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GANDA ASIA HEALING FILM PROJECT
Mindscapes Of Women, Island Grassroots Story Telling With Film
A project with Japan Foundation Manila and National Commission for Culture and the Arts

PROJECT INFORMATION:

GANDA CINE PROJECT is a story house of women of stories from four corners… We bring women film makers from Japan and Philippines to collaborate to make more films together. The film making project is a playground for healing the past between Japan and the Philippines. Understanding the pain of each other past and present, shall give birth to a new relationship of women in Asia.

The grassroots women have limited voice and engagement concerning the global issues. A film project involving the grassroots women is a powerful vehicle to show their relevance in the local and global issues. Their stories captured in a film is a powerful medium as they engage in the discourses that affects the community indirectly or directly. The film is a dialogue and an important space to discuss, provoke and engage that can attract interest from other women to share their voice on certain relevant issues.

Women are the storytellers, the weavers of cultures and the keepers of the knowledge of communities. They give birth to the next storytellers and culture-bearers. Women have intrinsic creativity that give birth to many ideas in the household and in the community. The very humane experience of giving birth to children and taking care of a family drives women to embrace multiple roles that sustains a demanding cycle of reproduction. Given a venue to express their ideas, women loves to interact and share their stories. With such curiosity women are good researches, for they naturally observe their surroundings and so they end up gathering stories of people and keep them sensationalized. That is a trait of a good marketing person in the grassroots. These are the people who can lead us to good informants in the community in the film research. We need this kind of collaboration in the community to make women involved.

The grassroots cinema can provide a venue where women can channel their natural curiosity into professional story telling that can expand their opportunities and sense of pride and dignity. We need to make women discover their power as storytellers to be able to create powerful stories that can create positive change and influence their own communities.

These are some of the cultural sensitivities that can only be experience if people have the chance to stay in these communities. Grassroots women are bound in a certain cycle of multiple roles equivalent to multiple intelligences. The grassroots women center can provide space to create something original. The process of self discovery is more powerful if shared with other women of many cultures.

The power driven women can help challenge other women to discover their potentials in their own context to find their own sense of power and free themselves from their own self-defeating circumstances such as poverty.

In the multi-cultural group, it will be interesting to study the different women archetypes, as one experiences them in the everyday and ordinary. Creating stories together is a synergy of minds and hearts that facilitates healing beyond the cultural differences such that breaks the culture of violence in perceptions, generalizations and steteotypes.

Art empowers people to transform memories and experiences into works with cultural and private significance. We believe that the development of a sense of worth and importance through artmaking will assist women to participate in dialogues and actions which may eventually lead to the transformation in grassroots communities in Philippines.

Mindscapes of women is full of emotions. This is a platform to tell stories of grassroots community from the eyes of women. Stories which speaks about the Island environment. Stories related to the sea, the mountain and the volcanoes. How these stories transform women’s life.

The suggested theme may include dialogues on particular issues around several subject of interests:
1. the life of a woman in the island struggling with poverty
2. life of a Muslim woman in the island market selling products that reaches different houses
3. the women rediscovering their traditional medicines so they do not have to buy commercial drugs
4. young women involved in ecotourism and exploitations involved
5. the old women who knows the history of the island that survived to tell about volcanic eruptions
6. a karaoke tradition and how women are exploited in media even in the farthest rural areas
7. a girl learning about coral reefs, shells and giant clams in one of the marine protected areas
8. Women Peace Stories

Type of Project:

This project is a combination of different kinds of art genre merge into a film, captured in everyday lives as stories and voices of women. The films are their inner voice which transforms into narrative and creative forms of emancipation to project everyday lives in the island as related to its landscapes and environment.

February 2010: Workshops and location shoot


Location where the project is to be carried out:

Enigmata Creative Circle in Camiguin Island for workshops and grassroots film showing

Our 1st Woman Director and Co-director of GANDA Grassroots Cinema Center was invited to Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival 2009 in Japan

Film Title:

Yellow Bridge (tulay na dilaw)

JAPAN / 2009 / Japanese, English, Tagalog / Color / Video / Appro. 20min

A film of colors blends the bitter, sweet, and dirty... This film is not enough to say my gratitude to my most respected farmers for feeding the world, who sacrificed so much for the love of the land and the people. This film is my conscience. it is what i can do to the global community eating in the same plate... it is my visual image of a price to pay to make this country happy. maybe sugar, mango and banana will be sweeter in your table when you know that it takes the blood out of Negros and Mindanao farmers to bring colors to your life.

