MANILA, Philippines – Overhead shots of crowds awash in pink paraphernalia overwhelm the frame. Lightsticks and confetti dance in the air. “Kindness is radical,” goes a placard. The radiant, contagious smiles repeat, image after image. We see Leni Robredo from afar, the camera still moving further away from her, as though allowing the former vice president to blend into the audience, as her campaign jingle, Nica del Rosario’s “Kay Leni Tayo,” thunders through the soundscape.
It’s an opening sequence blazing so brightly that recalls the nostalgia of the so-called pink movement and locates us right into the zeitgeist and burning heart of And So It Begins, Ramona Diaz’s latest documentary about the turbulent presidential elections two years ago.
But while the film is steeped in nostalgia, which carries more weight now considering how the whole thing turned out, another Marcos returning to power, no less, Diaz hopes to move beyond it.
“I think it’s still relevant because the film is really about what happens next,” she tells me over Zoom. “You’ve seen the film, yes, it’s nostalgic, but it can’t just stay in nostalgia, right? It has to be a question of, yeah, we did that. What else can we do? Where are you in this space? Where are you in this scenario, what do you stand for? And what are you willing to do? How are you gonna engage? That’s really what the film is about.”
Diaz says further that And So It Begins is also about interrogating history and providing context on how everything has arrived to where we are now as people, as a country. “Because we’re nothing without our past. We have to understand the past in order to move forward. So that’s why this film is also about historical context.”
Adds the director, “I just wanted to make sure that we didn’t stay in nostalgia. Nostalgia is great, but that energy has to evolve into something, into movement, into action, into engagement, whatever that is for you. I’m not prescriptive on what that is. But to make you question where you are in the political spectrum is all that I hope for.”
After premiering earlier this year at Sundance Film Festival, And So It Begins went on to screen in San Francisco and Los Angeles, returned to the Philippines as part of Cinemalaya’s 20th iteration, and is now set to grace local theaters, beginning August 21.
Notably, the film is already Diaz’s fourth feature at Sundance, following Imelda (2003), Motherland (2017), and A Thousand Cuts (2020), with the last title anchoring the earlier version of And So It Begins, a companion work, so to speak. In fact, Nobel Peace laureate Maria Ressa appears in both films, as Diaz excavates the patterns that ties the heightened political tension in the country to the state of the Philippine press and human rights at large, thereby rendering our collective grief on screen.
Often sprawling and meandering, And So It Begins captivates in its insistence on hope and solidarity, which are all we’ve got, really, under a republic still so eroded by its past and the machinations aimed at rewriting it. Somewhere in the film is an ellipsis – a story yet to unfold.
I caught up with the Filipino director recently to discuss how she put this story to the screen, access, and what it means to bear witness. The conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.
What was the reception of the film like during its run at this year’s Sundance? And how does it feel to finally have it screened here in the Philippines?
Sundance is always fantastic. I love that audience and I’m so comfortable at Sundance. And Sundance audiences really root for the filmmaker. They want you to succeed. You almost feel their excitement. So I’ve always loved that festival. It’s not Cannes, right? Where they can boo you.
But showing it at Cinemalaya here, our premiere hometown screening, is different, right? I mean, and it’s always the most nerve-wracking audience for me because it’s such a privileged audience. Basically it’s the audience’s lived experience and they know so much and they’re looking for so much and it’s 99 minutes.
You can never really fulfill everyone’s expectations, which I get, I accept that. But it was such a heartfelt reaction. [There] was silence after, and I’m like, “oh my God, they don’t like the film.” Because abroad, it’s instant applause, and then they usually have a standing ovation. And this one was like, huh?
And then someone explains to me [that] they [say] it’s so sad, the film, because Leni loses, but to me it’s not sad because I end on a hopeful note. So I was hoping it wasn’t sad. They go, “no, it’s really sad.” Everyone was just like, “huh, what do we do now?” So that was a feeling. And I was like, okay, all right. So it was different.
But of course, when I spoke to the audience after the screening and during the Q&A, I found out what they really felt. So it was like, I just have to remember, a really different audience. It’s a very privileged audience. And I’m telling theirs, you know, our story, beyond the kakampinks (the name of Leni Robredo’s supporters), right?
(Diaz also said that the film was originally going to be called This is How It Ends but decided later to change it the more hopeful And So It Begins.)
I’ve learned that you had “800 hours worth of footage.” Can you share the process of going through all that footage and making the best possible cut of the film?
