Award-winning Pinoy filmmaker: Being an OFW changes how you look at things

Riyadh-based Filipino filmmaker Christopher Gozum, whose “Anacbuana” film won an international award, said being an overseas Filipino worker (OFW) gave him a different perspective of things. Gozum won the Prix des Signes award in the Cinema in Transgression section of the 10th International Festival Signes de Nuit in Paris last October. “Being away from our country has given me a sharper and more objective view of things back home,” said the 35-year-old Pangasinan native who works as a medical videographer and video editor in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Gozum’s diaspora experience fueled “Anacbanua” (or “Child of the Sun”), the first film in the Pangasinan language. Narrated through visuals and poetry or “anlong,” the film follows a Western-educated poet as he goes back to his hometown. “My initial objective when I was writing the concept of ‘Anacbanua’ was to make a film that would become a vehicle to show the contemporary poetry of the province,” the two-time Palanca awardee told GMA News Online. He didn’t expect the film to get so much attention, but in the last three years, “Anacbanua” has made the rounds of numerous film festivals all over the world, including the:

• 16th Filipino-American Cine Festival in San Francisco in 2009,
• 8th Edition flEXiff in Sydney in 2010,
• 12th Mumbai Film Festival in India in 2010,
• 8th World Film Festival of Bangkok in 2010,
• 11th Jeonju International Film Festival in South Korea in 2010,
• 8th Edition Chennai International Film Festival in India in 2010, and
• 1st Anemic Festival of Independent Film & New Media Art in Prague in 2010.

Locally, “Anacbanua” won the Digital Lokal Lino Brocka Grand Prize and Best Director Award at the 11th Cinemanila International Film Festival in 2009, and has been nominated for Best Cinematography and Best Screenplay at the 33rd Urian Awards in 2010. The movie has also been shown at the UP Film Institute, the Alexis Tioseco-Nika Bohinc Film Series, Cinemalaya, and a few universities in Pangasinan. “Anacbanua” brings together Gozum’s passion for poetry and his skill in filmmaking (he has a film degree from UP Diliman as well as a diploma from South Korea’s Asian Film Academy). A playwright and a poet, Gozum chose cinema as a vehicle for his advocacy because of its accessibility. “I think the cinema has the capacity to reach as many people of diverse backgrounds. Creating the awareness among Pangasinenses on the importance of conserving their linguistic heritage is best done through cinema,” he said. Working to finance his passion Wanting to create independent digital films about Pangasinan is what drove Gozum to seek employment abroad. During the day, he works as a videographer for an eye hospital; at night he plans, writes his scripts, and coordinates with Philippine-based collaborators via the Internet for digital projects made through his own film production company, Sine Caboloan. Shoots are done during weekends or when comes home to Pangasinan for his annual vacation. “Anacbanua” was produced with his own money, funded partly by the cash prize he got for the experimental short film “Surreal Random MMS,” an Ishmael Bernal award winner at the 2008 Cinemanila. Even though he’s away from the country, Gozum continues to produce Pangasinan films that he hopes will inspire other ethno-linguistic communities in the Philippines like the Hiligaynons or the Bikolanos to tell their own stories, in their own language, through the cinema. Gozum has just finished working on “Lawas Kan Pinabli” (or “Forever Loved”), a three-hour experimental documentary about Filipino migrant workers in the Middle East. Funded by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, the film premiered this year at the Cinemanila and was brought to the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco and the Edinburgh International Film Festival in the United Kingdom. Gozum is working on a documentary on the Pangasinan and Ibaloi communities near the Agno River and how their lives are affected by floods, mining, and modern developments. Another project that is in the works is “Luyag ‘Da’ra’y Anino” (or “A Kingdom of Shadows”), which follows the life of a middle-aged migrant Filipina, a shepherdess in a remote Middle Eastern village, who has been unable to come home for 21 years. Gozum said these projects will start shooting once he gets funding for them. For a diaspora filmmaker like Gozum, one can never be too far away from home. - VVP, GMA News