An Pasko ni Intoy/Intoy's Christmas

Excerpt from An Pasko ni Intoy/Intoy's Christmas

An Pasko ni Intoy/Intoy's Christmas is a 30-minute video documentary that portrays the bitter-sweet Christmas of a child-laborer in a remote, swampy community in Leyte. I directed/produced this video together with my classmate Em Hidalgo for our production thesis. It was awarded Best Thesis (Docu Category) in our batch. It has also won awards outside our school such as Best Short Film in the Student Catholic Mass Media Awards 2008, 2nd place Docu Category in the 20th Cultural Center of the Philippines Independent Film and Video Competition, and Best Documentary in the 10th Ateneo Video Open.

It was soo fun doing this film. We immersed in the community for almost a month during our Christmas break. We took hour long walks with the kids to their school. We had to learn to pee in makeshift toilets, walk on knee-deep mud, survive without electricity, ride a canoe, and fear about it getting capsized, us drowning and our all-borrowed equipment getting wet. We also had to take a 2-hour motor boat ride to the town proper and back every two days just to charge our camera's batteries.

But in exchange of these little sacrifices, we feasted over fresh seafood and had regular tuba-drinking session with the locals. The children also gave us free paddling-a-canoe tutorial (though we never learned). Here are the behind the scene photos:


R-L: Intoy, the docu's main subject, and his buddy Ian


My thesis partner Em


Em directing our camera man Rayg


Rayg shooting Intoy's brother Kim-kim carrying fronds of nipa palm


Inday. She is the only female kid in the community


And finally, that is me, marvelling at the place

I wish to thank these people who made significant contributions to the production of this film:
Ditsi Carolino for lending us her Sony TRV900, Senheisser boom mic, tripod, the financial aid, and for all the advicing; Ms. Ervina Espina for translating the film from Waray-waray to English; Kuya Benj for the free technical support; Rayg, for all the free services; Renei, Kets, Valen, Flau, Emae, Mich, and Trix for the moral and immoral support; and of course the locals of Sitio Palanas, Brgy. Butason, Tabango, Leyte.

Portraits of the Sumilao Marchers

Philippines is one of the countries that has the most problematic agrarian reform program. For over decades that this was implemented, lands that were supposed to be distributed to the farmers remain in the hands of the landlords. These landlords always find a way to circumvent the law. Most of them would guard their land with heavily armed men to keep the farmers away. While others would do tactics such as apply to convert their land into an industrial land despite it being categorized as prime agricultural land. This is the case of the Sumilao marchers.

The Sumilao marchers are these farmers from Sumilao, Bukidnon who walked from their town to the Malacanang Palace in Manila hoping to meet the president and ask her to revoke the conversion order that was issued to their land. Besides being a prime irrigated land which their ancestors had tilled for years, for them this land is holy. The Sumilao farmers belong to a tribe called Higaonon and this is where they conduct their rituals.

And so they they travelled on foot 1,700 kilometres for more than two months to regain this land that rightfully belongs to them.