MANILA, Philippines – “It was an exciting moment,” says Don Josephus Raphael Eblahan of how it felt after learning that his short Vox Humana, which he describes as “a film about the language of listening,” will premiere at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), running from September 5 to 15.
“We figured TIFF is quite a perfect way to start our festival run as it kicks off during the turn of seasons from summer to fall. It matches the film’s atmosphere this way. It’s my first time in TIFF as well as most of our team, so it’s going to be a new experience for all of us,” he continues.
Vox Humana is the latest addition to Eblahan’s efforts on mapping liminalities as someone who’s been constantly moving and living in new places most of his life, either due to tragedy or the complications of life.
“So there is this constant search of ways to anchor myself geographically or spiritually in a place just so I can make sense of all of the rapid changes that happen around me,” the director tells me.
This insistence on locating a kilometer zero of sorts all began with Eblahan’s first short film, the equally dizzying and captivating Umbilical Cord to Heaven, about several individuals trying to summon ancient deities and forces of nature, enmeshed in terrific soundscape.
“And since then I’m always tracing my finger along the surfaces of the places that I inhabit,” says Eblahan. “Umbilical was my attempt to bridge the gap between my northern Igorot identity and my southern Visayan identity, so in a way it was my own personal land acknowledgment. Each short film that came after that is a way to explore and interrogate these geographies and the post-colonial lives that endure in these places.”
But apart from this, Eblahan’s next three shorts – Hilum, The Headhunter’s Daughter (winner of the 2022 Sundance Short Grand Jury Prize), and Vox Humana – would also revolve “around the idea of performance, featuring protagonists/actors who are professional mourners, balladeers, and movement artists.”
Set in a small mountain town, the 22-minute Vox Humana centers on a “feral man” in the woods encountered by the police following an earthquake. Puzzled by his existence, the police seek the help of a zoologist, a sound recorder, and a news team to determine if the enigmatic figure has anything to do with all the natural catastrophes disturbing their place.
The gestation period for Vox Humana, which got support from the Indigenous Program of the Sundance Institute, took quite a long time since Eblahan was working on it while taking a separate writing residency in Paris sponsored by Cannes to develop the material for Hum, the feature film cousin of Vox Humana.
“Although Hum has a completely different story, Vox Humana was my attempt to experiment with interweaving multiple genres as I aim to do in Hum: finding a seamless transition between western, sci-fi, and detective/crime films,” says the director.
Hum was first developed in the Sundance Institute and its Native Lab. The film, which follows “runaway northern land defenders who reinvent themselves as rodeo stars in the south,” is set to be Eblahan’s debut feature-length film.
“It’s going to be a bit more neon-drenched, sweaty, angry, and moody film compared to Vox Humana, despite their close similarities,” notes Eblahan.
Adds the filmmaker, “Cowboy discotheques, mechanical bull-riding, and Ifugao folklore will be some of the key aesthetics that will guide the narrative through its ups and downs. It’s plot heavy but of course retains a lot of the atmospheric sensibilities of our previous works. It’s a loose adaptation of the indigenous myth of Ovug ‘The Divided Child’ – the Ifugao god(s) of thunder.”
This, after his original idea for a debut feature – a longer counterpart of Hilum – has been shelved, even as he had already written the material before the short was made.
“I realized after the premiere of the short in Clermont that maybe I was too young to take on the feature version. I’ll have to wait until I get a bit older, and maybe then I can feel at peace about entering its world again,” admits Eblahan.
In our conversation below, which has been edited for brevity and clarity, Eblahan shares the process of putting Vox Humana to the screen, his take on indigeneity, and what it means to listen.
Parallel to The Headhunter’s Daughter, Vox Humana takes place in the mountains and also reflects the enigmatic and wistful attitude of its predecessor. Do you in any way see these films as part of a diptych or at least spiritually connected?
Both films were filmed in the same neighborhood in my hometown of La Trinidad. The enigmatic and wistful attitude is an atmosphere that comes with the place, but it’s also a vibe that comes with the Igorot personality. The whole team sort of adapted that cowboy coolness when we were on set, letting it guide our creative choices, our temperament, and sense of presence, much like the vibe of the protagonist in The Headhunter’s Daughter. So in a way, our production for Vox spiritually reminded me of the simplicity and the innocence that I had when making Headhunter’s.
