When Philippine film director Brillante Mendoza decided to make a movie about survivors of Typhoon Haiyan, which devastated Tacloban City in November 2013, leaving more than 7,000 people dead, he hired veteran actress Nora Aunor to anchor the film and enlisted the help of the Philippine branch of the Taiwan-based Buddhist Compassion Tzu Chi Foundation in filming location work.
Titled Taklub, a Tagalog word for a hand-made basket used to trap fish, the 90-minute movie was screened at the Cannes Film Festival in France last month and has received very good reviews from critics. There is even a chance the film could be nominated for next year’s Oscars in the foreign-language movie category.
Mendoza used a quote from the Bible to bookend the movie, which is not a documentary, but a feature film shot with a hand-held camera to give it a gritty, realistic feel.
Citing the Book of Ecclesiastes, a title card at the end of the movie reads: “A time to mourn, and a time to mend.”
Mendoza said he started working on the movie, produced and funded by several agencies of the Philippine government as “an advocacy film,” just six weeks after Haiyan (Yolanda) hit Tacloban.
Philippine actress Glenda Kennedy plays the role of a Tzu Chi volunteer in the movie, according to Alfredo Li, chief executive officer of the foundation’s Philippine branch.
In a recent e-mail interview, Li explained his role in the movie as a kind of assistant producer during an important location shoot.
“The movie was an independent film with a limited budget,” Li said. “The director called me one day asking for some support, saying he needed about 1,500 people to shoot a particular scene in the story depicting the fear that local citizens of Tacloban felt about another storm surge coming in. Mendoza told me candidly and frankly that his budget for the movie could not afford paying so many extras a daily rate for that scene, so I said to him that the Tzu Chi Foundation in Tacloban could mobilize our Filipino volunteers to do the scene without pay.”
On the day of the scheduled location shoot, 3,000 Tzu Chi volunteers showed up. Mendoza was so touched by the enthusiasm of the volunteers that at the end of the day’s shoot, he donated 10,000 pesos (US$222) as a token of appreciation to Tzu Chi, Li said.
“In one particularly poignant scene in the movie, Tzu Chi volunteers are seen distributing much-needed Taiwanese rice supplies to victims of Typhoon Yolanda,” Li said. “Audiences around the world will be able to see very clearly the many sacks of rice in the movie with a marking reading ‘Love From Taiwan’ on them.”
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