Erik Matti’s Food Lore episode goes to Tokyo filmfest
MANILA, Philippines — Erik Matti is set to serve the international audience an “inclusive” narrative about Filipino life and culture through the lens of cuisine.
The 48-year-old filmmaker has directed Island of Dreams, the opening episode of HBO Asia’s drama series, Food Lore, which was shot in eight countries across Asia.
Food Lore: Island of Dreams is also one of two episodes (the other is Vietnam’s He Serves Fish, She Eats Flower) selected to world-debut at the upcoming Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) on Oct. 30, ahead of the HBO and HBO GO premiere on Nov. 3, 10 p.m. The episode stars Angeli Bayani, Yul Servo, Ina Feleo and Joey Marquez, among others.
In Island of Dreams, Nieves (Angeli) leaves her husband (Yul) and children to work as a domestic helper in Manila. Returning home for the annual fiesta, Nieves soon realizes that she may have grown estranged from her beloved family as her jubilant homecoming takes an unexpected turn.
When Singaporean showrunner and award-winning director Eric Khoo recruited the Buy Bust and On The Job director for the project, “the first questions we asked when we were writing the script was, what do you want to know about the Philippines and that international audience will also be excited to know about?” direk Erik recalled.
According to Erik, the script went through “several permutations” given that “a lot is writing on a food story with Filipinos because we’re the most un-Asian in the ASEAN region. I mean, we’re more Spanish or more Latin American rather than Asian Asian. Those are the things that we took into consideration.”
There were three main things he aimed to highlight in the story. One is the Filipino fiesta. Second is how food “brings together communities because with us, it’s a communal thing.”
He further said, “We are like the Spanish. When we start eating, we take hours just talking on the table. We’re not like the Japanese, where it’s more ritualistic. With us, it’s family-style, everyone digs in. And it’s the conversations on the table that really matter.”
More importantly, Erik wanted the episode to be able to present the “most identifiable Filipino story that we can have” — that is, the Filipino diaspora.
“With this one, she (Angeli) just came from Manila, but eventually is going to end up in Hong Kong in the story. So, we felt that that would be universal, but it’s something that also Filipinos would relate to,” he said.
“We wanted a very aspirational Filipino food movie. Aspirational in where it will inspire people to know our food a little more and to see what kind of celebratory life we can also have. Na di lang naman dukha lagi,” he added.
Apart from entertaining and hopefully educating a foreign audience about the Filipino, Erik hopes the episode will inspire fellow Filipinos to dream more and not settle.
“Inasmuch as this episode is about food, this episode is also about filmmaking in the Philippine context, and also everything about our country,” he said, opining that “our country has stopped being ambitious or figuring out the best.”
He cited an example, “When you go to a place like Hong Kong, there’s a guy who does noodles for 80 years (but) he has figured out down to the last centimeter and down to the last ounce of flour, what’s the best chew of a noodle. With us, we always settle. We don’t go for perfection even if we can never get there.”
“A lot of people would like to settle and here’s (the character of Angeli), who wants to see things. She is curious about finding out things. We have all these ideas, good ones. We do good work, but we always settle for something because there’s not enough money, there’s not enough resources, there’s not enough time for research. And we just equated it to food — that sometimes, food is just (about) survival,” he added.
Meanwhile, direk Erik revealed that it has been a big dream of his to feature Ilonggo way of life, culture and food in a film project, him being from Negros. But he decided against doing so in Food Lore in hopes of presenting a story that’s inclusive, not regionalistic.
Take, for example, the setting. Cartagena Island, is a real place in Sipalay, Negros Occidental, but he hopes Island of Dreams would feel like any island in the Philippines.
“We wanted this to be very Filipino rather than just Ilonggo. Of course, we shot it in Negros but we are not saying it’s in Negros. We’re saying it’s any other island in the Philippines,” he said.
Even the soundtrack is a conscious mix, featuring Ilocano and Bisaya music, et. al, in different genres.
More so, with the food that they chose to feature. He described it as a “cross-section of the best that we can have of our regional cuisine.”
“We probably had 40 dishes that I wanted to feature. Why a lot of dishes? I don’t want to be regionalistic,” Erik said.
So, expect the favorites — kare-kare, inasal, adobo — and more “just so everyone feels that the show is inclusive. Kasi tayo, that’s the problem. We’re kind of watak-watak (divided or scattered) as a country. I’ve always dreamed of showcasing Ilonggo food but for this one, I thought, I shouldn’t. I should be inclusive of all the other dishes that we have.”
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