Cooperation: The Japan Foundation “JENESYS Programme: Invitation Programme for Creators”

Maria Rosalie Zerrudo

Born in West Negros, the Philippines. Zerrudo bridges multi-characters as a poet, filmmaker, chanter, dancer, performance artist, and artist of recycled functional art. Co-founder and creative director of Enigmata Creative Circle on Camiguin Island (off the north coast of Mindanao), she conducts regular art camps for local children and special children. Her short film/music video “Ovarian Chants” showed many places and will show at YIDFF with Yellow Bridge. Now, she's been in Yamagata as the first residency artist of YIDFF and working to make documentary Yellow Bridge in Yamagata.

GAME (Grassroots Advancing Multi-Media Eco-education) for Children, February 2008
Sculpting Island Community and Protecting our Natural Legacy
Enigmata Biodiversity and Art Education through Popular Multi-Media





The world of children is animated and dynamic. Educating children needs a multi-faceted approach in a creative setting. Technology has done wonders in the lives of people, but the challenge lies in the context where we teach without loosing the value of personalized human touch. For instance, stories are powerful tools in making children reconnect with their culture and appreciation of their roots. We need to revive the tradition of story telling where children are nurtured in a holistic way as they learn the living values of environmental and cultural preservation in their own language with the use of multi-media.

Since the island has limited resource materials and multi-media equipment (such as only one LCD projector is available for all the 72 schools), 90% of the children have no access to multi-media and internet access not to mention that most schools do not have computers. Activities like multi-media showcase and art film festivals can open new windows for the children to see beyond the four walls, discover other cultures and other environment.

Enigmata Creative Circle, Inc. (Enigmata), in partnership with Department of Education (DepEd) and Camiguin Polytechnic State College (CPSC) initiated the first contemporary Kinamiguin Biodiversity Children’s Story Telling in the Island last February 2007 during the February Arts Month Celebration entitled; “Islakwatsa Eco-Cultural Kids Story Telling Festival” sponsored by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) featuring “Dula sa Gabon” theater production which was showcased nine times in two weeks in all the five municipalities in over 40 schools, involving more than 800 DepEd students and teachers. In the same event, an entry to the international children’s story telling festival “Tell Me a Story Mr. Cloud Project” was shown in two parts; “Earth Song and Isla” sponsore by Patrimoine Sans Frontieres, Paris, France. One colorful highlight during this event was the mobile exhibit as an output on the recycled soft sculpture and tapestry workshop “Oikos Natura” brought to Camiguin by House of Comfort. These are some of what we have started which needs reinforcement and improvement.

In popularizing eco-cultural preservation in the island, there is a need to work on audience development in a dynamic venue inside and outside the classroom. Camiguin is one of the epicenter of world’s marine biodiversity and being a growing ecotourism destination, environmental degradation is inevitable. Educating the young is the most proactive measure we want to reinforce in the preservation of our natural heritage and to sustain the health of this island.









Project Description:
The proposed project is a package of creative processes in developing multi-media resource materials like indigenized story books, short films, and printing of (BACK-UP) Biodiversity Art Childrens’ Kinamiguin User-friendly Pictionary that shall be mounted as the first children’s picture dictionary in Kinamiguin, Visaya, Tagalog and English Language. This resource book can later be used in 72 schools in 58 barangays in the island. Children’s Art film Festivals for Environment (CAFFE) can be a good alternative venue from mainstream television since popular media has a very strong impact on the lives of children. Another main component is product development out of recycled materials like scrap clothes, plastic bags, bottles which can become souvenir items for tourists in the island as part of local community Creative Home Indigenized Local Designs (CHILD) enterprise project. The works and stories of children will be showcased in a BIO (Biodiversity Island’s Original) Showroom “Balay Kinabuhi.”

