The making of Kat Sumagaysay and Richard Salvadico’s Cinemalaya entry ‘Tumandok’ 

After making the laureled short film Dribol for Cinemaybank, a film festival of Maybank Philippines, in 2018, filmmakers Kat Sumagaysay and Richard Salvadico, also romantic partners in real life, have since made a pact to never direct a film separately. 

This, despite the former pinning her hopes on becoming a writer and working abroad. “Like an Emily in Paris kind of vibe,” Sumagaysay tells me. “It was Richard who really wanted to become a filmmaker since he was in high school.”

At the time, Sumagaysay was still a mass communication student at Central Philippine University, while Salvadico already completed his digital media and interactive arts degree at the same institution.

Since then, they have worked on several shorts such as Chok (2019), Utwas (2020), and Mga Handum nga Nasulat sa Baras (2022) – projects that in many ways informed them what it means to truly build communities and to see filmmaking as a gesture of care.

Their collaboration in Dribol, shot in an Ati community in Barotac Viejo, Iloilo, would lead them to create more work for the municipality and visit seven more Ati communities, including Sitio Kabarangkalan, where they filmed Tumandok, their debut feature at this year’s Cinemalaya Philippine Independent Film Festival. Utwas and Mga Handum nga Nasulat sa Baras were their previous entries in the festival’s short film competition.

“In 2019, we went to have a cultural mapping in the municipality, and that was the first time that we had been to Sitio Kabrangkalan and met the real En-en who inspired the lead character in our film,” says Sumagaysay.

She adds, “As we were having a Q&A session with the community, En-en stood up and said that there were lowlanders entering their community and threatening them. At that moment, we suddenly felt guilt – the guilt of not trying hard enough to hear the stories of these communities.”

Sumagaysay’s initial response was to write a fiction based on what they had heard, but realized later on that the community’s stories overpowered what she thought would best help them. 

“We decided to try seeing the story from the perspective of the community and of En-en, our translator, our tour guide, our interviewee who later on became our friend,” shares the director.

The duo then consulted the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) to learn more about the issues of the community and discovered that the tribe needed about half a million to a million Philippine pesos to fast-track the processing of their Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title (CADT) – a process that has been in place since 2007.

The Atis of Sitio Kabarangkalan are among many indigenous communities in the country who have long been struggling to exercise their right to self-determination and safeguard their ancestral lands and identities, especially against corporate mining giants, as previously reported by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism and Rappler.

“We aren’t millionaires, nor do we have the right connections to make such an amount. So, we decided to use our privilege to be able to make films for a higher purpose and use the power of cinema and Cinemalaya to reach out to potential sponsors and to shed light on the stories of the community,” explains Sumagaysay.

This is chiefly the reason why the directors were in tears when they received the email from Cinemalaya stating that they made the cut. “We have gone through so much crafting this film,” admits Salvadico.

Tumandok, a docu-fiction film, tracks the life of “a 16-year-old chieftain’s daughter as she fights tooth and nail with her people for their ancestral land.” True to its commitment in recognizing its genesis, the film centers on first-time, all-Ati actors, led by Jenaica Sangher and Felipe Ganancial. 

Its visual lexicon is shaped by Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland (2020), Sarah Polley’s Women Talking (2020), and Alejandro Loayza Grisi’s Utama (2022). 

“Nomadland for the production setup (we were just a small crew) and cinematography (the use of largely available light); Women Talking for the lengthy but gripping conversations, although Sarah Polley had the convenience of doing a scene for so many takes and we didn’t; and Utama obviously because we are dealing with the story of an indigenous people,” says co-director Salvadico.

Sumagaysay worked on the script alongside Arden Rod Condez, of Cinemalaya 2019 best film John Denver Trending – a gestation period that she describes as “tedious” and “very brain-wrenching.” 

“He would often ask me to rewrite and clarify things for him because I would often have typos, and he forgives me for that. We have had multiple days of lock-ins in Pasig and Iloilo, where we would spend time writing and jotting down our ideas. He would sometimes pinch my arm for slacking,” she says of Condez, who also served as producer for Mga Handum nga Nasulat sa Baras.

Particularly challenging for the text, apart from the four revisions it has gone through, notes Sumagaysay, is the shift between languages. “After finalizing the script, we had to translate it from Filipino to Hiligaynon and then to Inati, the language of the Ati. I can understand and speak a few words of their language, but to be sure, we gave the script to En-en and let the community read it. So I would like to believe that they are also writers of the film.” 

Sumagaysay says further that working with a non-professional acting ensemble factors into the artistic process. “Especially the actors of the Ati community, because some of them have yet to know how to read and even count. So we would often stay up until 11 at night to dictate their lines and teach them techniques on how to throw lines naturally. Most, if not all of them, are also aloof from lowlanders and outsiders; understandable because of the threats that they have been experiencing from lowlanders or uta as they call them.”

While the film, accompanied by a terrific poster from Justin Besana, was shot for only seven days, the director and the rest of her team lived in the community two months prior to the shoot to establish trust and rapport.

“One of the main issues I had to consider was whether my participation might be tantamount to exploiting the Ati community when involving them as actors. This concern has preoccupied me since pre-production until now. We kept asking each other if their stories were presented true and respectfully.

We have always asked: How can we make sure that the community’s involvement in this film could be termed empowering rather than exploitative? This made us think twice about everything starting from securing informed consent to ensuring equitable and fair pay, up to ensuring that they are comfortable with their roles, wardrobe, and scene.”

Sumagaysay adds, “Then, there were very difficult personal questions regarding how one can amplify the Ati community’s voice yet respect their privacy and dignity. It forced us to figure out how to honestly depict their experiences without exaggerating their hardships or reducing their lives to mere storylines for the screen.”

Salvadico also weighs in on this. “I think the most important thing that we did to address this was to spend two days with them before shooting. We gathered the community and explained to them thoroughly the main purpose of the film [and] they wholeheartedly agreed with it. Even those who were hesitant to go near were suddenly participative during production. I’d like to say that it has become a bayanihan or dagyaw for them. That’s why I always say that this is theirs, not ours.”

“Walang halong showbiz, doing the film with them was such a soul-enriching journey,” he points out.

At a time when environmental plunder is heightened due to corporate greed and state violence and surveillance, displacing our indigenous peoples in the process, the directors ultimately hope that, by putting the struggles of the Atis to the screen, audiences can look past their resilience and actively forged better conditions for them and all oppressed sectors at large. More than anything, Tumandok is a demonstration of the power of community, an insistence that a more humane, livable world is possible now.

“Hopefully, it will inspire more people to take action and support efforts to secure land rights for indigenous communities,” says Sumagaysay. – Rappler.com

This year’s Cinemalaya is set to run from August 2 to 11 at select Ayala malls.