That’s nothing. I think A Thousand Cuts was more because I had more camera people and I had two units for A Thousand Cuts and shot much more, you know, and I shot A Thousand Cuts longer, from 2018 through 2019, all the way to end of 2019, I even came back to Rappler. I did a pickup right before the premiere. So that to me, that’s par for the course. I shoot a lot because I’m gonna miss something, right? I really film life unfolding.
For example, in this film, And So It Begins, Leni tells a story about her fear of flying, right? Her fear of flying and how she got over it. I could have asked her that in an interview, right? I could have researched and known she had a fear of flying up until Jesse [Robredo] died in a plane crash.
But then she happened to tell it to military men while she was waiting for a helicopter, you know, you won’t ever capture that if you don’t film a lot. So that’s basically what I like doing. And I keep very strict production notes while shooting. So I know exactly, “Okay, this is a golden scene. This is a golden scene.”
So I already have in my head a working structure, you know, what I’m gonna lean in towards by the time the editor comes on board. I already have the conversation. And you know, my editor tends to watch everything because she wants to, this is a different editor I worked on, but they tend to like watching everything. And so basically my conversations with them, I tend to tell them, “well, watch these ones and tell me if there’s a film there.” That’s a process.
And then it’s a puzzle, you know? It’s basically a puzzle of editing. And this one has no, it has no narrative arc, right? To me, it’s a bit more meandering, which I like. I like meandering films. The only structure to it is the beginning and the end of a campaign, but everything about the middle is up for grabs. So that was the hardest actually, the middle of the film. Act two is always the hardest. It’s not even an act because we have no acts, because we have no structure. It’s complicated, but the middle of the film matters.
While revisiting the film, I’ve noticed that the camerawork is pretty straightforward and former vice president Leni Robredo is often captured from a distance, save for moments where she’s revealing more intimate encounters. Has it always been the visual lexicon you had for the film?
Well, the long lenses were intentional, and the only time I really get close and, you know, use some more normal, like 50-or-under lenses is when we’re close to her. But I wanted you to experience her as the audience experienced her. They were big crowds, you know.
So those long lenses were meant to put you in the audience as well, except for the moments when we were in her private or pseudo-private places, like the aforementioned, when she talks about fear of flying, when she’s putting her makeup on, this close-up when she’s drinking and then she looks up. It’s a shorter lens. It’s a more intimate lens. So that was the thinking behind it.
And then of course, for Maria, I think we use prime lenses on her. It’s all prime lenses, because she wasn’t moving. It’s hard to use prime lenses when [doing] observational shooting, because [you] forget your focus, right?
When it’s prime lenses, Maria was in her home. And she wasn’t being allowed to travel, she wasn’t running around the country, right? So all of Maria’s are prime lenses. And also you see a very different Maria in it. She’s more vulnerable. So I just really wanted to get that super crisp kind of [image], you know, that the prime lenses give you and also that sort of cinematic, intimate look with those primes.
What were the roadblocks you encountered during filming? Was there any problem in terms of access?
Access is always a negotiation…. But, you know, in documentary filmmaking, access is never [fixed], it’s a moving target.
They say yes to you, but they don’t really know what they’re saying yes to in a way. Because what I’m wanting is full access, I’ll be in your face for what, like, four or five months, who wants that? I don’t want it. I’d never say yes to me, but they do.
As you know, in Robredo’s presidential campaign in 2022, there’s always this insistence on “radical love.” After following and filming her for so long, I’m curious, what does “radical love” mean to you now?
I think radical love is unconditional love. So radical love is loving those who don’t love you back. It’s easy to love the people who love you, right? That’s reciprocal. But radical love is loving no matter what, right? So loving the BBMs, trying to understand them.
So that’s what I got from it. I’m not entirely sure that’s what she meant, but that’s from what she said, that’s what I gathered. It’s a matter of understanding where people are and loving them where they are, because that’s the only way the divisions will be healed.
How do we remain committed to safeguarding historical truth and memory, and how does cinema factor into that?
I bear witness. I think it’s important to bear witness. That’s what I do. Whenever I think of a new film, I don’t start from there. Because that to me is overwhelming, right? I can’t be the keeper of memory, right? That’s not my intention. My intention is when I see something, I want to show you. It’s like, “oh my God, this is such a great experience.” I want to show you the experience. It’s not meant to tell you anything. I just really want to show you.
What you get out of it, if it is about memory, if it’s about recall, if it is about keeping history alive, then that’s great. But to me, that is a result of my first impulse, which is to share with you an experience; that to me was the main thing. And it was like a moment in time, right? The pink movement, all the volunteers, something moved them. And I wanted to capture that for posterity and to bear witness. – Rappler.com