The opportunity to own a physical copy of your favorite Filipino film is a luxury neither afforded to the audience nor the filmmakers. Gone are the days when you can rent out your favorite DVD at Video City or buy them in bulk during a sale at Odyssey, with more production companies and independent producers handing over their work to streaming platforms. But while this has led to immense availability, recent mergers and the restructuring of these platforms put many works at risk of erasure, disappearing permanently once removed from the online sphere if not completely ignored in an already saturated market.
‘
Physical media has experienced an international resurgence in the last few years due to the ephemeral nature of streaming. However, Blu-ray releases and restorations — 4K and otherwise — are often reserved for popular, canon-defining work such as Lino Brocka’s work “Bayan Ko,” “Insiang,” and “Maynila sa Kuko ng Liwanag,” with the latter two restored by The Film Foundation. So when a film programmer from Bristol emailed me that one of my favorite contemporary Filipino films — Dwein Baltazar’s “Oda sa Wala” — was being released on Blu-ray in North America, I was delighted.
‘
The home video label and distributor behind the effort, Kani Releasing, was created by Fantasia International Film Festival programmer Ariel Esteban Cayer and Good Move Media sales and acquisitions manager Pearl Chan due to shared worries about the current landscape and shared hopes of (re)introducing Asian films to the West.
‘ ’30’: ‘image’: ‘jcr:e5a8a6e5-302d-4f51-aac4-68dc9fb030e1’ ‘imageCaption’: ‘Kani Releasing’s Pearl Chan and Ariel Esteban Cayer. Photo
‘
“It’s been a frustration of mine because Southeast Asian films are, generally speaking, deprioritized when put next to East Asian films, partially because of the funding structure of exhibitors and festivals,” says Chan. Southeast Asian titles are left to compete for one to two remaining slots at film festivals while Japanese, Korean, and Hong Kong films take up most of the slots, in part due to economic and trade agreements that fund festivals.
‘
So when OCN Distribution, the sister company of cult film preservation and distribution company Vinegar Syndrome, was looking for partners, Cayer and Chan took the leap, becoming one of the only labels releasing Asian films for North American audiences based in Asia. “Within the community itself of Blu-ray producers, we’re often the only people of color around. It’s very dominated by people who’ve told us who matters to us for a long time,” says Chan. “I’m really interested in getting Asian and Asian Americans to realize that if you’re looking for representation, it’s there.”
‘
Acquiring “Oda sa Wala” was a natural progression for the label after Cayer programmed it at the Fantasia in 2019. Cayer was looking for films that straddled multiple lines, created by filmmakers with unique voices. “It’s a very personal film but it’s very artful and deliberate. But also, there’s also this subterranean current of horror,” says Cayer. “It felt like perfectly emblematic of what we’re trying to do.” To give the film a new face that audiences will gravitate to, Baltazar picked artist Costantino Zicarelli to create new artwork for a spot gloss slipcover.
‘
Since its launch in December 2021, Kani Releasing has distributed nine titles that hit a variety of sensibilities — from Tadashi Nagayama’s eccentric pastoral comedy “Being Natural” to Daisuke Miyazaki’s tech-thriller “Videophobia” to Yeo Joon Han’s musical satire “Sell Out!” Each hybrid note surprises, with beloved films that have held local attention such as “Oda” but haven’t had the same opportunities to be distributed internationally, with the entire slate curated with the same logic. “We’re looking for films that feel local to wherever they’re from,” says Cayer. “They have an X factor about them where they feel ripe for rediscovery.”
‘ ’28’: ‘image’: ‘jcr:57c2db5b-4931-4f47-8ee1-8234bb801269’ ‘imageCaption’: ‘A scene from Dwein Baltazar’s “Oda sa Wala.” Photo courtesy
‘
But beyond placing a spotlight on newer filmmakers, Cayer and Chan are taking the opportunity to dive into older films, repertory films, and restorations in the hopes of giving these films a second life. Two titles by Masashi Yamamoto, “Robinson’s Garden” and “What’s Up Connection,” had only been available via an out-of-print DVD released in the US 15 years ago and a VHS/DVD copy exclusive to Japan, respectively. But now, Kani Releasing has invested not only in releasing it in Blu-ray format but also in theaters in the US. “We’re not hitting ‘Avatar’ numbers. But there’s a sense that the movie exists again,” says Cayer. “I don’t think streaming alone can do that. There’s something about an object that commands attention.”
‘
Such rediscoveries are much easier now considering concerted efforts and investments towards film restoration and increasing international attention on Filipino cinema. But hurdles still exist. “Whenever you talk about this labor-intensive work, you’re ultimately going to be talking about cheap labor, which is not transparent,” says Chan. While the price of scanning films and getting them back into circulation is falling thanks to technology, much of it remains a barrier to restoration and distribution, especially for labels without the same capacities. “Something I constantly think about [is] who is doing the work? Who is behind the computer scrubbing scratches so you can have a better viewing experience that you can complain about? It’s all human labor.”
‘
Such external factors create limitations in what can be restored resulting in complexities in what should be prioritized in terms of curation. “The problem with the way we [as a society] have been doing restoration is that people are calling the shots of what is worth restoring,” says Chan. “Of course, you’re gonna restore some filmmaker you value versus the bomba films.”
‘
‘
‘ ’29’: ‘image’: ‘jcr:bc5d34a1-8d66-4859-bcff-b0e14bf223f2’ ‘imageCaption’: ‘The art for the special limited edition Blu-Ray slipcover of
Case in point: ABS-CBN discovered a print of “Cain at Abel” — one of Brocka’s widely known but less venerated works. Given the amount of warping from time and climate, “Cain at Abel” was in an advanced deterioration that required more money to arrive at a restoration standard similar to that of the Library of Congress. “We don’t necessarily have tons of money to sink to [go] all-in on restorations,” says Cayer. “But in taking that risk, we’ve discovered that the appetite for rediscovering films supersedes the criteria of a perfect restoration.”
‘
Crucial to reintroductions are the extras. “Personally, my favorite part is putting the booklet together, commissioning new writing, or assembling existing writing,” says Cayer. “In a way, it gives the film this cushion of context.” Given the sociopolitical weight of Brocka’s critique of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr., Kani Releasing took care to provide audiences with starting points to understand the milieu in which it was created: including archival materials and notes from the film’s screenwriter, National Artist Ricky Lee, a video essay and additional writing by “Martial Law Melodrama” author José Capino, and interviews with its stars Carmi Martin and Christopher de Leon.
‘
While Kani Releasing isn’t solely focused on distributing Filipino films, they have recently signed another deal with ABS-CBN to acquire more titles, including Lupita Aquino-Kashiwahara’s “Minsa’y Isang Gamu-Gamo” (Once A Moth) starring Nora Aunor, a film that swept at the 1977 FAMAS Awards and was recently digitally restored and remastered through the Sagip Pelikula program. “A lot of things are lost and not even deemed lost,” says Cayer. “The truth is we’re okay with this modest following. We’re working the long game this way. We’re hoping we create an object that will survive some amount of time, that will end up in video stores somewhere.”
‘
