Cinema is always mutating. From screening images through shadow play in the 19th century to the flux of contemporary digital images in movie theaters, television, and now, online. The silver screen pulsates.
This is true of the grassroots filmmaking movements in the Philippine regions. Their production guerilla-like, with people wearing multiple hats, screening in alternative spaces, where cinema transcends the screen and evolves into a shared communal experience.
At the heart of the Visayan regions is one film festival that’s been doing just that for 13 years and counting: the Binisaya Film Festival. Founded by Keith Deligero and friends in 2009, it started as an outdoor screening of their own films. But what started as Deligero and friends’ fun communal way of screening films grew into a movement, with incorporators and collaborators at the helm and with an NCCA grant in 2012, three years after its founding. It has also become a looking glass of the ever-mutating subcultural landscapes of Cebu and its pioneers: “Di lang siya naga document sa kana nga year kung kinsa ang rising sa Cebu, but also in the techniques and technologies nga gigamit sa salida,” shared Deligero in a 2019 video posted on Facebook.
‘ ‘2’: ‘image’: ‘jcr:024389b0-ed72-4bd2-a788-f6a9fd53a8e5’ ‘imageCaption’: ‘Binisaya Film Festival started in 2009 in Cebu City, founded by Keith Deligero with incorporators Darcy Arguedo, Idden de los Reyes, and Remton Zuasola. In photo: A Binisaya outdoor screening in 2017. Photo courtesy
In 2015, when things got pretty serious and Binisaya started receiving hundreds of film submissions from all over the regions, Deligero enlisted the help of Binisaya incorporators Idden De Los Reyes, Darcy Arguedo, and Remton Zuasola to huddle and select submissions that would be accepted as official entries to the festival. From there, the Binisaya Movement spread like wildfire among filmmaking and art circles, opening doors for Bisaya stories and being a conduit for Cebuano storytelling.
Fast forward 13 years and it’s now at par with some of the oldest existing regional film festivals like the 26-year-strong Mindanao Film Festival or the Bantayan Film Festival in Guimbal, Iloilo, in becoming a gateway to access regional films.
‘ ‘6’: ‘image’: ‘jcr:4b4dcdd3-81ac-497d-be50-3edde5c13ddf’ ‘imageCaption’: ‘Binisaya 2011 class picture with filmmakers from Visayas and
True to Binisaya’s core is freedom, community, and an impassioned zeal for filmmaking. “Freedom powered by a strong community of critical thinking and film-making audience,” Deligero affirms. You feel it when you attend a screening, cramped in alternative venues, in basketball courts, AVRs of public schools, existing alongside other mediums of art. You feel it when you attend the festival and see its volunteers. This sense of freedom and community is what made the Binisaya Movement grow into what it is now. Its fuel has always been the partnerships it has fostered, not only within Cebu City but from other regions as well.
“Volunteerism has been the heart of Binisaya since day one, and that includes me as a volunteer,” Deligero proudly says, remembering his own challenges as the festival programmer for 13 years now. He recalls: “While I was up in the mountains of Cebu shooting [Cinema One Original Best Picture] ‘Lily’ (2016), I was remotely troubleshooting Binisaya challenges at the same time.”
“Volunteerism has been the heart of Binisaya since day one…”
This freedom, the untethered nature that makes Binisaya unique among regional film festivals, comes with its challenges. Deligero shares that even though they meet new people and see new stories every year, only a few continue making films especially during the pandemic when, according to Deligero, filmmaking was rendered “non-essential.”
“Independence is a struggle, but Binisaya has enjoyed its freedom for 13 years because it was never dependent on the traditional benchmarks of success established by an industry or an institution. It was never the intention of Binisaya to be part of any industry. Binisaya started with nothing and nothing will stop it from existing.”
‘ ’15’: ‘image’: ‘jcr:8a1954c7-e601-4dec-a132-ecf6ca07c17c’ ‘imageCaption’: ‘The poster for Binisaya 2023, the 13th edition of the festival.
In 2023, Binisaya Film Festival still continues to inform a new wave of Cebuano independent filmmakers, tastemakers, and volunteers. Binisaya’s partnership with other independent organizations and artists through the years remains strong. “For every year of Binisaya, there’s a different organization who’s hosting and who’s at the helm as Festival Director,” Deligero explains. For this year, Binisaya screenings were hosted by UP Cebu Lawak Sinehan, with student volunteers from UP Cebu and the University of San Carlos.
It’s become a film festival that film-adjacent volunteers want to volunteer in and a festival that filmmakers from Visayas and Mindanao want to screen in because when you premiere or screen in Binisaya, chances are you’re going places.
This is true for the first Binisaya 2012 Shorts Competition winner, “Katapusang Labok (Last Strike)” by Aiess Alonso — a film about fisherfolk in North Cebu who are suffering from human-induced environmental impact and the religious superstitions that they employ to survive, which competed in the Short Film Corner of Cannes Film Festival the following year.
’37’: ‘image’: ‘jcr:562f14d2-aa22-4556-bea0-b78ff0d1c07c’ ‘imageCaption’: ‘”Cleaners” (2022) by Glenn Barit was the opening film of the 13th edition of Binisaya last September 10,2023 at UP Cebu Lawak Sinehan.
Recent Binisaya alumni have had their share of successes too, with Deligero and wife Gale Osorio co-producing their stories under their production house, Archipelago, and taking them to premiere or screen at prestigious film festivals worldwide. There’s Maria Estela Paiso’s “It’s Raining Frogs Outside,” QCinema 2021 Winner for the Gender Sensitivity Award, and whose round of international screening has received nominations from Singapore International Film Festival (SGIFF), Berlin International Film Festival, and Jogja-NETPAC Asian Festival, among others. There’s also Gabriela Serrano’s “Please Bear With Me,” currently making the international pitch rounds, from SGIFF to the Festival Du Nouveau Cinema in Montreal.
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For this year’s 13th edition of Binisaya, Whammy Alcazaren’s “Bold Eagle” won in the Binisaya World category, while Iloilo filmmaker Kevin Piamonte’s strong depiction of Leoncio P. Deriada’s “Dog Eaters” was met with acclaim and won in the Binisaya Horizons category. “Dog Eaters” by Piamonte went to compete at the Nabunturan Independent Film Exhibition after, where female lead Sunshine Teodoro was nominated as Best Actress.
A special Jury Award was given to Dianna Velasquez’s riveting documentary entitled “Arise” which follows a man who recycles discarded restaurant food found in dump sites and turns it into new food, creating a livelihood out of it.
“In the peripheries, where storytelling thrives, the Binisaya Film Festival emerges as a testament to the resilience and ingenuity of regional filmmakers.”
Among it all is the witty winner of the Shorts category, Cebu-based filmmaker Rhed Honoridez’s “Sa Dihang Nabulabog Ang Tanan” which Deligero said won “for its campy, charming, and earnest depiction of a filmmaking and sexual awakening gone wrong through a Cebuano-style meta-cinema lens.”
In the peripheries, where storytelling thrives, the Binisaya Film Festival emerges as a testament to the resilience and ingenuity of regional filmmakers. Its existence chronicles the ebb and flow of techniques and technologies of the [filmmaking] time, offering insight of Cebu — and the regions’ — cinematic evolution.
And in an ideal world, these collective efforts of regional filmmakers and producers should result in a more nuanced appreciation and understanding of Philippine cinema, an understanding that extends beyond the confines of “the capital” and challenges prevalent notions of what is representative of Philippine cinema on the international stage. Because for what (and for whom) is a national cinema that only speaks from the vantage point of political and economic power?
