Filipina director films adventures of RP teachers in US

By Bayani San Diego Jr.
Inquirer

MANILA, Philippines–Sleep-deprived, Filipino-American filmmaker Ramona Diaz’s mind was swirling with all sorts of “compelling” images: African-American girls dancing and chanting “Pen-pen de Sarapen.” An American school principal and janitress swaying to “Pinoy Ako [I'm Filipino],” the theme of the ABS-CBN reality show “Pinoy Big Brother.” And her film’s Caucasian cinematographer insisting on changing his citizenship to Filipino.

Diaz, whose 2004 documentary “Imelda” won Best Cinematography in the Sundance Film Festival, was in the country for almost a month, to shoot scenes for her latest documentary “The Learning.”

From controversial First Lady Imelda Marcos, Diaz is now training her camera on a group of Filipina schoolteachers who have migrated to Baltimore, Maryland, to teach in inner-city schools.

Diaz, director of photography Gabriel Goodenough and sound man Paul Flinton were in the Philippines for three weeks (from June 19 to July 13) to capture the homecomings of four teachers: Dorotea Godinez of Cebu, Rhea Espedido of Sorsogon, Mary Angel Alim of Antipolo and Grace Amper of Cagayan de Oro.

It was a whirlwind trip not only for the teachers, but for Diaz and her ragtag crew as well.

“It was tiring,” she told the Philippine Daily Inquirer in an interview a week before her flight back to Baltimore on Friday.

“From Cagayan we went to Malaybalay, Bukidnon. We spent some time in Bogo, Cebu. Also in Legazpi and Manila.”

Her American crew, however, savored the sights and sounds of the countryside. “They couldn’t believe that, in their short trip, they saw the real Philippines,” Diaz recounted.

Cameraman Goodenough, who had developed a fondness for Pinoy rock songs (like Alamid’s “Your Love”), told Diaz that he wanted to give up his American citizenship to become a Filipino citizen.

“They’d have to build a new building just to accommodate his historic request,” Diaz said, laughing.

She estimated that she had accumulated 759 hours of raw footage for “The Learning,” which is set to premiere in the Sundance film festival in 2008.

Unlike “Imelda,” which involved only one person, “The Learning,” explained Diaz, would be more complex. “It’s an unfolding tale — following multiple story lines.”

She has been shooting the documentary for a year and a half — trailing four teachers from recruitment to their adjustment period in Baltimore and eventual homecoming after a year in the US.

Principal photography has been finished, she reported. “It’s almost in the can. I just have two to three days, to shoot the teachers’ return to the US.”

Then, Diaz said, the hard work would begin — in the editing room.

“Documentaries like this are really fashioned in the editing room. Editing can make or break a film. Docus need to be nurtured in post-production.”

In the editing room, she’s hands-on, she owned up. “I do the choosing [of scenes] because these are mostly in Tagalog and my editor, Kim Roberts, is an American. If Kim would watch everything that I shot, it would take her six months!”

She compared editing this docu to solving a “puzzle.”

Although she admitted that she was fixated on sleeping at the time of the interview, it was obvious that she was also making a mental list of “compelling” scenes as she gabbed with teachers Espedido and Alim at the Unitel office in Makati.

(Tony Gloria of Unitel is producing the documentary, which was partly funded by the Sundance Institute and the Center for Asian American Media.)

Diaz related: “Suddenly, I would remember: Ah, yah, we have footage of the principal dancing ‘Pinoy Ako’ [for example] … So I would include that in my list … which is not fixed, by the way. It may still evolve.”

Gloria pointed out that a lesser filmmaker would have quit a long time ago.

“She’s been shooting for over a year with very little resources,” Gloria said. “Fortunately, she feels strongly about this story. It’s been a journey for Ramona and the teachers.”

So what kept Ramona in this exhausting journey?

“I’m not a quitter. The thing is, something new was happening all the time. By the end, the teachers themselves were calling me about the latest developments,” she noted.

To think that Diaz picked up this project because she had wanted to stay closer to home.

“After traveling constantly with ‘Imelda,’ I got so tired that I wanted to stay put in Baltimore, where I live,” she recalled.

While browsing through the newspaper Baltimore Sun, Diaz found out about the first batch of Filipino teachers who moved to Maryland in 2005.

That was the seed of “The Learning.”

“But I wanted to focus on the second batch of teachers, so I could follow them as they adjust in their new life in the US,” she recounted.

In the process, the teachers became close friends of Ramona’s.

“I know things about them that not even their own families know,” she quipped.

When Fe Bolado, one of the teachers featured in the documentary, committed suicide last May, it felt like a major blow for Diaz.

“It was traumatic. It affected the whole Filipino teachers’ community,” Diaz remembered. “There were lots of memorials and prayer groups.”

Diaz also had to help the teachers cope with the nitty-gritty. “I had to find lawyers and take care of the insurance. Fe’s roommates had to find a new apartment. The body had to be moved from the morgue and shipped back to the country.”

It was draining.

She shared the highs and lows, the joys and tears of the teachers’ “unfolding lives.”

She felt for Amper when the teacher came home and her own two-year-old son did not recognize her.

She experienced Alim’s thrill when the teacher watched her African-American students perform the “pandango sa ilaw” dance and “Pinoy Ako.”

Diaz related: “In the beginning, most of these kids didn’t even know where the Philippines is. It’s good for these marginalized students to get acquainted with a different culture through their teachers. It widens their horizons.”

Diaz, however, did not gloss over the migration’s possible negative effect on the Philippine school system.

“The good teachers are leaving. Filipino children are not getting the benefits of being taught by veteran teachers. But, we can’t really blame them. A lot of these teachers told me that if only they were paid enough here, they’d never leave.”

Diaz pointed out that, as of the Fall of 2006, there were 400 Filipino teachers in Baltimore City.

“A school supervisor was quoted in the documentary, saying that the US is getting the crème de la crème,” said Gloria. “The students are charmed by Filipino teachers because they’re so motherly.”

In one scene, Godinez was grilling an African-American student who got pregnant, as if the teener were her own daughter.

“Some of these kids have no parents to go home to,” said Diaz.

“We have a no-touch policy in school,” Espedido said.

“But it’s the kids themselves who embrace us first,” Alim said.

“The kids’ faces brighten up when they hug their teachers,” said Diaz.

Initially, the teachers encountered resistance. Espedido and Alim recalled that they had to grapple with culture shock.

“I had to send a kid to the principal’s office and he was just on his first grade,” Espedido said.

“I had to remind the kids not to break the glasses in pandango sa ilaw,” Alim looked back. “They found it strange that candles are used in dancing because they only light candles for the dead.”

Espedido and Alim remarked that their students had described Filipino food as “nasty.”

Alim related: “I brought them to a Philippine festival and treated them to halo-halo. At first, they said it was weird but they finished off the entire glass.”

Diaz said: “You have to be tough. It’s a hard population to teach. But at the end of the day, you’ll realize that they are just children.”

Although Diaz was the first to admit that the documentary was a challenging shoot, she would gladly relive the process of telling these teachers’ stories all over again.

“In a way, it’s an homage to the teaching profession,” she explained. “This docu is a snapshot of our time. The theme is very universal. Filipinos are not the only ones flocking to the US, thinking it’s a land of milk and honey … only to discover it’s not always milk and honey.”

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