Module 1- Lesther Papa

Summary and Reaction to “Nailed” and “Bontoc Eulogy”


The first film we watched “Nailed” was a kind of timeline of the history of the Philippines captured on film. Some of the different parts put on the timeline were things like the Spanish rule, the US staying in Philippines, and Imelda and former president Ferdinand Marcos. Throughout the film excerpts from the bible and maybe other biblical texts were inserted and were read by some lady. There also were sections of a documentary of a woman named Lucy who crucified herself every year that was inserted into the film (other religious activities, such as people beating their backs even though they were bleeding and raw, were included).
Overall I thought this kind of layout for a film was quite confusing at first. I didn’t understand why the filmmakers would mix all these different things together. It didn’t seem coherent and I felt like I was watching something that was quite sloppily made because the timeline and the other things inserted into the film seemed so randomly placed.
Then I began to really think of why the filmmakers would layout the film the way they did. After a while of pondering I came to the conclusion that religion was occurring throughout the history of the Philippines and that’s why the filmmakers made the film the way they did. Inserting the religious excerpts and the documentary of Lucy into the timeline of the Philippines represents this idea perfectly. So the excerpts and the documentary weren’t random like I originally thought, but were actually inserted there on purpose therefore adding different kind of structure to the entire film.
After figuring this out, I found that my appreciation for the film had increased. I understood the message behind the film and that’s what I appreciated because I finally saw how important the influence of religion, especially Christian religion, is to the Filipinos as a culture and even as a nation.
The second film “Bontoc Eulogy” was about the native peoples of the Philippines, the Igorot. There were various kinds of Igorot but the focus of the film was on the Bontoc. These people were tribal and lived in villages. They also did everything the old way, like hunting, foraging, and maybe farming. Later the white men came and took some the Bontoc with them to St. Louis so that they could make a village as a display for part the World’s Fair. A few of the Bontoc froze to death on the way but the ones that did survive made a village that was quite similar to the ones back in the Philippines. Later more and more Igorot people were brought to St. Louis to make villages so more people could see the different types of Native Filipino. Finally the Bontoc asked the workers of the World’s Fair if they could have a recording machine so they could tell their story from their perspective.
The first thing that shocked me about this video clip was the way the Igorots were portrayed in the film, it was nothing like the way my parents had said they were like. My parents and most of my family members treat the Igorot people like they are some dumb savages that live up in the mountains and are always the punch line of some joke. But in the movie they were portrayed and tribal but they weren’t savages and they seemed to have a decently structured civilization. So I had no idea where my family got this preconceived notion that the Igorot people were savage or worthy of being punch lines for jokes.
The second thing that shocked me about the film was that these indigenous people were being taken away from their homes to make displays for people to gawk at all the way in St. Louis! I had absolutely no idea this kind of event ever took place. I totally blew my mind once I heard the amount of Igorot people that were imported to become displays at the World’s Fair; over a thousand Igorot people were taken from the Philippines.
This made me think about when the first Filipinos came to America. I always thought that the first Filipinos to come to America were the sugar cane workers that came to Hawaii looking for a better life and a way to send some money back home. But now I have to think about that differently. The Igorots came to America before any of the sugar cane workers did; so they technically were the first Filipinos that came to America.
This in turn made me wonder what happened to the Igorot people after the World’s Fair in St. Louis. Were the Igorots sent back to where they came from? Or did they have to stay here in America? The film kind of ended with one of the Bontoc people recording their story about what happened to them. But I found it a bit ironic that the film didn’t show what happened to the Igorot people after the fair (unless it was actually shown but I just forgot).