I was kind of pissed off while we were doing the pictorials. Everyone wanted me to take their pictures at the same time. I tried to accomodate everyone and all their varying degrees of camwhoring. At the end of the day, everyone had great photos for our exhibit except me! And by the time I vented out my frustration to some orgmates, I’m already all sweaty and tired.

But that’s over. I like how the pictures came out.

My left-leaning political party in UP has been giving me its lipunan at makabayang rebolusyong Pilipino lectures the past days. I know, the title can get somehow intimidating, but really, it isn’t. Some of the ideas are not new to me, and I actually subscribe and believe in some of them. However, reactionary point of views are welcome, and I’m actually searching for them. Please refer to me articles online or books that would debunk ideas like the idea that neo-imperialism exists and that our national policies and our establishment’s system itself have always been geared towards serving exploitative local elites and foreign powers-that-be.

Here are a few shots from our pictorials this afternoon. UP Cinema Arts Society (UP CAST) will be celebrating its sixteenth anniversary next week. Wohoo!

This is going to be a long backtrack chronicle of the past week. You don’t have to go through this. It’s just so I don’t forget what happened the past week.

Last Thursday, I went to my only class that day, Hong Kong Cinema class. I attended a UP MCO (Mass Communicators Organization) general assembly afterwards. Then, I watched Ang Huling Araw ng Linggo and Batad: Sa Paang Palay at Cine Adarna with some of my UP MCO orgmates.

On Friday, I ran errands for my mom during the lunch break after Film 115 class. I went back to school for Film 113 and then attended an applicants’ bonding activity for UP Cinema Arts Society.

The weekend was generally uneventful. I went to UP to attend a student council meeting on Saturday. I didn’t stay in school that much, as I was late for the meeting and it was already about to end the time I came. The meeting was about amending the student constitution of our college. On Sunday, I went with my mom to our grocery store, after which, we had a very hearty dinner at Gloria Maris in Greenhills with her college friend and her family from Iowa. I got a little annoyed when she insisted that I sit with her friend’s daughters. I’m not a talker really, and I sort of dreaded the thought of initiating conversations with Middle American-raised girls. I didn’t know what to talk about. So, is my assumption that Iowa is a conservative red state correct? Haha. Anyway, we survived. Small talk is okay.

Last Monday, my political party in UP started to give me the lecture on lipunan and makabayang rebulusyon. I’ll talk about it here some other time. Anyway, I finally got to report in my Broadcast Communication 100 class. I’m glad it’s over. No more worrying about receiving verbal lashes from Sir Avecilla. After BC 100, I whisked off to the student council office for our weekly meeting. Aside from the usual talks, we were given these forms from our dean. They were application forms for the Ayala Young Leaders Congress (AYLC). After the student council meeting, I went to SM North with Andre, my applicant buddy in UP Cinema Arts Society, for a buddy date. I also ran some errands for my mom while in SM.

On Tuesday, I had another art show-kuya stint with Ayeen for Christer’s TV production class. The first demo art show stint was for Ely in the same class a few weeks ago. After the said stint, I crammed my AYLC application form because our deadline was on that day itself. Filling out the forms made me feel a little insecure. I left a lot of fields blank because no, I did not win anything outside school, I’m sorry AYLC.

After Communication Research 100 class that afternoon, I attended another UP MCO general assembly at the batibot.

After the general assembly, I persuaded Con and my other orgmates in UP MCO to come watch Umaaraw, Umuulan with me. After hanging out at my orgmates’ dorm at Ilang-Ilang, Con, Flau, Kim, Ely and I went of to SM North for the movie.

Yesterday was, well, not a very good day, as I’ve previously mentioned in an earlier blog entry. To make things worse, my cell phone went bonkers for a few hours, making me unable to contact groupmates and orgmates regarding different matters at crucial times.

I woke up late in the afternoon already. I was contemplating on whether or not I would still go to school. I eventually decided to just go. Staying at home would just make me feel worse about being such a lazy sleepyhead. I haven’t accomplished a lot of things for the student council, I missed scriptwriting class, I guess all I could do was at least attend my orgs’ activities. Agh, I hate being sleepy.

I got to Cine Adarna’s steps just in time, even early, for a small workshop for UP CAST’s applicants. That went well, I guess. I had to leave pretty early though to attend another applicants’ activity for UP MCO. Thankfully, by the time I got to the lagoon, things were still going on. Hopefully, the applicants learned some things from what happened.

