After Venice-winning Lav Diaz in 2008, Cannes Best Director Brillante Mendoza becomes the second Filipino filmmaker to be honored with a retrospective and teaching stint at the world-renowned film school DFFB or the German Film and Television Academy Berlin.

Axel Estein, programmer of the Asian Hot Shots Berlin Festival, related that the master class consisted of screenings of Mendoza’s films at the Arsenal Cinema as well.

The master class and retrospective were held in the German capital early this month.

Round table

“Brillante analyzed the technical and aesthetic aspects, plus the social relevance of his films with the students in a round-table forum,” Estein related.

He said the students expressed interest in the production details of Mendoza’s films like “Tirador,” “Foster Child,” “Serbis” and the Cannes winner, “Kinatay.”

“They wanted to know more about his camera equipment and how he organized his location shoots,” he said.

The students were curious about real time, a story-telling style employed by Mendoza and his acknowledged mentor and frequent collaborator, Armando “Bing” Lao.

“They regarded it as closer to documentary than conventional drama, in terms of technique,” Estein said. “They also wanted to learn more about Philippine society—its history, politics, economy, social classes.”

Unfamiliar terrain

Estein noted that Philippine cinema, and Philippine society in general, were unfamiliar terrain for the students. “The master class [gave] them a better understanding of the significance of Brillante’s works in relation to contemporary Philippine realities.” He described Mendoza as a “great” teacher.

“He was organized and very familiar with the structure of his subject matter. He was specific and precise with all the issues tackled in the day-long classes,” said Estein.

At the same time, however, Mendoza was a “flexible” mentor, Estein added.

“He was able to answer the students’ questions. He was keenly aware that the students were limited by their first-world point of view. In that way, he was a wonderful mediator between the two hemispheres,” the East and the West, the first and the third worlds.

“He opened up the students to new perspectives and brought greater understanding and knowledge to them in the process,” he said.

Best-known

Estein regards Mendoza as the “best-known Filipino filmmaker to date... a leader in contemporary filmmaking.”

As such, he was pleasantly surprised that Mendoza, in spite of his achievements in the global scene, was no diva. “He was easy to get along with, down-to-earth and open to other people’s ideas, experiences and questions,” Estein said.

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