In December last year, just before Christmas, at the rooftop bar of Suazo in Davao, I sat down and recorded a podcast with two of the most promising Davao filmmakers: Conrad dela Cruz and Joshua Cesar ‘Wowa’ Medroso, who started their current filmmaking path almost the same time, when their short films competed at the 17th Mindanao Film Festival in 2019.
Medroso made Trabungko, a fantasy retelling of the myth of his birthplace Tibungco, a district located in the outskirts of Davao City, while Dela Cruz’s entry is Bootleg, about two DVD pirates who succumb into the world of drug dealing with the waning profitability of their trade. Both films are wildly different from each other, but they depict a contemporary Davao in all its gritty realism and as a myth-filled landscape, while cognizant of a Mindanao storytelling consciousness.
Following Bootleg, Dela Cruz made two shorts: Living Dead and Dead in the Dark during the pandemic, which looks like they exist in the same microcosmic universe—a nondescript interior of a house—saturated with a neon-soaked bloodbath. Dead in the Dark won best short film at the 8th edition of Ngilngig Asian Fantastic Film Festival, with the jury citing its fantastical tale of the macabre that speaks of our contemporary history of violence.
In his sophomore short, Kumbiyor (The Conveyor Belt), Medroso was able to make use of his place’s remoteness, its existence between the urban and rural spaces of the city, as a futuristic landscape gripped by a zombie apocalypse. He followed it up with ‘Tong Adlaw Nga Nag-Snow sa Pinas (The Day it Snowed in the Philippines), about two boys obsessed with snow and Samurai movies, that also works as a commentary on latent violence in the form of child abuse. A complete turnaround from his mid-length sophomore film, the film’s runtime is a mere five minutes, a requirement of the Sine Kabataan film lab. Nonetheless, the brevity showcased his skill at storytelling restraint, and proved successful as it competed as one of the 10 entries in Cinemalaya’s short film category last year.
Medroso continues his Cinemalaya streak with his first feature-length film Kantil, produced with funding under the festival. It will be a science-fiction queer story featuring two boys, that feels like a continuation of his Sine Kabataan short, and will still be set in his birthplace Tibungco, particularly in the coastal slums. Meanwhile, Dela Cruz says that he would like to “commit more mistakes” with short films before embarking on a full-length film, planning to complete a trilogy of horror shorts that starts from his recent Ritwal, which won him a Best Director trophy at last year’s MFF.
In this podcast, Minda Salida talks to Wowa and Conrad about their films, influences, filmmaking process, appreciating each other’s works as well as their contemporaries, and their insights on Mindanao regional cinema.
Note: This essay was completed under the author’s Arts Equator Fellowship. Views expressed are solely of the writer.
Special thanks:
Paolo Papica of Suazo Bar, Balik Bukid, Liz Manabat, Brendel Zarate.
Executive Producer: Yas D. Ocampo
MindaNews Editor-in-Chief: Bobby Timonera
Hosts, Minda Salida: Jay Rosas and John Bengan
