Women Cinemakers terrace, no matter how smoky it got. It was rather dim indoors, so I felt outdoor seating was more suitable for reading, writing or typing. (I would eventually do my long and short edits of the pre-city-scape student film, "Flaneurs in Love" at the very same terrace.) I like people-watching and, occasionally, having short conversations with the waitstaff. I would take walks to the park nearby and either continue reading there or observing workers taking a breather from their evening shifts by walking along the concrete path, or foreign mothers with their children who are still running around in the playground close to midnight (believe it or not). In the video itself, I had Gian almost replicate my cafe terrace routines, minus the use of celfones or laptops and those small exchanges with people. I didn't want to think too long and hard about having him do a production number of sorts at the terrace without the waitstaff thinking I was going nuts filming it, but since other gestures had initially been done with his hands on the table, I guess it was only a matter of time to zero in on those made with his feet while he hovered over the terrace to observe the passersby. I wanted it to feel natural as well, and in a public space obsessed with permits, I wanted to get away with the momentary artistry-in-progress. Surprisingly, the street scenes were met without much difficulty. A vacant parking lot en route to the park gave us the luxury of space to explore how Gian's unchoreographed dance movements could be captured on video. I had to keep up with his pace, since he propelled himself forward pretty fast. And there I was, behind the camera, doing a little unwitnessed dance and leaping of my own. I did the first city-scape in 3 takes - all nighttime shoots - one of which coincided with an event in the park. My spontaneous background cast added to the video's charm - a kid on a scooter must have passed Gian twice. Also, while he strutted on a sidewalk like he was on a fashion runway, a small troop of night riding Vespas appeared from behind. Admittedly, that felt very French New Wave, without really having to try. It felt wonderful to have elements of the neighbourhood emerge in the video without going out of my way to negotiate them, since I was aiming for things to unfold naturally. The main priority was the dance, after all. I think Gian felt comfortable right away with all this space to work with. There was a slightly rough quality to his performance, especially with all that spinning around, but he would slow down with a graceful finish.
I also picked this neighbourhood location because of the multicultural/expatriate presence that is reminiscent of First World Asian cities like Hong Kong and Singapore. In a creative environment that feels the need to assert itself by re/claiming what is Filipino, which gets tiring after a while, I felt that the opposite could be said about my choice of intellectual and cultural habitat. I am home, I feel at home - and at times I do not - and yet current trends in architecture and interior design do not scream of local identity. As a traveler, I also have, to some extent, felt at "home" in other multicultural cities. Even if the Filipino cannot be taken out of me or Gian for that matter, we can always play up the fantasy that we could be whoever and whatever we want to be, given the anonymity of traveling bodies. But using this residential hub of Salcedo Village which is populated by condos and boutique hotels (as well as cultural libraries, banks and BPOs) - as a stand-in for another multicultural city heightens the fantasy that we could be anywhere, even if we happen to be from a Third World city. The cosmopolitan disguise, after all, is not so apparent, even with the seemingly non-evidence of its contextual baggage. city-scape n°2 was shot inside the area where I live. It is a "gated" community, also in Makati, that only residents can access. For reasons of privacy, I won't say where, but as it is, there are several villages within Makati that operate as "gated" communities. The village association issues stickers to residents on a yearly basis for all-access entry to the village gates, located in strategic points, which are strictly monitored by security. Because of where these gates are strategically located within access to areas of the city, one of the known perks of residing in the village is avoiding traffic, which tends to bottleneck outside. Driving through inside can get a resident from Point A to Point B with ease, while those without access deal with the horrible traffic outside. This explains why over the wall where Gian dances on the short path, you can hear a lot of cars outside. Cars do pass inside, but not with the kind of volume and intensity of how much traffic is generated as the public space outside, except perhaps during the rush hour. Inside, the streets are quite still. We just wanted a wall to work with. We also have to respect private property by not shooting in front of houses, but that was not the real reason why we chose the wall. It was for Gian to be given a quiet space to interact with, to bounce off from. It just so happened that the sounds coming