Indie film director Jim Libiran was looking for personal salvation when he gate-crashed Philippine cinema with a movie tackling Manila’s violent gangland culture.
Three years later the former journalist is among a handful of emerging Filipino directors leading a renaissance of the local movie industry, yet his motives for tackling gritty social issues remain the same.
"I would like to say there is a deeper philosophy why I am doing this," the animated and passionate 42-year-old told AFP in an interview.
"But really there are only two reasons — one is I wanted to find relevance — my own place under the sun — and two, trying to get a message out to my son."
Libiran has not seen his young son in two years after a bitter separation from his former wife.
"My movies will serve as the vehicles to impart lessons to my son, to help him understand what is happening around him," he said.
Libiran said he is never at ease being compared with big-budget Filipino directors specializing in what he calls mindless, song-and-dance movie formulas that rake in millions.
"I am a gatecrasher. I was a journalist who dove into film making. I was never invited (by big studios) and yet I arrived," said Libiran, who spent 23 years as a newspaper and television reporter before venturing into film.
"I do not make perfect films. A new voice? I don’t know. What I try to say in the movies are the same things I have been reporting all along as a journalist."
Libiran left his job as news director of a television station in 2006 after becoming frustrated by what he felt was a general sense of apathy from a public numbed by corruption and poverty blighting this country of 92 million.
"It was frustrating. No one was listening to journalists anymore, nobody cared," he said.
"But journalism is not the only way to tell the truth, so I tried my hand at another craft, entered a new career."
Shortly after quitting his television job, Libiran enrolled in an advanced script writing class where he would meet future collaborators, some of whom have also carved out a name for themselves.
Libiran was among the oldest in the competitive class, and probably the most experienced when it came to storytelling.
For his thesis, Libiran revisited a story on warring gangs in Manila’s sprawling Tondo slum district which he had previously done as a television reporter.
He gathered members from 52 gangs and asked them to appear as real life characters in the movie that depicted their lifestyle.
The film, which was titled "Tribu" — the Filipino term for gang — gave the public a glimpse of a very graphic, brutal underbelly of Manila’s gang culture.
It was visceral, dark and raw, pricking the public conscience about the crucial social issue of pervasive poverty and crimes related to it.
"Tribu" also pulsated with Filipino street rap as the soundtrack that showcased the talent of local gangs as lyricists.
After winning the top prize in the local Cinemalaya film festival in 2007, "Tribu" made the cut in independent film road-shows internationally.
It received critical acclaim at the Pusan International Film Festival in 2008, and in the same year won the Le Pari de L’Avenir (Youth Jury Prize) at the Paris Cinema Festival.
However Libiran’s fame remains confined to die-hard indie film followers in the Philippines, and his venture into the movie industry has cost him money.
"Tribu" was so shocking that major cinemas in malls refused to show it, he said.
Libiran said that even when one art-house movie theater showed it on a limited run, only a handful of patrons came to watch each day.
"There is a problem with access. The businessmen and marketing people tell us that people don’t want to watch our film because it is art house," he said.
"You also can’t see a DVD of Tribu, because we don’t have the money. We don’t want to surrender this to the businessmen for mass distribution. This is ours."
Labiran said "Tribu" cost him about five million pesos (110,000 dollars) in production and marketing costs, a huge sum for a director with no major studio support.
Yet he remains committed to his new career and is busy putting the finishing touches to a second movie called "Happyland," which chronicles the story of a group of priests using football to woo children away from gangs.
The narrative again takes place in Tondo, and uses the same group of social outcasts as protagonists.
"Tondo is the story of the Philippines. We are dirt poor, but we fight and persevere as a people," Libiran said.
"These are local stories, but they resonate loudly abroad."
