibility, underscores that not all the police are corrupt. But however principled the cop may be, we are reminded that he still operates within the system of social injustice, one that Dagñalan hopes that art can help change.
Born in San Fernando, Pampanga, Ma-an L. Asuncion-Dagñalan attended cinematography class in 2003, and studied Mexican filmmaking under the Mexican director Gustavo Loza in 2006 at the Mowelfund Film Institute. She trained under National Artist Ricky Lee and Armando Lao for scriptwriting. She was a Pro Online Delegate at the 74th Locarno International Film Festival for Blue Room. She was also the producer, cinematographer, and co-writer of Layang Bilanggo which won Best Screenplay and Best Picture at the 2010 Cinema One Originals Film Festival. Blue Room is her first feature film as director.
Registration:
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