T’boli period movie weaves a cultural spell in New York

Filmmaker Ida Anita del Mundo speaking to viewers after the screening of her movie “K’na The Dreamweaver” in New York. PHOTO BY DENNIS CLEMENTE

NEW YORK CITY — Outside of Manila, from South Cotabato to Singapore and Toronto to New York, “K’na the Dreamweaver” has been getting mostly positive reviews from a diverse audience and collecting some awards, too.

The T’boli-inspired movie, which started screening at the off-off Broadway Producer’s Club steps away from Times Square last June 26, has attracted young and old, Filipinos and non-Filipinos, weavers and weepers taken in by the fable’s quiet charm.

The movie ends its run here on July 2 and it certainly needs more viewers than it is getting for the accolades it is receiving, except in Manila where the reactions were mixed.

Manila’s audience reportedly expected a movie with more realism and social relevance, but writer-director Ida Anita del Mundo said that she chose to write it as a fable set in a bygone era, inspired as she was by Zhang Yimou’s timeless movies. It’s about a woman who must choose love or tradition to stop the fighting between warring tribes.

Del Mundo said she always wanted to write a tragic story but just didn’t have the setting. She found her story while on a magazine writing assignment about T’bolis in South Cotabato. Stranded in a heavy downpour, Del Mundo and her crew found themselves staying with a T’boli tribe who performed ritual songs and dances.

She started learning more about the T’bolis, the locals, their heritage and their traditional cloth-weaving, and worked with consultants to develop the story, with culture and language consultant Oyog Todi.

“K’na the Dreamweaver” has since garnered Special Jury Prize and Best Production Design honors at Cinemalaya, Manila’s premiere independent Filipino film festival, and Best of Show at Toronto’s Female Eye Film Festival, besting a field of 86 contenders.

Del Mundo flew in from Toronto to do a Q&A and sit down with the New York audience for three consecutive nights before going back to Manila Sunday night.

“I like that the movie has a universal timeless quality and how it reminds us to protect and preserve something like the (T’bolis of Lake Sebu),” said photographer Michelle Poire in one of the screenings here.

The teary-eyed viewers included a woman waxing nostalgic about her hometown in South Cotabato during a Q&A session, as well as a group of twenty-something Filipino Americans and Filipino Canadians. Some of them were repeat viewers from the Toronto screening, and another saw the movie at the Cinemalaya premiere night in Manila.

Del Mundo responding to audience’s questions at movie screening. PHOTO BY ANN QUITO

Kelly Mortensen of Yakang Yaka, a company that is modernizing weaving in the Philippines, said she has now seen the movie in both Manila and New York.

Francoise Buffaulp, a retired French-language teacher at the United Nations, went to see the movie with a bad leg but found the movie worth the steep climb to the old Producers Club. “I admired the intelligent way you approached the culture,” she said to Del Mundo after the screening.

Potri Ranka Manis, the founder and artistic director of Kinding Sindaw Melayu Heritage from Lanao del Sur but based now in Queens, also came to watch the movie.

“K’na The Dreamweaver” establishes a first in Philippine cinema. It’s the first film to show the T’boli culture in the T’bolis’ language with their traditional cloth-weaving rituals. The cloth is made of abaca fibers in red, black and the original color of abaca leaves.

Asked which screening she liked the most, Del Mundo said the gym in South Cotabato with 5,000 T’bolis watching the movie with a strong sense of pride.

The one-week run has two screening days left—today July 1 and tomorrow July 2 at 5:30 pm, 7:30 pm and 9:30 pm

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