Mamang

Director’s Statement

The story of Mamang (term used by most Filipinos to call their mother) began as a personal account of how I’ve gotten to know and understand my grandmother. I wanted to start with my most recent memory of her – as someone who keeps complaining about getting old and how we used to candidly talk about it. I used to wonder what was behind the grumpiness, or those nuances and mannerisms — what is the history behind certain gestures or the way she used to laugh.

Having known her when she was already in her 70s, her story and her life, for me, has always been incomplete, and I’ve had to take note of references she made every now and then about her past – the river she used to play in, a friend made during the war, the toys she used to make for her sons, a night out that went awry when she was still a young girl, a miscarriage, the passing of a son, her first love – these were little pieces of a puzzle which I never fully completed, even after she passed away and I was left with an incomplete picture but somehow the incompleteness of it became part of the story. In the end, the film Mamang became – pieces of characters, encounters, dreams, memories, but more importantly, absences, and gaps which became a barometer of sorts for what is remember-able and what is not because of the pain it took to remember.

I wanted to tell that sort of story and to do that, I tried to get as many woman as possible on my team – my cinematographer, musical scorer, producers, production assistants, assistant director – because I felt that these gaps and absences inherent in our narrative as a woman living in a third world country where misogyny has become glorified and cheered upon, will find its voice only in women.