It’s very much evident how the film takes advantage of its landscape. Did you shoot all of it in a single location, and what was the motivation for mounting the film this way?
It was basically only two locations: the exterior and the interior. There weren’t many company moves during the shoot, although there were some tough hikes! It was also my first time working with a DP after doing camera work myself for Hilum and Headhunter’s. Our director of photography, Vincent Prochoroff, was very adaptable and sensitive to the sights and sounds of the place and understood what was needed by the film after spending months in my hometown, La Trinidad.
These locations were handpicked by us based on the natural lighting we saw during the time and day we scouted it. We used no lights in this film, so location choices were purely dictated by light, and light was purely dictated by the unpredictable changes of our land. So our creative dialogue involved being open to what the earth gives us as our biggest collaborator — to dance with it, rather than to shape it to force our film to come out.
Sound and movement are also integral in the film, and I find it particularly interesting how you incorporated it as a language that behaves in a way that is sort of prehistoric. What’s the reasoning behind this artistic decision?
We wanted to make a film about the language of listening: to the earth, to the people, and even non-human creatures. Through sound, I wanted to interrogate the concept of “non-human” particularly in the lens of how such meaning can be weaponized against marginalized people whose lands and rights are usually taken away.
By having the elite and academic characters of the film believe the rumors, projecting “dehumanized” traits towards the “feral man,” we begin the film at a disadvantaged playing field. The audience takes on the gaze of the advantaged until the narrative progresses and we are eventually brought to the “feral man’s” mental domain where we finally get to hear his “language.” This moment makes us confront the inequality that the film forces upon us from the beginning.
The notion of the prehistoric has always been a fascination for the elite — and having this aspect be a device in the film, we establish a class difference without resorting to saturating the designs of our characters with obvious symbols that might kill the mystery of the premise.
The fictional language used in the film is a collection of mouth sounds paired with hand symbols developed alongside our main actor and movement director Sasa Cabalquinto and co-performed with Bruce Venida, who plays our “feral man.” These mouth sounds are later enriched with more texture in post, alongside my long time sound and music collaborator, Henry Hawks.
Indigeneity can at times be a tricky domain, and I’m curious how you contend with it so that it doesn’t come across as inauthentic or performative when rendered on screen.
We portrayed it the way I saw it growing up in the Cordilleras. Us indigenous folks, we exist much like everyone else. Making fun film concepts while portraying the indigenous body is our assertion that we deserve to be as visible as everyone else does.
Of course the goal here is not to make us blend into the homogenic representation of the “Filipino” but to highlight our country’s diversity by showing that indigenous stories are just as complex, imperfect, contemporary, and worthy of being seen as non-indigenous stories. It’s just another way of practicing decolonization as we think of making stories going forward.
There’s a breaking of the fourth wall towards the end of the film. What made you decide to have that formal pivot?
It was a nice moment with our actor, Ymeiliza Tabora, who is also of Igorot and Bisaya descent like me. She found creative ways of when to do it. I wanted her character to sort of be the thematic “key” as a “divided” identity indigenous child. In a way, her character sort of holds an understanding about what lies beyond the runtime of the film, so having her break the wall is an acknowledgement of her awareness that breaks the fabric of the “screen.”
Breaking the wall is also a concept I’ve never been able to shake off from my subconscious since reading about Brechtian Theater. Vox aims to remind the audience of the native land struggles in our country — so it felt appropriate to include this moment in the edit and break the illusory wall of melodrama and let the real world rush in even just for a brief second. I’m not sure if it served to this effect — it might have done the complete opposite depending on the audience, but anyway, it just felt right!
You closed the film with the song “Amber” by Maria BC. Why this music in particular, and how do you think that enhances the impact of the final images?
As a fan of their music, I was always intrigued by their album Spike Field where the song Amber is from. The album is inspired by semiotics and language as it relates to the nuclear age. Their music’s connection to land, human relationships, and past really resonated with the themes we are also exploring in the film.
Particularly in the final scene, the song becomes this beautiful thread that emits intimacy in an otherwise cosmic cascade of land imagery, making both the micro and the macro emotions feel one in the same. – Rappler.com