Objectives and Expected Output:

To strengthen advocacy for child-friendly programs in Camiguin and deepen community values and participation in eco-cultural preservation through a creative local enterprise
To animate children’s classrooms and the community with environmental friendly and culture-sensitive multi-media resource materials
To produce a biodiversity children’s animated multi-media pictionary coupled with a video animation in Kinamiguin language for Department of Education classrooms
To popularize the use of media such as art film making and appreciation in the biodiversity context
To develop creative recycling enterprise for children utilizing scrap materials to showcase endangered species and biodiversity of Camiguin
To build an Island Showroom as part of creative enterprise for the works of the children for display or for sale which will serve as the children’s community museum

Target Group(s):
· Children, youth and local educators (estimate of 11,686 elementary pupils, 5,743 high school students, Ecotour Students and 492 school teachers);

Issue(s) to be Addressed:
Strengthening advocacy in environmental and cultural preservation with childrens’ direct participation in biodiversity and heritage conservation.

Project Implementation Site(s):
Multi-media presentations, exhibits and showcases, theater road shows, art film showings and interactive workshops will be done in all five municipalities, 58 barangays and 72 schools under Department of Education in Camigiuin Province, i.e. Sagay, Catarman, Guinsiliban, Mahinog and Mambajao. Enigmata has a signed Memorandum of Agreement with the Department of Education (DepEd) which channels all programs and communication through the office of the Schools Division Superintendent, Province of Camiguin.

Project Duration:
Phase 1 - One school-year June 2007-March 2008

Project Benefits and Impact:
This collaborative project is one of its kind and the first eco-cultural experience to support the vision of a rich eco-cultural tourism in this island for biodiversity conservation. The main beneficiaries of this project is the school children and youth of the Department of Education. This is an investment of a lifetime in opening the minds of the children. When we create wonderful children, then we have a wonderful future.

Popular media has a very strong impact on the lives of children. In Camiguin where there are limited cultural events and concrete cultural development programs, initiatives like Children’s Cultural Story Banking, Animating Classrooms, Indigenizing Resource Materials using the vernacular “Kinamiguin” Language for biodiversity conservation and cultural regeneration, mounting mobile exhibit/ showcase is a very valuable project for audience development. Children will start to use Kinamiguin language with pride. A resource material like the Kinamiguin biodiversity pictionary is a pioneering effort in this island which will enrich all the DepEd schools as we try to popularize the use of the vernacular language.

A showroom shall be the link to the real community experience with the tourists or visitors. The creative enterprise is important in the tourism industry to generate resources while children are given a voice to express their visions and dreams for their environment. This is a valuable process where local talents and skills are honed and developed.

Lastly, direct beneficiaries of this project shall be exposed to high quality learning conditions with the help of experts and seasoned facilitators which is a one-stop-shop package.

Sculpting Community is rather a more challenging task than just sculpting concrete or wood. The long lasting impact can become intergenerational which shapes society in general. The amount of passion and intention with the help of exposure and a dash of talent is what makes the life of a development artist and biodiversity art animator more fulfilled. It is making one’s life the greatest work of art that matters most, and so others can be inspired to do the same.

Project Collaborators
The main actors of this project will be a team of passionate visionaries namely:
Maria Josefa P. Patilla, Ph.D. (Consultant), Elinor M. Abuton (Consultant), and Ma. Rosalie A. Zerrudo (Project Coordinator). The implementing Enigmata artists are the following; Kublai Millan, Waway Saway, Errol Balcos, Chico Barreto, Oliver Paderanga, Soni Kum, and Tatting Soliva.


Methodologies and Strategies:
1. Children’s Art film Festivals for Environment (CAFFE). Specially chosen environmental art films will be shown in schools for a series of film appreciation workshops in the classroom. This can also show the works done by the children and the slides production develop during the previous Earht Camps
2. Publication of (BACK-UP) Biodiversity Art Childrens’ Kinamiguin User-friendly Pictionary and Mounting of the animated Kinamiguin Biodiversity slides. The wealth of resource materials, workshop outputs developed by the children consolidated, will be mounted together into a multi-media animated slide production and in printed publication as “BACK-UP”
3. Creative Homemade Indigenized Local Designs (CHILD) enterprise project. A local enterprise development to continue the creation of original designs and one-of-a-kind endangered species in soft sculpture and wall drapes. An intensive workshop in all the schools will be conducted all year round to popularize techniques and let at least each child make a voice for one species and a story with it. The output of the workshop will then be showcased in the showroom as either for exhibit or for sale.
4. BIO (Biodiversity Island’s Original) Showroom “Balay Kinabuhi.”
The Island Showroom shall serve as community museum where all the works of the children will be on display or for sale. The Showroom serves as the “must-see” souvenir shop in the island and tourists can buy local products made by children. The showroom will be constructed using recycled materials and junk art. It will serve as a children’s community museum.

