ANGELES CITY – Two upcoming Kapampangan filmmakers are slowly but surely gaining national prominence with their excellent works using the vernacular as medium in their movies.
Bor Ocampo, 35, and Jason Paul Laxamana, 26, both proponents of the Kapampangan language as medium in their movies, have significantly gained national and even international prominence with their respective achievements in the alternative, independent film industry.
Both Ocampo and Laxamana said they want to portray “the Kapampangan experience” in their films which have been cited in important international film festivals abroad as well as recognized in prestigious national film competitions in Manila.
The two upcoming film makers, who were guests in Friday’s media forum dubbed: “Batirulan qng Café Juan” at the Holy Angel University here organized by the Capampangan in Media, Inc. (CAMI) and the HAU Kapampangan Center in cooperation with the Clark Development Corp. and the Social Security System, also said they want to develop the Kapampangan film industry as part of their legacy.
Laxamana, who has just fi nished directing the movie Magkakabaung (The Coffin Maker), was cited in the film Babagwa (The Spider’s Lair) in the 29th Warsaw International Film Festival last year and became a finalist in the New Breed category of the Philippines’ most prestigious independent fi lm festival – Cinemalaya 2013.
Babagwa is the story of an internet scammer who falls in love with a wealthy old maid while trying to swindle her using a fake Facebook profile. Ocampo, who is currently in the production of Dayang Asu (Blood of a Dog), won Best Actor in the 2013 Metro Manila Film Festival for his performance in the Kapampangan film Dukit.
He has also directed a number of short films. Ocampo is also the founder of the Film Academy of Pampanga. Robby Tantingco, director of the HAU Kapampangan Center, observed that the Philippines has already recognized a lot of Kapampangan filmmakers.
“But even if we had Kapampangans in the film industry early on… because of our proximity to Manila, they use the Tagalog language as their medium,” Tantingco said. “So our Kapampangan film industry was stunted…they were just there,” he added.
Tantingco recalled that in the 1930s, a group of Kapampangans in this city attempted to produce movies but the movie they produced also catered to the people in Manila so it was in Tagalog. “It’s only now that we have Kapampangans using our language as medium,” he noted while lamenting that in Cebu they have the Visayan Film Industry which not only produced relevant but also high budgeted films.
We have outstanding Kapampangan movie directors Brillante Mendoza, Elwood Perez and Lupita Concio, who directed the award winning and critically-acclaimed Minsan May Isang Gamu-gamo. Perez was a consistent box office director in the 1980s and 1990s.
Kapampangan as medium in movies was started by Mendoza who was the first Filipino to win Best Director in the prestigious Cannes Film Festival. But Tantingco said Ocampo and Laxamana “are the young breed that have really pushed the envelope forward.”
