I believe in the next five minutes. – JG Ballard
MANILA, Philippines - As you read this article, imagine it as a print version of a ribbon-cutting ceremony. Launches are momentous and, for the most part, joyous occasions. A launch (of any kind) happens when an institution wants to unveil to the world something important, lasting, useful, innovative or beautiful and this is done usually with a sense of triumph and grit. Aplomb. Ribbons are cut to say “Voila!” There is no semblance of delight in me as a write this for I am tasked to tell you who this column is for or in remembrance of — and it is for an esteemed film critic named Alexis Tioseco.
Alexis is dead. He was murdered on the night of Sept. 1, 2009. I know this because I saw him dead. Not in the solemn way that we are accustomed to — prepared and lying in peaceful state but face down and crumpled on their kitchen floor with his girlfriend Nika Bohinc almost beside him. Nika was a respected auteur herself, hailing all the way from Slovenia. The two met at the Rotterdam Film Festival a few years ago, both fell deeply in love and built a high-powered partnership mantled in a gentle relating together.
When Alexis died almost everyone near him focused on remembering his life, celebrating his work, reveling in his love for film and passion for saving Philippine Cinema. I suppose it is normal for human beings to ask for the cause of death — in passing — and when found too difficult to stare at — we focus our pupils elsewhere. We toast to him and comfort ourselves with the illusion that it was after all “a full and good life.” It works for a few months but not for me who saw exactly how he fell, less than two hours after his murderers left (what is now known as) the crime scene.
As difficult as this is for you to read and for me to write, it needs to be said that Alexis died by violent hands. It was not clean and there was nothing graceful about what I saw. I can always use euphemisms — God knows I have been — but not today. I want to cut the ribbon of The A/V Club with truth.
The truth is Alexis was beat. He was bruised and his right hand shot. His left hand’s middle finger had something around it. I stared at it for a while, thinking it was a ring — I never remembered Alexis wearing jewelry so I had to strain and look through the blood and saw that it was his house key in a ring. He was shot while he was still holding the keys to his home.
I will never be able to describe how it is to see the crime scene investigators mosey around him with characteristic city-hall indifference. All I could do was remind them over and over to be thorough. I barked orders at many of them that night in the kitchen, so much so that after a while they started calling me “Attorney.” I would ask if they’d dusted the chair or the bottles for prints. When asked why I was allowed inside the crime scene I lied and said I was Alexis’ legal guardian and that I was a student of forensics and that they should just take my word for it. In my mind, Alexis and I had a good chuckle because he is (was?) aware that all the forensics I know is from watching CSI.
I stood guard watching over Alexis and Nika pacing around them, kneeling beside them every now and then to make sure they were comfortable — a most absurd thing given that they were already dead. I am not mincing my words now, am I? I am sorry if this disconcerts you but it is the truth. And the truth is we have to be brave enough to talk about their death. I know we have to continue remembering his life and celebrating his life’s work — but f*ck — shouldn’t he be living it instead? Tonight I am angry. I am sad. I am resolved. And then I want to forever look the other way. I want to forget but I need to remember. There are reasons.
Alexis and Nika were murdered and today, over six months after, there is still no progress on the case. His sisters and brothers, our shared good friend Erwin Romulo and I have wrestled through administrative meetings with the police, a general, the former Secretary of Justice Agnes Devanadera, you’d think with all our connections we’d get somewhere — still nothing. The courtesy calls to the heads of these departments were hell. We’ve witnessed the Forensics Department go antsy when they found out we consulted a private forensics expert, the big title game — and the delay of releasing documents because of red tape and ego. All hell. All hell to all the players in this game as I cling on to my childhood belief that both my friends are in heaven.
I have no real theories on the afterlife but that night Alexis kept up a conversation with me. It could be paranormal if you want it to be and it could be something as cold as my brain and the way it knows the speech inflections of Alexis talking to me. Alexis was sheepish that night. With his characteristic understated manner, he kept apologizing to me for the inconvenience of being the only one there. The Scene of the Crime Operators kept asking me if I wanted tissue because they said the smell of blood was too strong. I didn’t notice it one bit. I was busy talking to Alexis, whose body was on my feet. After a few minutes, my phone rang and I heard myself say out loud, “Excuse me.” I felt our conversation was being interrupted. It was Nika’s father calling from Slovenia. We were both halting, him from the language barrier, me from the weight of what I had to tell him. That had to be the most difficult five minutes of my life.
Where to turn to for comfort is a question I wrestle with every day. This is the same for all who loved him fiercely. I never want to go public on this narrative as I was raised to believe that talking about what is considered gruesome is distasteful. I refused the route that tabloids or broadcast news take where they show photos of the dead for commercial shock value. I was vocal about my anger towards networks and newspapers that printed the photos of Alexis and Nika in a heap, reduced to what my friend Lourd de Veyra referred to as mere “grim pixels.” But there is no poise in the face of this. There are no pinky fingers raised while holding martini glasses in the act of searching for justice for murdered friends. There is nothing ginger about my motions regarding what happened on Sept. 1.
Once again the memory of Alexis takes me out of this conundrum, gently and eloquently like the man himself. Paraphrasing Susan Sontag (from “Regarding the Pain of Others”): Some people believe that if the horror could be made vivid enough, most people would finally take in the outrageousness, the insanity of war and violence. Coincidentally, I quote that from the physical book that Alexis once owned.
It is my understanding that The A/V Club is a column that will rotate pieces from the views of four film critics Alexis respected and supported: Richard Bolisay, Francis Cruz, Dodo Dayao and Philbert Dy. Alexis spoke highly of these four critics, referring to them as allies in the battle he chose to fight. It is a minor comfort but a comfort nonetheless that they will continue the work of Alexis — not as mimes but as accomplished critics with their own language and points of view possibly similar but most probably (thankfully) different from Alexis.
As I said in my eulogy for my friend the morning they buried him: One never leaves a conversation with Alexis with an aftertaste of his ideas in your mouth. He will leave you with a bigger sense of your own taste and your own thoughts. If you notice my testimony for him this morning seems to be all about me — but see that’s what he wanted others to do. He didn’t want you to remember him or laud his brilliance (though we often do) but no way was that ever his purpose for conversation. When he wrote — he always focused on ideas and not on himself. I always felt he wanted us to revisit our own thoughts — thoughts that he merely articulated for us and in the end we think the ideas were actually ours. That… is genius.
So with this, my truth, I cut the ribbon of this column to celebrate the genius of the late great Alexis Tioseco. Voila.
