The Market Monitor Minding the Nation's Business
If there’s a word that best describes the impression that Filipinos made overseas, particularly in Japan, in the last two weeks, it’s “beautiful”.
Consider: Last Thursday, Jun Robles Lana’s latest film Die Beautiful won the Audience Choice Award and the best actor prize for star Paolo Ballesteros at the 29th Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF). In the dramedy, Ballesteros portrays a transgender beauty contestant named Trisha Echevarria who unexpectedly dies after winning in a pageant and whose last wish is to be dressed up as a different celebrity on each night of her wake.
Renowned for his jaw-dropping cosmetic transformations, the Eat Bulaga co-host earlier caught everybody’s attention at the TIFF when he walked the red carpet as Angelina Jolie at the beginning of the festival. He did the same again at the awarding ceremony, where he strode onstage in a gold sequined gown and looking like a Pretty Woman-era Julia Roberts to accept his translucent trophy.
Die Beautiful wasn’t the only Filipino movie that the TIFF honored, though: Mikhail Red’s sophomore effort Birdshot earned the best film award in the festival’s Asian Future section. In this film, a farm girl accidentally shoots dead an endangered Philippine eagle, prompting the local authorities to start a manhunt that leads them to discover something horrific.
These victories are just the latest the Filipino independent-film community has scored in 2016—already a watershed year for Philippine cinema, thanks, in part, to Lav Diaz, whose Hele sa Hiwagang Hapis (A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery) earned the Silver Bear Alfred Bauer prize at the Berlin International Film Festival in February and Ang Babaeng Humayo (The Woman Who Left) nabbed the Golden Lion trophy for best film at September’s Venice International Film Festival; and Brillante Ma. Mendoza’s, whose Ma’ Rosa scooped for leading lady Jaclyn Jose the best actress award at the Cannes Film Festival in May.
And to digress a little, adding more feathers to the community’s proverbial cap are the nominations the country garnered recently at this year’s Asia Pacific Screen Awards, which will announce its winners in Brisbane, Australia, on November 24. Recognized are best actress nominee Hasmine Killip for her breathtaking turn as an impoverished teenage mother whose baby is kidnapped in Eduardo Roy Jr.’s Cinemalaya best picture winner Pamilya Ordinaryo (Ordinary Family), and best animated feature film finalist Manang Biring, which was the top winner at last year’s Cinema One Originals film festival.
Filipino beauties
The Philippines’ TIFF triumphs came several days after Kylie Verzosa won the Miss International 2016 crown—the sixth time a Filipina has done so—in Tokyo and Nicole Cordoves finished as first runner-up in the 2016 Miss Grand International Pageant in Las Vegas.
The question-and-answer portion of both competitions proved to be crucial for both beauties. Verzosa’s response was, as one might expect, classy and diplomatic, if a bit too prepared: “If I would become Miss International 2016, I will devote myself to cultural understanding and international understanding, because I believe that it is developing in each of us sensitivity to other cultures that we expand our horizons, tolerate difference, and appreciate diversity. All of these enable us to achieve international understanding, and I believe I am prepared to take on this responsibility.”
For her part, Cordoves seemed honest and thoughtful in her reply to the provocative—and, in hindsight, ill-advised—question on which United States candidate for president would she choose to help her stop war and violence: “I would choose Donald Trump to stop the war and violence with me, because if we choose him to switch to our side, there won’t be war and violence anymore.”
Unfortunate as the reception to Cordoves’ answer was, she should take great pride in performing so well in that contest, unlike disgraced former Miss Earth Philippines 2016 Imelda Schweighart, whose recorded postpageant allegations that Miss Earth 2016 Katherine Espin of Ecuador had plastic surgery—which reek of sourgraping, no matter how one looks at it—went viral on social media and gave outraged netizens a prime example of what a beauty contestant should not do.
It’s just, then, that Schweighart did not place at all in the contest. It’s now puzzling to think how she won the Miss Earth Philippines title in the first place.
What lies ahead
Now, after the initial adulation, what’s up next for our winners?
For Die Beautiful, its reported chances of being selected as an official entry to this year’s Metro Manila Film Festival have now increased, especially now that it has a pair of major international prizes it could proudly show off. Similarly, Birdshot stands a greater chance of getting screenings in a local film festival or in special venues, if not a commercial run.
Ballesteros is sure to continue relishing his first-ever acting award, and I hope he gets meatier roles that showcase other facets of his talent. As for Verzosa, she has already started performing her duties as the new Miss International, and if her coronation-night performance is any indication, she should fulfill them brilliantly. Cordoves, meanwhile, will keep on carrying out her responsibilities as Miss Grand International Philippines with the same grace she showed during the pageant.
In a time when ugliness in all its forms make their presence felt whenever we turn on our television sets or open our laptops or mobile devices, or whenever we step ourside our homes, the recent accomplishments of Lana, Ballesteros, Red, Verzosa, and Cordoves abroad remind us that there’s still so much beauty and talent in our country that the world should experience, even when unpleasant events gradually make them harder to see.