Walking on a Tightrope

The Binisaya Film Festival grew from pop-up screenings in beaches, rooftops, basements and basketball courts. How did founder Keith Deligero go against the tide?

- Jelou Galang

The first time I had to meet filmmaker Keith Deligero, I almost bailed.

I was in my third year of college, and the Cebuano director-writer was invited by my Philippine Cinema professor as a panelist for our makeshift student film fest. Lined up in her laptop were the short films we made, serving as our final project for the semester. None of us were film majors—the majority was required to take the subject, and I took it as an elective.

As each film was screened, the pair who made it had to listen to Deligero’s feedback—along with the whole class. Despite being an aspiring filmmaker, I found myself hesitating to submit our film.

Aside from a sudden change of script that made us cram the whole movie, we had to make do with a very low budget and less-than-ideal equipment. My classmates had DSLR cameras, while I could only use our old family Handycam. Of course I was grateful to be able to use something, but I still felt a little behind my class.

As the credits of our film started to roll, I knew we were facing our doom. Deligero would probably talk about how the editing was subpar; how the story was cliche as fuck; how the shots were too grainy; how the lighting was non-existent; how we didn’t know what we were doing. But just like the redeeming arc of a comingof-age story, he didn’t say any of those things.

Instead, Deligero asked about my influences in writing the script, saying he saw different chunks of world cinema in our film, which then led us to discuss the local and foreign flicks we used as references in our student film. “It’s not a bad thing,” he clarified.