There you go. It’s almost four in the morning right now. Thank you to Patty for endlessly ringing my phone to wake me up. You’re successful this time. I owe you a favor.

Being an active member in two organizations, being Film Department Representative and Publicity Head of the Student Council, having all the academic loads and short film productions, plus having all my commitments to my family and friends can really put on the stress on me. The bad thing is I can’t help but sleep a lot. It doesn’t help that I get headaches often when I’m not sleeping. All of which lessen my productive time. I feel like I don’t give enough time to fulfill all my responsibilities anymore. What makes me feel worse is that because I always have to divide my time and attention to these reponsibilities as equally as I can, I tend not to be able to focus on doing just one thing, thereby making most of my outputs mediocre.

This morning, I missed my Scriptwriting class because I overslept. I was supposed to attend a similar class in the afternoon with the same professor, just to make up–but I slept again. I woke up just in time to be able to go to school and attend some activities of my two organizations.

I know this might be just a matter of time management. But I really think I sleep too much. Sleeping has become a hassle for me.

Umaaraw, Umuulan is a relatively short feature-length digital film about a young director (played by Ryan Agoncillo) whose script gets rejected by producers and to make things worse, finds his girlfriend cheating on him on their anniversary, right before he planned to propose marriage. He goes into depression until he meets his dream girl.

Before watching the movie yesterday, I read reviews online and was unavoidably spoiled. (I won’t do that here. My synopsis is as vague and neutral as it can get). Once you know what the whole problem is, the entire movie would feel like a drag. Thankfully, as I’ve said, it was a relatively short feature-length film. It only ran for more or less an hour and a half.

This is not your conventional love story movie though, at least when viewed among typical Filipino romance movies, which makes this movie a breath of fresh air.

There were a lot of cameo roles in the movie from actors and actresses, most of whom we haven’t seen much of in the past years. Judy Ann Santos, the lead actor’s real-life girl friend, also has a cameo appearance towards the end, and when looked at that context, their encounter can be really cheesy and hilarious. The comic attempt on the other hand, especially by the Ryan Agoncillo’s supporting characters, were really in bad taste and it annoyed me.

Umaaraw, Umuulan is from Heaven’s Best Productions (of Harlene Bautista, Herbert Bautista and siblings) and was directed by Richard Arellano.

It amazes me how fellow college students can pull off all-nighters in order to cram stuff for school. I attempted to pull one tonight and for the nth time, I’ve failed. I’m too weak to fight sleep. Turuan niyo ‘kong magpuyat! I’ve wasted enough time sleeping.

Ang Huling Araw ng Linggo is a movie about seven individuals with different yet interconnected struggles.

From the film’s official synopsis: “Domeng is involved in networking or multi-level marketing business and plans to encourage his estranged daughter Luna to join in this unscrupulous business. Luna is abandoned by her husband and son so she asks help from her mother Aling Tess. Aling Tess is a land lady who lives alone and fancies a young male boarder named Kulas. Kulas is a grocery store employee who aspires to become a store manager to impress Julie. Julie is a laundry shop attendant who is obsessed with a male costumer named Brian. Brian is a nurse in a local hospital who wants to work abroad so he persuades his girlfriend Sally to provide for his “fixer” fees. An accounting graduate who failed to pass the board exam for two consecutive years, Sally enters Domeng’s networking business in the hopes of proving her worth. When she found out that networking is a scam Sally plans to take revenge on Domeng.”

I heard another person within my hearing distance remark (while the film was screening), “Ang agonizing naman ng film na ‘to.” At first I was tempted to agree. The film does not really follow the traditional three-act structure and it would initially feel like the film was dragging in a static narrative for more than an hour. One will everntually appreciate the entire film once it makes its full circle of defining how everything everyone is interconnected. So, yes, it was sort of agonizing, (also because of the excessive long takes and dialogues), in a satisfying kind of way.

It’s a profound film which tries to remind us that everything we do and don’t affect other people and eventually affect us back, and with this realization that we are interconnected with each other, it is important that we see the things that we do as a struggle shared with other people. “Siguro dapat isipin na iisa lamang tayo… Kapag sinaktan ang iba, dapat isiping sarili din ang sinasaktan.”

Click here for more photo stills from the film’s shoot.

Ang Huling Araw ng Linggo was written and directed by Nick Olanka, a UP Film Institute graduate. Some of my orgmates from UP Cinema Arts Society were also part of this production.