Finding cinematic inspiration from tribal roots: Auraeus Solito

A collective gasp rose from the audience at the Bengaluru International Film Festival as they watched slimy worms crawl out of Punay — the protagonist in Busong. They sighed as the worms wriggled out wings and became beautiful butterflies.

Gasps and sighs don’t surprise its director Auraeus Solito. He has seen viewers respond this way since Busong first screened at the Cannes festival last year as the official selection for Directors’ Fortnight. “That Busong moves far-off audiences is heartening,” Solito tells me, raising his hand to his heart and bowing.

Busong (Fate) is the second part of Solito’s trilogy on Palawan, his tribe in the Philippines, a dream project that had been incubating for 15 years while he established himself as a filmmaker. His films now tell the stories he feels are vital to a world that is fast losing touch with nature.

Busong explores the Palawan concept of fate. “It’s like instant karma. When you do something bad to nature or your fellow men, it strikes back at you instantly,” explains Solito.

The beginning
The story of how Auraeus Solito became a filmmaker begins when he was just a little boy in Manila, hankering after stories. His mother told him strange, magical tales of a faraway land, where man and nature were a seamless being. He heard her speak in a mysterious language when her relatives visited. To little Solito, it sounded like “bird tongue”, the language of birds. He smelt a secret — one which took twenty years to unravel. “In Manila, people often mistook me for a foreigner.” His physical features — hair, face, limbs — were distinct. “Look at my hands,” he says.

“They are Palawan.” It was only while majoring in theatre art at the University of Philippines that he learned he belonged to a tribe called Palawan, but there was hardly any information about them. His mother had taken him to the Palawan islands once as a toddler. Images from that trip of mountains, lakes, flying squirrels and mud-skippers stayed with him. For his final year thesis in college, Solito wrote a script interweaving those memories and his mother’s stories. “The professor who read it told me: ‘Go back to where these stories came from. Nobody knows these. Go back to your roots and that’s where you will find your calling’. And I went.”

Finding himself
The boat journey to the Palawan islands was “like a doorway to another world”. Solito heard for the first time that he was a descendant of the Shaman kings of Palawan. “I was discovering paradise, the land of my dreams and memory.” He underwent shamanistic training with his uncle for two years. He mastered Taruk, their dance. “The music of the drums is the key. You have to follow the rhythm with your feet, hands and body, and you dance with your eyes closed. At one point, the music will take over your brain, and you get into a trance.” He learnt the Palawan language and their tribal spells, even bettering his cousins in some of them.

For seven years, he lived there, soaking in every aspect of his tribe.

His mother’s family had converted to Christianity when missionaries first came to parts of Palawan. Soon, fissures began to appear. “It became “they” and “us” — something that never existed earlier when the tribe shared every resource, food, water, everything,” says Solito.

His mother later moved out to Manila when she won a scholarship to study law. “There she met my father, married him, and had me — the first Palawan to be born outside of our tribal land. She hid her Palawan roots from me because she was ashamed of them.”

Palawan was mostly insulated from the Spanish colonisation because of the tough terrain. “The mosquitoes saved Palawan,” quips Solito, explaining how the place retained its beauty. “Over the last decade though, our fellow Filipinos are colonising Palawan. Beautiful sandbars around our islands have been taken over by rich businessmen for pearl farms. Its rich deposit of minerals and precious metals has attracted a number of mining companies that have begun large-scale strip mining operations.

Trees are being cut indiscriminately, and gun-toting guards are everywhere. The natives cannot go near their sacred sandbars anymore.” Solito joined environmentalists and activists to fight these encroachments, and they moved court. Soon, he began to receive death threats. “Finally, I was forced to head back to the city as everyone urged me to do so.”
 
Moving to cinema
Solito returned to Manila determined to tell the stories of Palawan. “The world should hear about the ancient culture of Palawan, their knowledge and wisdom, and their absolute harmony with nature. These stories mustn’t die.”

Solito wanted a canvas larger than theatre to do this. He needed cinema. So he attended a summer workshop at the Mowelfund Film Institute on basic filmmaking. But it was impossible to find funding for a film on the tribe. Then he decided to go the mainstream way to gain recognition. In 2005, he made Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros (The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros), a $10,000 film about a 12-year-old gay in Manila. It was the first Filipino feature film to score big in the West. It won 15 international prizes, including three at the Berlinale. His next film Tuli (Circumcision) was about a villager who fights the tradition of circumcision. Then he made Pisay (Philippine Science) about six teenagers in a science school discovering themselves. His fourth film Boy (2009) was the story of a poet who sells his collection of comic books and action figures to hire a male stripper on New Year’s Eve. All four films bagged awards and had the box-office ringing.

In 2010, Solito was chosen for a screenplay development programme at the Binger Film Lab in Amsterdam. There, he wrote Delubyo (Deluge), the first part of his Palawan trilogy. But it was the second part, Busong, which got funding because it was cheaper.

Solito had planned to cast Dr Gerry Ortega in Busong. Ortega was a leading environmentalist who was fighting the mining industry in Palawan. The day before shooting began, Ortega was murdered.

He was shot in the head from behind. “We were up against dangerous enemies. But we finished shooting in 20 days,” says Solito.

On January 24, the first death anniversary of Dr Ortega, Busong will screen in Palawan. And Solito has also started work on Delubyo.
 
The learning
Apart from becoming the inspiration for his films, Solito’s search for his roots even gave him a new name, rather his “real” name — Kanakan Balintagos, meaning the hunter of truth. “This is my tribal-spirit name. My uncle dreamt it when I was born,” he says.
Solito now feels at ease anywhere in the world; the disconnect he felt while growing up has vanished. “I am like a Kukok — a shape-shifter, who can change his appearance to suit situations,” he laughs. A lone Brahminy Kite circled far above our heads as he was talking. “It is a Palawan omen,” Solito smiles.