'And So It Begins' documentary on Filipinos' bravery headlines LA filmfest | TFC News California
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In discussing And So It Begins, the documentary she stars in, 2021 Nobel Peace Prize awardee Maria Ressa laughingly recalls that she did not quite agree with one storytelling decision that award-winning filmmaker Ramona Diaz made for the film.
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I would see you brave and you do that here too, but you know, seeing your vulnerability too, did you hesitate at all in putting that on screen?
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Yes, a lot. I got mad at Ramona. I was like, stop showing me angry. I spent my entire career learning to squash my anger, right? And then she only shows me when I'm angry in this film.
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That's not true. Not only when you're angry, that's not true.
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Oh, and then getting surprised by the Nobel.
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She zooms in only on these moments. Like, oh, my calmness is gone in this film.
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Our problem is that emotion is vulnerability. That is vulnerability for a journalist. That will be attacked. The best part is it's not about Rappler or me.
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Ressa has a good reason to be concerned. As someone who advocates for truth in journalism, for many years, she endured being the target of hate by vicious online trolls,
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focused on people who report on former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte.
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Among other things, and so it begins, chronicles the effects of his presidency.
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But in the end, Ressa says that what the film provides in terms of information and insight is more important,
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especially in light of appalling efforts to dismantle press freedom and influence elections in countries like the Philippines.
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What measures can be done to correct it?
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I've spent most of the last two years working on policy.
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Really, outside the country.
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Really, outside the country.
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Really, outside the country.
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Outside the Philippines. You know, I no longer have an editorial role in Rappler.
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In order to solve our problems in the Philippines, we have to go outside the Philippines.
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We have to make sure that these tech companies are not exploiting us.
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Content moderators are Filipinos, right? The largest, the two largest for Facebook were in Warsaw and Manila.
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That's the first. We clean up their tech, but it's designed in Silicon Valley.
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It exploits us. We clean it up, and then it goes back out to the world.
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But the biases of the tech are against brown people, black people, because that's the way it's coded.
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So we have to stop being consumers, users of this tech that now includes TikTok.
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You know how that's even worse manipulation.
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And we have to move into the real world and become citizens because we will lose.
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And so it begins, continues the story started by Diaz in 2020's Peabody winning documentary, A Thousand Cuts.
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The film highlights the hope, heartbreak, bravery, and challenges faced by Filipinos during the 2022 presidential elections between Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Lenny Robredo.
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What was it like capturing that on film?
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It was overwhelming to capture it, and we captured a lot. So even the putting it together was also overwhelming.
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VP Lenny always says she didn't know, they didn't know whether it would be a lonely campaign.
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They thought it would be a lonely campaign, and then people just started.
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They just started showing up in numbers. And you can see this is an end to something or just the beginning.
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And that's why we also called it, And So It Begins. We wanted to lean in on the hope.
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Did the Marcoses have any reaction to the making of this film?
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Not yet. But we were, I wasn't allowed to film any of the rallies, right? I'd welcome their reaction.
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And so it begins premiered at Sundance earlier this year,
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And so it begins premiered at Sundance earlier this year,
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It will be one of the top-billed offerings at the 40th VC Film Fest.
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The Los Angeles-based film festival highlights stories from diverse filmmakers and communities.
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Apart from Filipinos resisting oppression and fighting for what they believe would be for the betterment of the Philippines,
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Reza and former Philippine Vice President Lenny Robredo are front and center in the movie.
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The feature-length documentary was originally conceived as an episode for the award-winning PBS documentary series Frontline
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which also released a thousand cuts.
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And so it begins, screens at the VC Film Fest in Los Angeles on May 2 as part of its Democracy series
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which shows urgent and substantial stories from different nations.
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Yong Chavez, ABS-CBN News, here in Hollywood.
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Thank you for watching!
