The film’s working title is Huling Baylan ng Buhi (The Last Priestess of Buhi). It is about the conflicts faced by an ethnic family in the 80s in their attempts to keep the tribe’s tradition, which is threatened with extinction by outside influences.
By Cheryll D. Fiel
davaotoday.com
DAVAO CITY A young Davaoeo filmmaker will join the “2nd Annual Cinema One Originals,” with his first ever full-length venture based on a story of the indigenous Mandaya people in the region.
Sherad Anthony Sanchez, the 21-year-old Davaoeo who will direct the film, said the project will not only showcase Davaoeo talent but culture as well.
The film’s working title is Huling Baylan ng Buhi (The Last Priestess of Buhi). It is about the conflicts faced by an ethnic family in the 80s in their attempts to keep the tribe’s tradition, which is threatened with extinction by outside influences.
The story revolves around the character Idang, a baylan (the tribe’s priestess, also known as babaylan in other parts of the Philippines), burdened with keeping the tribe together.
Idang’s responsibility in the tribe is quite immense as even the tribal leader has also become so dependent on her as he himself is busy with the emergent affairs of the tribe, such as fighting those who would want to take away their ancestral land and helping out communist rebels in hiding.
Worried over the fast conversion of their tribesmen to Christianity, Idang would perform miracles as a way of “showing off the mystical forces of their tribe in an attempt to scare away and repulse the converters.
Even a local Catholic priest, who comes to the area not to convert but to help, is not spared. He would encounter Idang in fits of burning holy relics.
But an ailment befalls the baylan one day, a stigmata, and her family is then faced with the conflict of “whether to keep the miracle a secret in an attempt to keep the tribe out of doubting their heritage, culture and religion; or reveal it to others and let things be.”
Sanchez said they would collaborate with a Davao-based digital film and television production outfit, Alchemy of Vision and Light Productions, which has been advocating development and promotion of Mindanao films through several projects on so-called guerilla filmmaking.
Production is slated in mid-July and August.
Although he has been given a grant as a budget, Sanchez said they still need some almost two million pesos more to finance the project.
The final output will be shown in all SM cinemas nationwide in October 2006 and will be released on cable television through the Cinema One channel. (Cheryll D. Fiel/davaotoday.com)
Indigenous Peoples
