Slumming with Sig

This week, kantogirlblues is four.

While I still have no idea what to do with this blog anniversary, I looked at the archives and discovered an interesting post in that first week that somehow brings things to a full circle:

After the Pinoy short film screening at the Alliance Francaise, and having nothing better to do, I hung out with some friends at a house in Vito Cruz.

It's hard being a bum surrounded by other bums: Instead of just lying about and ignoring pangs of hunger in favor of dozing off or staring at that cable movie you've seen a zillion times, you are forced to take into consideration other people's growling stomachs. You have to ask if they want to eat breakfast at 2pm.

In the mid-90s, the preferred pickup line for guys used to be "I'm in a band." Around 1998-99, this evolved into: "Hey, I have a website." In the first few years of the new millenium, it's now "I am a short filmmaker."

The house in question is Sig's, and together with him, my friend Carlyn, and batchmate Job, we thought of ideas for a scriptwriting contest whose deadline was looming like four days later. In between cooking extra spicey mackerel stew and sinangag, I pitched to them my idea about a girl working in a paging company, and while my Cinderella act did not win anything, it still felt like an accomplishment at the time. To actually finish something.

Fast forward to 2005 and that last statement about film is still true. Of course, it can now be modified as "I am an indie filmmaker." I watched Sig's Cinemalaya entry Lasponggols last Friday night at the UP Film Institute. It played to a full house. I got my ticket at the booth, lined up, learned that my friends won't be able to make it. I saw Sig amidst the crowd, waved, walked up to him and offered my congratulations. Then the gates were opened and I susddenly found myself being ushered in early along with our workshop master Ricky Lee. Groupie pa rin pala ako hanggang ngayon. Hehehe. I don't mind though.

The first few minutes of the film featured various teasers, all along the line of "Pasisikatin kita." We were told the film was two and a half hours long, and Sir Ricky joked, "Kaya naman pala two and a half hours."

But it was all worth it. I'll offer my airhead comment here: The film was funny and I liked it! Since both Lasponggols and Pinoy/Blonde featured Epy Quizon and had characters who were either film buffs or worked in the movie industry, I can't help but compare them. P/B was witty and glossy and fun, but Paolo offers that what P/B doesn't have you can find it in Lasponggols. The movie had a heart larger than the man who made it.

There's this scene in Lasponggols wherein the village idiot guy tells the audience that an indie film isn't complete without a time lapse. If I could do a blog time lapse, it would definitely carry that moment of me and friends hanging around that house, of Sig literally pushing back mounds of cassettes, cds, books, magazines, sheets of paper with his hands to reveal some floor space, sitting around and me wearing his really oversized red Coca-Cola shirt, drawing that little la ronde of characters, cooking on an unfamiliar stove and crushing red chili. I'm still not an indie filmmaker, but this one will do.

Congrats, Direk Sig. I still owe you that Coke shirt. :)