From the Metro to the Mountains: Habi in Bontoc
We took the leap of faith -- uprooting ourselves from our comfort zone in the Greater Manila Area to become resident documentarists of Bontoc, Mountain Province -- just this 2016. Two full years after releasing our first full-length documentary film "Walang Rape sa Bontok" ('Bontok, Rapeless' in the international circuit).
And it's one of the most nerve-wracking yet strangely fulfilling decisions we have ever made. The following is a litany of things you need to know before you continue reading from this blogsite.
First: why. Why move. Why Bontoc.
For a backgrounder, our vision as a media company has been largely shaped by events that ALL happened in the Gran Cordilleras: Lester and I officially becoming a couple in a Batad shoot; videographing our first non-voiceover documentary in Mt. Pulag; completing the Lagawe-Tinoc-Lagawe mountain bike loop; Lester's first tentative steps as a videographer in Lubuagan and Tinglayan; being part of the four-headed prod team for the last shoot leg of "The Woman Behind The Tattoo Artist" in Buscalan and getting inked by Ina Whang-od herself, by her own gentle prodding. Of course, finally, the life-changing five-month immersion and research about the old Bontok generation's rapeless society.
All those added up to our re-education and further Filipinization of our world view.
But we've lived relatively charmed lives before.
Here in Bontoc, by choice, we're left to our own devices: no more instant rescue from ze parents and sibs, nor belly-rubathons with our home dogs and felines. No more well-stocked city markets that run the gamut from oysters to labandera dresses, nor 24-hour convenience store franchises. No more elevators, escalators, beer-below-zero, nor midnight food trips somewhere in seedy Alabang or urine-soaked Quezon City. Thinly-sliced pork chop is a rarity here. Poetry jams and the cinema experience, even rarer.
But by the mountain's grace, we are humbled: we have fresh air, fresh leafies (Watercress and other greens that are organically grown), and DIY jobs have been saving us so far. We have clement mountain trails, well-nourished waterfalls and rice terraces. RICE TERRACES. Salted meat. Great basi and tapey. Shops selling pasiking and a bright red wanes or a green tapis. And an exciting infancy stage for the "fine arts" in the vicinity. For cinema. Central Cordilleran cinema.
No bag-slashers.
We do our own laundry, cook our own food, fix our own machines, compute our own finances, pay our own bills, the non-glamorous greasy stuff, all while tending to a start-up multimedia studio tucked five hours away from mainstream Cordillera. And then suffering anxiety attacks due to crying neighborhood dogs and our still-nonexistent second documentary. And then realizing again that we have clement mountain trails, well-nourished waterfalls and rice terraces. And good neighborhood yogurt. And genuinely good neighbors.
AND NO GODDAMN EDSA/C5 TRAFFIC.
We're not saying we've found nirvana. But Bontoc has sent us kneeling down to our once-proud, balut-fed knees and transforming into our most basic, most grateful, most inspired selves.
In this blog, we're giving you a glimpse of how it is to be slapped silly by fate and then re-calibrated by the indigene example. We're giving you a glimpse of how it is to be a start-up media company composed of cultural half-bloods.
Consider this a tribute to the people and town that rebirthed our identity. Bontoc is currently being pushed and pulled by the old and the new, but perhaps, we have been placed here by fate just in time, to learn from the ways of the Bontok Igorot, and to let us record their fleeting stories. One frame at a time, with somewhat a Bontoc and/or Bontok state of mind.
Welcome to the reborn Habi Collective blog.
