{"id":1031,"date":"2012-05-25T23:50:30","date_gmt":"2012-05-25T23:50:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/?p=1031"},"modified":"2012-06-06T15:47:59","modified_gmt":"2012-06-06T15:47:59","slug":"one-evening-two-worlds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/?p=1031","title":{"rendered":"One Evening, Two Worlds"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the pleasures in being married to a woman who spent the first 33 years of her life on the other side of the world is that life never gets boring.\u00a0 Everything is done at least a little differently–whether it is family gatherings which often seem dominated by karaoke or having a priest for a brother in law (a future pope?). I was lucky enough to\u00a0 get into the hottest Filipino event in NYC in some years, courtesy of Threese’s press pass.\u00a0 It was to celebrate three Filipino films in the Tribeca Film Festival but the real excitement surrounded Don’t Stop Believing<\/a>, Ramona Diaz’s documentary on Arnel Pineda<\/a> and his rise to fame as lead singer for the rock group Journey<\/strong>.\u00a0 He was the evening’s star attraction.\u00a0 Indeed he was definitely one of the reasons why we were there:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Arnel Pineda on the mike at the Philippine Consulate, NYC-April 20, 2012<\/p><\/div>\n

I had heard a lot about Arnel Pineda from Threese.\u00a0 What Filipinos love about Pineda, in part, is that he was seen as a good but hardly exceptional singer in the Philippines.\u00a0 Filipinos pride themselves on their musical abilities and I confess that Threese used to sing love songs to me over the phone.\u00a0 So they celebrate Arnel’s success but also it affirms the feeling that Filipinos can make it here in the US–where all too often doctors become nurses and college teachers become pre-school teachers.
\nWe went to the Philippine Consulate to meet Filipino filmmakers, but Ramona Diaz, in particular.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Ramona Diaz & Threese Serana<\/p><\/div>\n

From probably our first date,\u00a0 Threese was asking me if I had seen Diaz’s film Imelda<\/em>. And she was not the only one in the Philippines who asked me that question!\u00a0 Once she was in the US, she started to urge me to bring Ramona up to Yale.\u00a0 I moved slowly but included Imelda<\/em> in my World Documentary course, and was impressed.\u00a0 So were my students.\u00a0 Threese then heard\u00a0 that she was making a new documentary about Filipinas becoming public school teachers in Baltimore\u2013\u2013The Learning<\/em><\/a> (2011). So I began to be in email contact with Ramona–hoping to find a way to get her up to Yale. So this was actually the first time we met (I was behind the camera in this instance).<\/p>\n

One very popular ritual in Filipino culture is the photo-op.\u00a0 There were tons of photo-ops happening at the consulate.
\n\"\"<\/a>Here’s one with Filipino film distributor Vincent Nebrida (far left) and some of the stars and filmmakers there for the evening. -For some, it was their first visit to the US.\u00a0 So I will try to get Threese to identify these people–definitely part of the Filipino film community.\u00a0 But in any case, when in the Philippine consulate, do as the Filipinos.\u00a0 And so\u2026here I am with Michael Collins, who partners with Marty Syjuco.\u00a0 Together they made Give Up Tomorrow, a documentary about the conviction and imprisonment of Paco Larra\u00f1aga for a crime he did not commit.\u00a0 I am holding their promotional postcard for the film in my hand.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

with Michael Collins<\/p><\/div>\n

A few minutes later, we caught them<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Marty Syjuco & Michael Collins<\/p><\/div>\n

We met another filmmaking couple, who had recently moved East from the West Coast–Niall McKay and Marissa Aroy, who worked together through their company Media Factory<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Marissa Aroy and Niall McKay<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the pleasures in being married to a woman who spent the first 33 years of her life on the other side of the world is that life never gets boring.\u00a0 Everything is done at least a little differently–whether it is family gatherings which often seem dominated by karaoke or having a priest for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1031"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1031"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1031\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1033,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1031\/revisions\/1033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}