5. Re-showcase of “Dula sa Gabon” as a Popular Story Telling Material
A one hour theater production involves twenty-five cast of volunteer Ecotourism students from CPSC shall continue the story telling tradition inside and outside the classroom. “Dula sa Gabon” (The Story of the Clouds) tackles the cultural tradition of Camiguin, popularizing Kinamiguin Language and critical environmental issues through contemporary theater.

Tell Me a Story Mr. Cloud Project, August 28-30, 2006
“An Environmental Multi-Media Video Art Film for Children by the Children”
August 28-30, 2006
2006 Children’s Biodiversity Mini Earth Camp

The first of its kind biodiversity art film project for children initiated by Enigmata was conducted in Camiguin Island on in collaboration with Patrimoine Sans Frontieres, Paris, France as main sponsor. The participants of the 2006 mini-earth camp were thirty six students and three advisers from three local elementary schools namely; Sagay Central School, Anito Elementary School and Balbagon Elementary School.

“Tell me a story Mr. Cloud…” project is the offshoot of PSF “Culture of Remembrance” at the outbreak of Chernobyl, Belaruz accident which has caused serious problems in the lives of people. As a consequence of this environmental catastrophe, a project was launched to give voice to the affected communities and to restore solidarity with the inhabitants of the contaminated areas.

Enigmata was the counterpart organization in the Philippines among other participating countries like Belaruz and Lebanon. This is a very unique project which was the first of its kind and was limited to small group to be able to get the maximum output during workshops and outdoor shoot. The film entitled “Earth Song” and “Trash Can…” were filmed entirely in Camiguin Island with the help of expert consultants from Japan and Enigmata artists as facilitators, directors and screenplay writer.

The output of the visual workshops were collected for possible entry to The 14th Kanagawa Biennial World Children’s Art Exhibition. The output of the poetry workshop is now compiled into a “River of Words” poetry booklet which will be sent to the US secretariat to become part of the 2007 poetry contest.

The three day scheduled workshop was short of filming important parts, hence another two days spill over was maximized in filming more scenes with local children. The whole duration of the workshop was conducted in Enigmata Treehouse, while the filming where mostly done in the outdoors such as in the rivers, springs, falls, forest, white island sand bar, white sand beach, black sand beach, mangroves, ports, churches, shorelines, trees, garbage, labyrinth and treehouse.

The workshops were conducted using various creative theater and improvisational techniques. The facilitators were a team of musician, film makers, poets, visual artists and theater performers. The day’s workshop normally ends with a film or a slide showcase on biodiversity; a documentary film on “Nilasong Buhay” by The Correspondence; The Journey of Life by Moby’s Video; On Earth As It Is In Heaven by Animo Puppet Theater from Bacolod City; and the award winning Iranian movie Colours of Paradise. The highlights of the Earth Camp is Waway Saway’s concert, Pompet’s Villaraza’s writing and healing workshops, Greg Naduma and Felimon Blanco’s theater workshops, Rosalie’s Zerrudo creative group dynamics and Soni Kum’s film making with her mini-DV NTSC format..

During the outdoor workshops, special activities were conducted as a way of making nature as the most exciting classroom where children learn from hands-on experience. In the forest, several worksheet project were included such as a vegetation inventory, fantasy search, tree identification, and tree leaf bud identification. In the water areas, participants were given worksheets for river inventory and observation card for identification of species in the rivers and falls. The reading materials on forest and water including activity sheets were taken from the reference book published by Grupo Aprender con La Naturaleza (2003). A Day of Adventure in the Forest. Reading materials were researched regarding the Guimaras oil spill from the Greenpeace website. A primer on “Water for Life” served as one reference material from the “Bantay Kinaiyahan,” a publication of Interface Development Interventions, Inc., Davao City. A primer on environmental issues were downloaded from the web regarding the Chernobyl, Belaruz Accident and an article on Asian Brown Cloud Poses Global Threat as reference materials.

The two short films will be produced in DVD together with a booklet and translated in four languages; original language, French, Russian and English. The presentation of the DVD “Stories of a cloud” is scheduled to be shown in Belarus, in Braguine, in 2007. PSF will provide a copy of the booklet and DVD to each child, every participating artist and school.