Makamisa: Phantasm of Revenge is freely adapted from an unfinished novel Makamisa by eminent poet and revolutionary José Rizal (1861-1896), considered a national hero, active at the end of the Spanish colonial era. Why this text today?
As the first intertitle says, “The world is sick.”
Colonization is humanity’s shadow.
The best non-sequitur since 15th century Philippines: Either you’re the one being colonized or you’re the colonizer.
I tried to be as faithful as possible to the fragments of impossibility found in the 10-page Tagalog manuscript and the 73-page Spanish manuscript.
Yes, historian Ambeth Ocampo found it in 1987, the year after Marcos the dictator was ousted.
Ever since I read about Makamisa in the early 90s, I’ve always wanted to create something based on it.
In the mid-90s, I wanted to do an opera adaptation in the style of Ionesco.
So it’s been on my brain backburner for around three decades.
What is necessary today is to look at the past so as not to repeat the same mistakes.
All unfinished novels should be finished, not necessarily by the same author.
The Spanish colonial era is full of abuses and incongruencies that exist until now, albeit in different guises.
Makamisa’s necessity on film is reflective of Philippine history— unfinished.
Right now, our history is being subjected to a cruel form of revisionism.
The 70s were the martial law years under Ferdinand Marcos, and is being hailed as a golden age in Philippine history.
Throw in an army of cyber-trolls and the Filipinos are ready to take everything in— hook, line and whatever.
As subtext, Makamisa wants to show creative possibilities.
As history mimics the real, right now, a mayor in our country appears to be non-Filipino.
A Chinese at that.
Rizal predicted this 133 years ago.
Add in a president who sold out our rights as a country.
We are on the verge of a new colonization.
Only the colonized have no clue.
Perfect!
In addition to the characters of the novel, you introduce an other Rizal, called Simoun, a “sad poet” as you call him, with some irony toward him. Why?
Rizal’s brief life was a happy-sad cathartic tragicomedy.
The other choice was to call him a mad poet like Artaud, but Sisa already beat him to crazy.
Simoun is the poisonous wind that destroys the characters in Rizal’s second novel.
All poets are redundantly sad.
Rizal is very multifaceted, but if I were to focus on one trait, it would be this: the sad poet of the sad jungle/republic.
The poet as seer, cursed to see only the sad truth.
Rizal as poet needs a fictional correlative through Simoun.
Though not far from the real hero who was constantly chasing after love.
I don’t know if it’s Freudian or simply a microcosmic parallel for his love for country but I think Rizal was constantly in love because he had so much to give.
Yes because love in whatever form makes a poet out of everyone.
Silly love songs.
Your film begins like a fable (“once upon a time”), has among other features, a grotesque, exuberant, tone, mixing the times. Why?
Mix and match until the lightning strikes.
All films should begin and end as a fable to soften the harsh blows of reality.
The only way to deal with the many-headed monster of history is thru literary strategies: allegory, fabulism, grotesquery, silence, etc.
The film begins with a once-upon-a-time-note because our history has long been deformed by colonizers— Spanish, Americans, Japanese and don’t forget the British.
Mix local lore and what do we get?
Not the grotesque.
We get the real.
Even today, a Baby Jesus statue dances to give blessing to everyone.
Mother Mary sheds clothes and tears while she predicts a new date for the end of the world.
If you go down Quiapo in downtown Manila, at least 3 long-bearded men would say that they are God the father.
You made many films, in different ways, according different aesthetics and genres. Here the cinematographic approach is powerful and assertive, with 35mm film evoking both early cinema and a certain aesthetic borrowed from experimental cinema. Why? How did you work the images?
35mm can be as soft and flexible as you want.
The medium is not the message.
Power and assertion are highly subjective.
I believe all my films are powerful and assertive in the highest sense of those words.
I initially wanted to physically handcolor the 35mm positive print with aniline dyes ala Madame Thuillier, thus the decision not to shoot on 16mm and 8mm.
