Leaving on a Jet Plane... not!

Earlier, I caught parts of a Claudine Barreto movie on a local network while channel surfing. No, I am not a fan and although the local film industry is having a Renaissance of sorts, it takes more than a Claudine Barreto to make me sit and watch a locally produced film in its entirety. The script, acting, cinematography, editing, directing, it all need to be impeccable. Sorry, I am just like that. But what made me sit for a good five minutes to watch In Your Eyes was the profession of Claudine's character. She was a physical therapist working in a rehab clinic in the US, every Pinoy PT's dream, and it was (and still is) the dream for me. In fact, I would have been on a jet plane bound for the US now living that dream... not.

I was scheduled to take the NPTE, the state board exams for PTs in the US, on September 7, and from my correspondence with my employer, I would have left for Ellicott City, Maryland on this day to sit for the five-hour state licensure. I would have crammed for the exams in the process since I had just about three months to prepare, toiling over books and journals and review materials on everything physical therapy to successfully get my hands on that elusive RPT title. I would have probably bought a new luggage and busied myself packing clothes for my US stay, may have gotten winter outfits, too, if the need arise to extend till the Yuletide season. But due to an unfortunate turn of events, I needed to have the exam rescheduled to a later date, hopefully still within the year.

Thankfully, I am an optimist and looks at this setback as a blessing in disguise. A friend said that maybe it was not yet meant to be. Maybe I need ample time to review for the exams and not cram like what I've been used to the past months so that when it's time to sit for the NPTE, I'll nail it. Maybe I need not buy a big luggage or new clothes to bring with me because I will probably get them when I am physically there. Maybe I need not think wishfully anymore because the dream is within arm's reach, one that breathes life to a male Claudine Barreto a la In Your Eyes (read: a PT in the US), minus the drama and the hysterics. The script, acting, cinematography, editing, the directing, its impeccability is something I won't be biting my nails over with; it's gonna be real and I will be damn good at it. Sorry, I am just like that.

Read More

Waste Land (2010, Brazil): A Review

This morning, I heard the faint voice of a kid. He was shouting basura, basura (garbage, garbage), cue that it was time to throw a couple of days' thrash. It is like this in our neighborhood. Since our house is situated walking distance from the road, we need to bring our refuse outside for the dump truck to pick up. In the process, we learned to segregate our waste: the recyclables from the biodegradable. This part, recycling, is the very heart of Waste Land, a documentary from director Lucy Walker about a US-based Brazilian modern artist, Vik Muniz, who stages a grand project to benefit the garbage pickers or, as Tiao, who is one of the lead characters, would put it, recyclables pickers of Jardim Gramacho in Brazil.

The film became a portrait of the pickers of Jardim Gramacho, what used to be the largest landfill in the world, turning recyclable material as medium to turn the very portraits of these resilient individuals into works of art. The film is not just about picking out what you can make use of from the trucks of garbage that frequent Jardim Gramacho, it is about people whose message is for us to segregate, reuse, or recycle because almost always these things are not taken back by Mother Earth and, more often than not, is returned back to us. They end up clogging our sewers, polluting our seawater, posing a health risk not only to those who at some point became irresponsible but even those who took the time to segregate their waste.

This film fuses thrash and art, literally speaking, and you end up bespectacled with the molding of the former into the latter, which makes the best parts of the film, and the pickers became not only models but co-artists under the supervision of Vik Muniz. More than the amount of money that Tiao and his ACAMJG, the association of recyclables pickers of Jardim Gramacho, got from the auction of their portraits, a new lease at life was at the offing, made possible not by the mountains of garbage that surround them but by their drive to make a change for their family, the community, and themselves.

I waited for the dump truck to make it's way around the corner. On my hands were two plastic bag full of a couple of days' thrash. Our neighborhood neither has a recycling facility nor an area to segregate wastes so what is no longer needed in the house were in the bags. Handing them out, I was reminded of the men of Jardim Gramacho, of Payatas in Quezon City, and even the casualties and victims of the recent landslide of trash in Irisan, Baguio. The amount of waste could have been less if we had the opportunity, the capability, the responsibility, and the means to recycle. I handed my bags to the collector and went back home knowing that my garbage is another one's treasure, or a work of art, albeit how many centavos or pesos it may amount to.

Highly recommended. 5/5.

Read More