Opinions
Disturbing Films, Disturbing World
Reality hits you hard between the eyes when you watch Philippine indie films. They depict life as raw as it can get, not the life I choose to see—or the life within the four corners of the organized church.
Evil is out there; it is around us. No matter how we delude ourselves into believing there is innate good in people, there is, even more so, innate bad in people.
After The Fall in that idyllic garden, man’s nature has been—to use an overused phrase—between the devil and the deep blue sea.
At the Cinemalaya Festival, this beastly nature is dramatized, and this is what I make time to watch once a year. As an author, I can’t sterilize nor sensitize myself from the fallen world, where I write about grace.
Cinemalaya 2015, for one whole day (from 10 Am to 11 PM), offered me and my friends one full-length film, 21 shorts (all gritty), and two documentaries.
In this dark world where Jesus was born into, He offered light through His life, death, and resurrection.
The themes of all 24 well-crafted films revolved around homosexuality, idolatry, mental illness, theft, treachery, assassination, and drug addiction, most of them ending sadly ever after. To my relief, the full-length film, ended on a hopeful note and the two documentaries inspired:
Titser (Mukha): A Biology graduate from a prestigious university, who was set to become a doctor, decides instead to be a public school teacher in a depressed area.
The Boy Who Cried Books: A young man, with bipolar disorder, sells books on the sidewalk to earn for a college education. This one particularly touched me because the main character’s wares were books, the center of my working life today.
In our world—painted powerfully by the Indies—the good news of the gospel is the only hope. Christian authors and Bible-believing Christians need to share this hope in joint and distinct voices to be heard.
Lord, help us to find our voices and make it heard in this disturbed and disturbing world. Amen.