To accurately mimic early cinema, I also needed to shoot on celluloid.
The film was hand-processed to approximate the decayed/decaying celluloid films due to bad or non-existent archiving in the Philippines.
The idea to shoot digitally and achieve this “ruined 35mm” look would have been much more tedious, more expensive, and less authentic.
The images came from different pictures as well as texts that show the intersection between faith and our daily lives.
Why 35mm?
Because it’s more costly to use 70mm.
Film is not its format.
The cinema of freedom is not tied to labels.
Whether you like it or not, we’re back at the essence of cinema, whatever that is, what’s inside the pixel or grain, the intangible soul.
Some echo of our times?
Echoes all around it’s deafening.
Blind me, Tiresias.
Man sees what one is trained to see.
Man is blind to everything else.
The times don’t have a choice but to repeat, like celestial bodies revolving in almost perpetuity.
Sometimes the echo is louder.
Sometimes the echo is softer.
Sometimes it stutters.
Sometimes it’s all gibberish.
In the end, echoes can’t help but be overrated.
As for the echo of our times, as mentioned, this film is not history.
This film is the ongoing history of our nation struggling against the onslaught of revisionism.
There is rich and singular sound universe, composed with your band Kontra-Kino Orchestra and David Toop. Its conception? How did you work?
We played.
The essence of art has always been play.
All experimental films should always experiment.
Dialogue is also overrated.
Cinema is supposed to be the sanctuary where we can be free of words.
The world is already too full of words.
Words have aided in colonialism, the shackling of humanity.
Cinema was born silent and should die silent.
Music is the most malleable of the arts.
And though it deals directly with time, it’s also the most anachronistic.
We recorded the Kontra-Kino Orchestra parts of the soundtrack 8 years ago, way before a single frame of the film was shot.
It was initially an IST (Imaginary Sound Track).
The double vinyl album was called “The Woman Who Went Mad”, referencing both Lilith Stangenberg’s character, Sisa Bracken, and the song title of the first Philippine shellac recording as sung by Maria Carpena.
David Toop and I started working on “Tongue In A Glass,” a spokenword poetry album back in 2019, which will be released later this year.
In 2022, he created an abstract soundscape based on the 90-minute first draft of the film.
We just finished the final soundtrack last month.
Music came first and music came last.
It is played out in the film as congruent with the images.
Sound unconsciously shapes us so that its subliminal elements have long been there without us knowing it.
Hence, the ritual to summon what is there.
You play the “evil priest”. What drew you to play this character? And about the casting?
Inside everyone is an ugly bald 19th century Spanish friar rapist-killer.
The Philippine No Wave Superstars are probably the best ensemble of actors in 21st century world cinema.
They can mutate/metamorphose into any character.
To quote Tomaž Šalamun, We are monsters.
We need to investigate the monstrous nature of the human soul in cinema.
The key to understand this fragile universe is to enter its blackest heart.
Father Damaso is an iconic villain of Philippine culture, representing the darkest aspects of Spanish colonization.
Rizal wrote Makamisa as anti-clerical vitriol.
I thought it was an easy role, something that can be easily done while directing.
I didn’t get the memo that I had to jump off a 30-meter church cross straight to the bottom of a lake which was a submerged town.
My bandmates in The Brockas played the roles they were most comfortable with. Lav Diaz as the cursing bloodied Christ, a reprise of his role in my 2003 film, Headless. Roxlee as the horny crazy saint of chickens.
The actors in my 2022 theater play, “SMAK! “ at Volkbühne Berlin, including superstar singers Bituin Escalante and Bullet Dumas, were also in the film as a kind of pre-production for the live extravaganza.
It’s ironic, funny, and surprisingly effective to cast musicians as silent film actors.
I chose to play the devil because history is full of devils.
They provide conflicts in the flatbeds of storytelling.
Imagine Jesus fasting in the desert for 40 days without intrusion.
That would be like watching Satantango 8 1/2 times without emptying your bladder.
Interviewed/received by Nicolas Feodoroff
