In this case the protagonists are three kids in a prison for adults, how they struggle to keep their child’s soul together in a world grown suddenly less than human. The large enough frame consists of a prison somewhere in the south as Cebuano is spoken, and the gray rain beats down relentlessly on the pavement while Gary Granada’s melancholy piano helps segue into the next shot.
How does Carolino, herself a Cebuana from Consolacion town, get away with it, i.e., showing the faces of minors deep in the recesses of a prison subculture? A Bunso with shrouded, pixelized faces would not work, so that the exemption granted is made clear at the onset of the 60-plus minute film: it is a creative work of advocacy, the main thrust of which is to get President Arroyo and the congressmen to see it and eventually enact the juvenile justice bill. Certainly it would be time better spent than haggling over tax bills in special session.
Produced by Unicef and the Consuelo Foundation, Bunso is cutting edge, bare bones documentary, one that offers no excuses or apologies, yet subtly leaving us with heavy emotional baggage at film’s end when we learn that two of the three boys have since died. It could stir us to action or have us bawling in our seats, but the film is no tearjerker or fist-waving call to arms, and here Carolino’s depiction of disparate truths owes much to the fictional art of storytelling and dispassionate exposition.
"It’s hard to explain," the filmmaker says, referring to how she builds up the emotional connect while maintaining the camera’s safe distance. She recalls how she took pictures of massacre victims in Mindanao in the 1980s, and though she was overwhelmed by the experience, the camera helped keep her equilibrium. In this instance the camera seemed to be saying "distancia, amigo," yet also serving as a bridge in order for us to see what she saw, transporting us to the place of action.
Same is true with Bunso, two of whose young inmates, Anthony and Itsoy (the bunso) the filmmaker recognized immediately as lead players. Streetsmart and naturals before the camera, the two boys give cinema verite a new name–it is almost as if the camera isn’t there, and they are talking to Ditsi, the filmmaker as viewer and accidental storyteller. The third boy and only eventual survivor, Josel, treats us to a version of a Max Surban song, about how it is important for kids like them to stay in school rather than be in a prison for adults, not an uncommon occurrence in overcrowded cities.
As of late Josel is reportedly still somewhere in the parking lots of the big city, working as a watch-your-car boy, though his exact whereabouts are still trying to be traced.
Carolino and her assistant director, the photographer Nana Buxani of Cotabato, handle scenes of confrontation between Bunso and his mom and between Anthony’s parents with riveting spontaneity.
"I’m not good at giving directions to actors," she says, because mostly she just lets the camera roll as the subject says his piece, and when something extraordinary is done or said, the most the director can do is request that it be done again, "but it is never as good as the first take."
Devoid of any contrivance or grim and determined aesthetics, Bunso in fact even displays some kind of levity and good humor present in these lives on the margin, and what you see is what you get: Carolino doesn’t have to add to the moment’s available despair and confidently lets her camera do the talking.
The scene where Bunso explains how he fishes out the earrings or other jewelry of potential victims speaks volumes of a child’s resourcefulness to survive, and makes us laugh a bit uncomfortably, because to resort to such petty criminality if the alternative is hunger is really not that funny. Unless it’s Itsoy telling you how he steals.
A barefoot Anthony on the long muddy walk home from prison after his release, social worker in tow, might account for his ensuing headache in the monsoon weather, but is consistently in character with his Robin Hood mindset and devil-may-care attitude.
Noteworthy too is his volunteering to look for some clothes for a shivering shirtless fellow kid inside the prison, reminding us of one truth: children are often the most sensitive to the situation of those around them.
Straight to the camera Anthony relates his pre-pubescent fall into a life of crime, and not once does he flinch, reminding us during seeming fantastic points of his narration that this is the truth because "this is an interview".
Bunso was filmed for roughly a month in 2001, during which Carolino and Buxani spent much time with the young inmates and the urban community as they eked out a sort of existence. The jail on film was the fourth the duo set out to document, and it was, as the director says, by far "where we felt safest."
In the other jails they had to be accompanied by a full complement of six bodyguards, including senior inmates. In the on-film prison, only two were required and then only for the first two days. The rest of the time they were on their own, two smaller than average women with the occasional soundman.
At nighttime they had to pack up their gear because the jail was off-limits at such hours, and Carolino is well aware that the worse things happen in the dark, particularly to the young inmates in the crowded cells.
It took three years before finally Bunso could come out, making its Philippine premier on human rights day at the UP Film Center last December 10–wherein Bayang Barrios sang Bata Batuta, the Joey Ayala folk song of an enduring innocence–and its world premier in Amsterdam also late last year. Artist Noe Tio was imported from Palawan to help in the graphics of the launch.
The documentary is the latest or shall we say youngest in the growing catalogue of Carolino & Buxani, the others also noted for their dirty realism and how an innocence struggles to survive in adverse circumstances: Riles or Life on the Tracks, as well as Minsan Lang Sila Bata about child labor and sweatshops for minors.
At present the duo is working on the lives of the displaced mothers and children in the Mindanao front, in Pikit and another town caught in the crosshairs of the military war of aggression on secessionist guerrillas.
"It might be mentioned in the news that an MILF camp was bombed, but there are homes, mothers and children in there," the filmmaker says, rather astounded by the number of displaced and shell-shocked families in the areas of conflict, where children are born and named after a life on the move ("He was named Jimbong, because we were in the gym when we suddenly heard a loud sound nearby, ‘bong!’‚" Carolino quotes one mother as saying).
A resource person for this latest project is the lay brother Karl Gaspar, who has long been in the region and understands the delicate balance in the coexistence between Muslims and Christians.
A sociology graduate of UP Diliman in the early 80s, Carolino’s first camera was an Olympus. She honed her craft of photography in Davao where she worked for the non-government organization Dems, which among others produced the first cassette recordings of Joey Ayala and Bagong Lumad.
From photography to slide shows to documentary filmmaking, Carolino traces how one thing led to another in her evolution as a filmmaker. Her work has been lauded by such critics as the scriptwriter and De La Salle University professor Clodualdo del Mundo, who himself has megged a documentary on Filipina domestic helpers in Singapore.
It’s very likely that Ditsi and Nana, Carolino & Buxani, will yet pull some surprises for the moviegoing audience short of reinventing the cinema, or at least give a breath of fresh air to documentary filmmaking.
Bunso will have screenings at the SM Megamall in February 26 at 6:30 pm during the Pelikula at Lipunan festival, and on March 14 at Shangri-La Mall. While the filmmakers will be helping in the promotions and doing the round of open forums, and of course silently working away on their next project between trips to Pikit and their base on Lands Street, off Visayas Avenue with eyes shut wide, where the ambience is strictly nongovernment and the backyard creek is at low level and in no immediate danger of a tsunami.